I glare at her. “I can’t believe you, Mom. I’m doing this.”
“You don’t have like my decision, but it’s final and you do have to listen,” she says. “Listen and trust that I know what’s best for you.”
“What’s best for me?” I snap. “What’s best for me? It’s not what’s best for me, mom, it’s what’s best for you and I’m so tired of it. You moved us thousands of miles away from our home and our friends for you. Not us. I’m not going to let you make any more mistakes for me.”
I turn sharply, charging up the stairs and into my bedroom before she can say another word to me. I don’t want to hear her voice. I don’t want to hear her saying, no, no, no, to every good thing that happens to me.
I slam my door and turn to find McKenna, sitting on my bed.
“Hi,” she mumbles. She looks sullen. I’m sure she heard that whole argument. My mom is being impossible. She isn’t considering what this could mean for me and, she’s ruining every good part of my summer.
“You’re still going to go to the audition and the meeting, aren’t you?” McKenna says. I stare at her long and hard with determination.
“You bet I am.”
Chapter Seven:
I prepared for the audition for the next three days straight. Uncle Jim, although not liking the fact that we are all going behind my mother’s back to make this happen, agreed to help me. He’s agreed to take the proper steps to train me, prepare me and assist me.
We meet at Emily’s house, going over the script that will need to be read during the audition. I practice my lines until I’m blue in the face. I want it so badly; it’s driving me to be better.
We also talk about the modeling meeting. Uncle Jim agrees to go along with me, so I’m not taken advantage of and for support. I obsess over how I look, taking a slow, thorough shower, scrubbing every inch of my body with my Hawaiian body gel, washing my hair with my best coconut shampoo. I wash my face with my best cleansers and moisturizers. I apply subtle, yet enhancing make up. I blow dry my hair, brush it, fluff it out and brush it again. I ask McKenna three times, “How do I look?” Each time she replies with an eye-roll, “You look stunning.”
I eat a light breakfast, complete with watermelon and grapefruit. I guzzle water, because I know it’s good for my eyes and skin. I take slow breaths as I eat. McKenna stares at me as we sit at the kitchen table across from each other.
I think she’s waiting for me to faint or scream or panic, or all of the above. I stare back at her and laugh nervously.
“I’m fine,” I tell her. “It’s gonna be good,” I continue. “I’m gonna get it. I can feel it this time. It’s fine.”
“Best of luck,” she says, raising her glass of juice in the air dramatically. I roll my eyes, but grin at her. She smiles back with sweet eyes.
“Thanks, McKenna. For everything.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“Are you coming with me and Emily?” I wonder.
“Absolutely! I’m not missing this. I’m going to have to be there to tell the newspapers and the magazines all about how my sister, Malina Beach, landed her first big acting job when you are rich and famous.”
I snort a laugh, nearly choking on my juice. “That’s hilarious, McKenna. Keep making me laugh, it may help settle my nerves.”
“Oh, please,” she says. “My sister is going to be a big star!”
When Emily arrives moments later, I put on my game face. I imagine myself butch, with a mean squint and black paint in strips under my eyes. I imagine myself with boxing gloves on, pumping my fists into the air like Judd Nelson at the end of The Breakfast Club. I’m surprised at how good I feel about this. Today is the day.
I text Uncle Jim and tell him we’re ready to leave and head to the audition. I check the clock and my violet watch numerous times while we wait. Emily and McKenna are chatting quietly at the kitchen table while I pace the living room carpet.
“He’s late,” I call to them. I check my watch again. He’s ten minutes late, I can’t be late for this. “Where is he?”
“He’s late?” McKenna asks, marching into the living room. Emily follows behind her. “How can he be late? He knows how important this is.”
“I’m sure he’s coming. Calm down. You don’t wanna sweat off your make-up,” Emily says, smiling reassuringly at me. I take deep breaths.
“You’re right. I’m sure he’s on his way.”
Another ten minutes tick by, dragging on slowly. I start to panic when Emily looks distressed and worried.
