Lisa Marie's House, Calabasas, California
May 18th, 1998 - 6:36 a.m.
The note did not want to stay where Julian put it.
It slipped sideways the first time, came out too thin the second, and on the third attempt wandered off somewhere between C-sharp and a noise that made Benjamin turn around from the cereal cupboard as if a small animal had been offended in the walls.
"Was that supposed to happen?" Benjamin asked.
Julian lowered his chin. "No."
"Good. I was worried music had changed."
Michael sat at the piano in socks, one knee bouncing lightly beneath the wood, his fingers resting on the keys but not pressing them. He had not laughed when the note went wrong. That was one of the strange mercies of Dad teaching him: Michael Jackson could hear a mistake in the next county, probably through a locked door and a hurricane, but he did not make the mistake feel bigger than the person who had made it.
"Again," Dad said softly. "But don't chase it. Let it come to you."
This sounded like advice a wise man gave a hero before the dragon appeared, except the dragon was a vowel and Julian's throat had decided to be difficult before breakfast.
Riley, who was sitting cross-legged on the rug with a library book and no patience for dragons before eight in the morning, said, "Your face looks like you're trying to move furniture with your mouth."
"Thank you," Julian said.
"It's not praise."
"I accepted it anyway."
Marcus snorted into his orange juice.
He had slept over because his mother was working early, because his father had been in a late session with one of Dad's musicians, and because Marcus had developed the quiet but firm belief that any day beginning at Lisa Marie's house had better snacks than a day beginning anywhere else. He sat with his legs folded under him, wearing one of Benjamin's old Knicks T-shirts even though it hung from him like a warning about borrowing clothes without asking.
"Do the thing again," Marcus said.
"Which thing?"
"The broken spaceship thing."
"That was not a thing."
"It was a little bit a thing."
Dad touched one key, then another. The two notes sat in the room like small white stones.
"Listen before you sing," he said.
Julian listened.
The piano was not like the television, which threw itself at you. It did not announce. It waited. It put a shape in the air and trusted you to notice. Julian could feel the note before he made it, the exact place where it wanted to stand, not high or low but true, which was more annoying because true gave you nowhere to hide.
He took the breath through his nose. Dad had made him do that three times already because apparently breathing was also a thing adults could have opinions about.
The fourth note came out clean.
Not big. Not pretty in the way people meant when they wanted a child to be adorable. Clean.
Dad smiled first with his eyes, then only later remembered the rest of his face.
"There," he said.
Julian felt heat climb the back of his neck. Praise from Dad was not loud, which somehow made it worse. A big compliment could be dodged. A small one got inside the ribs and sat there with its shoes on.
Lisa came into the room tying her hair back, still barefoot, holding a folded piece of paper between two fingers like it had misbehaved.
"Who is making my child do scales before toast?"
"Art," Dad said.
"Art can wait until after toast."
"Art is afraid of you," Benjamin said.
"Art has sense," Lisa said, and handed the paper to Julian. "CBS sent over the preliminary publicity sheet."
The note Dad had just given him vanished from the room.
Julian looked at the paper.
At the top, beneath the CBS letterhead, someone had typed:
JULIAN PRESLEY-JACKSON - KIRBY PALMER - APPROVED BIO / TALKING POINTS
Under that, in a smaller line that had been crossed out in black marker hard enough to wrinkle the page:
SON OF MICHAEL JACKSON AND LISA MARIE PRESLEY JOINS NEW CBS COMEDY
Julian stared at the crossed-out line longer than he meant to.
The room changed around it. Not dramatically. No thunder. No music cue. Just a small tightening: Lisa's mouth, Dad's fingers going still above the keys, Priscilla's heels in the hallway pausing before she entered, Danny lowering the sports section in the kitchen doorway.
Riley leaned over from the rug. "Why is it crossed out?"
"Because it is lazy," Lisa said.
"It is accurate," Benjamin said, because he had not yet learned that accuracy and usefulness were only cousins, not twins.
Dad said nothing.
Julian read the line again.
Son of.
It was not wrong. That was the worst part. Wrong things could be fought cleanly. This was the kind of true thing that tried to become the whole thing.
They want the door before the room, Julian thought.
He folded the paper once along the middle crease.
"Kirby doesn't have a famous dad," he said.
Lisa looked at him.
Dad's face softened in a way Julian did not want to see too much of because then he might have to feel something properly, and he had only just defeated C-sharp.
"No," Dad said. "He doesn't."
Riley rolled onto her stomach. "Does Kirby have a dinosaur?"
"No."
"Then how is he expected to cope?"
"Privately," Benjamin said.
Marcus lifted his hand. "Does Kirby get snacks on set?"
"Yes," Lisa said.
"Then Kirby will live."
Consuela came in with a plate of toast and put it down in front of Julian with the gravity of a queen granting land.
"Come, Julien," she said. "Eat before the papers eat you."
