Reach for the Stars

by Cindy Jefferies

  Glamour! Talent! Stardom! Fame and fortune could be one step away for the kids of Fame School! All the students at Rockley Park, a school for the pop culture performing arts, are talented, but they still have to work hard. Being a star—and a kid—isn’t easy. They have to keep up their grades, learn about the professional side of the music business, improve their talent, and get along with their classmates. Things don’t always go as planned, but one thing’s certain—this group of friends will do their best to sing, dance, and jam their way to the top!

  Will Chloe make the cut?

  “‘Rockley Park School exists to train highly talented youngsters and demands a great deal of commitment. If your child wishes to apply’ . . . blah blah . . . ‘they ought to see Mr. Watkins without delay as time is very short,’” read Mom briskly before tossing the letter onto the windowsill.

  “Well, that will get all the silliest girls rushing round to Mr. Watkins first thing on Monday morning!” Dad said. “I bet no boys apply!”

  Chloe was still trembling. How could her dad laugh? Didn’t he realize what an amazing opportunity this was?

  Chloe had thought it was vital that she performed in Bugsy, but this letter changed all that. This was a way of getting straight to where she wanted to be, right in the music industry, or at least close to it!

  Famous people often spoke about their Big Chance. When the original star was ill and they took over the part, or they overheard something important that won them a role, or it was a mistake but they got to shine anyway and from then on they were famous. This could be it, better than any school production. Chloe’s Big Chance!

  Thanks to Rebecca and Gavin Landless for all their wonderful performances, Ele for the magazines and advice, and everyone at Usborne for working so hard to make this series the best it could be.

  For

  Maria McKnight

  1896–1914

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group,

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario,

  Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

  New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310,

  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,

  Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in Great Britain by Usborne Publishing Ltd., 2005

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007

  Copyright © Cindy Jefferies, 2005

  All rights reserved

  CIP Data is available.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-11884-9

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Version_2

  Table of Contents

  1. Born to Sing

  2. A Chance to Shine?

  3. A Good Day Ends Badly

  4. The Letter

  5. Chloe’s Big Chance

  6. A Bit of a Shock

  7. A Broken Friendship

  8. Rockley Park

  9. The Interview

  10. Disaster

  11. A Friend in Need

  12. Diamond Days

  13. Waiting

  14. Well Done

  15. Nearly There

  So you want to be a pop star?

  Special Excerpt from FAME SCHOOL: Rising Star

  About the Author

  1. Born to Sing

  Chloe stood alone, a small figure in black jeans and a pink top. As the music began, she was almost completely still, with her arms loosely at her sides, only one heel moving slightly to the beat. Her pixie face, topped by her trademark, tousled brown hair, seemed tiny in front of the massive speakers. Camera Two was swooping down behind her, filming the vast crowd of people swaying to the intro. But Chloe was totally focused. Her fans, and the song, deserved everything from her.

  She turned to where she knew Camera One was waiting. At once her face appeared in close-up on the huge screen behind her. A collective sigh went up from her audience. She raised the microphone reverently, close to her mouth. The first lines were delivered softly, pleadingly, and then, halfway through the first verse, the power of the song took over.

  Her face was full of emotion, and in her mind her voice soared, filling the vast auditorium with pure sound. She was looking right into the camera, opening her heart for everyone at home, as well as those who had come to the concert. The crowd was rapt, totally in her hands. She was giving the performance of her life.

  “Chloe, can I borrow this?” Jess was holding up a pale blue Indian scarf. Camera, stage, crowd, everything vanished.

  Chloe stood for a second, trying to bring back the imagined performance, but the moment had gone. It was no use. Jess had barged right in front of the mirror before Chloe had finished miming to it. She put her hairbrush down gently, as if it really were a microphone.

  “I hadn’t finished,” she told Jess, feeling the last wisps of her audience dissolve to nothing. “And it’s important how you sing to a camera. D’you know, I read in a magazine that when you’re famous you have to make the camera your friend.”

  “Sorry.” Jess was Chloe’s best friend, but even she couldn’t see what Chloe was imagining, or hear the song that she was singing inside her head. “Is there still going to be room to dance now that you’ve got this desk in your room?” she asked.

  Chloe took a hard look at the offending homework desk her mom had insisted on buying. There had been little enough floor space before.

  “Let’s go for it. We’ll do the dance we practiced. Don’t forget, it’s step turn, step turn.” They lined up together and Chloe started the music with the volume turned well down. The thumping beat needed to be louder, but she didn’t want to risk getting into trouble for waking her little brother.

  “Is it Ben’s bedtime already?” Jess asked. Chloe nodded. Step turn, step turn, step—

  “Ow!” Chloe stumbled against the desk and sent her homework flying.

