Shooting Star

by Rowan Coleman

  “Well, they wouldn’t write anything rude about me!” Anne-Marie reasoned. “I look great!”

  “Morning,” Gabe said, wandering out to join us and blinking in the sunshine. “What’s happening today then? Why’s everyone so hyper?”

  “Oh, Gabe,” Nydia said, grinning at him. “We’re waiting for the studio to call. Today we either find out we’ve got through to the next stage or we get packed off back home.”

  “Home I hope,” Gabe said, grabbing a glass of orange juice and yawning. “It’s too sunny over here. If I get back before the end of next week I’ll be in time for the preseason trials at football camp.”

  “You seem like you’re in a hurry to go home,” Anne-Marie said, raising a brow.

  Gabe smiled at Nydia. “There are some good things about Hollywood,” he said, making Anne-Marie and me clutch our throats and gag.

  “Girls, that’s enough!” Mum said, chuckling. Just then the phone began trilling in her hand and she almost dropped it. “Goodness!” she said, putting a hand to her chest and looking at it.

  “Is that the studio?” Sean’s mum came in and stared at the phone too.

  “That will be news,” Mr Martinez said, emerging from the TV room.

  All of us stared at the ringing telephone.

  “Shouldn’t someone actually answer it?” Anne-Marie asked finally.

  Mum jumped into life. “Hello? Yes, this is Mrs Parker. Yes, you can tell me the news for all of the children…”

  Twenty minutes later, after Mum had shared the news, we all sat around the pool and looked at each other. We didn’t know how to act.

  “It’s completely fine, honest,” Gabe said. “I knew they weren’t going to call me back. I got in there with Anne-Marie and I sort of froze. But you lot should be psyched! You’re all going back and it’s well cool, man.” He grinned and winked at Nydia. “I’m pleased for you.”

  “The boy’s right,” Mr Martinez said. “I don’t think Gabe’s mum and sisters would have been that pleased if we’d stayed out here the whole summer. But you girls getting through is brilliant news!”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Nydia said, looking at me, the start of a smile curling the corners of her mouth. “This means that the three of us have already beaten at least two hundred people! Now there’s got to be only about fifty going for the lead roles. We’re that close to getting a lead part in a Hollywood film!”

  “Well, I’m not surprised,” Anne-Marie said. “I knew we’d be brilliant – especially me!”

  “So what do we have to do next?” I asked. I felt sort of odd, as if the news wasn’t really real. It was incredibly exciting news and it took us one step nearer to a part in the film. A film that could change all of our careers forever and make us truly global stars. But I decided it was best not to think about any of that. After all, in show business things have a habit of going wrong when you least expect them. I knew that better than anyone.

  “They’ve asked that you go in tomorrow for audition workshops,” Mum told us. “They’ll try you out in different groups. Test you to see which actors work best together. I think there are all sorts – singing, dance, acting. It will be a long day, but a fabulous one. I’ll phone the Academy and tell Ms Lighthouse. She’ll be thrilled!”

  “Morning,” Sean greeted us as he ambled out to the pool. “I heard the phone,” he said as he stretched. “Good news?”

  “For everyone but me,” Gabe said with a shrug. “And that’s kind of good news anyway.”

  “Well, I have some news too,” Sean said.

  I sat up a bit and looked at him. Was he going to tell his mum about seeing his dad? On the one hand I sort of hoped he was, but on the other I was imagining the seventy-five years or so that I would be grounded for sneaking out of the house and going across Hollywood late at night.

  “I feel fine today,” Sean said. “So if the studio can fit me in for a screen test then I’m ready.”

  “Are you sure? Why would you want to do that?” I asked him, perhaps a little too quickly.

  “Why? Because it’s what he’s here for, Ruby!” Anne-Marie told me, jumping up and hugging Sean. “This is brilliant news, Sean! Do you want me to come with you?”

  Sean smiled at her. “No, you stay here and rest. You’ll need all your energy for tomorrow. I’ll go in with Mom. It’ll be cool.”

  Mrs Rivers looked at Sean for a long moment and then put her arm around his shoulder.