"They are not eating him," Lisa said.
Consuela gave her a look in Spanish before she used English. "They are practicing."
Dad laughed once, quietly, but it was not a happy sound.
Julian took a slice of toast. The butter had melted properly this time, glossy and obedient. He bit the corner and kept one hand on the folded sheet. It felt too thin to be dangerous. Paper always did. That was how it got away with things.
***
Lisa Marie's House, Calabasas, California
May 18th, 1998 - 7:41 a.m.
The questions sheet was worse than the talking points.
Talking points at least had the decency to sound like a disease caught by people who wore suits indoors. Questions were sneakier. They pretended to be friendly. They wore little question marks like hats.
Mara had arrived with a legal pad, two folders, and a pair of sunglasses she did not take off until Priscilla said, "If you keep those on in my daughter's kitchen, I will assume you are hiding either a hangover or a negotiation position."
"Both," Mara said, and removed them.
Danny choked on his coffee.
Mara put the first folder on the table. "CBS wants a short child-safe availability after the next table read. Still photography, two or three trade questions, nothing broadcast if we can avoid it."
"If we can avoid it," Lisa repeated.
"I'm being honest instead of soothing."
"Try both."
"I'm a lawyer, not a witch."
Consuela, passing behind her with a dish towel, said, "That is not what lawyers tell God."
Riley looked delighted. Benjamin whispered, "Consuela wins," and wrote something in the margin of his spelling homework that probably had nothing to do with spelling.
Julian sat at the table between his actual homework folder and the Percy notebook, which he had promised not to bring downstairs during breakfast and had therefore brought downstairs under the homework folder, which was technically a different crime. The Percy pages were thick with pencil: chapter headings, corrections, a list of monsters in one column and reasons they were unfair in another. Hyperion wanted the full manuscript by mid-May. It was May eighteenth. Time had become a thing with teeth.
Mara slid the questions sheet toward Lisa first. Lisa read it silently. The silence did not improve the paper.
"No," Lisa said.
Mara did not ask which one. "I thought so."
"No to all family questions. No to Neverland. No to Elvis unless the answer is 'I'm eight.' No to Michael appearing. No to whether this is a career. No to asking if he wants to be like his father. No to asking if he sings."
"They will ask if he sings," Mara said.
Dad's gaze moved from the piano to Julian and back.
Julian carefully did not look at him.
The scale from earlier still sat in his throat, clean and private. The idea of a stranger touching it with a microphone made his shoulders pull in.
"Then they can enjoy not receiving an answer," Lisa said.
Priscilla took the paper. She read more slowly than Lisa did, which was worse because you could see each sentence offend her in order.
"'How does it feel to continue your family's entertainment legacy?'" Priscilla looked up. "He is eight. His legacy is currently in a backpack with a broken zipper."
"The zipper is not broken," Julian said.
"It screams when you open it," Riley said.
"That is a sound effect."
Mara turned a page. "There are safer options. Why did you want to act? What's it like working with Kevin James and Leah Remini? How do you balance school and the show? What is Kirby like?"
"School question is allowed," Lisa said. "They can hear that he has a set teacher and actual school obligations."
"Can I say school is a violation of human optimism?" Julian asked.
"No," Lisa, Danny, Priscilla, and Mara said together.
Benjamin applauded softly. "A choir of oppression."
Danny pointed his coffee at him. "Finish your spelling before I become more oppressive."
Marcus leaned over Julian's shoulder. "What is Kirby like?"
"He listens," Julian said.
Marcus frowned. "That's not a person."
"It is if everyone else talks too much."
Dad smiled at that, not the proud smile from the piano but the one he wore when a joke landed because it told the truth with its hands in its pockets.
Mara wrote something down.
"Don't write that," Lisa said.
"I am writing that the child should not improvise near reporters."
"Good."
Mara turned to a second page she had kept beneath the first one, face down. This page had fewer questions and more black ink. At the top, she had written: MONEY / CONTRACT / BOOK ADVANCE / TRUST / INVESTMENTS.
The words sat on the kitchen table with the eggs and homework and toast, rude as grown men who had forgotten to knock.
Julian looked at INVESTMENTS last. Not because it was the most interesting. Because it was the one most likely to look back.
Lisa saw him see it. Of course she did. Mothers were worse than lawyers because they did not need paper discovery.
"No one asks you about money," she said.
"They might," Mara said, because she apparently believed breakfast needed more weather. "They shouldn't. They may. They may ask about what CBS is paying, whether Hyperion gave an advance, whether your earnings go into a trust, whether you understand any of it."
Danny put his mug down slowly. "They ask children that?"
"They ask adults near children," Mara said. "Then they print the child's face beside the answer."
Priscilla's expression went still in the polished way that meant somebody, somewhere, should begin worrying.
