Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper by Hilary Liftin Page A

teacher, Ms. Finley, to make the change.
    All the other kids stopped to listen.
    “She cannot be with
those
students,” he said forcefully. “She’s a
Pepper
.”
    “
Not really
,” I wanted to say, “I’m a
Purakayastha
.” The story my father always told was that my great-grandfather, upon arriving from West Bengal, was asked to spell his name aloud three times to immigrationofficers. That night, at the local diner, he pronounced, “Spelling is for schoolchildren. I will not waste any more time on Earth doing this.” At this moment of conviction he happened to be seasoning his favorite American food—scrambled eggs. Hence “Pepper.” It seemed to me that anyone whose great-grandfather offhandedly picked his name from a common tabletop spice was entitled to an average education. Unfortunately, my father did not see it this way.
    Ms. Finley tried her best, but at some point I guess she figured out what I already knew about my father: He went after what he wanted, and he never, ever backed down. I’d heard him say it a million times, during deal negotiations, after poker games, and when he disagreed with a teacher who’d given me anything less than an A.
I always win.
    Effective immediately, I was in all advanced courses, and it was a nightmare. I struggled to keep up until my parents hired three separate tutors. Then every night, after soccer practice, I spent another two hours transforming myself into the advanced student my father needed me to be. By the time middle school was over, all the late nights had paid off. I took AP classes as a sophomore, and, through sheer force of Doug Pepper’s will, I was a straight-A student. And then I became an actor and never went to college. Oh well.
    Needless to say, if Dad didn’t like Rob, we were doomed. And Rob already had a few strikes against him. First, he was twenty years older than I, much closer to my father’s age than to mine. Second, my father would never condone a whirlwind romance. He had all but fingerprinted my prom date. And third, their first phone call had consisted of my father yelling at Rob for his cartop performance. Somewhere way back on the Indian side of my family, every marriage had been arranged by the parents. Even though Rob personified the success and fame that most fathers dream of for their daughters, my father was different. He did want to control my life, but in his universe there was only one planetaround which everything else revolved, and it wasn’t Mars. It was his creation: me.

    After dinner, my father asked me to come into the kitchen to help fix everyone brandies.
Uh-oh,
I thought,
here it comes
. I silently began lining up the glasses, waiting.
    “Well done,” my father said. “Rob cares deeply for you. That much is obvious.” I was happily surprised, but then he went on. “And, of course, there are the professional perks.”
    “What do you mean?” I asked.
    “This is an opportunity for you, Elizabeth. Make sure you leverage your newfound visibility to promote your upcoming movie
.
”
    “Dad!” I wanted him to see me and Rob together, to validate my feelings. I wanted him to be happy for me.
    “No, he’s right.” To my utter embarrassment, Rob was standing in the doorway. I looked from my father to my boyfriend.
    “I’m sorry, Rob. My dad is overly ambitious on my behalf. I would never use our connection to promote myself!”
    Rob laughed. “I know you wouldn’t. And that’s what makes you special. But now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, maybe you should.”
    Dad nodded. “The press is all over you,” he said. “You might as well control the story.” Wow, three hours into their first meeting and the two of them were really in sync.
    Rob added, “Hollywood is shallow. Landing the best parts is all about optics.”
    “Optics, what’s that?”
    “You really are Lucy McAlister from Tennessee,” Rob teased.
    “Enlighten me, please!”
    “Optics just means how things look to the general