Musical Star

by Rowan Coleman

  “And telly famous too,” Gabe said. “That’s properly famous that is.”

  “Well, that’s good, I think,” Mr Petrelli said slowly. “That’s a reason to stop messing around and start giving it your all. Because if you people want to stand even the smallest chance of making it on TV as part of the chorus for Spotlight! you have to mean every single word you sing. You have to act it, feel it, be it, love it. God knows they are awful lyrics, but they’re what we’ve got to work with.”

  “We’ve got her, Ruby Parker,” Hannah said, pointing at me. “She’s been in films. The judges will love that.” A few other people murmured in agreement.

  “No, I mean, yes,” I said, flustered. “I mean, you have got me, but this isn’t about me, it’s about the school and all of us. In fact I’d really rather we played down what I used to do as much as possible because a chorus is like a team. We all have to work together. There can’t be any individual that stands out. We’re the glue that holds everything else together. If we do that, then we might, just might, be in with a shot of winning.”

  “And there is one other thing,” Mr Petrelli added. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but as it seems fame and celebrity are what motivate you the most, I can tell you that Danny Harvey is going to be auditioning for the lead at the same time you are taking part in the competition. You might even be able to get some autographs.”

  “Cool,” Hannah said.

  “He’s the one that chucked Ruby,” Adele reminded everyone.

  “Oh, right,” Hannah said, looking at me. “Never really liked him myself.”

  My heart was sinking, but not because of Danny. If the choir competition and the auditions for the leads were going to be on the same day, I’d have to tell Nydia and Anne-Marie about joining the choir because I was bound to see them, not to mention Jade, Menakshi and the rest. And although I knew Anne-Marie and Nydia would be fine about it, even pleased for me, Jade and Menakshi would find the whole thing hilarious. Failed star, Ruby Parker, tagging along with some manky school choir when she told everyone she didn’t want to do anything to do with show business any more. They’d think I’d given up – not because I chose to, but because I wasn’t good enough.

  And the worst thing, the deepest darkest worst thing was, that I had given up because I wasn’t good enough. But I didn’t want them or anyone else to know that.

  I glanced around at the choir and decided to take my own advice. I couldn’t get out of this so now I was part of the team, part of what might one day be a chorus. I would do the only thing I could do, blend myself into the background and do my best to help make the choir as good as it could be.

  “Right,” Mr Petrelli said, gesturing for silence. “Now we’ve got our motivation – let’s sing!”

  Chapter Five

  It took some persuading to get Dakshima to come to Anne-Marie’s party.

  “I’m not sure this is really me,” Dakshima was still saying while we getting ready round at mine. “I mean, trainers and jeans are me, and hanging out at the multiplex on a Friday night is me. Not wearing a sparkly dress and hanging out with the people who star in the films that are on at the multiplex. That’s not me at all.”

  “There won’t be any film stars there,” I said. “Only Sean Rivers, and he’s retired. In fact, it’s probably best to act as if you have no idea who he is, especially in front of Anne-Marie. She can be a bit territorial.”

  “Only Sean Rivers,” Dakshima laughed. “You can’t say the words only and Sean Rivers in the same sentence! I love his film The Underdogs. I’ve seen it about a hundred times. I can’t believe he’s Anne-Marie’s boyfriend. I was sure he’d like normal girls like me.”

  “Anne-Marie is normal,” I defended my old friend to my new one. “Yes, she is very rich; yes her dad is a movie producer and her mum is a fashion industry mogul. But it doesn’t stop her from being one of the best and most loyal friends I have. And it’s not all easy for her, you know. She never sees her parents; she spends most of her time alone with the housekeeper and her older brother. Money can’t make you happy.”

  “No, but it can make being sad a lot easier to deal with,” Dakshima observed.

  “Starting a new school is hard,” I tried to explain. “Knowing you, Hannah and Talitha and the others makes it better…easier. I want my new friends to get on with my old ones, starting with you.”

  Dakshima watched me for a moment as if she was deciding whether we were friends or not. “All right then,” she smiled after a moment. “I’ll give a go, seeing as you are a movie star too.”

  “I was in a film,” I protested, still feeling a bit awkward about my famous past. “That’s a whole different thing.”

