Film Star (13 page)

I decided that there was no point in saying anything at all and that we were probably in so much trouble already that we couldn't get into any more. I gave the driver Nydia's address. As we sped off out of the city centre I paused and looked out of the back window. I had no idea how angry or worried Mum was going to be when she found out I had gone, and no idea how angry and annoyed my friends were going to be when we got to Nydia's house.

“Oh, well,” I said, more or less to myself, “at least I'm being rebellious at last.”

But when I thought that Sean and I couldn't get into any more trouble—well—I was seriously wrong about that.

“Hello, hello,” I said breezily to Nydia. “Sorry we're late. We brought some food! I held up a bag of crisps and chocolate that Sean and I had bought at the corner shop with his dad's money.

“I love this town,” Sean had said to me as we left the shop. “No one cares who you are. You go into a shop and buy snacks with a girl in a blue ball gown and no one even raises an eyebrow.” I shrugged, feeling my nerves grow as we approached Nydia's house.

“Well, Mr Memhet's known me since I was a baby,” I said. “And he's probably never heard of you.”

“Awesome,” Sean had said, and he really meant it.

Now, as we stood on Nydia's doorstep, she looked from me to Sean and her eyes widened.

“Sean Rivers!” she squeaked. I breathed out a sigh of relief; it looked as if she might be so impressed by Sean that she'd forget to be cross with me for being really late.

“Hey, pleased to meet you,” Sean said, reaching out and shaking Nydia's hand. “I hope you don't mind me crashing your party, but it's so good to get out of ‘movie world' for a little while and hang with some real people, you know?” Sean smiled at Nydia who seemed frozen to the spot.

“Shall we go in?” Sean suggested, which reanimated Nydia.

“Yes, yes, of course,” she said, stepping back to let him by. “Ruby did tell you, didn't she, that it's not a party, party? It
was
a family thing with a few friends, to celebrate because I've got a part in a TV show…”

“Cool,” Sean said. “What part are you playing?”

“It's not very important really,” Nydia said quickly. “But anyway, Mum and Dad are out, giving lifts home to my grannies, and my brothers are out with their mates. In fact, it wasn't much of a party before you got here, and now…” Nydia looked anxious, but Sean beamed at her.

“Well, it's a good job I've arrived then, isn't it?” he said. “Let's get this party started.” I flashed a grin at Nydia but she stared back still looking as if she had just witnessed first-hand a real-life alien encounter.

“Sean Rivers!” Anne-Marie appeared in the door. For a moment she was as silly and as giggly as a girl
confronted with her dream boyfriend could be, and then she seemed to collect herself and transformed before our eyes into her old cool blonde self.

“We saw you on the news, Rube,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “We thought you'd ditched us for Sean, but then nobody could blame you.” Anne-Marie stared intensely at Sean as if he were the waxwork dummy of himself that had just gone on show at Madame Tussauds.

This might have been embarrassing and uncomfortable for Sean Rivers except that he was staring back at Anne-Marie in exactly the same way, and she didn't even have a waxwork dummy.

“Um, hi,” Sean said, and suddenly all his smooth confidence seem to evaporate. He looked just like a normal fifteen-year-old boy again, not that I got to hang out with that many fifteen-year-old boys. Any actually. Apart from Sean.

I looked at Nydia, who was rolling her eyes, and remembered that Sean was her crush too.

“Hello,” Anne-Marie said, holding out her hand. “I'm Anne-Marie Chance. I go to school with Ruby. Of course I know who you are.” She smiled and Sean's cheeks flushed a deep red. “Come into the living room and have some cold pizza.” Anne-Marie made the invitation
sound impossible to resist. “It's not much of a party really but I bet it's sometimes nice for a big movie star like you to hang out with some real people…”

I watched, impressed, as Anne-Marie led Sean into Nydia's living room.

“That girl is amazing,” I said to Nydia. “You'd think she ran into a movie-star heart-throb that she had a huge crush on and a shrine made out of posters to in her bedroom every day of the week.”

“Yes,” Nydia said, her voice cold. “You would.”

I looked at her. She clearly hadn't forgotten to be angry with me at all.

