Almost Famous, a Talent Novel (6 page)

Mac raised her right eyebrow. She wasn’t sure if she should—or could—believe the Tawker. After all, Kimmie was publicly Team Ruby. Could it be a trick? Or could it be that Kimmie recognized power and wanted to give her allegiance where she knew it would soon be rewarded?

A conundrum.

But before Mac could say anything, Ruby appeared from around the corner, hobbling on a set of shiny silver crutches coated in glitter and faux diamonds. Mac fought the urge to gasp—Kimmie wasn’t kidding. Ruby really
was
hurt. She stopped at her locker, which was just across the hall from Mac’s. (Number 782—Ruby always copied Mac, and had petitioned for a locker that spelled out
her
name. But really it just spelled out RUB.) Haylie Fowler and Ellie Parker stood on either side of Ruby, holding her books.

Kimmie immediately took a step away from Mac and zipped up her hoodie, hiding her Team Mac T-shirt. She joined Ruby, Haylie, and Ellie as though her conversation with Mac had never happened.

“Ruby, I have your history textbook right here.” Kimmie patted her oversize Coach bag, which she used as a backpack. But she looked back and smiled knowingly at Mac.

“Well, if it isn’t the soon-to-be-loser of social chair,” Ruby snickered, spotting Mac. Haylie proceeded to open Ruby’s locker and carefully hang Ruby’s white jacket inside.

Mac sized up the new group, who were so clearly trying to copy the Inner Circle. Ellie was wearing a miniskirt that showed her stick-thin legs, and even Haylie looked like she’d dropped a few pounds. “If it isn’t the Thinner Circle!” Mac smirked, pleased at her new nickname for Ruby’s group of newly skinny Inner Circle wannabes.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Ruby said, leaning on a shiny crutch.

“Yeah, thanks for the cohm-pliment,” Haylie said, totally overdoing the friend backup.

Ruby shot Haylie a
shut up
glance and Haylie looked down at the ground nervously, chewing a cuticle.

“Um, can we hit pause for a second?” Mac said, eyeing the sparkles on Ruby’s crutches. “Did you BeDazzle your crutches?” She said
BeDazzle
like you would say
barf all over.

“They’re titanium,” Ruby snapped defensively, gripping the handles of her crutches a little tighter. “Engineered just for me by the designers at Porsche.”

“That’s very, um, reality show of you.” Mac shrugged, snapping shut her compact. She was about to say,
Thanks for showing us why Porsche should stick to car design
, but then decided it wasn’t any fun to kick someone when she was already so clearly down.

“So, Mackerel, I hear your friend made dance captain,” Ruby said bitterly. Haylie and Ellie smiled smugly behind her, and Kimmie played with the zipper of her sweatshirt, as if unsure what to do. “At least this time she didn’t freak out and make a fool of herself in front of a major record producer.”

Mac slammed her locker shut and glared at Ruby. Disrespecting Mac was one thing. Disrespecting the Inner Circle was another. “At least
she
didn’t get a dance contract and then
blow it
. Have a good day!”

With that, Mac spun around on her Mary Janes and clicked down the hallway. Without looking back at Ruby and her minions, she threw a little skip into her step.

Just because she knew Ruby couldn’t.

E
mily stared at her egg-white frittata, sliced pink grapefruit, and flourless toast, debating which would be the least messy to eat. Not that Adrienne Little-Armstrong or Mac would notice if Emily spilled on the pastel pink tablecloth.

They still hadn’t even noticed Jake Gyllenhaal in a booth in the corner, tucked behind a copy of
Variety
. Maybe this was just a typical breakfast at the Polo Lounge, but Emily was not used to seeing A-list celebrities before school started, and she
really
wasn’t used to taking power breakfasts with Hollywood’s top talent agent, aka Mac’s mom. Who, at that exact moment, was checking her BlackBerry with her right hand and stabbing her egg-white omelet with her left. Mac sat next to Emily taking notes on her iPhone and sipping her papaya-banana breakfast smoothie.