  “Are you sure that this is what you want, Sean?” she asked him, looking into his eyes. “Only when you came down with that sore throat yesterday I thought it was nature’s way of telling us you weren’t ready to act again. The only person you have to do this for is you. What I or Anne-Marie or the whole world thinks isn’t important. Is it, Anne-Marie?”

  “Um, well…no, no, it’s not,” Anne-Marie frowned, but agreed.

  “Only do this if it’s what you really, really want,” Sean’s mum told him.

  Sean paused and I wondered if I was the only one who could see the mixture of guilt and worry on his face. But then he turned on his world-famous Sean Rivers smile and it made us believe the impossible.

  “Mom,” he said, “this is what I really, really want.”

  “We’ve got a whole day with nothing to do,” Anne-Marie said, after we had all waved Sean off, wishing him luck and telling him we hoped he’d break a leg. “Shall we go shopping?”

  “Not me,” Nydia said as we walked back into the house. “I haven’t got any money and besides…” She looked over to where Gabe was playing football with his dad. “Gabe’s flying back tomorrow.”

  “When did you decide that you liked Gabe, by the way?” I asked Nydia. We had trailed into the TV room and Anne-Marie had put C! the Celebrity Channel on. “And what happened to Greg? You never said you were going to chuck him.”

  “I didn’t chuck him really,” Nydia said. “We just stopped calling and texting. Then when me and Gabe were suddenly thrown into the leads for Spotlight!, we got on really well…”

  “Has he been your secret boyfriend all this time?” Anne-Marie challenged her.

  “No!” Nydia said. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know if he liked me, and anyway, after the show I didn’t really see him. But when we came out here and we hung out a bit, he asked me out, if you must know!”

  “Of course we must know, we’re your best friends! It’s the law that you tell us everything,” I said, instantly feeling guilty about what I had not told Anne-Marie. “Anyway I think it’s cool.”

  “It is sweet,” Anne-Marie agreed. “Sean was my secret boyfriend when we started going out together. Do you remember – when the whole world thought it was Ruby he liked?” Anne-Marie giggled as if the idea of Sean liking me was impossible. Which it was, I supposed. “Me and Sean are a perfect couple.”

  “Really?” I asked her, worried about how interested I sounded, not to mention felt. “How do you know?”

  “Because…” Anne-Marie trailed off as she thought about it. “Just look at us!” she exclaimed.

  “Do you, you know…like, love him?” I asked her.

  She laughed, tossing her golden curls over her shoulder. “Yes, I do. I love that he’s going to go and audition for a part in Spotlight! The Movie Musical. I love that he makes me laugh and that when we walk down the road together every other girl within a five-mile radius practically drops dead from jealousy. He’s perfect for me and I’m perfect for him.”

  “But are you?” I asked thoughtfully.

  “Pardon?” said Anne-Marie.

  “I mean you are,” I said hastily. “You are perfect for him, of course. Come on then – let’s go shopping.”

  Anne-Marie can shop better than anyone else I know. Maybe it helps that she has a lot of money, or that her mother is a fashion designer and her dad is a movie producer. But I don’t think it’s any of that. I think it’s just in her genes – like Gabe can keep a football up in the air longer than anyone else in the school and Nydia can s
ing a top C without even having to try that hard. Anne-Marie is good at a lot of things, but shopping is her natural gift.

  As we went from Guess to Banana Republic, Gap and Esprit, and all the other cool shops that seemed so much better here than they did at home, Anne-Marie scanned the rails like a hawk looking for prey. She didn’t browse or um and ah over things. She just knew what to pick up and she was never wrong. And it wasn’t just for herself – she picked out outfits for me and Nydia too. She knew all our measurements, down to our shoes, and she knew exactly what colours suited all of us.

  “You’re best in berry colours,” she said, holding a deep purple dress up against me. “I suit pastels and white. And Nydia, well, she can wear almost any colour. Let’s get you this dress and her this yellow one – she will look so cute in it!”

  “We can’t afford these,” I said, checking the tag.

  “I can,” Anne-Marie said, waving her mum’s charge card at me. “Mummy sent me this so I could take care of my expenses while I was here.”

