Action! (9 page)

“I need the revised pages,” I said.

“Nance, you don’t understand—”

“No, you don’t understand,” I snapped. “I’m tired and I’m having a really hard time on this movie, but you and Bess don’t seem to get it. Every time I say I’m nervous, you act like it’s a joke. But it’s not. I don’t care about your computers any more than you care about my stage fright. Now can you just print out the pages so I can go home?”

George stared at me, her brown eyes wide and astonished. I felt a stab of guilt. I’d never spoken to her like that before. But I was too tired to do anything about it now.

Silently George turned to the computer and pulled up the script. She hit Print, and the pages shot quickly from the printer near the door. George didn’t even turn back to look at me again. I took the pages from the printer and left without saying good-bye.

The Mountain Lion Attack

I
woke up late the
next morning, as usual. The first thing I thought about was how I had snapped at George. I glanced at the clock. It was almost eight thirty. George is an early bird. She was probably at the set already. I didn’t want to bother her at work, so I would have to call her later.

Thinking about George reminded me of the fire at Jeffrey Allman’s house. George had mentioned that she was making progress in salvaging his hard drive. I wished again that I hadn’t cut her off—she’d probably been trying to tell me something important about the mystery of who set the fire. Would Mr. Allman’s laptop help us find the answer? It was possible that his old computer files from Rackham Industries would contain information leading to a suspect.

I wished I could have focused on a nice, juicy mystery like that one. It would have been much easier than trying to figure out why I was so nervous all the time on the set!

I sighed and picked up the revised script pages I’d gotten last night. I only had one scene today, in the late afternoon. But the whole thing had changed a lot since the last time I saw it. Luther and Althea seemed to keep making my part bigger every time they did a rewrite. The original scene had contained only two lines of dialogue for Esther. The revised scene had two whole pages of new dialogue for me to memorize!

There was a knock on my door, and Hannah stuck her head in.

“Morning, Hannah,” I said.

She stepped inside and frowned at me, her hands on her hips.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “What did I do wrong?”

“You ate the dinner I left you last night,” Hannah said.

I nodded. She had left a whole plate of her meat-loaf and vegetables wrapped up in the fridge. I’d been so hungry by the time I got home that I stuck it in the microwave and gobbled the entire thing. “It was delicious,” I told her. “Thanks.”

“You left your dirty plate sitting out on the table,”
Hannah said. “With the dirty tin foil lying next to it, and the dirty utensils on the table too.”

I grimaced. How could I have forgotten to clean up after myself? Hannah hates anything dirty on the clean table. “Yikes!” I cried. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I got home so late, and it was such a bad day …”

Immediately Hannah’s frown disappeared. She studied my face for a moment, then took a seat on the foot of the bed.

“Why was it a bad day?” she asked.

“I kind of messed up a lot during filming,” I admitted.

“Did you forget your lines?”

“No.” I shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t even have any lines. I was just sitting there writing in a diary.”

“So how did you mess up?” Hannah asked. “You never ‘mess up’ anything!”

“Oh, come on, Hannah. I got nervous, so I didn’t look natural,” I told her. “The director helped me out a lot. In fact, if he hadn’t taught me a trick about how to do it, I wouldn’t have gotten through a single take.”

“But you still think you did a bad job?” Hannah asked. “Even after he taught you his trick?”

I nodded. “I could tell he was frustrated with me by the end of the day. They were just short scenes with no dialogue. It shouldn’t have taken so long to
shoot them all. But I had to keep doing a lot of takes.”

“Why?”

“I got self-conscious in front of the camera,” I said quietly. “In fact, I
always
get self-conscious these days.”

Hannah’s brow wrinkled in concern. “That doesn’t sound like you,” she said. “You’re the most confident girl I know.”

“Not when it comes to acting,” I murmured.

“What do your friends say?” Hannah asked.

“Every time I try to tell anyone that I’m nervous, they say it’s normal,” I told her. “But I don’t think it
is
normal. This is more than just jitters. I’m really afraid I’m going to make a fool of myself.”

“But Bess and George said that everyone on set considers you a natural,” Hannah protested.

I shrugged. “I doubt Morris thinks I’m a natural after yesterday. Mostly I’ve just managed to muddle through.”

Hannah looked skeptical. “I have a feeling that you’re doing a much better job than you think you are,” she said.

“It’s just such a big responsibility,” I told her. “The film and the cameras are expensive, and the sets are expensive, and the salaries for all the crew members are expensive. Plus, after the rough beginning this
movie had, with Herman Houseman’s sabotage, everyone is working their hardest to make sure the final film is terrific.”

“And you think that if you do a bad job, you’ll let them all down,” Hannah said. “Now I understand.”

“Understand what?” I asked.

“Why you’re so afraid.” Hannah reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze. “You’re not nervous about your acting talent. You’re afraid of disappointing people—the director and the other actors and the crew.”

I frowned. Could that really be the reason?

“Nancy, being afraid just isn’t part of your personality,” Hannah said. “But wanting to do a good job—that’s your personality. Whenever there’s a wrong, you want to right it. That’s why you got George and Bess and Mrs. Fayne and Harold Safer involved in
Stealing Thunder.
Because the movie would have fallen apart without them, so you stepped in and found people to do the jobs that needed to be done.”

I had to smile. That was true. Morris had called me his local headhunter because whenever he had a crisis, I found someone to solve it.

“But you’re afraid that if you do a poor acting job,
you’ll
be the one creating a problem for the film,” Hannah said. “You don’t want to let them down. It’s a perfectly natural fear.”

I chewed on my lip while I thought about that. “But how do I get over it?” I asked.

“Well, first of all, you can believe people when they say you’re doing a good job,” Hannah teased.

