Shooting Star (3 page)

I’m not crying, I just have…um hay fever. That’s all – it makes my eyes run.

SEBASTIAN hesitates again. He knows that ARIAL is lying, but he doesn’t want to embarrass her.

Look, I know you haven’t got very many friends here yet, and that some of the girls are giving you a hard time – but that’s only because they are jealous.

Only because you are more talented than they are. Kinder, nicer, funnier and more beautiful…

ARIAL looks up sharply at SEBASTIAN.

Pardon?

SEBASTIAN looks scared and then his face changes as he makes a decision to say what he’s really thinking.

I said I think you are really beautiful.

They look at each other for a moment longer and then SEBASTIAN loses his courage. He climbs back in through the window, leaving ARIAL sitting alone once again.

Cue production number four SEBASTIAN and ARIAL’S 1ST DUET “I’m in Love!” Sung as a duet but shot in two separate locations: SEBASTIAN’S room and the fire escape.

“I’m in Love!”

“Right,” I said to everyone as we sat in the waiting room right outside where the screen testing was, with a slight note of panic in my voice. “All we have to do is act, sing and dance. It will be fine.”

“It won’t be fine,” Nydia said anxiously. “This isn’t a scene, it’s a whole act! I thought they’d give us less to do and more time to prepare. I thought we’d get the scene and then at least have a chance to rehearse. I didn’t think they’d hand us a huge script and then tell us we’ll be seen on set in about five minutes. And that was four minutes ago!”

“Don’t panic,” Gabe said, taking her hand. “This is your role. You’ve played Arial on TV in front of millions. OK, so this is a new song and a new scene that none of us have ever seen before, written especially for the film. But it’s still Arial, and you still know how to play Arial better than anyone.”

Nydia smiled at him and I thought that I really had to
get her on her own soon and ask exactly what was happening between those two. But now wasn’t the time.

“Gabe’s right,” I said. “We’ve prepared as much as anyone could. Now we just have to do our best.”

“How can you be so calm?” Nydia asked, dropping Gabe’s hand as if she’d only just realised that she was holding it.

“By pretending mostly,” I said. “Look, if you don’t want to do it, just say. Nothing bad will happen, except that you definitely won’t get a part in the film and will have to spend the summer in London.”

“I want to do it,” Nydia said, biting her lip. “Only in about two
weeks
, not two minutes!”

“I really wanted to do my scene with Sean.” Anne-Marie spoke for the first time since she’d been handed the script. “We’d be so good together in this scene. I can’t believe that he’s not here.”

That morning Sean had woken up with a temperature and a sore throat. He’d told, or rather croaked to, his mum that he wouldn’t be able to screen test-after all. His mum had phoned the studio to tell them and they said they had to go ahead and start the casting process today, but that they’d be happy to wait for Sean to get better before they made the final decision on male roles. By which they meant the part of Sebastian, because there
would never be any way that Sean Rivers would get any part in any film that wasn’t the lead.

I’d found Sean lying on the sofa watching TV just before we left.

“Well, there are no radiators on in here, it’s much too hot,” I said, crossing my arms and tipping my head on one side. “So tell me – how did you fake your temperature?”

“Dipped the thermometer in a mug of tea,” he confessed in his normal voice. I shook my head. It was hard to be cross with Sean, but I wanted to give it a go.

“OK, so you’ve managed to get out of it today, but how long are you going to be able to keep it up? You can’t have a sore throat forever, you know.”

“I know,” Sean said, grinning at me. “I was thinking it could progress to a chesty cough, maybe a rash and then, oh, I don’t know – the bubonic plague. That would do it.”

I tired hard not to laugh, but failed.

“Have you worked out how you are going to reach your dad yet?” I asked, glancing at the door to make sure we weren’t being overheard.

“No,” Sean admitted. “But I will. The first thing I have to do is find out his address, because he’s moved. I need to find out where he is living or working. I’m going to do that today.”

“Your mum is staying home with you,” I reminded him in a whisper as I heard voices in the hall. “You won’t just be able to look him up in
Yellow Pages.
”

“I know,” Sean said. “I wasn’t in the movie
Kid: Super Spy
for nothing, you know. I picked up a few tricks of the trade.” He smiled at me again, that same but new smile that suddenly seemed to unsettle me the way it did every other girl in the entire world. I didn’t like it.

“Don’t smile at me,” I said without thinking, as my tummy did a backflip.

“What? Why not?” Sean asked me.

