Dramatic Child Stars

Sixteen

Percy,
July 25, 2021,
10:43 am.

Sundays have always meant family day for me. It was like that when I was a kid too. When my mom and I were living alone in Los Angeles, we always declined to shoot episodes of the sitcom on that day, even when pressured by deadlines and back ups. The studio would be incredibly pushy about it. My mom pretended we were religious to get out of filming. She never took shifts for herself on those days either.

When I was a kid, family day tended to look like the two of us sitting on the sofa eating junk food and watching movies. We liked superhero movies. We liked getting excited at all of the action and suspense. Musicals were also a regular occurance for obvious reasons. Other nights we would play board games. When I was especially fed up with working, she and I would just sit on the living room floor reading my scripts aloud in a mocking tone. Some of the episodes were just especially cringy and we'd make fun of them and laugh together.

Sometimes a Sunday would land on a day where my dad had suddenly decided to grace us with his presence. Those Sundays were unfortunate. We sat at the small rickety folding table in our apartment having a family dinner. He'd eventually snap at me for something because I had a hard time with the pretending he never left thing. I would then go to my room and read, or play the piano, or do something independently in a way that completely missed the point of family time. Once my little sister Genevieve was involved, I'd stay for her, but things were still tense and odd.

Sometimes Riley came. That was something that happened later, when we were teenagers, but it wasn't something that was exactly planned. Riley wasn't even explicitly invited. He was just suddenly always around at a certain point. He started coming home from work with me and staying through the weekend. Nobody ever came to collect him, so my mom started making an extra plate at dinner. I used to wonder if we could even afford the extra mouth.

Eventually he stopped coming. There was never a conversation about that either. The list with his name on it released and the lawsuit showed up and Riley became a distant face I only saw sometimes until it was mostly over.

"You're going somewhere?" Riley asked me when he saw me lacing up my stupidly clean leather shoes.

He had been sitting out on the balcony. I didn't remember hearing him go out, but I also hadn't seen him come in the previous night. I was choosing not to read into that too much, even though the fact that he hadn't changed clothes since the previous morning was quite evident. He also smelled. It was a mix of cigarette smoke and weed and something else unfortunate. Riley hadn't showered in a while. Standing in the doorway, I couldn't help but think he looked quite pitiful.

"It's Sunday," I answered, tying the last knot. I straightened up from my place on the sofa to face him.

Recognition showed in his face. For a moment he looked to be processing it. Then his features dropped slightly to something more nervous, which he immediately tried to hide under a false blankness.

"Oh," he said. "Oh, right."

"We probably won't be long," I said with a little shrug. Even though the image of my father came to mind, I kept my voice light. "It's probably best if we don't linger."

Riley nodded. He still hovered on the balcony. I expected he'd be back out there soon enough.

"What do you think you're going to do in the mean time?" I asked. I allowed some sort of enthusiasm to show in my voice, and I smiled nonchalantly like I didn't already know he planned on sitting on the porch and smoking the weed Basil put in that stupid child's gift bag for him.

"I'll just... I'll be here," Riley said in the same almost positive tone I'd mustered. He tried to smile and then settled for the neutral look.

I could have ignored it. I could have just let him off without the inquiries I knew he didn't want to hear. It's honestly a part of myself I don't like very much; the desire to push when it's clearly unwanted.