Dramatic Child Stars

Two.

Percy,
July 17th, 2021,
2:47 am.

The first time I saw Riley having one of his freak outs, I was 8. Riley was 7, but just barely. I'm a year and 9 months older than him.

His behavior was the reason I was offered the job. A talent agent scouted me specifically because I was known to have a calming presence when I was on productions with other kids. They saw me backstage at one of my last theatre performances making a temporary stop in Los Angeles, and then begged my mother to permanently relocate us a thousand miles away from home so that someone would control Riley. His professional record was immaculate. Riley was the visage of perfection for a child star. Everyone wanted him, but nobody could control the absolute terror of having Riley alone on set. They needed another kid. He just couldn't be the only one. That was the studios determination after a few horrible days of nothing getting done while Riley paraded around acting almost feral every time the cameras turned off.

The script was rewritten to give Riley's character a brother. I was brought onto set to watch Riley have a melt down on my first day.

It was something about a scene. They wanted to run him through his lines. Someone had offered to sit with him in his dressing room to go over them. I think it was just an intern, but I have no idea. What I do know is that Riley started crying. I always assumed the tears were because he felt like he wasn't doing a good job. Being a child actor is actually really hard. Aside from the stress and the premature professionalism expected of them, you have to learn to take criticism far before your brain can comprehend what criticism is. Instead you just think people don't like you.

I walked up to the crying little boy. It's worth noting that at the ripe old age of 8, I was also a little boy. I reached him, I grabbed his script, and then I said, "Let's go. I don't know my lines. We have to practice."

Some things I should mention are that I'd only met Riley one time during our joint screen test a week prior, I totally knew my lines, and Riley stopped crying to make fun of me for not knowing them. Riley could barely read also. He'd never set foot in a classroom actually, and everything he knew was from sketchy homeschool lessons with his mom. Everything he knew about reading, he'd learned from scripts.

Anyways, now Riley was screaming.

Actually, a lot of people were screaming, but I thought Riley might have been the loudest. When I woke up alone in my bed, I heard his unintelligible shouts above everyone else. I also heard the baby crying. That was probably what upset me the most about being woken up in such a manner.

I muttered a curse word and stumbled out of bed in a confused tumble. I was practically blind in the darkness of my room, but I still found the shirt hanging on the bedpost as I made my way to the door. It was pulled over my torso by the time I made it to the door. I never slept with my door closed all the way, so the dim light of the hallway guided me.

When I emerged into the hallway, I immediately saw Leah. When I'd gone to bed, she'd been sleeping on the sofa just like she'd been doing for the past two weeks(and on and off for the last two years). She was standing in the doorway of the bedroom next door to mine, a cross look adorning her face. She was still wearing shorts and the tshirt of mine she'd been sleeping in. Her mousy brown hair was falling out of its braid into her face. In Leah's arms was our son, the 11 month old that was currently attempting to scream loud enough to drown out the sound of Riley and whoever was yelling back at Riley down the hall.

"He woke up Flynn," she growled at me. "Deal with him. Now."

She was definitely going to keep sleeping on the sofa after this. I sighed and nodded earnestly. I couldn't exactly argue. She already didn't like the Riley situation, and he wasn't helping his own case.