Julian thought of the green folder from Mara's office. Apple, Amazon, Yahoo, AOL. Paper only. Watch only. Wait. The names were tucked away at home like toy soldiers under a bed, except soldiers were honest about wanting war and companies wore logos.
"What do I say if they ask if I'm rich?" he asked.
The adults did not like the question. That was useful. It meant the question had found the place where the floorboards were thin.
Lisa sat back down beside him. "You say, 'My mum and the grown-ups handle contracts. I'm here to do my schoolwork and play Kirby.'"
"That sounds fake."
"It is safe."
"Safe things can still sound fake."
"Then make it sound like you," Lisa said. "But do not make it sound like you understand more than the reporter does."
The sentence landed harder than she meant it to. Julian could tell because Dad looked at her, and she looked away first.
There it was. The real lesson. Not smile. Not stop talking first. Not keep Kirby separate.
Be smaller where adults are listening.
He hated it immediately. He also understood it immediately, which made hating it much less satisfying.
"Can I say I'm paid in fractions?" he asked.
Mrs. Alvarez had not arrived yet, but somewhere in the future a worksheet shivered.
Danny pointed at him. "That answer has dignity."
"That answer has danger," Mara said.
"The dignity is the danger," Benjamin said, and looked pleased with himself until Riley stole the last corner of his toast.
Julian made a face. "You want me to sound stupid."
The kitchen settled.
Not a huge silence. Not the kind that entered wearing boots. A small, careful silence, the kind adults made when a child had stepped too close to the machinery and named one of its wheels.
Lisa pulled out the chair beside him and sat. She was still in a white T-shirt and jeans, hair tied back badly, no shoes, no armor except the way she looked at him like the world could try its luck and regret it.
"No," she said. "I want you to sound eight."
"I am eight."
"You are. And sometimes you don't sound it."
Julian looked down at the questions sheet. The paper had a coffee ring near the corner now, not from him. Adults were always telling children to be careful with things they themselves were busy ruining.
"So I lie?"
"You choose the safest true thing," Lisa said.
Priscilla nodded once. "That is not lying. That is manners with a lock on the door."
Dad came around the piano and sat on the arm of the sofa instead of at the table. He did that sometimes when he wanted to join a conversation without making everyone feel as if a spotlight had moved.
"When people ask questions," he said, "they are not always asking for you. Sometimes they are asking for the story they brought with them."
Julian knew that. He knew it in the way he knew the other life: not as a lecture but as a bruise memory. Reporters did not enter rooms empty. They carried headlines in their pockets and waited for you to step into them.
Dad tapped the folded publicity sheet with one finger. "You do not have to fit inside a sentence somebody else wrote before they met you."
"Can I say that?"
"Absolutely not," Lisa said.
Dad laughed then, properly this time.
Mara circled three questions in blue ink.
1. What do you like about Kirby?
2. What is it like at table reads?
3. How do you keep up with school?
Then she circled a fourth line on the forbidden page, not because it was allowed, but because forbidden things needed rehearsing too.
IF ASKED ABOUT MONEY: The adults handle contracts. I am here to learn and do the work.
Julian stared at it.
The sentence was a little cage with curtains. It let him stand in the window while hiding the room behind him. It did not mention the Coogan account, or the performance trust, or the paper portfolio log, or the fact that he had written CROWD / EXIT MATTERS beside Yahoo in pencil because a thing could be valuable and doomed at the same time.
"Do I have to say adults?" he asked.
"Yes," Mara said.
"It makes me sound like I live in a cupboard."
"You may say my mother and our lawyers," Priscilla said.
Lisa shook her head. "That sounds like a threat."
"It is a threat," Priscilla said.
Mara, who had the exhausted look of someone admiring a weapon she still had to file paperwork around, wrote an alternate version beneath the first:
My mum handles the grown-up parts. I do the work.
Under them, she wrote in capital letters:
ANSWER SHORT. SMILE IF REAL. STOP TALKING FIRST.
Julian read the last instruction twice.
"Adults never stop talking first."
"That's why they lose," Priscilla said.
***
Culver City Studio Lot, Los Angeles, California
May 19th, 1998 - 9:08 a.m.
The studio lot smelled of hot pavement, coffee, dust, and paint pretending it had always been walls.
Julian liked that immediately.
Houses at least admitted they were houses. Studio houses were liars in useful clothing. A kitchen ended six inches after the fridge. A hallway led nowhere but a coil of cable. Windows showed a painted sky if you stood in the right place and a man eating a breakfast burrito if you did not. It was dishonest, but it was honest about being dishonest, which made it more respectable than several adults Julian had met.
His visitor pass hung from a blue cord around his neck. The pass said JULIAN PRESLEY-JACKSON in black letters and beneath that, smaller: KIRBY PALMER / THE KING OF QUEENS.
It did not say son of.
Lisa had checked.
Priscilla had checked after Lisa, which meant the badge had been inspected by both a mother and a monarchy.
