Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3)

by Helena Newbury

  And that was the problem. Like everything else in my life, I’d made those choice because they were what Jasmine would do. Most of the time that felt fine. But occasionally, I’d catch myself and wonder if I really liked all that stuff...or if it was just in character.

  Being intensely Jasmine was working, though. Sleeping in the boudoir-chic room separated me from my past and that seemed to help with the nightmares. They only came once a week or so, now, and they didn’t burn themselves into my brain so deeply—sometimes, by around lunchtime, I’d actually stopped shaking and feeling like I wanted to throw up in fear.

  The worst events weren’t necessarily the worst ones for hanging around my head all day. Like the time my dad had tried to drown me—or scare me, I’ve never been sure which—by pushing my face under the freezing water at the bottom of the old ice chest and holding me there. He’d been drunker than usual, that night. Angry, because someone had tried to stiff him for a few hundred bucks. That was all it took.

  I’d been twelve, at the time.

  The ice chest was a regular in my nightmare cycle, but it usually faded fast, once I’d realized that I was safely in my bed. But others were harder to shake. The first time he’d taken me with him in his truck to collect money from a debtor, for example. He’d left me in the passenger seat while he talked with the guy in his garage, maybe ten feet away. My dad’s voice had started out friendly, then turned threatening, then taken on that cold, detached tone I’d learned to fear.

  He came back to the truck and fetched his baseball bat. I hunkered down in my seat and kept my eyes on the dashboard.

  I heard the bat whistle through the air and then there was a sound I’d never forget, both alien and horribly intimate: bones breaking. The man’s scream hurt my ears. Then it became muffled and I figured my dad must have stuffed something in his mouth to shut him up.

  Another cracking noise. Another. Another. Muffled moaning. The noises started to sound wet. I could have turned on the radio or put my hands over my ears, but I knew by then, at sixteen, that either of those would make my dad turn his anger on me. So I sat there like a little statue and stared at the dashboard as if it was the best book I’d ever read.

  The moaning grew weaker. Eventually, it stopped altogether.

  That nightmare was one of the worst, because the sound followed me around afterwards. I’d be walking along with Karen, the morning after, and I’d still hear that wet crack of bone echoing in my ears. I always had to pretend that I had a stomach bug, because I felt too sick to eat.

  And then, of course, there were the two worst nightmares of all. The reruns of the two worst nights of my life.

  The nightmare I’d had that morning hadn’t been anything like as bad as one of those. It wasn’t even anything that had happened to me, as such.

  In the nightmare, one of the customers in our bar, a pimp, was sitting there with one of his hookers, a blonde called Hayley. I was cleaning glasses, trying to keep a low profile. My dad sauntered over there, drunk as usual, and he said something I couldn’t hear, a crude come-on. Hayley, I figured, didn’t realize that her pimp owed my dad money, and didn’t know what my dad was like. So she told him where to go.

  The pimp back-handed her. And then, apologized to my dad and encouraged him to do the same. Between them, they split Hayley’s lip open.

  A few minutes later, I saw her going into the restroom. I knew there was nothing in there you’d want to put remotely near a wound, so I got some clean kitchen towel and soaked it in cold water and handed it to her when she came out. I expected her to be grateful.

  But she just glared at me. “I don’t need your fucking pity,” she snapped. “You think you’re better than me? You’ll be just like me! I’m your future!”

  I’d woken with those words echoing around and around in my head and the sheets soaked through with sweat. I’d had to lie there for ten minutes before I felt strong enough to move, before I’d fully reassured myself that I’d escaped, that I was in New York now. That was why I was running late.

  I looked in the refrigerator, just in case I’d had a complete brain-melt and put the shoes in there. Nope. I slumped down on the bed, defeated. And immediately jumped up again as a heel dug into my ass. The bed?! What was my shoe doing in the bed?!