Emily decided the frittata was the safest choice, and relaxed when it broke apart quite cleanly in a dainty, non-attention-grabbing bite.

“So how do you like BAMS so far?” Adrienne asked absentmindedly. She sounded like she was reading off an e-mail.

By the time Emily realized Adrienne was talking to her, it was too late. Adrienne had already moved on. Like her daughter, Adrienne had a charming/scary way of firing information at someone.

“She needs acting lessons. Let’s call Larry Moss,” Adrienne said, tapping Mac’s phone with her polish-free fingernail. Mac nodded politely to show that she’d heard and tap-typed
Larry Moss
into her iPhone. Mac was being oddly, enthusiastically obedient at this meeting, Emily noticed. It was the Adrienne Effect—she made people behave. “Don’t take it personally, Emily,” Adrienne added. “Everyone in this town has a coach for everything.”

“I’d love to meet Larry Moss,” Emily said, not letting on that she knew he’d worked with Leonardo DiCaprio
and
Hilary Swank
and
Helen Hunt. All Emily wanted was to avoid saying anything that would remind Adrienne that she had way more important (as in: already famous/successful/proven) careers to plan.

“It’s all about making
you
more you,” Adrienne said, pointing at Emily with a forkful of egg white. “What you’ve got besides talent is authenticity. People respond to that.” Mac nodded again, typing
authenticity
into her phone. Adrienne continued. “It’s your
essence
.” Emily didn’t know why Mac and Adrienne put so much emphasis on something that was
invisible
. But according to Mac and Adrienne, an essence was just as obvious as hair color or height, the second you walked into a room.

Emily’s mind was spinning with all the ways she needed to be a better Emily. She peeked at Mac’s screen and read the notes thus far:

While Mac was busy taking notes and Adrienne was fidgeting with her BlackBerry, Emily furtively held up her iPhone and took a picture of Jake. She couldn’t wait to show it to Paige, as part of her online L.A. scrap-book.

Mac stopped sipping her smoothie and shot Emily a
don’t do that again
stare.

Emily shrugged.

“No, seriously, sweetie,” Mac said, speaking for the first time that breakfast. “If you want to fit in here, you cannot get excited every time you see a celeb, okay?”

“Well, she
can
get excited, Mac,” Adrienne corrected her. “She just can’t play paparazzi.”

“The only stars you can get excited about are the cult heroes,” Mac said, as though it were common knowledge. She took a sip of her smoothie. “Quentin Tarantino, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep—you know what I mean?”

“Even PSH is too mainstream,” Adrienne observed, fluffing her reddish blond bob, “but definitely Quentin.”

Emily couldn’t believe this mother-daughter duo were sitting at a table arguing about how much enthusiasm you could show when you saw a real, live movie star.

“Got it,” Emily said with a brisk nod, wanting to end this lecture already.

Adrienne took one last sip of her cappuccino and dropped her BlackBerry into her alligator-skin Birkin bag. “I love your energy,” Adrienne sighed wistfully. “I haven’t felt this way since Katie Bosworth arrived.”

Emily smiled. She had never been compared to Kate Bosworth, but it was definitely a compliment. Especially coming from someone who actually
knew
“Katie.”

Adrienne leaned into the table and focused her steely blue gaze on Emily. It was the first time all morning that she’d actually made eye contact. “And listen, I hate to dip into the clichés about Hollywood, but here goes: At the end of the day, it’s not who you know. It’s not even who knows you.” Her BlackBerry was buzzing again. She reached down to retrieve it, still piercing Emily with her laserlike eye contact. She pointed the device at Emily like a sword. “This town is all about who knows you and who
adores
you.”

Emily swallowed her lemon-infused mineral water. The idea of making people adore her was scary. There wasn’t a coach for
that
.

Adrienne’s eyes darted across the screen, reading her latest work e-mail. Then she stood abruptly. If it had been anyone else, the sudden movements would have signaled an emergency, but Adrienne just operated in a semipermanent state of 911.

Apparently breakfast was over.