Danny walked on Julian's left, because Lisa was in a meeting with CBS publicity before the table read and because Danny had said, "I can escort a child through a studio lot. I have survived grocery stores with twins." Riley and Benjamin had taken that as an insult to their historical dignity and spent the whole car ride listing grocery-store incidents that, in their opinion, proved they had contributed to culture.
They were at school now. Marcus too. Julian was missing math, which made the day feel instantly more promising.
The set teacher, Mrs. Alvarez, met them outside a squat building with beige walls and a door that opened too heavily.
"Julian? I'm Elena Alvarez. I'll be your studio teacher when you're working."
She did not bend down to talk to him.
Julian decided to like her provisionally.
"Hi."
"Your mother sent over your school packet. Math, reading, spelling, and one science worksheet."
The day dimmed.
Danny, treacherous in a denim jacket, said, "Good news. The republic survives."
"I thought we agreed adults would stop celebrating worksheets."
"I agreed to no such thing."
Mrs. Alvarez's mouth moved like she was trying not to smile. "Work first between calls. If production runs over, I send you home. If you miss required school time, I send you home. If anyone argues with me, I send them to your mother."
"That last one seems violent," Julian said.
"It is meant to."
Yes, Julian thought. He liked her.
Inside, the hallway had bulletin boards, call sheets, arrows taped to walls, and a row of chairs occupied by adults who all looked as if they had been waiting for something since 1987. A man carrying two garment bags walked past muttering about shoes. Someone shouted for props. Someone else shouted back that props had left a message. The building did not hum like a studio. It coughed.
A production assistant hurried toward them with a clipboard.
"Julian, hi. Great. We're just getting set in Room B. Kevin's here, Leah's on the way, Victor is in wardrobe, writers are in the back. Your mom's with Dana from CBS."
Danny glanced at the clipboard. "And I'm with the kid."
The assistant blinked.
Not because Danny had been rude. He hadn't. Danny had a way of speaking calmly that made people realize the sentence was not asking permission.
"Of course."
They followed her down the hall.
On the wall outside Room B, a temporary sign had been taped slightly crooked:
THE KING OF QUEENS - TABLE READ
Underneath, in smaller print, someone had added:
CAST / WRITERS / NETWORK / PRODUCTION ONLY
Julian's stomach did something small and annoying.
He had auditioned. He had read. He had sat in rooms where adults watched him and decided whether he belonged. This was different. This was not a test to get in. This was the first room after someone had said yes.
Don't perform getting chosen, he told himself.
The thought came in Trey's voice, dry as a matchstick. Julian ignored the name attached to it. He was not Trey here. He was a boy with a pass around his neck and a math worksheet waiting to ruin his afternoon.
Danny touched the back of his shoulder once.
"Breathe," he said.
"I already did that this morning. Dad made it a whole activity."
"Try again anyway."
Julian did.
Then he opened the door.
***
Culver City Studio Lot, Los Angeles, California
May 19th, 1998 - 9:27 a.m.
Kevin James was bigger in person than he had been in the audition room, which seemed unfair because rooms should not be allowed to change the size of people.
He was standing near the coffee table with a script rolled in one hand, talking to a writer about a delivery route joke. Leah Remini sat sideways in a chair with one knee up, flipping through pages and underlining something with an expression that suggested the page had personally disappointed her. Victor Williams looked up first.
"There he is," Victor said. "Kirby."
Not Julian.
Not Michael's son.
Kirby.
The word did something kind to the room.
"Morning," Julian said.
"You ready?" Kevin asked.
"No."
Kevin blinked, then laughed. "Honest. I like it."
"Mum said honesty is allowed if it doesn't create paperwork."
Leah pointed her pencil at him. "Your mother sounds like my kind of woman."
"She scares lawyers."
"Definitely my kind of woman."
A few people laughed. Not the audition laugh, where adults tried to reward a child for being cute. This one was quicker, less padded. It came from the line, not from his age. Julian could feel the difference. The room did not make a nest around him. It made space.
He found his seat between Victor and an empty chair with his name tent folded in front of it. JULIAN PRESLEY-JACKSON. Under it someone had written KIRBY in pencil.
A script sat on the table, thicker than the sides had been. A yellow tab stuck out at each of his scenes. His dialogue amounted to less than six pages, but the whole script mattered because Kirby did not exist only when he spoke. Dad had said that after reading it. Lisa had said, "Please do not give him actor language before bed," and Dad had looked wounded because actor language was apparently a food group.
Julian opened to the first tab.
The table read began with names, a few jokes, a network person thanking everyone with the terrifying cheerfulness of a man who controlled notes. Then the script moved.
Kevin's voice changed when he read. Not into someone else exactly. More like he leaned his weight a different way and the room accepted that Doug Heffernan had arrived. Leah was fast, sharp, already finding corners in Carrie that were not on the page yet. Victor's Deacon was easier, warmer, but Julian noticed the timing underneath: the tiny half-beat before a line that made the joke land without showing his hand.
