Star Switch

by Alesha Dixon

  “What about it?”

  “You had such bad stage fright that you forgot all the lyrics to your first two songs. You just danced instead and then ran off and burst into tears! Oh, and the time you performed at the MTV awards—”

  “Wait, I remember that! I was amazing then! That was one of my best performances!” I hesitate, realizing how that sounds. “I mean, that’s what people told me.”

  “You were amazing. Absolutely brilliant,” Riley assures me, Sam nodding in the background. “But don’t you remember what you were saying to me before? You kept saying over and over, ‘Mum, I can’t do this. I can’t do this.’ It took a lot of persuading to get you on that stage.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Naomi Starr gets nervous? But she always looks so confident on stage. How is this possible?

  “The nerves give you adrenaline,” Riley continues, as though reading my mind. “The best and most famous stars in history often get nervous. It’s natural! But sometimes you have to face your fears to do what you love and show who you are.”

  “OK, but what if tonight it’s different? What if tonight, it’s not just nerves?” I take a deep breath. “What if I don’t feel like Naomi Starr? I don’t feel like a pop star. I feel like a nobody. A nobody who doesn’t have the talent or confidence to sing in front of her family, let alone thousands of people.”

  She reaches over and takes my hand. “Well, then I would say that maybe you need to have a little more faith in yourself. Wouldn’t you agree, Sam?”

  “Absolutely,” he says cheerily. “You may not feel like a pop star, but you sure look like one to me.”

  I smile gratefully at him and Riley squeezes my hand.

  “You can do this,” she says, and then before I can protest, she drags me to my feet and suddenly we’re marching out of the dressing room and down the maze of backstage corridors towards the wings leading out on to the stage.

  The crowd is chanting Naomi’s name in excitement. I feel completely numb with fear. Someone is fitting my earpiece while someone else places a glittery microphone into my hand.

  I don’t know what to do. I glance over my shoulder and see a crowd of backstage crew and dancers standing behind me, blocking my exit. There’s no chance of me making a run for it.

  I quickly turn to Riley, who is standing next to me and speaking into a headset.

  “Wait. I can’t do this,” I tell her, my hands shaking. “This is all wrong. I’m not Naomi.”

  “Do you remember when you used to dance around your bedroom, pretending you were a pop star?” she says in response, ignoring me completely.

  “Huh?”

  “Do you?”

  “Um. Well, yeah.”

  If only she knew I was doing that just a few days ago.

  “Forget the crowd out there,” she tells me. “That stage is your bedroom. Go sing and dance just like you love to do. Show everyone how you shine.”

  I blink at her. “W-what did you just say?”

  “You are a pop star. Everyone else can see that. You just have to believe it,” she beams. “Let that pop star inside of you shine!”

  The lights go down. The audience erupts. Riley wishes me good luck and gently guides me out of the wings. The band starts up and a spotlight shines down, an empty pool of light waiting centre-stage.

  Treading in Naomi Starr’s shoes, I walk out towards it.

  I turn to face the audience, a sea of faces that goes so far back, I can’t see the end of the crowd. They go crazy as I get into the spotlight and squint out at them. The noise is so deafening that I stumble backwards. There are thousands of blinking phone lights all shining up at me expectantly.

  I’m frozen. Completely frozen. My heart is slamming hard against my chest. My throat is closing up in fear.

  And I realize now that I forgot to say that I wouldn’t sing live.

  The band is playing the introduction to one of Naomi’s songs. It’s ‘Shining Bright’. One of my favourites. As I stand frozen to the spot and the band repeats the introduction, waiting for me to come in, I hear a voice yell to me from the wings. It’s Riley.

  “You can do this!” she’s shouting, beaming at me as though I’m not messing up a huge arena concert right now. “You’re Naomi Starr!”

  That’s when a thought flits through my mind:

  Maybe, just maybe, I can do this.

  Because Riley is right. I’m not Ruby, the clumsy, shy nobody right now. The crowd can’t see Ruby up on this stage. They can see Naomi Starr. I just have to pretend to be her.

  I lift the microphone to my lips and I start to sing.