“Nydia, I'm sorry I was late,” I began, hoping to get past her being cross with me as quickly as possible so that I could talk to Danny about that kiss. “But I had to go to the premiere. Art said I did and I was going to phone and tell you but…”

“You didn't,” she said.

“No, I didn't because, well…” I struggled to find a way to say what I meant. “Look, Nydia, you've been really strange recently, ever since I got the part of Polly Harris and, well, it's just not easy to talk to you any more…”

“What, not like your new film-star friends?” Nydia said, nodding towards the living room where Sean and Anne-Marie had put on some loud music.

“I thought you'd be glad I brought Sean,” I said. “I thought you'd like to meet him.”

“Well, I would have,” Nydia said. “But now Anne-Marie's got her claws into him I don't expect he'll have time to talk to me.” Nydia crossed her arms.

I held out the bag of crisps and chocolate. “I brought you food?” I offered.

Nydia snatched the bag and threw it on the floor.

“You just don't get it, do you?” she yelled at me.

I stared at the contents of the bag which were scattered across the floor.

“I don't,” I said. “I know I was a bit, OK—
v
ery—late, and I know it was stupid not to just ring you and tell you why. I don't know why I didn't. I'm sorry for that, I really am.” I looked at her face, which was so hard and cold and not like the old smiling Nydia at all. “But even though I've told you I'm sorry, you're still angry with me,” I said, and then I realised something. “You were angry with me before you even knew I was going to be late, weren't you? You would still have been like this If I had turned up three days early!” I shook my head in confusion. “What have I done so wrong, Nydia?”

“Nothing. You haven't done anything wrong.
You
never do,” Nydia said. “Everything always goes right for
you. You mess up an audition so badly that you are actually sick and you still get the part! You never had to worry about fees or about whether you'd get a new scholarship each year. And I stuck by you, kept on being your stupid fat friend even when no one else could stand you—always moaning about being famous and how hard it was, when the rest of us were wishing we had even half of the chances you've had.” I opened my mouth and shut it again.

It had never occurred to me that I might be
especially
lucky; I had always thought that people like Anne-Marie, with the money, the looks and the swimming pool, were the lucky ones. But I supposed out of all of the children at the academy, maybe I
was
the one to be envied. I was the one who was doing what all of us dreamed about. But even so, I had never imagined that Nydia, my nearly twin, could be jealous of me. Just as she knew I would never be jealous of her. And then I realised—maybe that was the problem.

“Who helped you when you had to do that kissing scene with Justin on
Kensington Heights
in the summer? And you got all panicky because you'd never kissed anyone.” Nydia narrowed her eyes at me. “Me, the same silly old Nydia, always there for you, always thinking about you—well, who thinks about me?”

“I do,” I said. “I do, honestly, all the time.”

“Like you were tonight?” she said.

“I'm here now, aren't I?” I pleaded, hoping that at any moment her face would be transformed by one of her smiles. “Please don't be angry any more, Nyds. Let's make up. You know you're a brilliant friend—the best.”

“I am,” Nydia said. “Are you?”

“I…” I suddenly felt very stupid in my blue satin dress and diamonds in Nydia's hallway. My shoulders drooped and I knew that whatever I said next would not be the right thing. “I thought I was.”

“You shouldn't have got that part,” Nydia said. “Everybody else who auditioned for it deserved it more than you. It's not fair; you only got it because of who you are.”

“That's not true,” I protested, starting to feel quite angry myself.

“And the one night when you know how much I really wanted you to be around—where are you? On TV kissing somebody else in front of Danny.”

“Nydia!” I snapped at her. “I'm here now, aren't I? And anyway, that kiss was just for the camera. Danny won't mind…” I stopped talking and looked at the living-room door behind which Danny would be waiting. I really wanted to see him.

“Won't he?” Nydia said. I took a step closer to my old friend.

“Nydia, please,” I said, making a last attempt to stop this going too far. “Let's not fall out. We don't really have anything to fall out about, do we? I'm sorry if you think I shouldn't have got the part, but I did get it. And I think I'm doing a pretty good job of it. And if it was the other way round, if it had been you, I would have been so pleased for you, Nydia.”

Nydia kicked a family-size pack of Maltesers in my direction.

“Yes, but it's never
me,
is it, Ruby?” she said. “It's always, always
you.
”

She ran up the stairs and after a few moments I heard her door slam shut.