Listening was not passive.
People thought it was. They thought waiting for a line meant sitting politely until your mouth had permission. But listening was work. You had to hold the other person in your face without stealing from them. You had to let the scene happen to you and still be ready when it asked you for something.
Kirby's first line came after a joke about Doug bringing home too much food from work.
Julian did not look down.
He looked at Kevin.
Kevin finished the line, eyes on his own page, voice big and warm and silly around the edges.
Julian let Kirby wait one beat too long, because a child watching adults make food into an argument would wait that way.
Then he said the line.
It was not a great line. It was the kind of line a writer gave a kid to prove a kid was present. But the room laughed.
Not too hard. Not fake. Enough.
The writer across the table looked up.
Julian looked back down.
Do not enjoy that too much, he told himself. Enjoying too much made people greedy.
The next scene went easier. Then the next. On his third line, Leah threw him a look that was not in the script, and Julian felt Kirby answer before the words arrived. He gave the answer smaller than written. It landed better.
A pencil scratched somewhere in the writers' row.
Julian heard it.
He hated that he heard it.
Because the scratch meant someone had noticed. Noticed was good. Noticed was also a door opening onto a room full of people with ideas.
Victor leaned slightly toward him without turning his head. "Good," he murmured.
Julian kept his eyes on the page.
The table read ended with applause that belonged to everyone, which made it easier to stand inside. Chairs scraped. Writers gathered in little knots. The network man said "energy" twice and "family" three times, which made Julian suspicious because adults repeated words when they were trying to convince themselves they had already solved the problem.
Kevin came over while Julian was putting his pencil back in his bag.
"You did great, kid."
"Thanks."
"You always that calm?"
"No. Sometimes I fight cereal."
Kevin nodded solemnly. "Cereal starts a lot of trouble."
"No one talks about it."
"That's how it wins."
Julian liked him then. Not because he was funny. Because he knew how to keep a joke alive without making Julian prove he understood it.
From the doorway, Lisa watched.
Beside her, Dana from CBS publicity watched too, but in a different way.
Lisa saw her son.
Dana saw the paragraph.
***
Culver City Studio Lot, Los Angeles, California
May 19th, 1998 - 11:03 a.m.
Dana had a smile that seemed to have been approved by committee.
It was a good smile. Straight teeth, warm corners, professional patience. Julian did not distrust it personally. He distrusted its job.
They sat in a small conference room that had three posters on the wall from shows Julian had not watched and a fruit bowl containing apples so polished they looked embarrassed. Lisa sat to his right. Danny sat to his left. Priscilla had taken the chair near the door, which was either coincidence or battlefield doctrine. Mara stood by the window with her legal pad. Mrs. Alvarez sat in the corner marking down school hours like a quiet angel of bureaucracy.
Dana placed the revised questions sheet in front of Julian.
"These are the only questions we're allowing in the availability," she said. "Two trade reporters, one CBS in-house photographer, maybe one short Entertainment Tonight hallway bite if your mom approves. No personal family angles. No music questions. No book questions unless Hyperion clears separately. No money questions, no contracts, no advances, no trusts, no investments, no 'what are you doing with your earnings.'"
The last part came out a little too fast, as if Dana had practised it in the mirror and disliked the mirror for making sense.
Julian looked at the fruit bowl. The apples had remained shiny through contracts, advances, trusts, and investments. Apples were either very brave or very stupid.
"What if they ask anyway?" he said.
Dana hesitated.
Lisa did not. "Then we cut it off."
"And if they ask me before you can?"
Mara tapped the sheet. "You use the answer."
My mum handles the grown-up parts. I do the work.
The sentence looked worse in studio light. Everything did. Studio light had no manners.
Julian read it once, twice, and put it away behind his face. That was the other lesson adults did not write down: some answers were not for telling the truth. They were for hiding how much truth you had already counted.
"Hyperion already said no cross-promotion," Mara said.
"I know. I have the fax."
"Frame it."
Dana's smile flickered. "We'd like to avoid making this seem adversarial."
Lisa leaned back. "Then avoid doing adversarial things."
Julian looked down at the sheet before Dana's smile could suffer further.
QUESTION: What do you like about playing Kirby Palmer?
APPROVED ANSWER: Kirby is funny and smart. I like that he loves his family and has his own way of seeing things.
That was not terrible. It was also not his.
QUESTION: Is it exciting joining a new CBS comedy?
APPROVED ANSWER: Yes. Everyone has been kind to me, and I am learning a lot.
That one sounded like a thank-you card written by a hostage.
QUESTION: How do you balance school and acting?
APPROVED ANSWER: I have a studio teacher and my schoolwork comes with me.
QUESTION: Are you making money from the show?
APPROVED ANSWER: My mum handles the grown-up parts. I do the work.