  There’s an eruption of cheers as soon as I start singing, and it gives me a boost of confidence. This might actually be working. As the song goes on, I start relaxing into it a bit more. I notice the dancers around me doing a routine and I recognize it from the music video of this song. I know all the steps.

  I can do this.

  As we hit the chorus, I find the courage to go for it. I launch into the dance routine, pretending I’m in my bedroom dancing around to Naomi’s song, my only audience member Daisy, lounging on my bed, chewing happily on one of Roman’s shoes that he’s left lying around.

  It works. I dance perfectly in time with my dancers, while singing all the lyrics. And when the song ends and we strike our final pose, the crowd’s reaction is so overwhelming, it feels like the whole world is cheering for me. Confetti cannons go off from the ceiling and glitter rains down around me as I attempt to catch my breath, tears rolling down my cheeks. This must be the best, most incredible feeling in the world.

  I can’t believe it. I can’t believe what just happened.

  I did it.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  (AS RUBY)

  “If you don’t give my phone back, I am going to SUE. Did you hear me? I mean it! I WILL SUE YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY!”

  I’m yelling at the top of my lungs, but it’s like I’m invisible. I even try waving my arms around while shouting to see if that gets anyone’s attention, but no one notices and then one of the gross boys of this dysfunctional family shoves me out of the way as he steals the seat I was about to sit at.

  This is the WORST.

  I can’t believe I am stuck here in this house of crazy. I should be in Berlin right now performing to my thousands of adoring fans.

  “Stop talking about suing people and sit down, Ruby,” John says, putting his book aside for a moment to spoon peas on to his plate. “You’re being weird.”

  “How dare you! I am NOT weird. I am an icon, John! An icon!”

  So far, John is the only one of Ruby’s hundreds of siblings that I can remember the name of and that’s because of the canteen showdown with Ali yesterday at school. He seems to spend most of his time reading, so I don’t know how he can possibly think that I am the weird one around here.

  I am so over this whole body swap thing.

  Not only have I had to sleep in Ruby’s tiny bedroom and put up with her strange family and her stinky dog, I have had to suffer two days of school. TWO DAYS. I don’t think I’ll be able to survive another one.

  For one thing, the teachers won’t stop yelling at me, even for the tiniest things. I brought the wrong textbooks to class and it was this HUGE deal, and I got in trouble for speaking without putting my hand up first. If that wasn’t bad enough, I discovered that you have to ask the teacher’s permission to go to the toilet during their lesson. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! I swear, if I wasn’t so busy writing and recording platinum-selling and award-winning albums, I’d be writing to the prime minister or whoever and telling them that they have GOT to sort out this whole asking-to-go-to-the-toilet thing in schools.

  Plus, the lessons go on FOR EVER. Who has that kind of attention span? I keep getting told off for looking out of the window or yawning (I admit, I did yawn loudly a couple of times on purpose because I thought it was constructive criticism).

  And don’t get me started on the food serv
ed in the canteen. It should be illegal. There’s no way round it either. I tried ordering in some sashimi and the school receptionist sent away the delivery driver, so I had no choice but to starve.

  Also, you have ZERO freedom. Yesterday, the bell FINALLY rang for the end of school and I was like, “See ya,” to Beth, and she went, “Wait, don’t you have detention from Mr Jones?”

  “Oh yeah. What does that mean exactly?” I asked.

  “It means you have to go to his classroom and sit there for another hour working in silence.”

  YEAH RIGHT! I laughed right in her face at that one and then left the school pronto. The fact that I’d stayed until the end of school was a miracle; I wasn’t going to extend the torture. And then do you know what happened? I walked into school this morning and Mr Jones, aka the Angry Ferret, comes storming over and tells me that for missing detention, I get ANOTHER DETENTION.

  I told him no, thanks. I was already in a bad mood because I had woken up still in Ruby’s body and been forced to get on a smelly overcrowded bus and go to school yet again.

  Then he said, “Well then, you’ll be getting another detention!”