  “Just for the record, I thought that The Lost Treasure of King Arthur was pretty good actually,” Dakshima said. “Not the best film I’ve ever seen, like. But I didn’t hate it. You were all right in it. And Sean was well amazing…Anyway I’ve always wanted to go to a show biz party.”

  “Only an hour till the party – better decide what to wear,” I said, opening my wardrobe doors.

  I took one of the outfits I had brought home from Hollywood out of my wardrobe; a dark, ruby red velvet dress with a drop waist and a silk rose on the hip. It was exactly the sort of “fabulous” thing I should be wearing to Anne-Marie’s party, but I wasn’t sure if I could bring myself to do it.

  “That’s nice,” Dakshima said, wrinkling her nose a little bit. “It’s a bit girly, but I suppose that’s dresses for you.”

  “It reminds me of Hollywood,” I said, thoughtfully.

  “Well it’s perfect then, isn’t it? That’s what Anne-Marie wants. For everyone to dress up like Hollywood Stars?”

  “I hated Hollywood,” I said. “What with getting hounded out of school by the nastiest girl I’ve ever met, and then hounded out of Hollywood by critics and the press. In the end I ran away, stole my mum’s credit card, booked myself a flight and came home in the middle of the night alone because I didn’t think mum would let me.”

  “Weren’t you scared?” Dakshima asked me, her eyes widening.

  “Seriously scared. I just had to get out of Hollywood, right then. Mum said anything could have happened to me.” I paused, remembering how much Mum had cried and shouted at me when she caught up with me. “Anyway, reminding myself about Hollywood isn’t the most fun thing, which is why I don’t really want to wear this dress.”

  “Rubbish,” Dakshima said firmly, without a shred of sympathy. I looked at her. “That’s plain rubbish, Ruby. Put the dress on – you’ll look really great in it. And you can’t tell me any remotely sane thirteen-year-old girl is not going to wear something totally cool because it reminds her of a place that wasn’t so cool. If you wear that dress tonight then from tomorrow it will remind you of Anne-Marie’s party. Problem sorted and it’s all good.”

  I looked at the dress and then took it off the hanger. Dakshima was right – what was I thinking, I had a whole wardrobe of clothes that Jade Caruso would kill for! Leaving them unworn was unthinkable, no matter how much they reminded me of Hollywood.

  “You and Anne-Marie are more alike than you think,” I said, my voice muffled as I temporarily got my head stuck in an armhole.

  “If you say so,” Dakshima snorted, pulling the dress over my shoulders. “Nice one,” she said, with a nod of approval.

  Just then there was a knock at the door and Mum popped her head round it.

  “Look who’s here,” she said, pushing the door back for Nydia, who was wearing a green silk dress with a paler green stole wrapped around her shoulders. She had sprayed her skin with gold glitter spray so that she sparkled.

  “Hello,” Dakshima said, with a friendly and slightly shy smile.

  “You look great,” I said. “It’s a shame Greg is still up north – he’d be blown away!”

  “Thanks,” Nydia said, before adding, “I texted him a photo.

  “Right, well,” Mum said, with the funny look on her face that she usuall
y had when she wanted to hug me but knew I’d drop dead from embarrassment if she did. “Hurry up and get your glad rags on then, girls. I’m dropping you off at Anne-Marie’s and Nydia’s dad is picking you up at 10.30 sharp, so be ready, no excuses, OK? I want you in this door at 10.45 latest. Dakshima’s mum and dad are trusting me to take care of her tonight, so don’t let me down.”

  “We won’t,” I said, rolling my eyes at the others.

  Secretly though I liked having my old un-Hollywood mum back again. Since she started going out with world famous star of stage and screen Jeremy Fort, she kept her roots tinted and her nails manicured and wore high heels on weekdays to go to the supermarket, that was true. But at least the orange skin and stiff face that she had experimented with had faded away, and with it had gone the monster mom she’d become for a while. In Hollywood she’d been so ambitious for me and blinded by the glamour that just for a bit she forgot about asking me what I wanted or how I felt about everything that happened over there. So I didn’t mind if she told me off for leaving my shoes in the hall or wiped off the lip-gloss I tried wearing to school with spit on a tissue. That was my mum, the one who wanted what was best for me, even if it was sometimes boring and a total lip-gloss-free zone.

