Shooting Star (10 page)

“Yes, but now
my
phone is ringing. I’d better go,” Kirsty said. “Call you later.”

Nydia and I walked into Jeremy’s study and sat on the brown leather sofa opposite his desk. Mum looked from me to Nydia and back again.

“Are you two still not talking?” she said, which
made both Nydia and I breathe out frustrated sighs. What did that have to do with
anything
?

“No, we’re not,” I said quickly. “But, Mum, what did Christina Darcy say? Who’s got the part?”

Mum paused and pressed her lips into a thin line and knotted her fingers together. This usually meant that she was either cross or about to deliver a lecture. I suspected lecture. I just couldn’t believe she had chosen now to give it!

“Acting is an extremely competitive career,” Mum began, so off the topic that I wondered if she’d forgotten what we were supposed to be talking about. “People’s feelings get hurt all the time. Ruby, you remember how you felt when those reviews for
The Lost Treasure of King Arthur
came out, don’t you? All actors get rejected at one stage or another, even really good ones…”

“Are you saying we both got rejected?” I interrupted her. I love my mum, but sometimes she can really go on.

“No…” Mum paused as if debating what to say next. “In fact, one of you has got the part.”

Nydia and I stared at each other and suddenly I realised that we were holding hands, gripping each other’s fingers tightly.

“Who then? Who’s got it?” Nydia squeaked.

“I’m not going to tell you,” Mum said steadily. “Not until you’ve cleared up your differences.”

“Mum!” “Mrs Parker!” Nydia and I wailed at the same time.

One of us had got the most hotly-contested part in the history of Hollywood teen musicals and only my mother knew which. So it was typical that she decided to use that power over Nydia and me to try and sort us out now.

“Look,” Mum said firmly, “if you two want to be actresses and go up for these big roles then you’ll find yourself competing against each other a lot. You need to make sure that your friendship survives, because one thing I’ve learnt is that a good friend should always be there for you, no matter what. And you should always be there for your friends. You mustn’t fall out over parts.”

“We haven’t fallen out over the part,” Nydia told Mum. “We fell out because Sean dumped Anne-Marie for Ruby, and Ruby says she would go out with Sean—”

“If he wasn’t Anne-Marie’s boyfriend!” I interrupted hotly. “And besides that’s
not
the reason why we’ve fallen out. Not really. I’ve talked to Anne-Marie. I’ve explained things to her, which is more than you’ll let me do. I think you’re angry with me because of this audition. You want the part of Arial. You want it really badly and you think you deserve it – and so do I. Me and Sean might have
given you a reason to be angry with me. But this,
this
is the reason that you still are.”

Nydia scowled, but she was still holding my hand.

“You’re right,” she said. “I do want this part. I don’t want you to have this part because I want it. I didn’t realise how much.”

“If it’s you,” I told her, “I’ll be really upset. I’ll run off and I’ll cry for about a day and a half, but then even though I’ll still be jealous and fed up, I’ll be glad for you. And I’ll still be your friend who is proud and happy for you. Because, Nydia, you’re my best friend and we’re…well, we’re like the Great Wall of China.”

“What, you mean you can see us from outer space?” Nydia asked me, perplexed.

“No, I mean our friendship is strong with deep foundations and, most importantly, it’s ancient. I wouldn’t let anything come between us.”

Nydia screwed her mouth into a sideways knot as she thought about what I’d said. “OK, perhaps I have been a bit unfair. Perhaps I should have let you explain about you and Sean, and maybe I didn’t realise how badly I wanted the part of Arial. But I feel the same way as you do. If you get it I’ll be upset. But I won’t hate you. Because you are my best friend and you always have been and you always will be.”

“Brilliant,” I said, hugging her.

“It is a relief,” Nydia said. “Because I’m rubbish at not being friends with you.”

“Fancy a swim to cool off?” I asked her.

“Good idea,” Nydia replied.

“Ahem,” Mum stopped us as we were about to rush off. “Don’t you want to know which one of you got the part?”

We both sat down with a bump and suddenly my heart was racing, thumping so hard that I thought I could hear it knocking against my ribcage.

“Christina said it was a very hard choice to make,” Mum told us. “She said that all three of you girls were brilliant, but it was between you two. They weighed up everything they had seen in the auditions, and your film experience, Ruby, along with Nydia’s experience of already playing the part. But in the end they said they chose the person who really embodied the essence of Arial, the person who lived with the same bravery and free spirit as she did.”

And in that second I thought I knew who it was, but I was wrong.