  “I don’t think your expenses include buying clothes for your friends,” I said.

  “No, but she won’t know that. She probably won’t even read the statement,” Anne-Marie said, suddenly looking quite sad. “I’m going to buy them anyway, so you’ll have to wear them otherwise it will be a waste.”

  She sounded like a spoilt brat, but I could see from looking at her that the thought of an endless pot of money didn’t make her happy.

  “Have you heard from your mum?” I asked.

  Anne-Marie had been certain that she would see her mum while she was in Hollywood. She’d been secretly looking forward to it ever since we all found out we were coming. She hadn’t said anything; she wasn’t the sort of person to talk about personal feelings all that much. But ever since we’d arrived she’d been checking her phone for messages and missed calls, or asking if anyone had called for her. So far nobody had.

  “No,” Anne-Marie sighed, sitting down suddenly on the edge of a pedestal usually reserved for mannequins. I settled down next to her and put my arm around her. “Nothing, not an e-mail or anything. I left her a message about us getting called back for second auditions, but she hasn’t replied.”

  “What about your dad?”

  Anne-Marie shook her head. “He’s in Budapest. I knew I wasn’t going to see him, but Mummy said she’d come if she could. Oh, look, I’m being ridiculous. I’m sure she’ll visit – I just wish she’d call and tell me when…”

  “You miss her, don’t you?” I asked. It was hard for me to imagine Anne-Marie with her mum, because I’d never actually met her properly. She wasn’t like my mum, Nydia’s or even Sean’s. Mums that were almost a part of my daily life. She was a bit like those photos that are already in a photo frame when you buy it from a shop. You know the person in the picture isn’t real. And that’s how I felt about Anne-Marie’s mum; she didn’t seem real.

  A few years ago I remember her coming to an open day at the Academy. She was tall like Anne-Marie, with the same curly blonde hair. She had arrived, breezed around the school as if she owned it and then left. And I think she might have left without saying goodbye to Anne-Marie although I wasn’t sure.

  My mum was always around whether I wanted her to be or not.

  “I don’t know if I miss her,” Anne-Marie said quietly. “I miss having a mum like yours. Someone to tell me what to do, to talk about stuff with. But the weird thing is, Ruby, I don’t know if I miss my mum or just a mum. After all I hardly ever see her. I don’t blame her or anything. Some mums are more mumsy than others…but I just sometimes wish…” She looked at me sideways. “Can I tell you something?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “You know when you asked me if I love Sean?” I nodded. “Well, I made a joke of it because I didn’t want to look silly. But the truth is I do love him, and you, and Nydia. I love all three of you because you are like my family. You’re the only people in the world who really care what happens to me. I know I tease you and act like a diva and spend most of my time being a horrible, self-obsessed cow. But I don’t know what I’d do without the three of you. And if you ever tell anyone I said that I’ll kill you.”

  “Well, you won’t have to find out what you’d do without us because we’ll always be friends,” I said hugging her back, a huge well of guilt brimming up inside me. OK, so I’d recently started feeling a bit odd around Sean. Thankfully no one ever had to know that, including Sean. But how would Anne-Marie feel if, when, she found out that I had been keeping Sean’s secret; that he had trusted me and not her? She’d feel like two of the three people in the world that she relied on had let her down, and she didn’t deserve that. I had to make Sean talk to her tonight. I had to make everything right as soon as I possibly could.

  “Anything I can do to cheer you up?” I asked.

  “How about double-chocolate-chip-cookie ice cream?” she ventured. “I saw this ice-cream parlour across the street that looks amazing.”

  “It’s a deal,” I said. As I hauled her up on to her feet I stumbled backwards and straight into the person who was behind me. Knocking him off his feet, the pair of us staggered backwards, tumbling on to the floor and taking a clothes rack with us.

  “That works too!” Anne-Marie laughed.

  “Help me, I’m stuck under teen casual wear!” I yelled. But Anne-Marie was laughing too much to be of any use. It took two shop assistants and another customer to get us free from the rack.

