Famous & Hollywood

It started with a camera and a coffee shop. No, that’s not right. Any psychologist will tell you it started way before that. Like, when my brother Alex became seriously ill around the age of three, and five years later when my parents divorced, and all that psychological gobbledygook.

But that camera, a black Nikon P90 with a 24x zoom lens, a fourteenth-birthday present from my father, was the charm that changed everything. It was the bridge I crossed from being a typical, everyday eighth grader to someone completely different. An atypical eighth grader. A slightly almost-famous eighth grader. Not that it was my plan. It just happened.

The day was gray, wet, and chilly. The coffee shop was called Cafazine, and it provided two of life’s greatest pleasures – coffee and gossip. After a quick scan of the headlines, I turned my attention to a tall woman in front of me holding the hand of a little boy. She was wearing a long gray raincoat, wide-brimmed hat, and sunglasses, and suddenly I recognized her – it was Tatiana Frazee, the supermodel! I’d seen enough pictures of her in magazines and on TV to know. Besides, why would anyone not famous wear a hat and big sunglasses inside on a cloudy day?

Her son, Connor, was pointing at a large brownie with chocolate chips inside the glass counter. “I want that, Mommy!” he whined. “Not before dinner,” Tatiana answered. “But I want it!” Connor persisted. “I said no,” Tatiana repeated. “Yes!” The boy pulled at the gloved hand. “No,” Tatiana replied icily.

By now they had reached the counter. “What would you like, ma’am?” the young man by the cash register asked. As the supermodel turned away from her son to answer, Connor suddenly yanked her hand as hard as he could. Tatiana Frazee lost her balance and toppled forward, banging her perfect chin on a display of CDs, sending them crashing.

To this day I don’t know what compelled me to yank the camera from my pocket and slide the shutter into quick-shot mode just in time to catch Tatiana as she wheeled around and slapped Connor on the cheek. The next shots caught Tatiana glaring at me with a mixture of horror and fury. An instant later she scooped Connor up under her arm and ran out of the shop.

A photo agent friend of my dad’s sold the shots to a tabloid and to a website that specialized in celebrities’ most embarrassing moments. A few weeks later I received a check for what seemed like a fortune to a fourteen-year-old. Just for taking some pictures.

After more of her photos have been published, there’s an article about Jamie in the New York Weekly. On their way to school one day, Jamie talks about it with her boyfriend, Nasim.

“You’re famous,” Nasim said. It was the first time anyone ever told me that, and I had to admit that it felt good. Right up there with “You’re pretty” or “You’re smart.” No, even better than “You’re smart.” “Thank you,” I replied. “How many people do we know who have been profiled in a major magazine? New York City’s youngest paparazzo ever? I believe the correct answer would be one.”

I grabbed his arm to stop him and we kissed in the middle of the crowded sidewalk. “Thank you,” I said, our faces close. “Only, for the six hundred and seventy-fifth time, I am not a paparazzo. I am a celebrity photographer.” Nasim rolled his eyes, and we started to hurry again, our shoulders now and then bumping. “There is no difference.” “There’s a big difference,” I insisted. “I may take pictures of celebrities, but I don’t stalk or harass them or try to get them to punch me so that I can sue them for assault.” Nasim changed the subject.

Jamie receives an invitation to spend one week hanging out with teen superstar Willow Twine, photographing her and documenting her life. On day seven of her week in L.A., however, she wakes up and realizes that her camera is gone.

I know it sounds like a cliché, but I feel naked without my camera. Or even worse than naked, since these days who cares if you’re naked? The camera represents who I am. It’s my identity. With it, I’m a sixteen-year-old celebrity photographer. (And maybe something of a celebrity myself?) Without it, who am I? What am I?

The answers to these questions will have to wait. Right now I just need to find my Nikon. I try to remember last night. Last night was a party. I had my camera with me early this morning when I came upstairs to find a place to sleep. Normally I would have put the camera on a night table or dresser, but since there is no furniture in the room, I left it on the floor beside the mattress, close to the wall.

So where is it? I check the bathroom. Not there either. I walk barefoot out into the hallway, then downstairs and out across the grassy lawn. I head toward the pool, where Zach, the house boy, and Daphne, the house techie, are straightening up from last night’s frolic. “Either of you see a camera?” I ask. “Think I saw one on the kitchen counter,” Zach says.

The kitchen counter? That’s weird. I don’t recall even being in the kitchen last night. Passing through the French doors, the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee is in the air, and there on the marble kitchen counter, where I swear I wouldn’t – couldn’t – have left it, is my Nikon. “Buenos días, Miss Jamie. You like some breakfast?” Maria, the Mexican cook, hands me the mug of coffee she knows I crave.

The camera rests on the marble counter beside me while I sip my coffee. Now that it’s back in my sight, my anxiety has gone. I didn’t take many shots at the party last night. Willow asked me not to. But ‘they’ are Willow’s management, and ‘they’ have made it clear that my assignment is to show the world the Willow Twine ‘they’ want to see – the sweet, girlish pop star (her true age, twenty-one, is a more closely guarded secret than the president’s personal cell phone number).

All I’d taken the previous night were a few innocent party shots. I had intentionally not taken the shots that editors everywhere would have paid a lot of money for. As a result, this morning I’m in no rush to review what’s in the camera’s memory. I wonder if I can really make this idea of staying here in California work. It’s not that crazy, is it? I’ve earned the trust of Willow Twine, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. She’s already introduced me to a bunch of her actor friends and has promised to hook me up with even more. If I stay, I have a chance to become the Annie Leibovitz of the L.A. young actor scene.

But what about Nasim? My insides clench and my heart beats wildly when I think of him and the fight we had before I left New York. I would so hate to lose him, but I know what my father would say: You’re young, you can’t let a guy influence the direction of your career.

I pick up the camera, turn the viewer on, and have a look at the previous day’s shots. Willow holding the red shoes she bought me for the party. Willow hanging out by the pool with her best friend, Anne-Marie. Willow and Anne-Marie trying on clothes for the party. I get to the last shot I remember taking the night before – Willow in a pink dress by the pool, welcoming guests. But the camera’s counter indicates that there are six more shots. How weird is this? First I wake up and my camera isn’t where I’m certain I left it. And now I discover I took pictures I don’t remember taking.

I flip to the first one … and freeze. I am staring at a shot I definitely don’t remember taking. And for good reason. I didn’t take it. But that hardly matters now. I’ve stopped breathing. My heart is thudding. Goose bumps race up my arms, and it might be imagination, but I think I can feel tiny beads of cold sweat seep out of my pores. In my camera is a shot that changes everything.

After finding the mysterious shot on her camera, Jamie hides in a bathroom and has an imaginary conversation with Carla Harris, her photo agent.

I’m sitting in the pink bathroom in Willow’s mansion – a digital gold mine in my hands – hearing voices in my head.

Me: “Can I really do this? Destroy Willow’s career in order to advance mine?”

Carla: “Darling, are you crazy? This is your ticket. Everything you’ve dreamed of since day one. People would kill for this kind of opportunity. You think if it was the other way around – if Willow Twine needed to wreck your career to advance her own – she’d hesitate for a second?”

Me: “But Willow and I are friends.”

Carla: “Oh, please! You’ve known her for exactly one week.”

Me: “You don’t know. You haven’t been out here with us.”

Carla: “My dear, they were calling me an old-timer in this business back when you were still in Pampers. I’ve seen and heard it all. Believe me, I know.”

by Todd Strasser (abridged and adapted)