  “When I’m famous,” she told Jess crossly, “I’m going to have a huge bedroom. In fact, I’ll probably have one room to sleep in and another just for my clothes and stuff. I certainly won’t bother with a desk! I won’t copy other people’s dances either. Someone will make them up to go with the songs I sing. And I’ll have the right clothes for my performances,” she added, dr
aping a remnant of curtain material over her shoulder before tossing it onto her bed in despair.

  “Cool,” said Jess. “You can get anything you want when you’re famous. I’m going to have a hundred kittens in my dressing room.”

  “A hundred kittens would be way too many!” said Chloe. She knew Jess only mentioned kittens because her mom wouldn’t let her have one of Katie Wilson’s. “Imagine all the puddles on the carpet,” she added, wrinkling her nose.

  “One of my servants could mop them up.” Jess giggled.

  Chloe sighed, rubbing the bruise on her hip. “Being famous isn’t just about being rich, you know,” she said. “It’s not a game, Jess. I know it’s fun dreaming about lots of money, and having what we want, but it’s more than that! I really want to be a pop singer, not just dream about it. Imagine making thousands of people happy when you sing. Wouldn’t that be amazing? That’s what I want to do, but we’ll never make it if you don’t take it seriously.”

  “I am taking it seriously!”

  Step turn, step turn. There was just enough room between the desk, the dressing table, and Chloe’s bed. Chloe nudged Jess and they raised their microphones together for the final line of the song. Jess’s voice rang out in the tiny room before she remembered about Ben. Chloe dived for the CD player, but it was too late.

  “What on Earth are you doing?”

  They both started guiltily. “Nothing.”

  Chloe’s mom was standing in the doorway. She looked really upset.

  “Well, you’ve disturbed Ben again. How many times have I told you to keep quiet while he’s going to sleep? You know if he hears your voices he wants to get back out of bed.”

  “Sorry,” they mumbled.

  “Have you finished your homework?” Chloe’s mom had noticed the fallen schoolbooks.

  “Not yet.”

  “I thought that’s why you were both up here. Honestly, Chloe, if you started your homework as soon as I put Ben to bed, you wouldn’t keep him awake, would you?”

  Chloe shook her head.

  “Perhaps I should go,” Jess said awkwardly.

  “Well, maybe that would be a good idea,” Chloe’s mom agreed. “While Ben’s going through this difficult stage, it would be better if you came over right after school instead of after dinner.”

  The girls walked soberly downstairs together. “Sorry about that,” Jess whispered. “See you tomorrow.” She shimmied down the front path and out of the gate without a care in the world.

  Chloe closed the front door and leaned up against it. It was all right for Jess. She didn’t have a little brother who wouldn’t go to sleep, or a stupid desk in the way of dancing practice, and Jess’s mom wasn’t always nagging her to do her homework. She wished she were allowed to go to Jess’s house more often. It was so hard, thought Chloe, to keep her ambition alive when the rest of her family didn’t care about her making it as a singer. And Jess didn’t have to keep her voice down all the time.

  Chloe dawdled back up the stairs, deep in thought. The memory still burned in her of the birthday party years ago when everyone had laughed at the way she’d sung Happy Birthday. Even now, she was certain she hadn’t been out of tune, just loud.

  Even worse, when she had sung in the choir in elementary school, Mrs. Pendle had constantly been at her to pipe down because her voice didn’t fit in with the rest of the class. It wasn’t fair.

  Mom was waiting for her on the landing. “Now,” she said, “you’d better clean up this mess and get on with your homework. I don’t know what those books are doing on the floor. You should take better care of them. They’re important.”

  “You didn’t have to yell at me in front of Jess,” Chloe said angrily, slapping the books back onto her desk. “It was embarrassing.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but if you’d been quietly doing your homework, there wouldn’t have been a problem. Besides, you’re in junior high school now. You are growing up. You can’t spend all your time with Jess pretending to be a pop singer. I’ve told you before how important it is to make a good impression at your new school. You don’t want the teachers to give up on you.”

  “Fine!” Chloe closed her bedroom door behind her, resisting the urge to slam it. She slumped onto the chair in front of her new desk and leaned her chin on her hands.

  She wouldn’t give up. She wouldn’t! No matter how difficult Mom made it. One day, she and Jess would be up there on TV for everyone to see. Then her mom wouldn’t go on about homework!

  2. A Chance to Shine?

  Chloe and Jess drifted along the corridor eating their chips. They still hadn’t gotten used to their new school. Beacon Comp was so big and noisy compared to their elementary school. The buildings were old, and the walls needed painting. Chloe wondered if she’d ever feel at home here.