  With Anne-Marie unavailable, it was Dakshima who did our make-up, me first and then Nydia. Considering jeans and trainers are her favourite things, she seemed like an expert. (It would have been hard to be worse than me. I tried out some pink and purple eye shadow a while back and my Auntie Pat asked me if I had conjunctivitis.)

  “You’re good at eyeliner,” I said, admiring hers, which swished out at the corners making her eyes look even bigger than they were.

  “Well, it’s the law in my house to learn how to do make-up. My mum started teaching me when I was about three,” Dakshima said with a laugh.

  “What are you going to wear?” Nydia asked.

  “This,” Dakshima said uncertainly. “I’ve got a couple of dresses but this is the sparkliest most “fabulous” thing I could think of. It’s my sister’s and if she finds out I’ve borrowed it I will be dead, so don’t let me spill anything on it.”

  Dakshima held up a two piece Indian trouser suit in a rich deep purple that was decorated with gold thread and beading all around the neck and sleeves.

  “Wow!” Nydia said.

  “It’s a bit more Bollywood than Hollywood,” Dakshima said, a little uncertainly.

  “It’s amazing,” Nydia said. “Ooh, this is going to be a good party, I can feel it.”

  “I hope so,” I said, as Mum called us from downstairs. “Otherwise Anne-Marie will never shut up about it.”

  “Rubes,” Nydia laughed, “whether it’s the best party in the world or the worst, there is one thing we know for sure…”

  The two of us looked at each other and laughed. “…Anne-Marie will never shut up about it.”

  I was quiet in the car while Nydia gave Dakshima the lowdown on Anne-Marie’s place. I was feeling nervous and not only because I’d be seeing all of the Academy kids again for the first time since the Valentine’s disco. I’d be seeing Danny too, and he was bound to be there with Melody. Anne-Marie had told me that despite her policy of inviting everyone she even vaguely knew, whether she liked them or not, she was happy to uninvite Danny and Melody if I wanted her to. And I had wanted her to, but I told her it was fine. I knew that they all still hung out with him at the Academy so it would have been silly for Anne-Marie not to invite him. Besides, I wanted him to see that I didn’t care any more, even though that was a total lie; he seemed to be stubbornly sticking around in my head despite my best efforts to get him out of it. Even a Valentine’s kiss for Hollywood High hunk Hunter Blake (as Teen Girl! Magazine called him) hadn’t dislodged Danny from my daydreams, which was highly inconvenient. I decided to try a bit of method acting to see if that worked. I thought if I acted like I didn’t give him a second thought for long enough, then pretty soon it would become true.

  It was funny that no matter how much I tired to give up acting, there was always a little part of me still doing it.

  “Jade is going to be gutted,” Nydia said, as Mum pulled the car up outside Anne-Marie’s electronic gates and they began to open. “Everyone is going to be talking about this party for weeks and weeks.”

  She wasn’t wrong about that.

  When Anne-Marie’s dad said she could have anything she wanted for her fourteenth birthday party, he probably hadn’t quite expected her to go to the lengths that she did, which is most probably his own fault for not knowing his daughter very well. If he was trying to not feel so guilty by spending a ton of money, then he almost succeeded, except that Anne-Marie wasn’t currently speaking to him since he refused to book McFly to play the music.

  “Not that he’ll notice,” she told me on the phone earlier that day. “It’s hard to know someone is snubbing you when you’re eight thousand miles away.”

  But even without McFly the party was pretty amazing.

  Me, Nydia and Dakshima were open mouthed as Mum drove us up to the front door. “Maybe I should have hired a limo,” she said, laughing nervously as we coasted along the driveway. It was lined with huge spotlights that sent shafts of light up into the night sky and must have been visible for miles around. “A clapped out Corsa doesn’t quite seem like the right ride for such an occasion.”

  The whole house (and it’s really more of a mansion) was covered in fairy lights that twinkled and sparkled. We said goodbye to Mum and walked in through the front door where a snooty looking man in a bow tie and tails took our coats, while another one dressed in exactly the same way offered a fruit juice cocktail.