  I strapped it on. Time was, it would have been there because I’d invited some hot guy back to my place and kept my shoes on while we worked through the juicier parts of the Kama Sutra. In the last month, though, I just hadn’t been able to face it. And that was a problem, because if I didn’t keep shoring up Jasmine by living like she would, a void formed in my center, sucking everything down into it. And once everything was gone, all that would be left would be Emma.

  Something else was different, too. Since Ryan and Hux had blipped their siren and talked to me, a month before, I hadn’t seen them. Maybe it worked, I thought. Maybe he finally lost interest and moved on to someone who deserves him.

  Maybe. And if so, that was a good thing, right? So why did I keep looking over my shoulder every Thursday, not in trepidation but in hope? Why had I strolled from Fenbrook to Harper’s three times, last Thursday, eyes scanning both ends of the street? Why did I dream of him almost every night: Ryan pulling me into his patrol car and pushing me down on the back seat, his muscled thigh between my legs; Ryan in my bed, my legs wrapped around him, his mouth at my ear as he told me what he wanted; most disturbing of all, Ryan and me hand in hand, as if I was some innocent, carefree girl, glimpses of funfairs and beaches and picnics.

  I pushed that thought down inside me. It didn’t matter why. However much I ached for him, he was better off without me.

  I grabbed my bag and ran.

  ***

  We were well into October, but the weather was holding. I’d had to add a shawl to my dress but, as long as I kept to the sunny side of the street, it was bearable.

  The sidewalk was more crowded than it normally was, which told me I was running even later than I’d thought. Great. Still, it was only method acting class with Mr. Gizacho (or Gazpacho, as we’d renamed him). The first half hour would just be him regaling us with stories of life in the theater—he wouldn’t even notice I was missing.

  I clattered down the stairs, half an inch and one sideways heel away from a sprained ankle. I slipped through the mass on the platform and was just in time to see the train pull away. I swore under my breath, drawing surprised glances from the suited commuters on either side of me. One of whom soothed his moral outrage by checking out my boobs.

  I realized I was staring across the tracks at the exact spot where I’d seen my brother, Nick, a few years before. I still wondered if I’d imagined it. I’d had a class cancelled, that day, so I’d been coming into Fenbrook an hour late, waiting at the station when I’d just looked across...and there he was. His jeans had been frayed and muddy at the ankles, and he’d been wearing an oversized shirt that looked like it once belonged to a long distance trucker. If it hadn’t been for the ancient Cubs t-shirt, I might not have recognized him at all.

  He’d looked up and seen me, and we’d stared at each other across the gap. And then my train arrived, and I told myself I had to get on it, and that was that.

  Except, as soon as I’d arrived in Fenbrook, I’d gone to the toilets and thrown up for about an hour straight, as if all of the memories were choosing that route out of my body. Seeing him again had made my entire escape from Chicago, the whole creation of Jasmine, seem like nothing more than a daydream. They’d found me. They’d found me!

  Eventually, when weeks went by without seeing him again, I calmed down to realize that it had been a simple coincidence. There was no sign of my dad, so it wasn’t that he’d tracked me down. More likely, Nick had done exactly what I’d done, fleeing the family and coming to New York on his own, with no idea that I’d picked the same city. It made sense: he’d always loved the idea of coming here, as well.

  So he was on his own. So I should do the right thing and find him. Family stick toget
her, and all that.

  But this was my family. My twisted, fucked up, crime-ridden family. Yes, my dad was the root of the evil, but Nick had bent to his will more than once to stop the beatings. He was a year older than me, so he’d been first in line when my dad needed things doing. He’d started small, just a little dealing in the high school parking lot. But then he’d got into bigger, more serious deals, until he eventually wound up doing time. He was released and almost immediately got involved in the same old world, although this time the charges didn’t stick. It was only a matter of time, though, and by the time I fled I was pretty sure he was using as well as dealing.