I stared at him for a second or two trying to think of something to say that didn’t involve the words “because I think I’m getting a bit of a crush on you for some bizarre reason and you smiling at me only makes it worse”.

“I…um…because I am in the zone. If you smile at me I’ll want to smile at you and then I’ll be out of the, er, zone thingy and um…It’s like Anne-Marie, your girlfriend and my best friend, is always saying, you have to stay in the zone.”

Sean’s smile widened. “You are crazy, Ruby Parker,” he told me. “But that’s what I’ve always liked about you.”

“Sean!” Anne-Marie rushed into the room wearing a paper mask over her face, presumably to protect her from his germs. “Are you sure you can’t come? Because when you get out there in front of the camera, the adrenaline will kick in and I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“Can’t talk,” Sean croaked, shrugging apologetically.

“But I really
want
you to come,” Anne-Marie said miserably.

“Break a leg,” Sean had managed, and I dragged Anne-Marie out to the car.

And now we were in a room waiting to be called for a screen test. The funny thing was that on the other side of the door was a full-size movie set of a building, complete with a life-size fire escape that each of us was supposed to perform a “dance interlude” on. For the first time ever in my acting career, it was quite likely that I actually would break a leg.

On the way back to Jeremy’s house we were all silent. Finally Anne-Marie spoke up.

“I can’t believe how awful I was!” she moaned miserably, staring out of the car window.

“You weren’t
that
bad,” Gabe told her. “At least you remembered the words. I forgot every other line. I’m sorry, Anne-Marie. I messed up and I know it means a lot more to you than it does to me.”

Gabe and Anne-Marie had been paired together for their screen test, whereas Nydia and I had two total strangers as our Sebastians.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Anne-Marie said, smiling wanly at Gabe. “At least when you said your lines you were brilliant. I remembered all of mine, but I might as well have been reading them off the back of a packet of cornflakes for all the feeling that I managed to get in them. And the song!” She clutched suddenly at her throat. “Maybe I’m catching Sean’s
sore throat. Maybe that’s why my singing was so off.”

“At least you two knew each other,” said Nydia. “My Sebastian was a metre taller than me and he couldn’t look me in the eye. There’s nothing more off-putting than a boy telling you he thinks you’re beautiful when he’s gazing at your left ear.”

“You’ve been very quiet, Ruby,” Anne-Marie said. “What was your Sebastian like?”

I had been standing looking up with some trepidation at the fire escape where I was soon to be sitting when I had been introduced to my Sebastian.

“Ruby, isn’t it?” A lady with headphones and a clipboard approached me. “You have about twenty minutes before we start filming your scene. Now would be a good time for you to meet Henry Dufault. He’ll be your Sebastian today.”

She’d stood aside to reveal a boy of about fifteen with a distinct look that wasn’t like any other boy I knew. Henry had long dark hair that reached down to his shoulders and fell across his brown eyes, which looked as if they were lined with eyeliner. He wore a red T-shirt featuring a band I was not nearly cool enough to have heard of, skinny black jeans and a pair of bright green cowboy boots. He was not at all how I imagined Sebastian. Or anyone, for that matter.

“Oh, hello,” I said, suddenly sounding very English and proper.

“Hey,” Henry nodded and smiled.

“Do you want to talk the scene through before we start?” I asked him as the lady with the headphones and clipboard headed off. “Work out any moves or anything?”

Henry raised one amused brow as if he thought the suggestion was a completely silly one. “Let’s wing it,” he said with a grin. “It’ll be a buzz.”

“Wing it?” I asked him, sounding a bit squeaky. “A buzz? Do you mean improvise?”

“Winging is always best,” Henry told me. “Keeps it fresh, real. Let’s just follow each other, cool?”

I’d nodded.

“This is going to be terrible,” I’d whispered to myself as I took my seat on the fire escape.

But weirdly enough it wasn’t and neither was Henry. He could act as well as any boy I knew, even Sean, and he had a better singing voice than all of them. Even though I couldn’t see him when we sang our duet I could sort of feel his voice; it was so strong that it gave me confidence to push my voice further. I had never enjoyed singing a song so much before and I realised that whether I got a part in
Spotlight! The Movie Musical
or not, I had enjoyed my screen
test when none of my friends had. And that was why I was quiet.

“So?” Nydia prompted me as the car pulled into Jeremy’s driveway. “How did it go?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly, looking at my friends. “I think it went OK. But we’ll soon find out because if they still want us they will be calling us back tomorrow.”

