Which leads me to my final point. Producers are the masterminds of the show—the contestants are more like puppets. The show might not be scripted, but if you’re not saying the things they want you to say, if you’re not having the conversations they want you to have, they’ll stop the cameras and tell you, “Talk about this.” And they edit so shrewdly, snipping out what they don’t want or stringing together words said on completely different occasions to create a sentence never uttered by anyone—there’s even a name for it: frankenbiting.
Like that—right there. “I never said that,” I said, lowering myself onto the couch and wincing when I heard myself remarking snidely, “People from small towns are all small-minded and stupid.”
Natalie sucked air through her teeth. “Wow. That was pretty harsh. You didn’t say it?”
“No! You can totally tell it’s edited—see the way it cut away from my interview to a voiceover? My voice doesn’t even sound the same! Those fucking producers were so slimy.”
The shot went back to me during the interview, and God, I hated my face. And my stupid girly voice. And who told me that color yellow looked good with my skin tone? “I’m actually from a small town,” I was saying. “I grew up on a farm in Northern Michigan, but I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
Wait a minute. Had I said that? I bit my lip. I honestly couldn’t remember. And seeing as I’d recently moved back to said small town in Northern Michigan, it was particularly embarrassing.
And then it got worse.
“It’s nothing but a bunch of drunks, rednecks and religious gun nuts,” I heard my voice saying as footage of some unfamiliar, old-timey main street flashed on the screen, complete with a farmer riding a tractor through town. “I’d never go back.”
“What?” Furious, I got to my feet. “I know I never said that! That footage wasn’t even taken here!”
“Can they do that?” Natalie wondered, finally sounding a little outraged on my behalf. “I mean, just take any words you say and mix and match like that? Seems wrong.”
“Of course it’s wrong, but yes, they can,” I said bitterly. “They can do anything they want because it’s their show.” As I poured margarita down my throat, my cell phone dinged. I grabbed it off the couch and looked at the screen.
A text from our oldest sister, Jillian. She was a doctor and usually too busy for television, but lucky me, she must have found time tonight.
What the hell was that???
But before I could reply, another text came in, this one from my mother.
I thought you said last week was the worst. The thing with the mechanical bull.
My head started to pound. I opened my mother’s message and wrote back, I thought it was! I told you not to watch this show, Mom. They manipulate things. I never said that stuff. But I knew she wouldn’t get it. No matter how often or how well I explained the way editing worked, she still didn’t understand. My phone vibrated in my hand. “Oh, Jesus. Now she’s calling me,” I complained.
“Who?”
“Mom. She’s watching the show, even though I told her not to. Do I have to answer this?”
My sister shrugged. “No. But you live on her property. She can probably see in the windows.”
I ducked, then sank onto the couch again. Generally, I didn’t ignore my mother, but right now I really didn’t feel like defending myself or lecturing her again on the how-and-why of editing for ratings. I tapped ignore and tossed my phone on the table. “Can we please stop watching this now?” Picking up the remote, I turned the television off without waiting for her answer.
“It’s not that bad, Sky.” Natalie got off the couch and went to the kitchen to refill her glass.
“Yes it is, and you know it. I just insulted everyone we know here.”
“Maybe no one is watching,” she said, ever the optimist.
“I seriously hope not.” I hugged my legs into my body, tucking my knees under my chin. Glancing out the big picture window, I saw darkness falling over the hilly orchard where I’d grown up. Memories flooded my mind…running through rows of fragrant blossoming cherry trees in the spring, picking the fruit in the summer, rustling through crunchy brown leaves in the fall, throwing snowballs at my sisters in the winter. Maybe I hadn’t appreciated it enough when I was younger, but I loved it here. For all its glitz, New York had never felt like home to me. I’d even liked Montana better than Manhattan.
Natalie returned to the couch and leaned back against the opposite end, stretching her legs out toward me. “All right, silver lining. You did exactly what you set out to do—draw attention to yourself. You’ve always been good at that.”
Had she intended to be snide? Natalie wasn’t the cryptic remark type, and neither was I. If we had something to say to one another, we said it.
I eyeballed her. “What do you mean by that, exactly?”
“Don’t get prickly.” She nudged me with one bare foot. “I’m just saying that you know how to work a room. You obviously charmed the producers into wanting you to stay on.”
“But not so much that they thought I’d win the cowboy’s heart on my own,” I pointed out.
She shrugged. “You said yourself you guys had no chemistry.”
“We didn’t. But why me?” I whined. “Why couldn’t they’ve asked someone else to play the villain?”