Rising Star

Rising Star

Karen C Webb

Copyright © 2014 Karen C
Webb

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For Sue and RUSTY

Chapter 1

Selena wasn’t really interested in being an
extra in whatever movie they were filming this time. It didn’t pay
anything, it was just for the fun of being on the set of a movie.
Most of the town of Los Estrellas, most of the county even, were so
used to it by now, that everyone pretty much ignored all the
commotion with each new cast and crew that came to town. Countless
movies had been filmed in New Mexico the past few years. She
assumed Hollywood had found a cheaper, more welcoming market in her
small town for making their movies.

But her friend Beth had begged her to go.
She had known Beth since kindergarten and they had barrel raced
together and rode their horses down every trail along the Rio
Grande since they were small.

“
But this time is
different,” Beth begged her. “They need people to bring their
horses and ride them in the movie. They need a whole crowd of
horses and riders, galloping together across the
desert.”

Selena stared at her short, curly-haired
friend as she thought about it. She wasn’t too keen on crowds, even
though she’d rode Rusty, her beautiful sorrel gelding, in front of
crowds at rodeos around the valley and she’d even taken first place
barrel racing at the county fair last August. That had been quite
some crowd. She smiled as she remembered the excitement.

“
Okay.” She made up her
mind. “I guess I’m in.”

“
Yay.” Beth jumped up and
down with delight. “It’ll be a blast. You’ll see.”

“
I really doubt that, but
it’ll get Rusty out of the yard. We’ve been so busy lately, I
haven’t even practiced on the barrels.”

“
I haven’t had Tripp out
much either, but school will be out soon and we’ll have all summer
to barrel race and trail ride.”

They parted ways at the bus stop; Beth lived
south of the school, a little closer to town, while Selena took the
school bus north, where homes and farms were a little more
scattered. Her family had an acre, with a small horse barn and a
large corral for Rusty. The acre was fenced and grassy and Selena
often turned him loose on it to graze. She stared out the window as
the yellow bus lumbered its slow way north. If not for Beth
dragging her out to rodeos and now to a movie set, she would
probably be a recluse, hiding away in her small room. It wasn’t
that she was shy, no, not at all. She was just a bit of a loner,
always wrapped up in her own thoughts. She enjoyed hanging out with
her classmates and the kids at the rodeos. But, even in a crowd,
her mind was apt to drift away, into one of the stories she was
working on. She had been writing since she was young, and when she
got her head tied up in her own make-believe, it was hard to pull
her mind back to reality. She seemed to drift through life, almost
as if she were at the edge of life, looking in.

Rusty pawed the air with his right hoof and
swung his head as he saw her walking up the long drive. He had a
way of putting his head near the ground with his chin tucked down,
then tossing his head high, his orange mane flying. It was his way
of greeting her and telling her he was hungry.

Selena tossed him a flake of alfalfa and
stood with him, scratching his favorite spot on his withers while
he ate.

“
You wanna be in a movie,
Rusty?” She said softly as she scratched him. He seemed to pay her
no mind, but Selena saw his right ear flick back toward her,
listening to her voice. “I bet you could be a big movie star, huh
boy?”

She spent a few minutes with him, then went
inside to make herself a sandwich. Her home was a very modest, very
small, single-wide trailer sitting smack in the middle of the acre.
She had always thought it was pretty old and ugly and she was a
little embarrassed by it when she had friends over. The white paint
was faded from the desert sun and a hail storm a few years ago had
beaten the paint off it in places, leaving behind neat, round
blotches of bare, grey metal.

She took the sandwich to her room, plopping
down in front of her small, second-hand computer. Her mother had
bought it from a coworker and, though it wasn’t much, Selena had
spent countless hours in front of it. She’d been writing fiction
novels since she was young and she worked on the current one
whenever she had a minute to spare. She was working on a detective
series, with a teenage girl as the lead character. She had started
the series three years ago, when she was fifteen and now, she was
beginning to wonder if it would ever be finished. It seemed as if
the older she got, the less time she had to work on her stories.
Between homework and rodeos and trail rides with Beth, there was
very little time to sit down and concentrate on it. She read
through the last chapter she’d written, then picked up where she’d
left off. Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she typed, her
mind lost to another place and time as she deftly led her
character, Trish, through clues and adventures and even romance.
Selena was so caught up in the lives she’d created, she didn’t hear
the car pull into the drive or the front door slam when her mother
arrived home.

“
Selena,” her mother
sounded angry. “You haven’t done your chores, your school books are
still on the table and it’s your turn to cook dinner.”

“
Sorry, mom. I’m coming,”
Selena called as she quickly saved her work on her old computer.
She had completely lost track of the time while she lost herself in
the life of Trish. She enjoyed writing so much, she promised
herself she’d devote at least an hour a day to it. Of course, it
was a promise she’d made before, but it was always easier said than
done.

“
What were you doing in
there, if you weren’t doing homework?” Her mother nodded her head
at the schoolbooks on the table.

“
Oh…I’m working on an
English paper. I have it saved on my computer.”

“
I see,” her mother said,
buying the lie without question.