  So I didn’t try to find him. I kept an eye out every morning on my way to Fenbrook, but I never even glimpsed him again. Maybe he’d only been visiting the city, and he was back in Chicago. Maybe he was dead. Or maybe he’d be right there, any week day morning, same time on the same commuter route, and all I had to do was skip class and show up an hour late.

  I’d been petrified. Of my dad, of my past being revealed, of the life I’d so carefully built up being snatched away from me. I’d been on the cusp, then: Jasmine had been starting to feel like my real life, with Emma just a bad dream. I wasn’t going to tip the balance back the other way.

  So I told myself I wasn’t being a heartless bitch and moved on, careful to never be that late for class again. But every time I saw a drug rehab program, or a soup kitchen, or a homeless guy in the street, the guilt welled up inside me like freezing, thick oil.

  I closed my eyes and opened them again. No, still no Nick. Nothing but annoyed commuters on the other platform. And then, thanks to karma or maybe just the cruel desire of the universe to fuck with me, they announced that the next train had been delayed due to a breakdown.

  ***

  When I eventually made it to Fenbrook, I was forty-five minutes late. That should have given me a whole fifteen minutes of Gazpacho’s class to apologize to him, but everyone was already in the corridor. I could see Gazpacho walking away, so they’d obviously only just come out.

  “What happened?” I asked the crowd in general.

  Nina grabbed my shoulders. She has a blonde bob, big blue eyes and can do a mean femme fatale if you put her in a dress or an Oscar-worthy troubled single mom if you put her in jeans. “You missed it!”

  I blinked. “It’s only Gazpacho. I mean, I like some method acting as much as the next girl, but—”

  “That was cancelled! There was a casting! With a really big producer! For TV!”

  Spontaneous, no-notice castings happened a lot at Fenbrook—the faculty was very proud of them. Producers would drop into an acting class to find fresh faces, often at a moment’s notice. My heart was suddenly thumping. “Okay, if you don’t stop doing that thing with the last word, I’m going to kill you. What casting? What for?”

  She bit her lip, so I knew it was bad. “A cop show,” she said in a small voice.

  I felt my body freeze inch by inch, from my toes all the way up to my ears. A cop show. My dream gig. My own voice grew small, now. “What were they looking for?” I asked.

  Nina could barely speak. “Cops. Female cops. Our age.”

  I was devastated. I couldn’t find any words. I could only gape at her in silence.

  “He said...someone very vibrant,” Nina whispered. “I thought of you. Even Gazpacho mentioned you. But you weren’t here.”

  I bent over at the waist as if I’d been punched in the gut. I’ve actually been punched in the gut, many times, and I swear it never hurt as much as this.

  “FUCK!” I finally yelled, making the whole corridor lapse into silence. People looking understandingly at me. A few even patted me on the back. Down near the end of the corridor, Mr. Gizacho even turned around and looked sadly back at me.

  At Fenbrook, there’s a general feeling of camaraderie. Everyone celebrates the successes and we don’t gloat when others fail. I knew the others sympathized, but that didn’t mean they could help. They could offer the old reassurances: that there’d be other auditions, that the show probably wouldn’t get past the pilot anyway. But when I heard that the guy behind it was A.K. Dixon, the hotshot producer who’d wowed everyone with his gritty war drama the year before, I wanted to weep.

  I’ve never liked cops. No, wait: I’ve never trusted cops. Back in Chicago, they were either the enemy, getting fat on my dad’s bribes, or oblivious, more interested in handing out parking tickets than helping a girl in need. And yet cop shows: the excitement and the fast-moving dialogue and the jargon...those I eat up with a spoon. Playing a cop, or a detective in a procedural, was my all-time dream role and everyone at Fenbrook knew it.

  Which is why, when I went to sit on the Fenbrook steps and the tears started to roll down my cheeks, everyone understood. Nina came and stroked my back until the next class started, but eventually she had to go inside. I couldn’t face it—not a solid hour of voice work with my throat hot and raw from crying. I stayed outside.