“I just want you to know,” Anne Marie said suddenly, grabbing mine and Nydia’s hands, “if I don’t get called back and you two do there will be no hard feelings at all.”

“Yeah, right,” me and Nydia said at once, rolling our eyes. All three of us laughed and the tension in the car disappeared in an instant.

“Whatever happens, best friends forever,” Nydia said.

“Best friends forever,” Anne-Marie and I agreed.

But as we walked into the house I saw Sean watching us from an upstairs window. He was waving a piece of paper at me, grinning exactly like a boy who had just found out what he needed to know.

Over dinner the parents talked and talked about the screen tests, and the other kids they had seen there, and what our chances were of getting called back for a second round of auditions, and whether or not we had
a chance of getting any part in the film, never mind the leads. But us kids just ate our food and tried to talk about something else.

“You seem to be much better, Sean,” I said, looking across at him. He had been trying to get me on my own since we’d got back and so far I’d managed to avoid him.

I had decided it was no good. I couldn’t be Anne-Marie’s best friend forever and keep a secret about her boyfriend from her. Worse still, I couldn’t be her best friend and start having weird feelings about Sean. The only thing to do was to try and avoid him as much as possible. If he wanted to track his dad down then that was fine, but he’d have to do it without me until these funny feelings went away and Anne-Marie knew about the real reason he’d come to Hollywood.
That
was proper best friend behaviour.

“I’m not sure,” Sean said. “I think I’m getting a cough.”

After dinner we decided to watch a film in Jeremy’s huge screening room. It was a bit like a mini cinema, only it had ten great big comfy chairs that you could swivel round on. We’d been watching the film for about twenty minutes when I went to get us some more microwave popcorn, because we’d eaten the first lot before the film had even started. I was standing in the
empty kitchen holding David in my arms, waiting for the microwave to beep, when Sean crept up on me.

“Boo!” he said, chuckling away as if he were hilarious. I was so surprised that I nearly dropped David, who went into a frenzy of barking and general guarding which might have been scary if he had been slightly bigger than a large mouse.

“Sean!” I hissed as I calmed David. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve got it,” he said, handing me a page he had torn out of the local directory. He’d obviously looked his father up in the
Yellow Pages
after all. “You were right – I didn’t need superspy skills to track Dad down. He’s here, Pat Rivers Talent Agency. I’m going to go and see him.”

“When?” I asked anxiously. I had been hoping that it would take ages for Sean to find his dad. It hadn’t occurred to me that it would really be as simple as looking him up in a phone book.

“Tonight,” Sean said, watching me intently.

“Tonight? But it’s his office address. Even if you could sneak out he won’t be there at this hour.”

Sean shook his head. “Ruby, you met my dad – when did he ever stop working?”

I thought for a second. “Never.”

“Exactly. He’s famous for his crazy working hours. Of course he’ll be there. He probably
lives
there, knowing Dad.”

“Well, if he does then it doesn’t sound like he’s changed much, does it?” I reminded Sean.

“Maybe not, but if I don’t speak to him I won’t know.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Anyway I’ve worked out how we are going to get there.”

“
We?
” I squeaked. “As in you and me? I am not coming with you, Sean. It’s not fair of you to make me. Anne-Marie’s your girlfriend – don’t you think you should be inviting
her
on stupid trips across LA in the middle of the night?”

Sean pressed his lips together for a second. “She wouldn’t understand,” he said, his voice low. “You do.”

“I can’t come, Sean,” I said. “Imagine if my mum found out. I’d be grounded for the rest of my natural life.”

“
Please,
Ruby,” Sean begged. “I know I shouldn’t ask you, but I…I don’t have the nerve to go on my own. I need you to come with me.
Please.
”

The microwave pinged and we all jumped, including the dog in my arms.

“There’s a phone number on that page,” I said hopefully. “Couldn’t you just call him?” Sean said nothing as he watched me and waited. I sighed. Maybe the quicker we got this out of the way, the quicker things would go back to normal.

“What’s your plan then?” I asked him. “That address is on the other side of LA.”

“Remember when you and I were all dressed up at the film premiere and we got a cab across London to Nydia’s party?”

“Yes, it’s quite hard to forget, what with the swat team they sent after the jewellery I was wearing,” I said.

“It’s pretty much the same plan. We dress up, we sneak out, we catch a cab.”

“You call
that
a plan?” I asked.

“Sorry, Rubes,” Sean said, stuffing a handful of buttered popcorn into his mouth and tossing David a kernel. “Haven’t you worked out by now that I’ve only ever got one plan?”