Under that, in Mara's handwriting, sharper than Dana's type: DO NOT ADD: TRUST / ACCOUNT / PERCY / STOCKS / PAPER PORTFOLIO / ANY SENTENCE BEGINNING 'TECHNICALLY.'
Julian looked at Mara.
"That last one is personal."
"It is accurate," Mara said.
"Accuracy and usefulness are only cousins," Benjamin had said once, which was irritating because Julian had been the one to think it first and Benjamin had stolen the furniture from his brain without asking.
Julian looked up. "Can I add that the schoolwork follows me like a ghost?"
Mrs. Alvarez said, "No."
"A very educated ghost?"
"Still no."
Danny hid his smile in his hand.
Dana tried to recover the room. "You don't have to memorize these exactly. We just want to keep you comfortable."
"That's what people say before they make children uncomfortable," Julian said.
Mara made a small coughing sound that might have been legal appreciation.
Lisa put one hand on Julian's chair. Not gripping. Just there.
Dana took a breath. "Fair. Then let me be clearer. There are reporters who will try to make this about your parents. That is not good for the show, and it is not fair to you. So we are giving you a fence."
Julian glanced at Lisa.
Lisa's expression said she had noticed the borrowed word.
"A fence," he repeated.
"Yes."
"Fences keep things in too."
Dana looked genuinely caught for the first time.
That was something. A committee smile could not do that.
"They can," she said. "The right one should keep enough out that you can choose when to walk through."
Julian considered her again.
Maybe the smile was not the whole person.
Priscilla crossed one leg over the other. "He is not walking through any personal-family question. Not today. Not for this show."
"Agreed."
"And if Entertainment Tonight asks why Michael is not here?"
"They won't."
Lisa's eyebrows rose.
Dana corrected herself. "They will be told not to. If they do, we cut."
"Good."
Julian looked at the sheet again.
The questions were so small. That was what made them frightening. Nobody was asking him to confess anything. Nobody was asking for prophecy, blood, inheritance, allegations, race, catalogue wars, or whether his father slept with lights on. They were asking what he liked about Kirby. They were asking if people were nice.
But every small question had a trapdoor if the wrong person leaned on it.
Choose the safest true thing, Mum had said.
The safest true thing was that he liked Kirby because Kirby had room to be ordinary.
Julian picked up a pencil and crossed out funny and smart.
Dana stiffened.
He wrote:
Kirby notices things.
Then, underneath, after thinking, he added:
He likes his dad.
Victor Williams was not his father. Deacon Palmer was not Michael Jackson. Kirby Palmer was not Julian Presley-Jackson.
That was precisely why the answer felt safe.
Lisa read it over his shoulder.
For half a second, her face changed.
Then she said, "That one stays."
Dana nodded.
Mara wrote it down separately.
Mrs. Alvarez checked her watch. "He has twenty-three minutes of school before photos."
Julian looked betrayed. "Twenty-three is a weird amount of minutes."
"Production is made of weird amounts of minutes," Mrs. Alvarez said.
"Can I appeal?"
"To math? No."
Kevin James stuck his head through the door just as Julian was being handed a worksheet.
"Everybody alive?"
"No," Julian said. "I've been murdered by fractions."
Kevin looked at the worksheet. "Bad way to go."
"Very undignified."
"Do you need help?"
Mrs. Alvarez and Lisa said, "No," together.
Kevin raised both hands. "I respect the law."
Julian took the pencil.
On the top of the worksheet, where no one had asked him for a title, he wrote:
FRACTIONS: A CRIME IN PARTS
Mrs. Alvarez looked at it.
She sighed.
Then she wrote the start time down anyway.
***
Hyperion Books, New York City
May 19th, 1998 - 2:14 p.m. Eastern
Gail had three messages waiting by the time she returned from lunch, which meant either a problem had hatched or publishing had remembered it was a business.
Both were common.
The first message was from CBS publicity, polite and polished, informing Hyperion that Julian Presley-Jackson might be asked a single harmless question about how school and writing fit around his new television work.
Gail underlined harmless twice.
Nothing in publishing was harmless once someone called it harmless. It was like a fairy-tale rule. The moment you said a cottage was harmless, a witch began pricing ovens.
The second message was from legal, asking whether any mention of Percy Jackson in CBS material would be considered cross-promotion, implied endorsement, or a premature public-positioning problem.
Gail wrote YES in the margin before she finished the sentence.
A fourth message, folded beneath the others, asked whether Hyperion should prepare a line in case a trade reporter inquired about the advance, subsidiary rights, or whether the child's television income and publishing income were being coordinated by the same representatives.
Gail wrote NO so hard the pen point made a small angry dot on the paper.
Coordinated was one of those words adults used when they wanted to pretend a hand was not reaching into two pockets at once.
The third message was from a children's-book trade reporter who had heard, from someone who had heard from someone else who should have had less lunch, that Hyperion was preparing a fantasy manuscript from Michael Jackson's son.