“Maybe we should just walk?” she suggests. I groan loudly.
“I hope he’s alright.” McKenna chimes in.
“I just can’t believe he’s late! Today of all days,” I exclaim. There’s a knock on the door before it opens. We all shoot up out of our chairs. It’s him. Thank God.
“Sorry!” he shouts at us as we rush towards the door. “My car broke down. But it’s running good now. Let’s go!”
“I hate your car,” I say as we hurry out into the front yard. “I hate it. I hate it so much.”
“Hey,” he says. “This car is a beauty. Don’t knock the car.”
“It almost made me late!” I say. I hop in the front seat while Emily and McKenna sit in the back. Uncle Jim guns it to the audition. My mind is racing with panic, but I have the script clutched in my hands. I’m going to read it the whole time I’m waiting, because I expect it to take a long time, and I’m going to practice and breathe and relax. This isn’t a big deal.
Except that it is.
“How do you feel?” Uncle Jim asks, pulling into a tight parking space between a small bus and another car. I shrug my shoulders. McKenna and Emily slide out of the car while Uncle Jim and I stay, sitting together in a comfortable silence.
He breaks it. “You’re going to do great,” he tells me. “I’m proud that you’re trying again,” he continues. “And I’m going to be proud when you get this job.”
I grin at him. He’s proud of me. He’s proud even before I win or lose. Time seems to slow down, slink by, and almost stop altogether. That’s the good thing about having an Uncle, or anyone who truly understands. It’s okay if I don’t get this one. It’s okay to fail. I’ll get one sooner or later and it will be a great one, because I’m good at this. And I’m only going to get better.
“Ready?” he says, popping open his car door. “Now we’re really going to be late.” he reminds me.
I jump out of the car and rush to meet him as he’s crossing the parking lot. Emily and McKenna are already inside. When we open the door, I’m again shocked at how many other girls are here to audition. I don’t make eye contact with anyone until after I let them know I’ve arrived on time and take a seat beside Emily and McKenna.
“Scoot over, Kid,” Uncle Jim says to McKenna, making her move down a chair so he can sit between us. “This is going to be good,” he says, his eyes sweeping over the rest of the girls in the room. There has to be at least seventy-five. I start to count. 1 2 3 4…
“These girls don’t have anything on you,” Uncle Jim says.
“Yep,” Emily agrees.
“You’re going to kick butt,” McKenna says from around Uncle Jim. I smile at them all and lift the script to my eyes, blocking out the rest of the group of hopeful teens and reading my lines silently to myself. I go over them again and again, planning and preparing.
Another girl’s name gets called, then another and another. After an hour, I wonder if they’ll ever get to me. Uncle Jim has shut his eyes and perhaps even fallen asleep. Emily is playing with a piece of her hair, combing through it with her nails. She glances up at me to smile, and then she’s right back at it. I watch her for a moment longer before turning to McKenna. She is staring at the remaining girls, probably wondering where they got their clothes on this island. I know she’s been to all the clothing stores, shoe stores, and shopping malls that they fit here. I’m sure she misses Tennessee as much as I do. She especially misses the mall there, i
n our town. She loved that mall. We have a lot of memories there.
I think of Jacob and all the dates we’ve had there. I recall all the stolen kisses in the food court, the shopping, while aimlessly wondering around. I shake my head at myself. This is so not the time for that.
McKenna notices me staring at her and grins. “Does it usually take this long?” she whispers.
“Yep,” Uncle Jim says, coming back to life next to us. “Shouldn’t be too much longer now,” he tells us. “There aren’t many left.”
“Good,” I murmur, though the closer we get to it being my turn, the more I sweat and want to run screaming from this building.
Another girl emerges from the door beside us, looking the way I did during my first audition in Hawaii. That seems like forever ago.
She looks upset. Maybe she panicked? As she leaves, another girl laughs at her, not even trying to hide it from the rest of the girls staring at her in disbelief. I glare at her until she notices. She stops laughing to glare back at me.
