Sneak Peek Saturday: Reality Check

Reality Check

By: Jen Calonita

Pub date: June 14th, 2010

Sixteen-year-olds Charlie, Keiran, Brooke, and Hallie live on the quiet and quaint North Fork of Long Island. It may not be glamorous but it is real and teen girls are where the drama is at - at least, that's the rationale of a television studio executive looking for the next big reality series. Thinking that Charlie and her friends might be THE next big thing, she signs them up for a show. 

However, soon enough, having cameras follow them everywhere and interfering producers surreptitiously scripting their lives starts to effect their relationships. Brooke seems to want all the screen time. Keiran is scripted out of the show - and the group's friendship - when she doesn't rate well and as soon as Charlie realizes what is going on, she figures out the perfect way to give the studio and her home audience a reality check.

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One

A Date with Destiny

It’s only 3:47 PM. How can that be? It feels like I’ve been here for hours, not just forty-seven minutes. If I’ve only been at work for forty-seven minutes, then that means I still have two hours and thirteen agonizing minutes to go before my shift ends.

I stare out the fogged-up window of Milk and Sugar, which is this quaint coffeehouse/eatery I’ve waitressed at all school year, and silently pray for Mother Nature to give me a break. But nothing happens. Raindrops continue to pelt the windows and the wind rattles the frame, reminding me how drafty this place is. I pull my cable-knit sweater tighter over my cream-colored apron.

“I doubt we’ll get anyone in here this afternoon,” Ryan says with a slight frown. His forehead wrinkles as well, which looks pretty funny with his shaved head. Ryan is my forty-something boss and the owner of Milk and Sugar, and aside from the two of us and Grady, the wiry twenty-year-old who helps out in the kitchen, there’s only one other person here, a customer named Susan who has been by several times this week. Susan told me she’s vacationing here, which makes sense because I’ve never seen her before, and in our town, everyone knows everyone. But why she’d chosen a beach community like Cliffside for a little R&R in the off-season is beyond me...

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To read the remainder of this excerpt you can do so here. Feel free to visit Jen Calonita at her official website. :)