Selena felt bad lying to her mother, but she
was a little embarrassed. She had never shared her stories with
anyone; as far as she knew, her parents didn’t know she had ever
written anything. It was one thing to lose herself in her stories,
but the thought of other people reading them was hard to imagine.
What if everyone laughed at her?

Chapter 2

Selena loaded Rusty into the horse trailer
Saturday morning and hurried to pick up Beth and her horse, Tripp.
She used her father’s battered old pickup to pull the trailer and,
as she drove, she could see Rusty push open the small door on the
front of the trailer and poke his head through. The door had never
latched correctly and Rusty had quickly figured out how to push it
open and hang his head out. He looked like a huge puppy in her side
mirror, with his head hanging out an open car window, his orange
mane flying in the wind.

Beth helped her load Tripp in beside Rusty
and they set out for Santa Fe, or somewhere nearby, Beth told
her.

“
You just have to follow
the yellow signs with a CW on them,” Beth said. “It should be just
south of Santa Fe, out in the desert.”

“
Got it,” Selena
said.

They found the location without any trouble.
The small, yellow signs were taped to the post of every stop sign
they approached, pointing the way to every turn.

“
Oh. Look how many
people,” Beth said as they bounced across the desert and parked
beside several other horse trailers.

“
Yeah, it looks like a
madhouse,” Selena answered. Beth’s excitement was catching and
Selena felt a knot of tension begin in her stomach.

They quickly saddled up their horses and
loped them around for a bit, warming them up as they did at rodeos,
before joining the crowd of twenty or so other people, sitting on
their horses and chatting. There were people of every age milling
about on their horses, as crew members scurried around, setting up
cameras and lights and microphones. Even though quite a few movies
had been shot in their area the last few years, Selena felt the
excitement working through her body as she watched the crew. It was
one thing to see film crews everywhere around the town, but she had
certainly never been a part of it. Rusty felt her excitement too
and he danced around a little until she rubbed his neck to quiet
him. She had heard a little about this movie, but honestly, she
hadn’t paid much attention to what it was about or even who was in
it.

“
Do you know who’s in this
movie?” she asked Beth.

“
Matthew Mason,” Beth
answered impatiently. “Remember, I told you last week. He is
incredibly
hot. And Brittany Toomes has the female
lead.”

Selena barely knew who either of them were.
She only had a vague recollection of what Matt Mason looked like.
She didn’t spend a lot of time in front of the TV, preferring
instead to be racing across the desert or around the barrels on
Rusty’s back. She’d had a huge crush on Paul James when she was
younger and she’d watched all of his movies through her teenage
years. His blond, California boy looks and sparkling blue eyes were
enough to turn any girls head. But those days were long behind her
now. Between horseback riding and writing her stories, she had very
little time for TV.

Eventually, the crew finished setting up and
an older lady with her hair in a bun and glasses hanging from a
chain around her neck came over to the riders. She was carrying a
clipboard and she studied it as she walked.

“
Okay,” she said as she
approached. “We’ve painted a white line way over there on the
grass.” She pointed behind the group and all heads turned
collectively as they looked where she pointed. “We need all of you
to start from there and run your horses past us here. You’ll find
another white line west of us way down there,” she said as she
pointed in the opposite direction. “After you cross that line, turn
around and meet us back here. We may need to do it several times,
or until the director says he’s happy with it.”

Selena and Beth turned their horses,
following along as the group headed off toward their mark. They
spun their horses around just past the white line and as everyone
lined up behind it an older man on a big paint horse said, “I’ll
count to three, and then we all take off, okay?”

Everyone nodded and watched the gray-haired
man for his cue.

“
Okay,” he said.
“One…two…three…GO!” Twenty-five horses leapt across the line like
racehorses from a starting gate and Selena tightened her legs
around Rusty as he took off. She was caught in the middle of the
pack of flying hooves, but as the horses ran, the pack began to
break apart as slower horses dropped back, faster ones moving on
ahead. Rusty stretched his neck out as horses ran alongside him. He
had racehorse blood in his background and his nostrils flared as he
struggled to catch the leaders. Three horses were still in front of
him and Selena moved him slightly left as he overtook the first
one, a small black mare with a young girl on her back. Now there
were two horses in front of Rusty and Selena tried to slow him
down. They were, after all, supposed to be running together in a
pack past the cameras, not participating in an old-school horse
race, where spectators made side bets.

But Rusty was having none of it, he shook
his head as she pulled on the reins and she saw he was running
quickly up on the heels of a big bay gelding. She steered him left
again, before he could clip the heels of the bay, causing both
horses to fall and taking their riders with them. Rusty fought for
his head again as they passed the big bay and he set his sights on
the remaining horse. It was the big black and white paint with the
old man who had yelled ‘Go.’ The paint had a half black, half white
tail and it was flying like a banner as Rusty closed the gap
between them. She could hear the thunder of galloping hooves behind
her, but she dared not look back. It took every ounce of her
concentration to guide Rusty at breakneck speed across a desert
dotted with sagebrush and gopher holes. One misstep could mean a
painful fall, not to mention the twenty-three sets of hooves that
would trample them if they went down.