  “And if I don’t show up to any of the detentions, what then?” I told him. “Will you just give me more detentions that I won’t attend? Looks like your punishment system is severely flawed. Anyway, I have to go wash my hands now because I’ve just been on the bus and it was disgusting. NO ONE respects your personal space on that thing. I plan on suing the bus company because I’m almost certain that whoever stepped on my foot as they got off broke all of my toes.”

  Apparently, speaking back to Mr Jones and then ranting about the bus was “unacceptable behaviour” and I got sent to the headmaster’s office where he lectured me for about half an hour, but I wasn’t listening because I was distracted by his strange obsession with owls.

  Literally everything in his office had an owl on it. There was an owl clock, an owl paperweight and an owl painting on the wall. Even the pen he was signing papers with had a fluffy owl on the end. Weirdo.

  Anyway, this whole school experience has made me super appreciative of my personal tutor, Harry, who comes with me on world tours and gives me lessons whenever I have free time, because it’s the law or whatever.

  He never makes me do homework and I can get away with pretty much everything, even texting or scrolling through Instagram while he’s teaching.

  I think he may be a little bit frightened of me because of the time I knocked everything off the desk in protest at being asked a question about the periodic table when I was trying to write a song verse.

  I had the best lyric in my head and then his stupid repeated question about the symbol for iron made me forget it.

  “Ruby, please sit down,” Ruby’s mum, Callie, says, barely looking up from the manuscript on her lap. “Everyone dig in.”

  “How was everyone’s day?” Ruby’s dad asks, but everyone is too busy eating or talking over him to answer.

  I reluctantly sit down at the end of the table, glaring at Callie, still annoyed at her for taking the phone away. As soon as I take my seat, that scruffy dog comes bounding over with her gross tongue lolling out, trying to get me to pet her.

  “Back to your bed!” I instruct, keeping my hands up away from her before she can slobber over me. “Off you go! Back to your bed! Leave me alone! Ugh! WHY doesn’t she understand what I’m saying?”

  “Because she’s a dog, you loser,” one of the identical twins says, piling an abnormal amount of potatoes on to his plate.

  I wrinkle my nose at the food on the table. No offence to Ruby’s parents, I’m sure it’s great, but this is not Michelin-star-chef standard like I’m used to.

  “Excuse me, Callie and/or Anthony?” I say, addressing Ruby’s parents. “Do you have any green juice in the house at all? I really need it for my skin. It’s suffering because of school in general.”

  But they don’t hear me. In fact, I can barely hear myself over the noise at this table. The twins have already got in an argument about a sports lesson they had at school today; the eldest son is debating with his dad about some DNA-related news bulletin today; and John has asked his mum’s opinion on the current number-one non-fiction book.

  This is EXACTLY what happened at yesterday’s dinner.

  “HELLO!” I huff, slamming my cutlery on the table. “Can someone PLEASE listen to me?”

  “You know what, Reggie, when that ball hit your head in football today, it must have knocked out your brain cells,” a twin is saying. “The score was two-one to MY team.”

  “It was four-three to MY team, Roman,” Reggie replies. “You can’t make up scores!”

  “Yes, but Dad, medical research has proven that not to be necessarily true,” the eldest boy is saying across the twins, with his mouth full, I might add. “Didn’t you read the news today?”

  “I did, and I think that the recent findings are problematic,” Anthony replies, passing the bowl of salad to his wife on autopilot.

  She has no idea he’s holding it out for her and is deep in conversation with John.

  Anthony doesn’t seem to notice she hasn’t taken it from him and so just continues to hold the salad bowl up for the entirety of the meal.

  “I don’t understand why you’re brushing aside twenty-first century fiction!” Callie is saying to John, a fork in one hand, a pen in the other. “You seem to be boldly prioritizing other periods with very little thought process!”

  “I’m not prioritizing Shakespeare, Mum,” John replies with a sigh. “It’s the school syllabus. I have to learn what I’m told to learn.”

  “Ah, now that’s an interesting debate.”

  “EXCUSE ME!” I yell, before being nudged on the arm by a cold wet nose. “EW, DAISY! Go away! Back to your bed!”

  She ignores my instructions and instead rests her head on my lap, looking up at me with those stupid big eyes.