“What?” she snaps. Her hair is blonde and long, almost down to her waist. She has dark chocolate eyes and thin lips. Her cheekbones are wide and her eyes are large to fit them. She has looks, no doubt, but she doesn’t seem to be a very nice person.
“Don’t laugh at her. Why would you do that?”
“Because I see girls like her all the time,” she says, rolling her eyes. “They come in off the street, no preparation, no education. They come in to auditions, every audition I go to it seems, and they think they will just get the part because they bat their eyelashes.”
“Maybe she tried her best,” I growl. “You don’t know a thing about her.”
“Oh, I bet she did,” she sneers, rolling her eyes again. She leans forward towards me. “I work hard. I get jobs like you wouldn’t believe because I work for it. It’s insulting when all these amateur pretty boys and girls come in and expect us to treat them like professionals. They are just looking for quick fame and money, while I work hard for something I care about.”
It’s quiet for a moment, mainly because I don’t know what to say. Uncle Jim is quiet, too, breathing deeply and slowly. If his eyes weren’t open and fixed on the girl, you’d think he was asleep.
I open my mouth to say something, but my name is called. A short, stocky woman opens the door and says my name. Uncle Jim sits up straighter, coming out of his snoozing stance.
“We’ll be right out here,” he says as I stand. I nod.
“Good luck!” McKenna and Emily say together. I hurry into the door and stand in front of a group of serious-looking, tired people. They’ve probably seen fifty or so girls so far. So, I make it quick, clean and to the point. I tell them my name and the part I’m auditioning for. I say hello and begin my lines. It’s going good, I’m doing great.
I try to ignore them. I imagine I’m in a room all on my own, practicing. Like at Emily’s house with Uncle Jim. I’m imaging there isn’t a camera on me. Once my nerves are all acted out, I speak a little louder, a little stronger. It’s as simple as pie. It’s a piece of cake. They take a bunch of pictures of me, positioning me in five or so different positions.
When I’m done, I thank them for their time. They all look pleased with my kindness, but I’m still unclear as to if they liked what they just saw. A women in the back is smiling at me, her bright teeth can’t go unnoticed in a sea of exhausted faces. Her smile gives me hope.
I return her smile with a wide, happy grin before thanking them again and going back out into the room, now nearly empty. I’m stunned to see Emily, McKenna and Uncle Jim standing up. They begin to clap softly, as to not disturb anyone else.
McKenna is jumping up and down.
“You did awesome!” Uncle Jim says. I laugh out of excitement.
“I can’t tell you how proud I am!” McKenna says.
“How do you know how it went?” I ask, coming to stand next to them.
“Someone came and told us that they really liked you!”
“Yep,” Uncle Jim says. “Half way through, a woman said that she saw real talent in you.”
“Wow…” I say, stunned. “That’s so great!”
“It is,” Uncle Jim says. “How about we celebrate-”
The sight of Emily’s thin body hitting the floor cuts off Jim. I gasp.
“Emily!” McKenna says. Immediately, Uncle Jim scoops her up from the floor. Her head falls back, her eyes closed, but she’s still breathing.
“The hospital is close. We’ll drive her,” Uncle Jim says, bursting out of the door and into the blinding sunshine. Thankfully, Uncle Jim’s car starts on demand. Traffic is low today, so we make it there quickly. McKenna tries to wake Emily up as she lays across our laps in the backseat. I stroke her hair and McKenna holds her head up.
“Emily,” she says. “Emily, wake up.”
“She’s not doing anything!” I panic. Not even a flutter of her fingers. What happened? My mind races and then shuts down completely. All I can think about is getting her to the hospital.
There are people there to help us immediately. They pick her up from our arms and lay her on a stretcher, wheeling her quickly into the double glass doors. We follow as quickly behind as possible.
“Call her parents,” Uncle Jim says before following her and the stretcher down the hall and into a room.
“Do you know their number?” McKenna asks. She has worry all over her face. I struggle to think, to gather the numbers in my brain.