For the first time in our friendship I found that I didn't know how to talk to her. I didn't know what to say that would stop her being angry with me, just for being me.

I bent down and scooped up the food that lay scattered across the hall and bundled it back into the carrier bag. If it had just been me and Nydia and I hadn't been wearing a long blue satin dress and diamonds, I would have left then, gone home, put my pyjamas on and gone to bed. But Danny was sitting
waiting for me in the other room and, although I had been hoping during my argument with Nydia that he would come out and rescue me, he hadn't, and I still needed to talk to him.

I pushed open the living-room door and saw that Anne-Marie and Sean had pushed Mrs Assimin's coffee table to one side of the room and were dancing in front of the gas fire. Danny was sitting on the sofa looking out of the patio doors and into the garden.

“Hello, Danny,” I said. When he heard my voice he stood up and smiled at me.

“Wow!” he said. “You look amazing. Better than on the telly.”

I smiled back at him. Danny was the first person to say anything about the way I looked, and whether or not the dress and diamonds made any difference at all to plain old Ruby Parker, he was the only person that really even noticed
me
at all the whole evening.

“I tried to call you this week,” I said, suddenly wishing I had some pockets to put my stupid hands in. As if reading my mind Danny nodded and stuffed his hands in his pockets. Usually about five seconds after meeting each other we are holding hands. Now it felt as if doing something so simple and easy seemed impossible.

“I know,” he said with a shrug.

I glanced round at where Anne-Marie and Sean were twisting quite inappropriately to an American rock band that one of Nydia's brothers was into, laughing their heads off as they danced.

“You met Sean then?” I asked him. Danny nodded.

“He said hi. He didn't seem that interested in me.”

I smiled. “That's Anne-Marie for you,” I said. “She's got hypnotic powers.”

Danny and I stood looking at each other by the sofa, and it felt that we were about a kilometre apart instead of just a few centimetres, and Danny might as well have been a tiny spot on a far horizon, because even as I stood right in front of him I couldn't tell what he was thinking or feeling.

“I can't believe you didn't tell me you were going to a premiere,” Danny said finally. “Like, I mean, I saw you on the
news,
Rube.”

“I tried to phone,” I repeated. “I phoned you and texted you and left messages with your mum but you didn't call me back.” Danny glanced at the carpet and then back at me.

“I know,” he said. “I'm sorry—I just thought that, well—I didn't know if you wanted me to.”

“Why not?” I was amazed.

“Well, I thought that maybe you were changing your mind about…well, me, I suppose,” Danny half-mumbled, suddenly not able to look me in the eye.

I stared at him. “What?” I asked him. “But why?”

“Hey, Ruby Parker,” Sean yelled over the music. “Come and dance.” I smiled at Sean but shook my head.

“I'm talking to Danny—this is Danny, my
boyfriend.
” I said the last word with as much emphasis as I could and looked hard at Danny, who went to the patio door and opened it.

“Can we talk outside?” he asked me, shooting a narrow look at Sean. “I can't hear myself in here.”

I nodded and followed him.

The evening was cold and damp and as soon as I stepped outside I felt the goose bumps rising on my hands. Danny slid his denim jacket off and draped it around my shoulders.

“Thank you,” I said, wishing he wasn't being so formal, wishing that he'd just put his arms around me and hug me like he used to.

“So what's the great Sean Rivers like then?” Danny asked me, nodding back at Sean and Anne-Marie, who we could see through the patio doors had flopped down on to the sofa and were talking and laughing as if they'd known each other for ever.

“He's really great,” I said warmly, and then seeing the shadows on Danny's face added, “but he's just a really good friend.”

“Yeah, I could tell that by the way you were kissing him,” Danny said darkly.

“Oh, that,” I said. I felt my tummy churn with so many emotions I couldn't tell what I was feeling. Anger was the one that surfaced first. All I had done was to come around to spend some time with my friends and my boyfriend and so far all I got was attacked for doing absolutely nothing wrong. “It was just a peck, Danny—hardly anything—and it was just Sean messing around for the cameras. I didn't even know he was going to do it until he did it.” I tried to sound jokey. “I mean it was over in a nanosecond.”