“I always think they’re just being nice,” I said. “But I’ll try to believe them.”

“And second,” Hannah went on, “I have a little trick of my own that you can try.”

“Really? What is it?”

“Did I ever tell you about my cousin Ethel?” Hannah asked.

I shook my head. “Are you really related to someone named Ethel?” I couldn’t help but grin.

“You bet,” Hannah said. “Cousin Ethel was the kind of girl who always wanted to be a star. She was outgoing and funny and charismatic, just like you.”

I blushed. “You’re biased, Hannah,” I pointed out.

Hannah kept on talking. “So when she got to be a senior in high school, everyone assumed that Ethel would be the star of the school play. And she got the part. At first she was excited and happy. She thought it would be a snap.”

“And then what happened?” I asked.

“Then rehearsals started,” Hannah said. “And Ethel discovered that she hated being on stage with everyone watching her. She got nervous and flubbed her lines. She had such stage fright that she hated the
rehearsals and she absolutely dreaded the actual performance.”

“Sounds like me,” I said. “So what did Ethel do?”

“She went and talked to a wise old woman,” Hannah told me. “Our grandmother, Edna.”

“What did Edna say?”

“She told Ethel that there was no point in being afraid of the audience. But Ethel still couldn’t shake her stage fright. So Grandma Edna suggested that every time Ethel glanced out at the audience, she picture the people sitting there in their underwear. It’s hard to be afraid of someone in their underwear.”

I groaned. “That’s the oldest trick in the book.”

Hannah gave me a stern look. “Why do you think it’s been around for so long? Because it works. Don’t question Grandma Edna’s wisdom.”

“But that won’t work for me,” I said. “There’s no audience.”

“What about all those camera operators and production assistants?” Hannah asked. “Why don’t you try picturing them in their underwear?”

I had a brief mental image of Mary Lupiani and Pam and Degas sitting around in their underwear. And, worse, Morris Dunnowitz in a pair of polka-dotted boxers and a T-shirt. Before I knew it, I was giggling uncontrollably.

“You see?” Hannah said. “Grandma Edna knew what she was talking about.”

The phone rang, interrupting my laughter. Hannah gave me a smile and left the room as I grabbed for the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Nance? It’s George.”

Right away the laughter died on my lips. “George!” I cried. “I’m so sorry for snapping at you last night. I don’t blame you for being mad at me.”

“Don’t be silly,” George said in her typical blunt way. “Obviously you’ve been struggling with these jitters of yours, and Bess and I weren’t helpful. No wonder you felt peeved.”

“That’s no excuse, I said. I still owe you an apology.”

“Apology accepted,” George replied. “Now can I tell you what I was trying to tell you last night?”

“Of course,” I cried. “What?”

“I hooked up Jeffrey Allman’s hard drive to one of the computers here at the set. The drive had some his files.”

“He should be happy to hear that,” I said.

“I hope so,” George agreed. “But that’s not the best part.”

“What is?”

“I may have found a file that could help your dad. Didn’t he say there was funny business with the books at Rackham Industries?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Dad is helping the new CFO look into the discrepancies.”

“Well, I found a large file on Mr. Allman’s hard drive. It’s a spreadsheet, an accounting file. It’s still corrupted, but I’m going to try to clean it up. Maybe it can help your father figure out what happened.”

“Leave it to you to rescue damaged files from a burned-out computer,” I said admiringly.

“I don’t know if I’ve rescued it yet,” George replied. “But I’m doing my best. And now I have a message for you from Morris.”

My heart leaped into my throat. Was Morris going to fire me after all?

“He’s standing right here,” George went on. “And he says you’re late. Get over to the set, lazy bones!”

I jumped out of bed. “On my way!” I cried.

I threw on my clothes, grabbed the revised script, and rushed downstairs. “’Bye, Hannah!” I called on my way out. “Thanks for cheering me up!”

“Remember,” Hannah called back. “Underwear!”

I chuckled as I got into the car and pulled out. I drove as quickly as I could to the set. My scene wouldn’t be filmed until late this afternoon, but I still needed to get there. Today and tomorrow we would
be shooting all the scenes that took place in the cave outside town, where Esther found Ethan Mahoney after he was attacked by the mountain lion. The cave was a historical site, protected from developers because it was an important part of River Heights history. With the help of Luther Eldridge, we had gotten the city’s permission to film there for two days.

The good news was that
Stealing Thunder
would be shot in a historically accurate location. The bad news was that the tight schedule meant we really had to rush. And because the cave was so remote, there was no parking. Everyone involved in filming was expected to travel together to the site. We were not allowed to drive our own cars because the city didn’t want us parking all over the grasslands surrounding the cave. So I had to get to the production lot before the bus left for the cave location.

I was so late that I hadn’t had time to practice my lines for the scene later in the day. I said them aloud as I drove. To my surprise I remembered every single new line. Not only that, but I didn’t feel even the tiniest bit nervous. Maybe Hannah had cured me!

When I got to the set, almost everyone was already on the bus. I climbed quickly on board and slipped into a seat next to Bess. Harold Safer sat across from us. He was already in makeup and costume, and he looked just like Ethan Mahoney.

“Where’s Morris?” I asked Bess.

“He went ahead with the camera and lighting crews,” Bess replied. “They wanted to get a head start on setting up. Everything will be such a rush today.”

I nodded.

“Nancy, George told me that you’ve been feeling really nervous,” Bess said. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice that you were having trouble.”

I gave her a smile. “I think I’m doing okay now,” I told her. “But I hope I didn’t ruin the movie with my nervous acting yesterday.”

“Don’t worry, Nancy,” Harold said from across the row. “If you were nervous yesterday, I’m just as nervous today.”