I tug my phone from my pocket, fighting with my own fingers to stop shaking long enough for me to dial. When I finally manage, I tell Emily’s mother where she is and what happened. After fifteen minutes of sitting in an empty waiting room with McKenna, Uncle Jim comes to tell us she’s okay, and asks about her parents.
“They said they were on their way…” I tell him. McKenna sighs with relief as they come, her mother, her father and her brother, into the waiting room.
“Where is she?” her mother asks.
“I’ll take you,” Uncle Jim says. As they walk, I hear him explaining who he is and what happened. Her mother and father go, but her brother stays, plopping down into a chair across from us, only a short distance away. He sighs and rubs his eyes. He looks like he has just woken up.
It’s quiet and awkward between the three of us.
“What happened again?” he asks after several minutes.
“She passed out at my audition. She was fine one minute and not the next,” I say to him.
He’s silent, but by the look of his eyes, I know he has to know something. Whether or not he’ll tell me is another story.
“Do you know what’s wrong?” McKenna says. His eyes switch to her face.
“Yes, I do. But it isn’t any of your concern,” he snaps. “You don’t know her. You’re not family. What are you even doing here?”
“We’re her friends,” I say to him. “We love Emily. And we got her here.”
He snorts. “If you were her friends, you would know what was wrong.”
I can tell McKenna is getting angrier by the second. I speak softly, slowly, so a fight doesn’t break out between them.
“We would like to know, though?” I say.
He stares at me, his expression softening. He sighs.
“Emily has cancer,” he says. “We found out a few months ago.”
“Cancer?” McKenna gasps in disbelief.
“Yeah, cancer,” he repeats. “She’s been having trouble with the chemo for some time now. She is supposed to be resting. Instead, she insists on hiking and biking and working and fooling around with you two.” He waves a hand in our direction, disdainfully. “I keep telling her… she doesn’t listen.”
“We’re sorry,” I say. “We had no idea.”
He smiles slightly. “It’s okay. How could you know?”
I smile back at him with sad eyes. “We’ll make sure she rests more.”
“I’m going to go get a snack from the vending machine,” McKenna announces. “Do you w
ant anything?” she asks, looking at me.
“Yeah,” Ben says, “I’d like a Coke and a Snickers…. thanks.”
I giggle. “Nothing for me, McKenna.”
Without another word, she turns to walk away. We watch each other, him and me, for a few moments. I lean back in my chair.
“What’s your name?” he asks. “I’m sorry… I’ve forgotten it.”
“I’m Malina.” I lean forward again to shake his large hand. “What’s yours?”
“You forgot my name?” he says in disbelief. I freeze.
“Well… you forgot mine!” I say. He has some nerve.
He holds his bewildered face for a second more before cracking. He laughs at me, throwing his head back and sinking down in his char. I still look stunned.
I crack, too. I smile, but don’t laugh. It suddenly hits me that my new friend has a very serious form of cancer. Why wouldn’t she tell me something like that?
“I’m Ben,” he says. “I was just messing with you.”
I pull my phone from my pocket and stand. “Will you give me a minute? I’ll be right outside, if they say anything about Emily come and get me.”
I nearly run out into the parking lot, phone to my ear, to call Jacob.
I know it’s weak, I know it’s a mistake; I know it’s stupid, but I just want to hear his voice so desperately. Just for a moment, I’d like to go back in time and lay my head on his chest. Maybe kiss him a few more times that night at the bonfire. Tell him I loved him before I told him I was leaving.
It rings four times before he picks up. “Hello?” he laughs. He sounds as if he’s talking to someone and laughing. He sounds like he’s having fun.
“Hi,” I say quietly. My voice sounds so little.
“Malina?” he asks. “I thought you wouldn’t call.”
“Well.... here I am,” I try to sound happy. “Are you busy?”
“No, definitely not. How are you?”
“I’m…” How am I? “I’m awful, Jacob.”
Malina Beach: A Paradise Island Series Page 7