He’s older than me, but he still looks too young to be doing this. When I catch his eye, he stares a little too long, and I feel a blush rise in my stomach and crawl up my neck. Everything about him is neat and tidy—his hair, his clothes, his attitude.

While my panic is growing by the second, Danny radiates calm, and I can already see why they hired him. He’s not impressed by me. He doesn’t treat me like a “star.” He sees me as something to move around a scene.

“What do you wear to bed?” Danny asks.

“I’m sorry?”

“When you go to sleep,” he says, “what do you wear?”

For a second, I think about telling him where to go, but then I realize that for the next month, nothing is private. He isn’t being creepy. He isn’t coming on to me. He’s doing his job.

I pull my pajamas from under my pillow and hold them out to him, wishing they were clean and matching.

“Cool. Put them on.” He sees my face and says, “We need to replicate your wake-up experience.”

After I’ve changed in the bathroom, Danny says, “Okay, pretend it’s the morning.”

I climb into bed, and he asks, “What side do you wake up on?”

“I don’t know.”

He makes a face. “What side do you fall asleep on?”

“My right,” I say.

Danny nods. “We’ll go with that. Lie on your right side and close your eyes…and…action!”

Danny clears his throat, then again, and I guess he’s trying to tell me something. So I do what I think I do when I wake up, and when I open my eyes, I see Michael the cameraman across the room.

When I don’t do anything, Danny waves his hands and mouths, “Go,” but I just lie there until he says, “Cut!” Then, “You can’t do that tomorrow. That’s what this is for: to prepare you.”

This is why they’ll be here in the mornings. Even with cameras all over the house, they need to ensure the best possible start.

We do the scene again, and they’re happier the second time. While Michael packs up, Danny speaks to me like I’m a real person and not a prop.

“You’ll be fine,” he says. “I promise.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

He smiles and says, “I’d be more worried if you were taking this in stride.”

Each of the five of us has a different director, and I wonder if I got lucky.

He is definitely nice to look at, and this quick change of character suggests he knows he’s a little bit of an asshole at work and is trying to make up for it now.

They’re about to leave when Dad appears in the hallway and says, “Could I have a word?”