Mum looked at Nydia and said, “I’m sorry, love.” And then she looked at me and said, “Ruby, it’s you.”

I got the ripped-out pages of
Teen Girl! Magazine
a week later and scrawled across the bottom in thick black pen were the words, “Finally I get a mention and they don’t even get my name right!!!!” It was Anne-Marie’s (or Mary-Anne’s) handwriting of course, but I knew that she had to be feeling a bit better otherwise she wouldn’t have sent the article in the first place. With it came a letter describing how her holidays were going much better than she’d thought; her dad had delayed his next trip and stayed home for a whole week, even taking her out to buy a whole new wardrobe. She’d also bumped into the girls from Highgate Comp – Dakshima and Hannah and Talitha Penny in the park, and had been hanging out with them and flirting with the boys playing football. (She was careful at this point to tell Nydia that Gabe Martinez hadn’t flirted at all and just looked a bit miserable because he was missing her.)

“I’ve even got quite friendly with Adele Adebayor,”
Anne-Marie wrote. “She’s quite a laugh. I got her to walk past Jade Caruso and Menakshi Shah and look menacing. Maybe your school isn’t so bad after all, Ruby. Anyway, miss you and Nydia loads – keep me posted on THE BIG DATE.

The big date was with Henry and it was happening that very night. It hadn’t happened at any point in the previous week because the last seven days had been a tiny bit of a whirlwind.

After Mum had said I had been picked to play Arial, Nydia and I had looked at each other, not sure about what to say or do. There had been tears in Nydia’s eyes and I felt really worried. But then she’d smiled and put her arms around me and hugged me really tightly.

“I love you, Ruby,” she’d said with a shaky voice. “If it’s not me, then I’m glad it’s you. You deserve it.”

“There’s some good news for you too, Nydia,” Mum said tentatively. “I know that Christina Darcy said you would only be considered for one role, but they were so impressed with you that they want you in the cast – in the role of Lena. It’s not a main character, but she has a lot of scenes and—”

“A really big solo!” Nydia exclaimed. “‘Dance Until Your Feet Bleed.’ Lena gets the best song in the show – it’s a huge dance number!”

“Exactly,” Mum said. “Christina said she hoped you’d stick around over the summer and be part of the production and perform that song for them.”

“Oh my God, that’s amazing!” Nydia said.

“We’re working together on a movie!” I said.

“A Hollywood movie!” she said.

And then we said something like, “ARRRRRRRRRRRRRR-GHHHHHHHHHH!” Because we were really excited.

A few days later when I had slightly come down from cloud nine, to around cloud eight and a half, the date came up.

“So when
are
you going to go out with Henry?” Nydia asked me over breakfast.

“Henry Dufault?” Sean looked up, wide-eyed at the sound of that name. We had barely spoken two words to each other lately. I’d guessed that he’d seen his dad at least twice in the last week because he disappeared off, talking about meeting up with Danny. But he hadn’t spent any time with me at all. He’d been pleased about the news and given me and Nydia a hug, but he’d kept his distance ever since. I wondered how we were going to get through a summer of preproduction rehearsals together – but then I remembered that whoever did play Sebastian to my Arial, it wasn’t going to be Sean. And the fact that I knew that secretly made me cross.

“Yes, Henry Dufault,” I said.

“Henry who?” Mum’s head snapped up from the contract she was reading.

“
The
Henry Dufault?” Mrs Rivers asked me, in exactly the kind of tone that was bound to get a girl’s mother anxious.

“Yes, that Henry,” I said breezily. “He asked me if I’d like to go out for pizza with him sometime, that’s all.”

“Let me get this straight,” Mum frowned. “We’re talking about the same Henry Dufault who’s just been given the part of Max in
Spotlight!
The boy who got thrown out of his last school for setting off the fire alarm twenty-seven times in one day?”

“He was going for a record…” I began before I realised that justifying some of Henry’s bad behaviour was probably not the best plan if I really wanted to go on a date with him, even though up until this point I still hadn’t really been sure about it. “Anyway, Mum, that stuff you read in the gossip magazines isn’t real. Practically all of it is made up; you of all people should know that!”

“I don’t think you should go on a date with Henry,” Sean said.

“And what’s it got to do with you?” I snapped back, making Nydia’s eyes widen and the mums exchange glances.

“I’m just saying. Henry’s a great kid, but he’s trouble.”

“Yes, well,” I said stiffly. “At least he’s honest. At least he says what he thinks and does what he says. At least he’s not on the point of letting down hundreds and hundreds of people because of a stupid lie.”

Sean held my gaze for a second longer, then dropped it.