  “Fine, you can stay there,” I grumble. “But don’t get used to it, you gross slobberer.”

  “MY TEAM WON!” Roman yells, slamming his fork on the table. “Mum, tell him my team won!”

  “Yes, sweetheart, help yourself to peas,” she replies, brushing him off before turning her attention back to John. “You need to start standing your ground and thinking for yourself. Do you want to be a puppet, told what books to study and how to think?”

  “Mum wasn’t there, Roman!” Reggie cries. “But I was there and I can tell you that his team LOST!”

  “Can someone PLEASE tell me where I can get some healthy juice around here?” I ask again, waving my arms.

  “Reggie, do you need to spit when you yell?” the eldest boy says, wiping his cheek in disgust.

  “I will spit when I yell passionately, Jeroame!” Reggie responds. “And I’m yelling passionately because Roman is a liar!”

  “Keep your voices down, please. Let’s stay calm,” their dad says, chuckling. “I’m all for competitive nature but let’s remember good sportsmanship.”

  “It’s not me being the sore loser, Dad! It’s Reggie!” Roman says.

  “I heard that Roman’s team won, if that helps,” John chips in.

  “SHUT UP, JOHN!” Reggie shouts, while Roman yells, “AHA!” at the same time.

  “Green juice! Anyone!” I attempt again.

  “I heard that Reggie’s team won,” Jeroame offers.

  “SHUT UP, JEROAME!” Roman yells, while Reggie does a little dance with his arms. “Stop dancing like that, Reggie, you look stupid!”

  “You look stupid!”

  Roman picks up a boiled potato from his plate and throws it at Reggie, but it misses and hits John on the head. John retaliates by throwing a carrot at Roman, but misses and instead hits Jeroame. Jeroame then scoops a spoonful of peas up and throws them at John, but misses and hits Reggie. Reggie picks up a handful of cabbage and throws it at Jeroame, but misses and. . .

  SPLAT!

  “AHHHHHHHHH!” I jump to my feet as wet cabbage hits me in the fa
ce.

  The dog thinks that I’m getting up to play and starts barking excitedly, jumping up and down at me.

  “All right, enough of the food throwing!” Ruby’s mum demands. “Someone hand Ruby a napkin. Now!”

  But I don’t need a napkin. Oh no. I NEED REVENGE!

  Without a moment’s hesitation, I grab some boiled potatoes from the bowl in the middle and throw them at Reggie. All three of them hit him right in the face.

  “THERE! How do you like it, huh?” I yell, seething as I pick cabbage out of my hair. “NOW you can pass me a napkin!”

  For a moment, everyone at the table stares at me in stunned silence. Then, they all burst out laughing. Even Ruby’s parents look impressed. John passes me a napkin, chuckling, while Jeroame gives me a thumbs up.

  “Nice shot, Ruby!” Roman says, while Reggie applauds me, a bit of potato still on his forehead. “Who knew you had it in you?”

  They all grin at me as I calmly sit back down and everyone resumes eating.

  And even though I have cabbage in my hair and dog slobber all over my skirt, and it looks like no one is bringing me a fresh green juice any time soon, I find myself grinning back at this outrageous, noisy, mad family.

  I can’t help it.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  (AS NAOMI)

  You were BRILLIANT!!

  Thank you so much!!

  YOU DID IT!! I had a

  feeling you could xx

  I feel like my heart might burst when I read Naomi’s message. I put the phone down on the table and exhale, enjoying the moment’s silence of being in my dressing room alone, taking in everything that just happened.

  I’ve never felt like this before. Like I can’t stop smiling. My ears are still ringing from the noise of the crowd when the concert ended and the adrenaline rush from all the dancing hasn’t finished. I’ve never performed in front of ANYONE before in my whole life and I’ve just stepped off stage from singing and dancing in an ARENA concert to THOUSANDS of people.

  And the best part is: it wasn’t me.

  And that’s why I could get over my fear and do the show. Because it wasn’t Ruby, the nobody, up on the stage; it was Naomi Starr, the biggest pop star on the planet! Nobody was going to laugh at her or ask what she was doing centre stage.