Gail sat down slowly.
The office around her continued being itself: phones ringing, pages turning, someone laughing too loudly near the copy machine, an assistant asking whether the mock-up cover blues were too ocean or not ocean enough. Books moved through the room in stacks and envelopes and opinions. They did not look fragile. That was another lie paper told.
She picked up the trade reporter's message and read it again.
Michael Jackson's son.
Not Julian.
Not the title.
Not the boy who had looked furious when an editor suggested Percy might have a cleaner surname if they separated him more from the author.
"His name is Jackson," Julian had said then, small hands flat on the table, eyes impossibly blue and impossibly done with all of them. "That is not the messy part."
Gail had not forgotten it.
She reached for her pen and drafted a response for legal first.
Hyperion does not permit CBS, Columbia TriStar, or any affiliated television publicity to discuss, preview, summarize, position, or otherwise exploit Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief in connection with Julian Presley-Jackson's acting role unless expressly cleared in writing by Hyperion, Lisa Marie Presley, and designated counsel.
She paused.
Added:
The author is a minor.
Then crossed that out. Too weak.
She wrote instead:
The author is eight years old.
Better.
Age had a way of cutting through corporate fog when people were forced to look at the number. Eight was not a brand strategy. Eight had missing teeth in its class. Eight lost pencils. Eight needed someone to check whether a sandwich had been eaten or merely relocated.
Gail looked at the manuscript pages on her desk. Percy's first chapter had a note from Julian in the margin beside a monster description:
TOO CLEAN. MAKE IT FEEL WETTER.
Eight could also do that, apparently.
She phoned legal.
"CBS gets nothing about Percy," she said when someone picked up.
"Nothing?"
"Nothing. If a reporter asks, the answer is that Hyperion will discuss Julian's writing when the book is ready. Not on a sitcom carpet. Not beside a craft-services table. Not because somebody smells synergy."
"You sound upset."
"I work in children's publishing. Upset is part of the pension plan."
After she hung up, Gail drafted the answer for the trade reporter.
Hyperion Books does not comment on manuscripts in development.
She stared at it.
It was correct. It was also a door with no handle.
Good.
She sent it by fax.
The machine squealed like it was being asked to participate in a crime.
Across the office, an assistant lifted a mock-up cover and said, "Is this blue too blue?"
Gail looked over.
"No such thing," she said.
Then she picked up the phone again, because the day had apparently decided that childhood needed managing from both coasts.
***
Culver City Studio Lot, Los Angeles, California
May 19th, 1998 - 12:06 p.m.
The photographer kept saying, "Natural," which made everyone less natural each time.
Julian stood between Victor and Kevin in a corner of the half-built Palmer apartment set, under lights that made the air warm enough to taste. The living-room wall behind them looked like a real wall from the front and like a carpenter's unfinished thought from the side. The couch smelled new. Not new like a house. New like a warehouse with ambitions.
"Natural," the photographer said again.
Leah muttered, "If he says natural one more time, I'm going to become supernatural."
Julian laughed before he could stop himself.
The camera clicked.
"Great," the photographer said. "That. Keep that."
"I wasn't doing it for you," Leah said.
"Still got it."
Kevin leaned down slightly. "This is the whole job, by the way. Accidentally doing something real and having a guy with a camera take credit."
Julian nodded seriously. "That sounds illegal."
"It pays better than most illegal things."
"Kevin," Victor said.
"What? I'm educating the youth."
"Badly."
Julian liked the way they all moved around each other. Not perfectly. Families on television never could be perfect because perfect was not funny. But there was a rhythm forming: Kevin's big warm push, Leah's fast return, Victor's easy anchor. If Kirby could fit anywhere, it would be beside Victor first. Deacon's son. A child on the edge of adult jokes, catching more than people wanted him to.
The photographer repositioned them.
"Julian, can you look up at Kevin like he's just said something ridiculous?"
"He did," Julian said.
The camera clicked again.
Kevin put a hand over his heart. "Hurtful but useful."
Lisa watched from beside the monitors with Dana. She had changed from kitchen Lisa into public Lisa: hair smooth, sunglasses pushed up, face calm in a way that cost money even when no one had paid for it. Danny stood farther back talking quietly to Mrs. Alvarez. He had Julian's backpack over one shoulder. The backpack looked obscene on a grown man, especially with the plastic keychain Riley had attached to it that said DO NOT PANIC in purple letters.
Mum's eyes kept finding Julian.
Not every second. That would have made him feel caged. Just enough that he knew where the exit was.
After the stills, Dana brought over two reporters.
One was from The Hollywood Reporter, a woman with short hair and a notebook that looked aggressively used. The other was from Variety, a man in a tan jacket who had already glanced at Julian's badge twice, as if it might rearrange into a better headline if he gave it time.
"Short and simple," Dana said. "Kirby and the show."
The Variety man smiled at Julian. "First off, congratulations. Are you excited?"