  I sat up, disentangling myself from dresses and the arms and legs of the poor person I had landed on, apologising all the time.

  “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened. I just lost my balance and then splat! And there you were right behind me and you sort of got caught in the crossfire…I really hope you haven’t broken anything because I did land right on top of you and…”

  “Seriously, Ruby, it’s fine,” came a familiar voice.

  I stopped talking and finally got a look at the person I had landed on.

  “You!” I shouted, making the whole shop look at me. I must have concussion, I thought. Or maybe post-traumatic stress disorder, because the person I had landed on appeared to be Danny Harvey.

  Chapter Seven

  “Anne-Marie, call 911, I’m hallucinating,” I said.

  “No, you’re not, Rubes,” Anne-Marie said. “That actually is Danny.”

  “I was just on my way to meet a friend when I spotted you though the window,” Danny said. “So I thought I’d come in and say hello.”

  “But you’re supposed to be in Sherwood Forest!” I said.

  “We were never going to film in the real Sherwood Forest,” Danny said a few minutes later when the three of us sat down for ice cream and I was just about getting my head round seeing him in the very last place I expected. “There’s not enough of it left to film in, and the little bit there is, is protected by the National Trust. Most of it’s being shot in Romania, but we’re in Hollywood for a few weeks to do some special effects and studio scenes.”

  “Honestly, Ruby, for one so experienced in the film industry you are naïve,” Anne-Marie teased me. “You should have seen your face when you realised it was Danny you squashed – it was spectacular!”

  “You were the one who said I didn’t have to worry about Danny and Hunter because they were miles away in Sherwood Forest…” I trailed off as I realised what I had just said. “Not that I was remotely worried about you and Hunter or anything anyway,” I added.

  “So how is it working with the lovely Hunter?” Anne-Marie asked Danny as she scooped up a big spoonful of ice cream. “Does he talk about Ruby?”

  Danny blushed, studying his mobile phone as he got a text. “No, not really,” he said. He looked at me for a long moment and then seemed to decide something. “The first day I met him it was all a bit awkward and then he said we had to clear the air about you. He said that he really liked you, but that you didn’t feel the same way, and I said that now you and me are just f
riends. So once we got that clear everything was cool and now we’re mates. He said to say hi.”

  “Oh, right, well, tell him hi back,” I said, waving my hand at no one. It was all a bit of a shock to be honest, literally bumping into Danny the way that I did and then hearing him bluntly telling me what I had been wondering on and off for months. It was officially over between us. We were just friends. As it happened I was quite relieved. But that didn’t stop the whole experience being really, really odd.

  As Danny and Anne-Marie chatted about Sean and his decision to take the screen test for Spotlight! I tried to look at Danny without him noticing so that I could test out how he made me feel. It was strange. I had expected to feel flustered and anxious, and for my cheeks to go pink and my heart to race. But actually the more I looked at him, the more I realised it was just nice to see him. Just like seeing an old friend.

  “So tell us – who else are you acting with? Who’s playing the part of young Marian?”

  “Oh, um, that’s Kirsty,” Danny said, smiling. “Kirsty O’Brien. She’s really cool.”

  “What’s she been in?” Anne-Marie asked him.

  “At Home with Dad – a kids’ sitcom,” Danny told her. “She’s really cool.”

  “You said that once already,” Anne-Marie said with a tiny smile.

  “I know,” Danny said. “She just texted me to tell me she’s got through the first round of auditions for Spotlight! too.”

  “She’s doing two films at once?” I asked him. “How is that possible?”

  “She’s shot most of her scenes for Robin Hood already and has six months before we finish the location stuff – she’s very in demand. It’s Your Life! calls her Hollywood’s Fastest Rising Star.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, glancing at Anne-Marie. “Maybe we’ll meet her tomorrow.”

  “Actually you’re going to meet her in about five seconds,” Danny said, smiling at someone who was walking up behind me. “She’s the friend I was going to meet.”

  “Hi, Dan!” A blonde girl with brown eyes and a sparkly smile greeted Danny and slid into the seat next to him. As soon as I saw her I recognised her face from the sitcom that Nydia and I had not been watching yesterday.