Waiting for Callback (14 page)

So, even if Lens made us all spend the
entire hour
warming up to Britney, being at ACT was a
guaranteed
improvement on the rest of the day. I went to wait in the
green room (which was painted yellow not green and which (always) smelled of salt and vinegar crisps and hairspray). Daisy was there, reading
The Stage
.

‘Did Stella put you up for
Fortuneswell
?’ I asked.

Daisy and me didn’t usually go to the same auditions because we looked so different. I was head and shoulders taller than her for starters. But
Fortuneswell
was looking for four
girls. It was a new drama – well, the casting call said it was a new drama, but as far as I could see it was just
Little Women
set in Dorset, moved back a hundred years and with
Perfect Pa going off to fight Napoleon instead of the Southern States. I was going up for the part of Mary (who was really just an olde English version of Jo: tall, bookish, gawky but with less
good hair).

‘Yep, the Sophie part,’ she said.

The Sophie part was basically Beth. ‘Lucky – you’d get a death-bed scene.’ I wasn’t thrilled about corpse opportunities, but I did long for a really good death-bed
scene. ‘Are you excited?’

‘Sure,’ she said and smiled, but she didn’t exactly sound excited. I
was
excited, not only because I still got tragically hyped about every audition (which is a triumph
of hope over limited experience), but because even if it wasn’t a very original storyline it was a good one. Also there would be
period costumes
.

‘Are you off-book?’

She nodded. ‘Off-book’ was just a bit of jargon that meant you’d memorized all your lines (I got more of a thrill out of using jargon than was dignified). It was typical of
Daisy to have the lines down days before the audition. It was typical of me that I would still be neurotically learning them the night before.

‘Stella put you up for the
Straker
role too, didn’t she?’ Daisy asked.

‘How do you know about
Straker
?’

‘Upside-down reading in Stella’s office,’ she confessed. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about it.’

I could trust Daisy. ‘What about you?’

‘No, I don’t look fifteen.’ That was true.

‘How did the meeting go?’

‘Not so well,’ I said and because she knew what it was like she didn’t ask me anything else. After multiple postponements, last week I’d finally had the first meeting
with the casting director to read through the ‘eat the bugs’ scene. I’d been super excited (leaving aside the whole maggots angle), but it hadn’t been great. There’d
been a conveyor belt of girls who all looked pretty much the same as me and I’d had about one and half minutes to give them my whole ‘I’m terrified but don’t want to die of
starvation’ thing. I wasn’t optimistic.

‘Baby One More Time’ started to power through the (thin) walls. Class was starting.

Lens clapped his hands. ‘OK, gang, everyone’s here, you’re all warmed up and we’re going to do something a bit different with script work. So I need two
volunteers.’

I stuck up my hand – might as well just unleash the keen. Script work was my favourite.

‘OK . . . Elektra and . . .’ He looked around the room. ‘Archie.’

Oh. Great. I mean, half of me genuinely thought that was great because, well,
cheekbones
. But the other half of me was in full flight mode. I needed to man up. This was a good thing. Tons
of co-stars ended up together: Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield, Nicholas Hoult and Jennifer Lawrence (OK, maybe not ‘forever after’). My complex inner
monologue was interrupted by Lens handing me a script.

‘Take five minutes to read it through and think about the characters. Let’s keep it old school – you play A, Elektra.’

Looking at the script, it took me less than one minute to start panicking and less than two to regret volunteering as tribute.

So, last week I had my first proper conversation with Archie (and yes, a thirteen-line text exchange counts) and this week he was going to be ‘cupping my pregnant
belly’. This was not the kind of escalation I’d been planning in our relationship.

‘So, how this is going to work is that Elektra and Archie are going to try this scene however they want. There is some direction in the script – which I wrote by the way . . .’
Lens paused then sighed. ‘That pause was for a round of applause, but never mind. Then we’re all – yes, all of us so I’d really appreciate it if you’d put your phone
down, Christian – going to give them more direction and we’re going to see how many different ways we can take this. The scene’s quite ambiguous so there are lots of possible
interpretations.’

What was he talking about? The scene was really, really not ambiguous. That was the problem.

‘Right, let’s get going. Come up in front, our A and B.’

Archie and I made awkward eye contact. I was struggling to get into the mindset of a pregnant teen.

We gave it a go.

Me: (deadly serious to try and distract from my deadly serious levels of embarrassment) ‘Babe, there’s something I need to tell you.’

Archie looked at me, sweet and concerned. Focus, Elektra, focus – he’s a really good actor. He touched my arm – gently, reassuring me (no, reassuring
A
; either way it
was nice). Once I’d passed the ‘I’m pregnant’ line and I hadn’t fainted or vomited (although that would have been very ‘method’), I started to relax into
it. And making eye contact with Archie when Archie was B was easy. Every pause was without doubt ‘emotional’.

‘It’s a lot to take in . . .’ Archie looked properly distraught (which I – sorry, which
A
– found borderline offensive).

Then Brian laughed.

‘Feel it!’ I carried on. Christian started cackling too and one or two others joined in. The corner of Archie’s mouth twitched as he came nearer and stroked my ‘pregnant
belly’ (which was looking depressingly realistic thanks to my earlier cake consumption).