“Who
is
going to do all of those horrible things?” Nydia asked.

“No one, no one,” I said, looking away from Sean. “I’m just saying that at least Henry isn’t going to do them.”

“Oh,” Nydia said, looking confused. “Right, well, that
is
good, I suppose.”

“Perhaps Henry could come to tea,” Mum suggested.

“Or perhaps we could go out for pizza like I said?” I countered. Up until this point I had been quite happy for there to be some unplanned date that Henry and I may or may not go on, but now that everyone was getting so flustered, I was determined to go.

“I don’t know, Ruby,” Mum said slowly. “All on your own in a big city in a foreign country with a boy I haven’t met properly? I’m not sure.”

“You’d let me go with Nydia and Sean,” I protested.

“What a good idea,” Mum said. “That’s sorted then.”

“What is? What’s sorted?” I asked, getting the distinct
feeling that I’d just been outmanoeuvred by my mother.

“You can double date,” Mum said. “You can take Nydia and Sean with you. I’d feel much better about it. I’ll drive you to the pizza place and pick you up after. Now give me Henry’s mother’s number and I’ll arrange it for tomorrow night.”

“If I haven’t died of mortification before then,” I said, hanging my head in my hands as Nydia giggled.

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Sean said. Which meant it must be the worst idea in the history of the world EVER.

Henry texted me early next morning to tell me he was looking forward to our date. “Shame you have to bring half of LA too,” he joked. At least I hoped he was joking. It was hard to tell with a text.

It took me and Nydia most of the afternoon to decide what I should wear. In the end I chose a pink cotton dress with a red cherry pattern on it. It took us about four hours to make it look casual, as if I had just slung it on at the last minute and didn’t really care about how I looked at all.

It was nearly time to go and I was toying with putting on eyeshadow when Sean appeared in my
open doorway, looking really gorgeous in a white shirt and jeans.

“You don’t need make-up to look pretty,” Sean said, noticing my finger hovering over a pot of light gold powder.

“I know,” I said, patting some on my lids anyway, just to annoy him.

“You don’t really like Henry, do you?” Sean said. “I mean, sure, he’s an OK kid when you get to know him. Not nearly as crazy as the papers make out, but you don’t like him the way you like me, do you?”

I turned around and looked at Sean. “He’s uncomplicated…for a complicated person,” I said. “He hasn’t got a secret life with a secret dad that will get him into all sorts of trouble, and especially when his secret life comes out.”

“I wish you’d stop doing that,” Sean sighed. “I know I’m a mess. I really miss talking to you about it. You were the only person I could talk to.” He looked a bit sad and anxious which made me feel a bit twisty in my tummy and worried for him.

“So, is it still going OK with your dad?” I asked him, my voice a bit softer. “You still think all of this is worth it?”

“Sort of,” Sean said hesitantly. “Dad thinks that I’ve come so far in the process of playing Sebastian that I might as well go through with it now. He says it would
be the best thing that I could ever do and that he’d manage me every step of the way. He says I’d be working for the rest of my life.”

“Sean, you’re sixteen years old. It seems a bit much to have your diary booked up until you’re…oh, I don’t know – seventy-eight!”

“That’s kind of what I thought,” Sean said. “But Dad really wants me to take the part.”

“Do you think he wants that because it will be the best thing you can do for
you
or for
him
?” I asked. I knew Sean knew the answer, but I also knew that he wanted it to be different from what it was, and that sometimes you can want something so much that it’s easier to believe it will happen than face the truth.

“I want to think that he wants what’s best for me,” Sean said. “And the funny thing is, since I’ve been back on set I
have
felt differently about acting again. After
The Lost Treasure of King Arthur
I never wanted to see another film set again. But I really like this film. I really like the script, the music and the other actors in it – some of them more than others.” He smiled at me and I felt a lot of tiny little fireworks go off in my chest. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to go through with it.”

“It would be
great
if you did the film,” I told him warmly. “But only if that’s what
you
want, not anybody else. You have to be sure that you’d be doing it for you. And you have to be sure soon, because your mum’s had your contract for a few days now and as soon as she’s had it checked by her lawyers, you’ll be signed up and it will be much harder for everyone when you leave.”

“I know,” Sean said. “I’m going to work it out, Ruby. One way or another.”

We stood there looking at each other for quite a long time until I heard my mum shouting up the stairs that it was time to go.

“You look really pretty,” Sean said with a sad smile.

I couldn’t help but feel as if I were walking on air as I went down the steps to meet Mum. It really was horribly inconvenient being in love with Sean Rivers.