This Doesn't Happen in Real Life

Chapter 42: Siren

My lungs were just about ready to scream for air but I denied their petty whining and finished what I was doing. I grabbed the stunt dummy dressed convincingly like a little girl and my lifeguard training kicked in as I took it up in proper form. I came out and took a gulp of air but I couldn’t look as out of breath as I was because Kaiya’s lung capacity was greater than that of mine.

They ended the shot and I put the dummy on the edge of the pool type area they tried to make look like a lake and hoisted myself out. I caught my breath with a couple refreshing gulps of air. Water droplets were cascading from everywhere: my hair, eyelashes, arms, clothes, just everywhere.

 I wrung my hair a bit and stood to look over at our director, “Do I need to do it again?”

“No, you’re fine Callia. I think we’ve gotten more than enough, go dry off.” He called over.

I nodded and walked over to my trailer thing and bounded in. I grabbed a towel from the corner and tried not to drip everywhere. After my hands were mostly dry I checked my phone to see if I had any new messages. Jo had sent me some exciting information about a musical she was in, Ella had sent me some agenty type messages I only half understood, Mom had asked me for the 50th time how I was doing that day, and so on and so forth. I responded to the more necessary ones and then sat down for a moment as I stared at the ceiling.

I started humming “Wishing you were somehow here again” from Phantom of the Opera then. And before I’d quite realized it I was singing it just barely short of full voice. All the while however I was still staring absentmindedly at the ceiling.

Then there was a knock on the door. I assumed it was someone coming to retrieve me. “Yup.” was all I said. The door opened and I saw Colin poke his head in slightly before he walked in.

“Mornin’ Callia. Singing again are we?” He said chipperly.

“Hey Colin, and yeah- I suppose I am.” I looked over at his smiling face and nodded my head for him to come in. I wrapped my towel tighter around me as I felt the cool outdoor air hit my skin.

Colin stepped in and I saw he had two cups in his hand. He passed one to me. “I figured you might want some coffee to warm you up after saving dummies for an hour.”

I gladly took it and grinned at him, “Thanks!” I thought for a moment as I sipped the coffee silently and I looked Colin over: blue plaid shirt, green beanie, jeans, and trainers, his usual go to outfit basically. His hair was sticking out from under the beanie in places and looked sort of funny and his eyes looked slightly more “so baby blue it’s going to spit up on you” than usual. That reminded me I still had my Kaiya contacts in so I carefully grabbed the contact case off my tiny desk of things. It took out the very ice blue contacts and put them in the case, I’d put them back in when I had to start filming again.

“So…” I began, “what brought you out to set today?”

Colin shrugged, “I wanted to come see how you were.  I don’t seem to see you in person much anymore. Did I need a reason?”

I shook my head a bit, “I suppose not. I was just curious.”

He chuckled at me and shook his head, “Callia, you are always curious!”

“I realize that.” I said in a snarky tone. I took a small drink from my coffee again; I was feeling much warmer already.

We sat in companionable silence for a moment before Colin broke the silence again. “Hey Callia, how long are you staying with David again?”

I paused, calculating in my head. I’d already been staying with him for a couple weeks since the block of flats had caught fire. My flat hadn’t really been horribly damaged but they had to work on building the top floors up again and fixing things and making sure everything was safe. Fortunately all of my things had been spared the cost of hungry flames (though everything still smelled faintly of smoke) but I just couldn’t return to the flat until everything was fixed.