  “Break’s boring when it’s raining,” she grumbled to Jess, brushing bits of potato chip off her sweater. She dropped the package into a trash can and licked her fingers.

  “Come and read this, then,” Jess said. “Look! They’re going to do Bugsy Malone!” There was a piece of bright red paper pinned to a bulletin board. The writing was inside a large, splat-shaped border.

  “‘Pupils who want to be in Bugsy Malone should come for an audition in the hall on Thursday,’” Chloe read aloud.

  “Remember, we watched the video ages ago?” said Jess. “All those kids playing gangsters, with splurge guns and custard pies?”

  “We ought to go to the audition,” said Chloe.

  “It’s not pop singing,” said Jess critically.

  “But we’ve never been to an audition,” Chloe said. “It would be good experience for later on when we audition for one of those pop-star TV shows.”

  “Oh! Okay,” said Jess, easily convinced. “I guess you’re right. We might have real microphones and everything!” She rummaged in her bag for a pen. “I’ll put our names on the list. There!” She scrawled their names on the paper, under several others. “Come on, I want to go to the bathroom before math.”

  “I’ll catch up to you,” said Chloe. Once Jess had gone, she looked at the notice again. It would be a good idea to go to an audition, but she wasn’t sure she actually wanted a part. They might get to be in the chorus, and she’d have to remember to sing quietly or everyone would complain. On the other hand, perhaps she couldn’t sing loudly anymore. It was ages since she’d really let rip. Mrs. Pendle had put a stop to all that.

  Part of her wanted to scrub her name out. What if they went along and everybody laughed at her? Perhaps it would be better if she told Jess she’d changed her mind.

  But what if I did audition and got a big part, and someone important like a talent scout came to see the show?

  It could happen. Someone in this huge school might have a relative who was in the music industry. Oh! And if they came to the show and liked her voice, they might sign her up, right away! But if she didn’t even audition, she’d have no chance.

  The bell rang for the next class and Chloe made her way down the hallway. Hordes of kids were streaming past in both directions. She had to hold her bag in front of her to stop it being pulled off her shoulder in the crush.

  If she and Jess went to the audition, and people laughed, she’d die. But maybe, if she sang quietly, it wouldn’t be so bad. And if she could get the video of Bugsy Malone and learn some of the songs really well, that would give her an edge. Yes! Get the video. Learn the songs. Make it so they had to give her a solo part. And Jess, of course.

  But Jess wasn’t interested in learning the songs.

  “That’s dumb,” she said, leading the way home after school. “We could spend ages learning a song for nothing. It’s only a school thing, Chloe. It’s not that important.”

  “But. . .”

  “I can’t come over this afternoon, anyway. I promised my mom I’d go shopping with her.”

  “We’ve only got tonight to practice, Jess! And I’ve got the video out of the school library now. Come over after shopping, t
hen.” But Jess shook her head.

  “What about your brother? We’d only get yelled at again. You watch it,” she added, seeing Chloe’s disappointed face. “You learn a song tonight, then you can teach it to me in the morning on the way to school. Don’t worry! We’ll fake our way through the audition. It’ll be a laugh.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Chloe ran up the path and indoors. If they were going for this audition she was determined to do it well. It might only be a school production, but it was a start.

  As she had expected, Ben was in front of the TV, watching one of his videos with great attention.

  “Look, Ben!” Chloe coaxed, taking the Bugsy video out of her bag. “I’ve got a new one. We can watch it together.” Ben looked suspiciously at the box.

  “Want my one,” he said doubtfully.

  “In a minute,” Chloe said. “It’s my turn now.”

  For a few minutes, Ben sat on his sister’s lap and watched, but he soon started to fidget. He scrambled down and toddled over to the TV.

  “Want my one.”

  Chloe rewound the tape and listened to the first song again. Ben was pushing his video in front of her face.

  “Ben! I’m trying to watch this. Play with your car for a while.”

  “Want my one, Co-ee!” He was starting to get upset. Chloe glared at her little brother. She loved him dearly, but sometimes he could be a real pain. And this was important.

  At last he scooted off on his car, and Chloe rewound the tape again. She was beginning to get the words now, and the tune wasn’t difficult, but then she heard her mom calling.

  “What?” she yelled back. “I’ll come in a minute.”

  “Could you put Ben’s video on for him, Chloe?” her mom repeated. “I’m trying to hem some curtains and I can’t do it with Ben under my feet. Can’t you play with him a bit?” she added, coming into the sitting room. “He hasn’t seen you all day. What are you watching?” Chloe had turned the sound down, but the kids on the video were still strutting their stuff.