Musical Star

by Rowan Coleman

  “She’s the same with me,” Anne-Marie told me as she stretched out her calves. “She acts all fine, but she knows that her voice was miles better than that Jade’s and even mine. She should have won a part, and knowing she didn’t because people at home didn’t like her enough – that’s a pretty harsh thing to deal with.”

  “It’s more than harsh,” I said, bending forward to stretch my hamstring muscles as I glanced over at Jade. “It’s not fair.”

  “But that’s show business, isn’t it?” Anne-Marie said. “It is harsh and it’s not fair. That’s what Sylvia Lighthouse is always telling us. Nydia understands that.”

  “Yes but this time it really isn’t…”

  “You two at the back!” Carmen Baptista yelled at us. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at us, including Jade, who was smirking.

  “Come forward,” Carmen Baptista instructed us.

  Anne-Marie and I filed reluctantly through the rows.

  “What did I say? Did you not hear me? Are you deaf?”

  Anne-Marie and I shook our head.

  “You are in a working rehearsal, not the playground, and while you are here I expect you to do as you are told and work.”

  “Sorry, Miss Baptista,” Anne-Marie and I said together.

  “Good, now drop and give me ten!” Carmen Baptista bellowed.

  “Ten what?” Anne-Marie asked, confused.

  “Ten press-ups of course, you imbecile!” Carmen Baptista shouted right in Anne-Marie’s face. Someone behind us sniggered, but one look from Miss Baptista shut them right up.

  Anne-Marie looked at me and, shrugging, dropped to the floor and started to do her press-ups.

  “I’ve never done a press-up before,” I said hesitantly.

  “Now you learn,” Carmen Baptista growled. “Right now, or I’ll double them.”

  It came as an enormous relief when we realised that we would mostly be rehearsed by Carmen Baptista’s assistant, Tristan Blanc – to begin with, at least. Miss

  Baptista would come in after we’d learnt the steps, songs and directions, and then polish us up like diamonds, as she put it.

  Tristan was much less frightening than Miss Baptista, younger and really funny, so that half the time we were having such a good time that we forgot we were learning dance steps and song parts. As part of the chorus I didn’t have any lines to learn. What we did was come in on the big dance numbers and crowd scenes. But I had been helping Anne-Marie learn her character Serena’s lines after school, so I was getting to know the script pretty well anyway. Compared to some scripts I’d had to learn for Kensington Heights and Hollywood High, it was fairly easy.

  “Mr Caruso wants you all miked up from the beginning,” Tristan explained as sound engineers came round and hooked us all up. “He says he wants you to get used to listening to your voice through the sound system. It’s not the norm in theatre, but I guess as this is a TV special it’s the right thing to do. Anyway Mr Caruso is the boss, so we do his bidding.”

  As the tiny microphones were attached to our heads with a bit of invisible tape just below our hair lines, I noticed that Jade and Danny’s microphones looked just a little bit different to the others. And I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to me that their voices came out of different speakers. It had to be the Auto-tune Miracle Microphones. Mick didn’t want anyone to ever hear Danny and Jade’s real voices, and by insisting that we all used microphones from the start, he could make sure that didn’t happen. He had everything covered to protect his daughter.

  The musical itself was quite simple to learn. It was the story of Arial, a girl from a poor background who wins a scholarship to a very exclusive stage school, leaving her family behind. Once there she battles against the prejudices of her classmates, including the fierce and feisty Serena, survives the extremely strict staff and makes friends with Jake. Finally she finds herself, falls in love with Sebastian, and then finds fame in the spotlight, which temporarily changes her into a not such nice person, before Sebastian reminds her what friendship truly means and everyone is happy again.

  While Tristan was teaching us the big dance numbers, I really enjoyed myself. I almost forgot about how unfair it was that Nydia hadn’t won a part in the show and for a couple hours I didn’t think about Danny and Jade’s Auto-tune Miracle Microphones at all. It just felt good to be in the atmosphere of a rehearsal room again, with that smell and those sounds and all of the feelings that I hadn’t realised I missed so much.

