by Dyan Sheldon
I gave a small, puzzled laugh. “Bret Fork eating a sandwich?”
Carla waved her diamond bracelet in my direction. “It’s should be right after this.”
The camera panned around the canteen at the other actors and crew having lunch and glided back to Bret, lifting a can of soda to his mouth. I knew what should be right after this.
“Oh my God…” whispered Ella. She knew too.
It was Ella and me being marched off the set. I could only hope that she was too far away to pick up the short but pithy lecture Mr Muscle gave us about not getting any closer to the production than Ottawa after this.
“Lola, let’s go,” hissed Ella.
I didn’t move.
Why not? Was it because I was mature enough to understand that what Carla had said in my dream was true: you can run, but you can never hide?
No, that wasn’t it. I mean, I was mature enough to understand that of course, but that wasn’t the reason I didn’t bolt for the door. I looked at Carla, smiling at me like the cat that’s just swallowed every fish in the lake. And at Marcia, Alma and Tina, smug as the devil’s own henchmen. And at the rest of the kids in the room, one eye on the TV and one eye on me. And I really didn’t care what any of them thought or believed. They weren’t my friends and they weren’t people I respected. I’d had more kindness shown to me by Gracia, who had plenty of reason to resent me, coming in and doing for fun what she did to survive. A disaster to Carla was breaking a fingernail. A disaster for Gracia was having her husband gunned down or losing her job. Working at Bergstrom’s had taught me a lot about the real world, and I didn’t think that Carla Santini had anything to do with it any more.
“Oh, I know what’s coming.” I was one beat ahead of the Carla Santini show. “This is where Ella and I were thrown off the set, isn’t it?”
And there we were, firmly in the grip of Mr Muscle, being shoved towards the road.
Mine was a free and easy laugh.
“Watch this!” I cried. “This is where I trip over a cable. Remember that, Ella? I nearly brought down the producer.”
One of the reasons I love Ella is because even though she worries a lot and dislikes serious confrontations, she always rises to the occasion.
Ella laughed too. “I thought you’d broken your ankle, the way you screamed.”
[Cue: more laughter from the gathered throng.]
“How come you look like that?” asked someone. “You look like you’d been swimming.”
“With sharks,” added someone else.
“We’d just walked along the shore and climbed up the cliff.” The Santini glass-bells laugh had nothing on my laugh. It sounded like wind chimes made by Tiffany.
There were a few hoots of “Really?” and “You’re kidding.”
“Well there was no other way to get up there, was there? The road was blocked for miles.”
Only Carla and the coven weren’t laughing along.
“I thought you said you had a part in the movie,” said Carla with this-cake-is-poisoned sweetness.
“That’s right, you said you had a part.” If all else fails, Alma could always become a professional echo chamber. “So why did you have to climb up the cliff?”
“You didn’t really believe I had a part, did you?” I gave Alma a pitying look. “I was just kidding. But then of course things got a little out of hand.” I turned to the crowd. “You want to hear what happened? It’s a lot more interesting than Carla’s movie, believe me.”
I can’t help feeling that acting’s gain could be something of a loss to the world of storytelling. If there’d been any aisles in the Santinis’ entertainment room I would’ve had my audience rolling in them with my many adventures of trying to get Charley Hottle’s attention.
“And that,” I said when my story finally came to its happy end, “is how I became a Hollywood star!”
[Cue: wild applause and the slamming of the door as Carla stalked from the room.]
After we drove Morty and Ella home Sam came back to my house with me.
“You never fail to amaze me,” said Sam. “I can’t believe you actually told everybody the truth for a change.”
I sat down next to him on the couch. “When I became a woman, I put away childish things,” I said.
“I hope that doesn’t mean me,” said Sam.
I said of course it didn’t. It meant Carla Santini. I said I was depending on him to pick me up from Brooklyn every weekend.
“Thanks,” said Sam. “It’s really nice to be appreciated.” He wanted to know what would happen if Charley Hottle gave me a bigger part in his next movie and I had to move to California. Did that mean I wouldn’t need him any more?
I said I figured a great mechanic could work anywhere.
Books by the same author
And Baby Makes Two
Away for the Weekend
Confessions of a Hollywood Star
Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
I Conquer Britain
My Perfect Life
My Worst Best Friend
Planet Janet
Planet Janet In Orbit
Undercover Angel
Undercover Angel Strikes Again
Coming in 2012
One Or Two Things I Learned About Love
Confessions of a Hollywood Star
Dyan Sheldon says that her writing for young adults “comes from personal experience. I just make the characters younger. I thought I would outgrow these experiences — but they keep happening.” She is the author of many books for young people, including Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (the prequel to My Perfect Life); And Baby Makes Two; The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love; and My Worst Best Friend, as well as a number of stories for younger readers. American by birth, Dyan Sheldon lives in North London.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
First published 2005 by Walker Books Ltd
87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ
Text © 2005 Dyan Sheldon
Hollywood sign photograph © Beren Patterson/Alamy
All other photographs © Hemera Technologies/Alamy
The right of Dyan Sheldon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-4063-3923-9 (ePub)
www.walker.co.uk