 

Adrienne dropped the girls off at BAMS at 7:35 a.m. exactly. She had an 8 a.m. meeting at Initiative, and—as Emily knew from every Hollywood magazine profile she’d read about her—Adrienne Little-Armstrong was never late.

The girls stood at the end of the BAMS driveway, in the cul-de-sac where parents and nannies dropped off kids, staring down at the school’s wide-open, wrought-iron gates, where one navy blue Team Mac banner hung loosely, flapping in the breeze. Emily could feel the other kids staring at Mac, sizing up her every move. Emily was admiring the Mac-frenzy when a familiar Rolls-Royce Phantom slid by the curb.

“Let’s go make sure Team Tachman
adores
you,” Mac said lazily. She flipped on her Gucci aviators and buttoned up her Ron Herman cashmere cardigan. “This is gonna rock,” she added in a sarcastic voice. Mac always looked upon Kimmie interactions as a chore, even though the girl was just slightly dorky and tried a tad too hard. But, as Mac had already explained, everyone had to be kind of nice to Kimmie, because everyone’s parents wanted to work with her dad.

Mac and Emily stepped to the side of the Rolls-Royce. They waited while Kimmie stepped out, reached into the backseat for her white oversize Coach bag, and then shut the door.

“ ’Sup, Mac,” Kimmie said, pulling her bag onto her shoulder. Emily opened her mouth to say hello, but before she could get the word out, Kimmie turned away. “Hey Emily sorry I’minarush,” she said as she darted off toward Main Quad.

Emily glanced at her Swatch. It was still only seven thirty-eight. So why the rush to get to an eight o’clock class? She shot a confused glance at Mac.

But Mac was useless at the moment—she’d started talking to a boy Emily instantly recognized as Lukas Gregory. Mac had already prepped Emily on all the cute boys. Just as Mac had described, he had dark hair and dark eyes, and the kind of perfect, all-natural tan that came from playing water polo in BAMS’s outdoor pool two hours a day. According to Mac, he’d spent the summer with his family in Tuscany, where he’d joined a local water polo team and learned to speak Italian. Mac was laughing and eyeing Lukas as though he were a new window display at Ron Herman.

Emily stayed put, wanting to give Mac some space. Maybe the Kimmie brush-off was nothing, she told herself. After all, Kimmie
had
said hello. Just not in that usual overeager puppy-dog way she usually said hello. Emily had read how people moved to L.A. and became super paranoid about everything. She shivered—was L.A. already making her crazy?

The Phantom was lurking in the driveway with the engine running. She looked up and spotted the famous producer staring at her through his rearview mirror. Actually, he was
glaring.
Emily looked at Mac for help, but Mac and Lukas were now watching a YouTube clip on Mac’s iPhone
.
Emily doubled-checked and confirmed on her own: Elliot
was
glaring.

Does he think I blew off his daughter? Is he wondering why I haven’t said hello to him?
Remembering Adrienne’s breakfast advice, Emily pushed up the sleeves of her teal Forever 21 hoodie, pushed her bangs out of her eyes, and stepped forward to show Elliot her positive energy. After all, she was supposed to have a meeting with him next week to discuss a role he’d handpicked for her. She might as well build their relationship now.

“Hi, Mr. Tachman!” Emily chirped. “Good to see you!” The second she heard herself she wanted to hit delete. She sounded so fake, like she was trying way too hard. The “Desperado” song played in her head, the sound track to her life at that second.

Elliot glared at Emily through his thin, rectangular glasses. She had never noticed how large his head was until that moment. He started to roll up the window. Just before the tinted glass slid all the way up, he said in an eerily calm voice, “Excuse me—I have a meeting.” And then he drove off, leaving Emily to wonder what had just happened.

Emily spun around on her checkerboard Vans to face Mac who, at that moment, was putting a Team Mac pin on Lukas’s black Fred Perry polo shirt. “You have to wear it all day!” Mac said, fake-seriously.

“Matches my shirt, huh?” Lukas patted the pin. “Laters,” he said, and gave a lazy head-nod to Mac as he walked off to class.