‘OK and let’s pause,’ said Lens because the only tension left was the sort that comes from trying not to laugh. ‘Very good, very good. I believed in you as a couple in
that situation.’

‘
A couple
’? Thanks, Lens – that killed any hope of more eye contact.

‘Right, ideas for different ways of playing it. Issam?’

Issam shrugged. ‘Dunno. Maybe Archie could have looked a bit more scared from the beginning? I mean it’s, like, terrifying.’

Well, yes.

‘Yes, even more fear from the outset, that would change the scene. Other ideas for how our couple could have done things differently?’

Brian muttered something under his breath that had more to do with A and B’s life choices than any stage direction. Lens stared him down. More laughter. I went red (redder). I don’t
know how Archie was reacting because I wasn’t looking at him. I’d probably never look at him again.

‘Maybe Archie could make the hold at the end more tender?’ suggested Daisy.

Noooooo
. Daisy was meant to be my ally.

‘Yes! Good suggestion. Why don’t you come up behind Elektra this time, Archie, and put your hands round her stomach that way? So you’re holding her?
Tenderly
. Yes,
Daisy, I
like
this.’

Oh, God, now Lens was in full swing. I also had a bad feeling that this was being snapchatted to half of London.

‘We are no longer friends,’ I said to Daisy when Lens finally switched up the parts of A and B (to Issam and Christian which was going to be interesting).
‘Seriously, you deserve to be paired with Brian for doing that.’

‘Ha, I gifted you that. You LOVED it.’

‘I did n—’ I started.

‘Don’t even try to deny it. Archie looked like he was also
very much
enjoying it.’ We both looked over at Archie, who was having a very self-conscious, banterous
conversation with some of the guys. In fact, I could stare as much as I wanted because I was pretty sure he was not going to look in my direction. Ever.

‘He’s just a brilliant actor,’ I said.

‘That too,’ said Daisy. And then we couldn’t talk about it any more because Christian had got to the ‘I’m pregnant’ line and, I’m not going to lie, it
was really hard not to laugh.

‘I’ll take her,’ said my dad in the same way someone would have said, ‘I’ll dig that grave,’ or, ‘I’d love to pay that tax
bill.’

‘Can’t I go on my own?’ I asked. ‘It’s only, like, four stops on the Tube.’ The
Fortuneswell
auditions were being held above a church hall on Tottenham
Court Road (this acting business was getting me into a surprising number of religious locations).

‘No, under sixteen you’re meant to be accompanied,’ said my mother who by now was a bit of an expert on this whole auditioning thing.

‘They’re not going to know. I’ll just attach myself to some random adult.’

‘That sort of comment is
why
you can’t go on your own,’ said Mum, who was in a filthy mood (which probably had something to do with the washing machine having so
thoroughly flooded the kitchen that this was like a conversation in a lifeboat). ‘Either you go or,’ she looked at Dad, ‘you stay and deal with the repair man.’

‘Let’s go, Elektra,’ said Dad.

Daisy had already gone in by the time I got there. The waiting room was really cold, but then I suppose if the people looking after the church had had money to spare on heating
they wouldn’t have been renting out its rooms for show business. It was the right place for it though, dispensing sermons on the American dream alongside providing audition space for the
Hollywood dream. You could tell who was going in for auditions and who was going to church: the actors were the ones who really looked like they were praying. Plus, it was conveniently close to the
London Scientology headquarters so if Tom Cruise was thinking about casting you in his movie and you were really desperate you could sign up for a billion years there and then.

By the time Daisy came out, I’d abandoned the waiting room for the corridor. There were more girls in the waiting room than there were chairs (and because they were all so pretty I was
getting insecure and wanted to sit as far from them as I could). The minute they’d told us they were running late, Dad had gone for a ‘little walk’ (i.e. he’d gone to sit in
a decent cafe and check his phone and do some work). Daisy came right past me and it was obvious even in my distracted state that she was upset.

‘Hey, Daisy. Are you all right? Were they mean to you?’

She shook her head, but she was close to tears.

‘Let’s go outside for a bit. They just told me that I’ve got at least half an hour before I’m called.’

We went outside, shooed away some filthy pigeons and sat on a low wall. A couple of other girls stared at us before they went inside, trying to work out which parts we were up for. It was a bit
hostile. We ignored them. Daisy was just sitting there, looking blank and miserable and scuffing the toe of her shoe against the ground like a five-year-old. Daisy was always very neat and very
sweet so something was very wrong.

‘What’s up?’ I asked her. ‘Was it a total fail?’ That sounds mean, but it wasn’t meant that way and she knew it. It was empathy.

She shrugged. ‘It was OK, I suppose. They said I was “great”, but hey, we all know that doesn’t mean anything.’

‘But that’s good, isn’t it? Well, it’s not bad anyway.’

‘I suppose.’

There was a long pause and I wished I had chocolate or something because whatever she said she obviously needed cheering up. Her eyes were welling with tears and the tip of her nose was
suspiciously red. Even her blonde curls looked sort of flatter and sadder than usual.