"Yes."
The man waited.
Julian waited back.
Lisa's mouth did a tiny thing.
The Hollywood Reporter woman laughed under her breath. "Good answer."
The Variety man tried again. "What do you like about Kirby?"
Julian looked at Victor for half a second, then back.
"He notices things," Julian said. "And he likes his dad."
Victor's face changed slightly. Not enough for the reporter to catch, maybe. Enough for Julian.
"That sounds important," the woman said.
Julian shrugged. "It is if your dad is in the scene."
The pencil scratched.
The man from Variety wrote too. "And how are you balancing this with school?"
"My schoolwork comes with me."
Mrs. Alvarez, from the side, lifted one eyebrow.
Julian added, "Whether I respect that or not."
Kevin barked a laugh from behind them.
Dana did not look pleased, but The Hollywood Reporter woman smiled. Not at him like he was cute. At the sentence.
"And the book?" the Variety man asked.
There it was.
Not a punch. Not even a shove. A hand on a latch.
Dana stepped in immediately. "Hyperion will address Julian's writing separately when appropriate. Today we're discussing The King of Queens."
"Of course. Just wondering if there's any overlap in how he approaches-"
"No," Lisa said.
The word did not land loudly.
It landed finally.
The man closed his mouth.
Julian looked at the couch seam. One thread had come loose and curled like a tiny question mark. He wanted to pull it. He did not. Adults were allowed to unravel rooms. Children got blamed for furniture.
The Variety man tried another door. "People are curious because you're doing television and there's talk of a book. Is it strange dealing with business at your age? Contracts, money, all of that?"
Dana moved before the last words finished, but Julian already had the sentence in his mouth.
My mum handles the grown-up parts. I do the work.
He could say it. He could make it sound ordinary. He could make himself eight in exactly the way Mum needed him to be, because that was also a kind of performance, though nobody clapped for it unless they loved you properly.
"My mum handles the grown-up parts," Julian said. "I do the work."
The sentence came out smaller than he felt. That was the point, apparently.
The Variety man wrote it down. Dana stopped moving. Lisa's face did not change, but her hand opened at her side, the way it did after she had been holding something invisible too tightly.
"And what is the work today?" the Hollywood Reporter woman asked, gently enough that Julian forgave her for using the word work near a fake couch.
"Not pulling that thread," Julian said, pointing at the loose curl on the couch seam. "And Kirby. Mostly Kirby."
Kevin, behind the photographer, said, "Growth."
Leah said, "Don't encourage him."
The Hollywood Reporter woman changed course. "What was the table read like?"
"Loud," Julian said.
Kevin called, "Accurate!"
"And everyone was nice."
Leah said, "Don't ruin our reputations."
The woman laughed and wrote again.
Then she looked up. "Do you want to do more acting after this?"
That was not on the sheet.
Julian felt Lisa shift before she spoke. But the question was not a trapdoor exactly. It was a hallway. Hallways could still lead places you did not intend to go.
"I want to do this properly," Julian said.
The woman stopped writing for half a beat.
"This role?"
"This day."
Behind her, Dana's smile returned, but this time it was smaller and more human.
The Variety man glanced toward Lisa and then, with the courage of someone who had not been adequately warned by generations of Presley women, asked, "Is your father proud of you taking this step?"
The set did not freeze.
That only happened in bad television and worse memory. In real rooms, people kept moving for a second after a line changed the air. A grip carried a cable past the doorway. Someone at craft services laughed in the hall. The photographer lowered his camera. Kevin's face lost its joke. Victor looked at Julian, then at Lisa. Leah's pencil stopped tapping.
Julian knew three answers.
Yes, which was true and too little.
My dad is always proud of me, which was also true and sounded like something CBS would put in a press packet with his hair combed wrong.
This is Kirby's show, which was the safest answer and therefore the one they would expect.
But the question had said father, and for one sharp second Julian saw Dad at the piano that morning, fingers still above the keys, letting the mistake be small enough to survive.
His throat tightened around the clean note he had found.
He did not answer.
Lisa stepped forward. "Next question."
No apology. No laugh. No softening. Just the line around him, visible now and not asking permission.
The Variety man blinked. "Of course."
The Hollywood Reporter woman looked down at her notebook and did not rescue him. That, Julian thought, was kinder than rescuing him would have been.
Dana ended the availability two questions later. Photos resumed. People began moving again. The room remembered its job.
Julian went to the edge of the set where his backpack waited beside Danny's chair. He unclipped the visitor pass and held it in his hand. The plastic had warmed against his chest.
Kevin came over with two paper cups of water and handed him one.
"You all right?"
"Yes."
"Good." Kevin leaned against the fake wall carefully, like he did not entirely trust it to understand weight. "That was a good answer."
Julian frowned. "I didn't answer."
Kevin took a sip of water.
"Exactly."
For once, nobody asked another question.