  It was almost lunchtime when Carmen Baptista came in, just as we were finishing our third run through of the biggest number in the second act. She stood by the door and crossed her arms as she watched us.

  “You,” she said, pointing at me. I looked over my shoulder. “Yes, you. Step forward please.”

  I did as she asked me, unsure what I had done wrong, but completely certain that my arms couldn’t take ten more press-ups.

  “You’re not trained as a dancer, are you?” she asked.

  “Not really, Miss Baptista,” I said apologetically. “I’ve had a bit of basic ballet training. I’m sorry.”

  “Hmph,” she snorted. “You move well, considering. With training and hard work you could be good. But you must work.”

  “OK,” I squeaked, looking over my shoulder at Dakshima.

  “The rest of you,” she hollered, diverting her attention from me at last, “are a disgrace. If you do not improve by this afternoon, I fire you all!”

  She smiled sweetly at Tristan and then stormed out.

  “OK,” Tristan said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s break for lunch.”

  “So, Ruby,” Clara Robson found me as I was eating lunch with Dakshima. “Had a chance to think about what we discussed earlier?”

  “I thought I had thought about it?” I said, slurping a spoonful of soup.

  “Come on, Ruby,” Clara said. “It must have been pretty traumatic for you, all that business in Hollywood, especially at thirteen. Didn’t it feel as if everyone had turned against you? That must have been hard to deal with. But we can help you raise your profile again.”

  I stood up abruptly. “Please, just leave me alone,” I entreated before walking off down the corridor.

  “Finding it hard to adjust to being a nobody, Ruby?” I head Jade call after me as I headed into the loos.

  “Are you OK?” Anne-Marie asked, when she and Dakshima found me a few minutes later, splashing cold water on my face.

  “I’m fine,” I said crossly. “Just irritated that’s all.”

  “Don’t worry,” Anne-Marie said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Soon the criers will start breaking out and there will be drama all over the place for them to film.”

  “Anyway, I thought you handled her really well,”

  Dakshima added. “I’d have probably spilled my guts and worried about it later. Lucky that I’m a total nobody.”

  “I suppose growing up in TV and film has got something going for it,” I smiled. “At least now I’ve finally learnt how to handle journalists and nosey producers.”

  “I’ve got to get back,” Anne-Marie said. “I’m helping David with some tricky dance steps. See you in five.”

  “Ruby,” Dakshima said, once we were alone, “do you really think the show will be any good?”

  “It’ll be fine,” I said. “It will be great – but the question is, should it be? Perhaps we should tell Clara Robson about the microphones.”

  “And what will happen?” Dakshima asked me. “All of the people that do deserve a chance – which includes you and me by the way – won’t get it. No, there has to be some way we can make sure the show goes on and expose what’s happening.”

  “And what about Danny?” I asked her.

  “What about him?” she said.

  “I don’t want to make a fool of him. We’d have to tell him before we did anything. And I don’t know if I can.”

  “Then perhaps we shouldn’t say anything,” Dakshima said thoughtfully. “I
n a couple of months this will all be over and will it still really matter then?”

  It was Jeremy who came to pick us up that evening, or rather, Jeremy’s chauffer driving one of his Rolls Royces. Anne-Marie, Dakshima and I all climbed into the back where Jeremy was waiting for us. “How was it, girls?” he asked with a smile.

  “It was good,” I said, trying not to feel guilty. “I really enjoyed it.”

  “I was fabulous,” Anne-Marie said. “And the rest of my cast are pretty good too – you know, good enough so as not to bring my talent down, but not so great that they outshine me.”

  “How lovely for you,” Dakshima said, winking at me.

  “I know,” Anne-Marie said blithely.

  “My favourite part of putting on a production for the stage is the rehearsal time,” Jeremy said. “Working as part of a team to bring everything together. Labouring over something you truly love to make it as good as it can be. Those are the golden moments in any actor’s career.”

  “Really?” Dakshima asked him. “Not the bit where everyone claps and you know that the whole world loves you?”

