Playworld

After wrestling ends in March, Griffin starts auditioning again. Meanwhile, Shel constantly reminds him that he has to keep acting to help with finances. One day, Griffin complains to Elliott about his acting career. Elliott recounts Lincoln’s assassination, reminding Griffin to find “a language for [his] life” (238). Griffin doesn’t understand.

For spring break, the Hurts vacation in Captiva. Shortly after arriving, Griffin sees a girl his age who intrigues him. He runs into Tanner, too, and tells him and Oren about the girl, who they say is Regina Goodman. Griffin hopes he can spend time with her and often watches her play tennis. 

After a bad sunburn, Griffin is incapacitated. He’s miserable until he receives a letter from Regina inviting him to take a swim. When Griffin meets up with her, the girl insists that she’s named Meredith, not Regina, and she didn’t write the note. Griffin confronts Oren and Tanner, who wrote the note as a prank. To get back at Oren, Griffin throws him off the dock.

After returning home, Griffin hangs out with Cliff. While watching television together one day, they hear reports of an attempted presidential assassination. Everyone is in an uproar. Watching the news, Griffin remembers what Elliott said about Lincoln’s assassination.

In April, Brent informs Griffin that the director Alan Hornbeam wants to work with him on his new movie Take Two. They meet and read lines together. Griffin immediately inhabits his role as Bernie, the son of Hornbeam’s main character, Konig. Hornbeam is impressed and gives him the part. 

Afterward, Griffin notices that the nearby girls’ school, Nightingale-Bamford, is getting out across the street. He sees a girl he thinks is attractive. The two take the bus home together and, after recognizing him from The Nuclear Family, she asks for Griffin’s autograph. Griffin is shy and barely engages her. When they get off the bus, the girl introduces herself as Amanda West and gives Griffin her number.

At home, Griffin and his family discuss his upcoming role in Take Two. In bed that night, Griffin tells Oren about meeting Amanda, but Oren barely responds. Restless, Griffin takes the elevator up to the roof and stares out at the city, thinking about Amanda and feeling lonely.

At the shoot on Monday, Griffin is distracted and keeps flubbing his lines. At the day’s end, he looks outside, hoping to see Amanda leaving school. Meanwhile, he imagines all the things they might do together. That night, he calls Amanda from his closet, but his family keeps yelling in the background. Before saying goodbye, Griffin invites Amanda to watch him film on Friday.

The next day, Hornbeam scolds Griffin for being distracted and playing his part poorly. He explains Freytag’s pyramid, a storytelling structure, and tasks Griffin with taking the script home and organizing his lines according to Freytag’s pyramid. Griffin does so and is proud of himself when Hornbeam congratulates him at the next shoot. 

However, Griffin soon realizes he’s behind in school. Meanwhile, he runs lines with Shel, who wants him to take liberties with the script that Griffin argues Hornbeam won’t like. Offended, Shel storms out.

On Friday, Amanda comes to the set. Hornbeam realizes she and Griffin are friends and invites her to be an extra in one of the scenes. On the bus ride home, Amanda invites Griffin to babysit with her the following week.

That night, Griffin and his family attend Shel’s Sam and Sara rehearsal. Afterward, the family goes out for Chinese food. The next day, Griffin attends detention, where he and a boy named Rob have to organize books in a basement room. That afternoon, he returns to the set before babysitting with Amanda. Griffin enjoys himself until Amanda reveals that she is dating Rob.

Griffin feels miserable after learning that Amanda has a boyfriend. He channels his emotions into Take Two, much to Hornbeam’s delight. In the meantime, he studies Rob to understand what Amanda likes about him. One day after school, he joins Rob and a group of girls under the stairs where they smoke. He listens to their conversation and is surprised when Rob includes him. Then Damiano (the high school drama instructor) joins them for a cigarette. Before leaving, he makes Griffin smoke a cigarette. Griffin pretends he’s a regular smoker but vomits immediately after he leaves.

Griffin continues hanging out with Amanda. While babysitting with her one night, she curls up against him. He feels happy and sad at the same time. In the meantime, Griffin starts rehearsing for the high school play, attending detention, and shooting Take Two. One night, Amanda calls and asks if he’ll come to dinner with her and her father. His parents are thrilled and insist he dress up. 

At Amanda’s, Griffin meets Dolores West, Amanda’s mother. Dolores’s negative comments about Rob make Griffin uncomfortable. Over dinner afterward, Griffin tries engaging Amanda’s father, who is an English professor. Amanda holds Griffin’s hand under the table.

The next week, Griffin performs in the school play, and Amanda attends. Griffin feels self-conscious for the first time in his acting career and notices how disappointed Shel seems. Afterward, Shel drives Griffin and Amanda home, insisting that Griffin walk her up to her apartment. They get stuck in the elevator, and when it starts functioning again, Amanda kisses his cheek and tells him he’s talented. Back in the car, Griffin asks Shel about his first love; Shel proposes they go for a drive.

Shel tells Griffin about the first time he fell in love. It was 1952, and Shel was 19 years old. He fell for a budding actor named Millie Van Bourne, who lived with her sisters Glenda and Maxine. Shel spent a lot of time with them and was enamored by Millie. 

That summer, he was drafted into the Navy to serve in the Korean War. While he was overseas, he and Millie kept in touch via letter. Sometimes, Shel called Millie, but soon her sisters informed him that she’d fallen for someone else. Throughout the rest of his time in Korea, Shel tried to get over Millie, and a photography assignment helped him channel his heartbreak.

Shortly after returning to New York, Shel ran into Millie on the street. She invited him to her apartment, and they began seeing each other regularly. One day, Millie’s husband entered the apartment while Millie and Shel were together. (Shel hadn’t known she was married.) Confused and afraid, Shel left. 

When he met up with Millie later, she explained that she’d thought she was in love with her husband, but he began exploiting her after they married. The relationship had driven her away from her sisters, and she was trapped. Shel promised to help her escape, suggesting they run away to California together. However, men associated with Millie’s husband attacked and threatened Shel the next day. Determined to help Millie, Shel returned to her apartment the day after the attack, but she was gone, and the space was empty. He tells Griffin he never saw her again. The story is sad, but it helps Griffin understand his misery over Amanda.