  There was a female cop strolling along the street a few hundred yards from the academy, as if to rub it in. I closed my eyes. Next spring, I’d graduate. And then I’d be just another unemployed actor in New York, faced with the choice of trying to hack out a living on the theater circuit or move to LA to disappear into a sea of hopefuls. My best shot was right here, at Fenbrook. The academy was very proud of all the careers it had helped launch—countless big names had been discovered by castings just like the one that morning. Because they hadn’t been idiots and spent vital minutes looking for a shoe just to maintain some stupid illusion. Because they really were actresses, and not just faking it.

  Because they deserved to be here.

  I sank slowly down into a cold, dark place. I could feel the walls that formed Jasmine groan and creak, their plaster cracking dangerously, but I was past caring. Maybe I’d used up all my luck. Maybe getting out of Chicago and having three years here with my friends was all I got. Maybe this was the start of everything falling apart, and all I could do was watch it happen.

  “Please,” I whispered to whoever was listening. “Please. Just a little more.”

  But no one answered.

  And then, down in that dark place, something flared into life, burning hot and bright. A little spark of Jasmine, down amongst the Emma.

  Maybe I had run out of luck.

  Or maybe I had to make my own.

  I opened my eyes and saw that the female cop was only a few yards away.

  “Hey,” I said, sniffing back tears. “How much to borrow your uniform?”

  ***

  I looked up at the glittering, glass-walled office building and, for the thirtieth time, tried to adjust the too-tight shirt. “This is ridiculous,” I told the cop. “I can barely breathe.”

  “Next time, pick a cop who’s actually your shape,” said the cop.

  It had taken me almost a half hour to convince her. She’d walked away three times, shaking her head, telling me how much trouble she could get into if we got caught. In the end, I think it was only the tears in my eyes that weakened her.

  Her name was Sierra, which I’d found hilarious because Sierra is cop-speak for “S” on the radio. I kept quiet, though, because I probably wouldn’t have been the first one to point it out to her.

  I took another breath and the shirt buttons actually creaked. Sierra was an A cup at most and I’m an F. The difference wasn’t subtle.

  “You pop those buttons, you’re paying for a new shirt,” Sierra told me. She was practically drowning in my dress. We’d changed in a McDonald’s restroom across the street, which had attracted a fair amount of attention when we’d gone in together and even more when we came out.

  I gave her a look. When she’d told me she wanted five hundred dollars to borrow her uniform, I’d almost given up on the whole thing. There would be no way I could pay my rent at the end of the month, and the whole crazy scheme only had a slim chance of working.

  But it was the only shot I had. And five hundred dollars to get my
dream part was nothing.

  “You sure I can’t borrow the gun?” I asked. The empty holster felt wrong.

  “Are you nuts?!” Sierra whispered. “I could get suspended for this as it is!” She’d stuffed the gun into my purse, which I was going to leave her with when I went inside the building. We figured we were both in roughly equal amounts of trouble if we got caught. “And don’t go using anything on the belt!”

  I looked down at the equipment belt, where a nightstick and a bewildering array of other equipment hung. “Uh, okay.”

  “And don’t answer the radio!”

  “Got it.”

  “And be quick!”

  I left her standing nervously outside and headed in. As I pushed my way through the revolving door, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a second. Do “cop,” I told myself.

  ***

  I’ve been into offices before, mostly applying for temping jobs. I had a pretty good idea of how I’d be treated by the men (leched at, propositioned, and gently patronized) and by the women (glared at, derided and always mistrusted). That was fine. That was part of Jasmine. Long fiery hair, big boobs, and a tight dress will do that.

  But this wasn’t like that. Not at all.

  The receptionist actually jerked upright when she saw me. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Is there a problem? Do we need to evacuate the building?”

  I tiny part of me actually wanted to say yes, just to see what would happen.

  “No,” I told her. And then added “ma’am,” for good measure, and asked which floor it was for Dixon’s production company. Instead of being fobbed off, she sent me straight up in the elevator.