“He also says one day he’s going to have a place there.”

“Latigo Canyon?”

“Malibu, but on the beach, like the Colony. He’s crazy intense.”

“About his career?”

“There are some people who put everything into a scene, you know? But later they know when to stop? Dylan can be cool when he’s just being himself, but he’s got these ambitions. Cover of People, take the place of Johnny Depp.”

“What are your ambitions, Michaela?”

“Me? I just want to work. TV, big screen, episodic, commercials, whatever.”

“Dylan wouldn’t be happy with that.”

“Dylan wants to be number one on the Sexiest Man List.”

“Have you talked to him since the exercise?”

“No.”

“Whose decision was that?”

“Lauritz told me to stay away.”

“Were you and Dylan pretty close before?”

“I guess. Dylan said we had natural chemistry. That’s probably why I got...swept along. The whole thing was his idea but he freaked me out up there. I’m talking to him and shaking him and he looks really...you know.”

“Dead.”

“Not that I’ve ever seen anyone really dead but when I was young I liked to watch splatter flicks. Not now, though. I get grossed out easily.”

“What’d you do when you thought Dylan looked dead?”

“I went crazy and started untying the neck rope, and he still wasn’t moving and he held his mouth open and was looking really...” She shook her head. “The atmosphere up there, I was getting freaked out. I started slapping his face and yelling at him to stop it. His head just kept flopping back and forth. Like one of those loosening exercises Nora has us do before a big scene.”

“Scary,” I said.

“Scary-terrifying. I’m dyslexic, not intense dyslexic, like illiterate or illegible, I can read okay. But it takes me a long time to memorize words. I can’t sound anything out. I mean, I can memorize my lines but I really work hard.”

“Being dyslexic made it scarier to see Dylan like that?”

“Because my head felt all scrambled up and I couldn’t think straight. And then being scared blurred it. Like my thoughts weren’t making sense— like being in another language, you know?”

“Disoriented.”

“I mean, look what I did,” she said. “Untied myself and climbed up that hill and ran out to the road without even putting my clothes on. I had to be disoriented. If I was thinking normal, would I do that? Then, after that old guy, the one on the road who...” Her frown made it as far as the left side of her mouth before retracting.

“The old man who...”