  “Well, yes,” Jeremy admitted. “Applause is music to any actor’s ears, but it’s the craft that’s important, Dakshima, the craft. Don’t you agree, Ruby?”

  I nodded, thinking once again about Danny and Jade and how they were cheating the craft, whether they knew it or not.

  “I suppose I always enjoy making something much more than I’ve enjoyed watching it,” I said. “But I’ve never done live theatre before so I don’t really know what it’s like to hear applause.”

  “You wait,” Anne-Marie said, smiling. “You wait until you’re out on that stage in front of a real audience. Then we’ll see if you give up acting for good.”

  When we got in Mum was sitting at the kitchen table staring into space and smiling for no particular reason. She did that a lot recently and it was weird to see how much she smiled when she was truly happy. For a long time before she and Dad broke up, she hardly ever smiled at all. It was nice to see her so happy, but I was sad too because only now did I realise how unhappy she’d been for so long.

  “Hello, love,” she said, as I walked in and dumped my kit bag on the table.

  Jeremy bent over and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ve just got a couple of calls to make to the States before dinner,” he said. “I’ll leave you two girls to it.”

  “Take that off the table, dinner’s ready,” Mum said, nodding at my bag as she got up. “I’ve made your favourite.”

  “Mmm, great,” I said. “I’m starving.”

  “I thought you would be,” Mum smiled. “How was the rehearsal?”

  “It was great, Mum, really great,” I said. “But…”

  “But what, Ruby?” Mum asked, looking up from the hob.

  “I’m enjoying it ever so much but I…I don’t know if I should,” I said finally.

  “Why ever not? You left the Academy to go to a normal school, and now you’re in the chorus of a televised world premiere of a musical! It sounds like a plot from Kensington Heights – and a dream come true.”

  “I just wish Nydia had got through…” I said, dropping my head.

  “Oh, love,” Mum said, “I know she’s your friend, but it’s not your fault she didn’t win the vote. Besides, she won’t want you to miss out because she has – Nydia’s not that sort of girl. You’re going round there after tea, aren’t you? I’m sure you’ll say something that will cheer her up.”

  “I know, it’s just…”

  “What is it?” Mum asked me gently.

  “Mum, if you knew something that was really bad and wrong, but that if you told people about it, it would mess up something that was really good for a lot of people and hurt someone you care about, what would you do?”

  “Are you in trouble, Ruby?” Mum asked.

  “No,” I told her. “No, it’s…it’s part of the plot of the show. I’m just wondering what you would do. It’s sort of…homework.”

  “Well, the truth always comes out in the end, Ruby,” Mum said. “I’d tell whatever it was to whoever I had to, to make things right again. The longer you leave a lie, the worse it gets.”

  “Right,” I said. That was exactly what I had expected Mum to say. But hearing it didn’t make it any easier to do.

  “Go and wash your hands and then you can set the table.” Mum said. “I want you back from Nydia’s by nine-thirty.”

  “You can talk about it you know,” Nydia said, after half an hour of all of us sitting around at her house nattering over the DVD we were supposed to be watching.

  “Talk about what?” Anne-Marie asked. “Hey, how’s Greg? When’s he coming down next?”

  “When we start filming the next series of Totally Busted,” Nydia said. “We’ve got some really cool pranks coming up, but they’re top secret so I can’t tell you about them, which means you will have talk to me about your rehearsals. I’m not going to burst into tears or anything.

  “No one thought you were going to,” Sean said with a slow smile. “It’s just that Annie hasn’t stopped talking about them all day and I’m so over it.”

  “Sean!” Anne-Marie punched him on the shoulder, then turned to Nydia. “We don’t want to upset you.”

  “I’m not upset!” Nydia exclaimed. “All right, I am a bit, but I’ll get over it. How long would I last in acting if I didn’t get over rejection? Being an actor is mostly getting rejected, as Ms Lighthouse is always telling us.”

  “Has anyone noticed that Ms Lighthouse hardly ever says anything cheerful?” Sean observed through a mouthful of popcorn.