  “You’re telling me that most of the time only three people live in this house?” Dakshima whispered in my ear as we headed towards the ballroom. “That’s wild!”

  “It is a bit mad, isn’t it?” I said. “But I bet you’d rather have your mum and dad around every day more than a load of money and presents.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Dakshima said, sipping her strawberry crush.

  “Rubes! Nydia! The other one!”

  We heard Anne-Marie call out to us as she flew down the staircase (which was brave considering her high heels), flung her arms around me and Nydia, and kissed us on the cheek. “You two look great,” she said.

  “So do you,” I said, wiping her lipstick off Nydia with my thumb. She was wearing a silver-sequin covered dress that reached the ankles and pair of matching silver heels that I only had to look at to feel dizzy. I was almost certain that Anne-Marie had been pacing the length of her rather large bedroom for several days perfecting her walk in them. She never left details to chance when it came to her image.

  “Great party,” Dakshima said, a little awkwardly. “Thanks for inviting me.”

  “Thanks for coming,” Anne-Marie replied stiffly. “I like your outfit. My mum says that Indian style is where it’s at this season.”

  “Right, well,” Dakshima said. “Happy Birthday and that.”

  For a second or two the four of us stood there looking at each other, then Anne-Marie tossed her blonde curls and put her arm through Dakshima’s. “Come and meet my boyfriend Sean Rivers,” she said. “You have to see him in a tuxedo. If I get him back into acting again he’ll make a perfect young James Bond!”

  Dakshima glanced back at me as Anne-Marie led her off, but she couldn’t resist the chance to meet the hero of The Underdogs.

  The ballroom was decorated with hundreds of silver stars hanging from the ceiling and a thick red carpet had been laid over the marble floor. I could see Sean by the food, stuffing tiny canapé after tiny canapé into his mouth while laughing with Danny. Sean did look handsome in his suit, but then he always did. Sean’s good looks had never seemed to affect me, but the sight of Danny with his hair gelled, looking just as James Bondish, made my tummy flip. I sighed. This method acting lark was much harder than I imagined. I watched as Dakshima nodded her coolest, least bothered hello to Sean and then to Danny. I w
anted to go over. I wanted to say hello to Sean because I hadn’t seen him in ages, but Danny was there so I stood rooted to the spot wondering where Melody was.

  “She’s in the loo,” Nydia said, reading my mind. “Anne-Marie said she could probably get one of the waiters to lock her in if you want her to. She said she has about twenty toilets so no one would notice.”

  “Danny would notice.” I laughed at the thought of it.

  “Really?” Nydia said, looking at Danny messing about with Sean. “I’m not so sure. He doesn’t seem to be missing her now.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “I don’t care about Danny and Smelody any more. I told you – I’m fully over him.”

  “Of course you are,” Nydia said. “And Anne-Marie bought that dress at Primark.”

  “I just said hi to the actual Sean Rivers,” Dakshima said, her eyes wide, as she came back over to where we were standing. “Sean Rivers stuffing a mini spring roll in his gob and like an ordinary idiot, just like any other boy.”

  Nydia and I laughed. “That’s Sean,” I said. “He is just like any other boy.”

  “I haven’t got posters of any other boy all over my room,” Dakshima said, then clapped her hand over her mouth as she let that detail slip. “Not that I’m that into him or anything.”

  Nydia and I laughed. “In a minute,” Nydia said, “he’ll start burping his way through Danny’s number one and I promise you, after that you’ll totally think he’s just like any other boy. Loud, immature and disgusting!”

  Nydia and I grinned at each other as we watched Anne-Marie beckon Dakshima back over to her and Sean. “They might even get on after all,” I said to Nydia.

  “Anything’s possible,” Nydia said. “Dakshima’s great.”

  “Yeah,” I said, laughing as Dakshima’s jaw dropped and I wondered if Sean was burping already.

  “But she’s not like…you know, your new best friend, is she?” Nydia asked carefully.

  I stared. “No! No way. I mean, I really like her and everything, and it’s good to have a friend at Highgate Comp, but you’re my best friend forever, Nyds.” I hugged her hard.