  “Rehearsals are fine,” I said. “Especially for us lot in the chorus because all the stuff we have to do is dead easy.”

  “And even though my character isn’t the actual lead as such, she is actually far more interesting than Jade’s wimpy old character, so I’d say I had the most interesting part to learn any day of the week,” Anne-Marie observed.

  “You should have won that vote though, Nyds,” I said because I couldn’t help myself. “It’s so wrong you didn’t – you were better than anyone else on that stage.”

  “You were,” Anne-Marie agreed. “You beat me.”

  Nydia paused for a moment and then shrugged. “I guess the public just didn’t like me the best,” she said.

  “Well, the public are idiots, everyone knows that,” Anne-Marie said.

  “Yeah, they voted her in,” Sean said, nodding at Anne-Marie and earning himself another punch. “But the main thing is you totally rocked it on national TV and everyone who’s anyone saw that, plus everyone here likes you the best and that’s what really counts. Life in the spotlight is hardly ever as good as you think it’s going to be. And in a few weeks time the show will be finished, but you will still be you and we will still be us.”

  “Only slightly more famous,” Anne-Marie said, making Nydia laugh.

  “Look, I’m a bit down about it,” she said, “but I still want you to talk about the show and what it’s like. I want all the gossip about Jade and if she’s got her claws into Danny yet. So tell me all about it, OK?”

  “Oh, where to begin?” Anne-Marie asked, gleefully. “So, about that over-rated diva…”

  “I thought we’d already talked about you?” I said. This time it was me who got punched on the shoulder.

  In bed later that night, I was about to switch my lamp off when I heard my mobile ring. I was not allowed to answer calls on it after 9 p.m. but I picked it up anyway, just in case it was Nydia and she needed an emergency pep talk after all. But it wasn’t Nydia’s number flashing up on my phone. It was Danny’s. I hesitated for a second, then I answered it.

  “Hello?” I said, trying to sound like I didn’t know who it was.

  “Hey, Ruby, it’s me…it’s Danny.”

  “Oh, hi,” I said in my best casual voice.

  “We didn’t get a chance to talk today,” Danny said.

  “Well you have your part to learn and I have�
��dancing about to do,” I said.

  “How do you think it’s going?” Danny asked.

  “Really well,” I said stiffly.

  “Look, I’m sorry if you don’t want to talk to me,” Danny said.

  “No, it’s not that. I do…” I trailed off as I tried to work out what to say. “It’s just a bit odd. I don’t know how to talk to you any more. I’m a bit rusty.”

  “Me too,” Danny said. “Look, not that you’ll care or anything, but I’m not going out with Melody any more.”

  “Oh?” I said, failing to sound uninterested.

  “She said there was no way I should have got through to the finals when she hadn’t and that if I won a lead part that it would be a joke. So that pretty much finished us off, which I don’t mind really because it turned out she wasn’t really a lot of fun.”

  “Well, never mind,” I said. “There are plenty more fish in the sea.”

  There was second or two of silence, and then Danny and I burst out laughing.

  “This is silly,” Danny said, his voice warm in my ear. “If we’re out of practise talking to each other, then let’s make sure we talk to each other a lot more, OK?”

  “OK,” I said, smiling. “I’d like that.”

  “See you at rehearsal on Tuesday?” Danny asked me.

  “It’s a date,” I said. “Though obviously not an actual date.”

  There was another moment of silence and then Danny said, “Goodbye” and hung up.

  “Not an actual date,” I repeated to myself as I switched off my lamp. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

  It took me along time to get to sleep.

  teen girl!

  Magazine’s

  Spotlight! Superstars!

  Meet the girls that you helped put in the spotlight as we talk exclusively to Jade Caruso and Anne-Marie Chance, the UK’s newest and youngest leading ladies!

  tg: Wow, girls, you must all feel like you are living a dream?

  jc: Well, I know I do. I just feel so privileged that the British public picked me to be in my dad’s show. And I am glad I made Dad put me through the auditions just like everyone else.