Shooting Star (2 page)

“I can’t believe it,” Anne-Marie said, whisking the copy of
Teen Girl! Magazine
that I’d bought at the airport out of my hands and staring at the article.

“Can’t believe what?” Nydia was sitting between us with her eyes closed. It turned out that Nydia didn’t like flying. None of us had known this because until today Nydia hadn’t flown anywhere. The minute that the plane’s engines had begun to roar in preparation for take-off, she had given a little shriek and closed her eyes. That was about twenty minutes ago.

“I can’t believe it either,” I said, reaching across Nydia and grabbing the magazine back. “Danny and Hunter
together
on a film? The only two boys I have ever kissed working together all summer! How did that happen?”

“Really?” Nydia opened one eye. “That’s massive.”

“That’s not what I can’t believe,” Anne-Marie said. “I can’t believe they didn’t mention my name once. Not
once
! Everyone else was: Nydia, you, Gabe, Sean – but
not me. Why not? I’m on this plane too. I got good reviews in
Spotlight!
Why wouldn’t they mention me?”

Nydia opened her other eye and looked at me. “Danny and Hunter are working together? How come this is the first we’ve heard of it?”

“They’ll hang out,” I said miserably. “They’ll be friends. They’ll get to like each other and then they’ll talk about me. They will discuss me.”

“Not a mention,” Anne-Marie said, scanning the article again. “Not even a photo.”

“That’s not true,” Nydia said, sitting up and leaning over. “There you are in that one.”

“Where?” Anne-Marie scrutinised a photo of me and Nydia, grinning like Cheshire cats at the aftershow party of the TV broadcast.

“Look, that’s your elbow, just in the corner there,” Nydia said, winking at me.

Anne-Marie scowled. “Ha ha – very funny. Amazing how you can be so funny when we are thirty thousand feet up in the air in barely more than a flying tin can that could crash to the earth at any moment.”

Nydia shut her eyes again. “I think I might be sick,” she said.

“You’ve got a point though,” I said, shaking my head at Anne-Marie. “Why didn’t we know about
The Young
Robin Hood
? After all, if anyone at the Academy gets a part Sylvia Lighthouse tells everyone. It’s announced in assembly. And they must have cast it ages ago – soon after Danny dropped out of
Spotlight!
I know he’s not talked to me since that party, but he still hangs out with Sean sometimes, doesn’t he?”

“No, actually.” Anne-Marie glanced a few rows back to where Sean was sitting next to Gabe playing his Nintendo DS. “They haven’t hung out for ages. Danny’s spent more time with Jade than anyone this term, though they aren’t going out together I don’t think.”

“Maybe there was a confidentiality clause,” Nydia said. “Maybe that’s why it wasn’t announced.”

I sighed and looked out of the window at the clouds below. At the aftershow party I’d thought that Danny was on the verge of asking me out again. Even after I told him that basically he was one of the worst singers I had ever heard, and that all the time he thought he had a brilliant voice it was really the Auto-tune Miracle Microphone making him sound good. Even after he had to drop out of the lead role in
Spotlight!
because of me I thought that maybe he still liked me, because I knew that I still liked him. But then we’d been interrupted and he hadn’t said anything. And I hadn’t heard from him since.

In the last few weeks I’d been busy helping Jeremy
Fort (my mum’s boyfriend and legend of film and theatre) find a nice house to buy in London, getting ready to come out to Hollywood and getting on with everyday life at Highgate Comprehensive. I hadn’t really had a chance to think about Danny and I’d decided that was a good thing. So now I learn about him and Hunter from a magazine.

“Look,” Anne-Marie said, “the least of your worries is whether or not Danny Harvey and Hunter Blake might be scoring your kissing technique out of ten.”

“I hadn’t thought of that!” I cried, clapping my hands over my eyes.

“I had,” Nydia said.

“It doesn’t matter anyway because they will be in Sherwood Forest or wherever and you will be in Hollywood. Thousands of miles away. So don’t even think about them. Concentrate on the screen tests. If we all get parts in this film we can spend the whole of the summer in America, and it will be so much fun! My mum might even be in LA for a week in August and I haven’t seen her since Easter, so she’s bound to let me go shopping with her credit card. And once Sean takes the part of Sebastian the whole town will be after him again. All the paparazzi wanting to shoot his picture, C! the Celebrity Channel will want to interview him,
and everyone will be wondering – who is that mysterious yet glamorous blonde girl with him?
Me
, that’s who it will be, and then
I
will be on TV and in every magazine, and
Teen Girl! Mag
can go and take a running jump.” Anne-Marie clapped her hands together. “It’s going to be so exciting!”

If only she knew what I knew she wouldn’t be so happy. I felt a knot in my tummy and looked out of the window. Maybe Anne-Marie was right. Maybe I should stop thinking about Danny and Hunter getting to know each other in Sherwood Forest. They were thousands of miles away and there was nothing I do about it. j Just had to put it out of my mind. What I couldn’t forget so easily was that in order to keep my promise to one best friend, I had to lie to another. It was a difficult place to be.

Mum and I had helped Jeremy find a nice house in Highgate, not too far away from our house. But he had decided to keep his house in Beverly Hills after all and I was glad of that because he’d said that we could all stay there while we were in Hollywood. There were three adults and five kids on the trip. Mum was in charge of me, Nydia and Anne-Marie, as Nydia’s parents couldn’t get time off work and Anne-Marie’s mum and dad were
working on the other side of the world again. I thought it was a bit much, because even when Anne-Marie was going halfway around the world, she still couldn’t seem to catch up with her parents. Sean and his mum were coming, and Gabe and his dad. Jeremy wouldn’t be there. He was in a play about seagulls in London, getting rave reviews. But his chef and housekeeper, Augusto and Marie, were and best of all his little dog David, who I had really missed quite a lot, although I would never tell my cat Everest that.

“This place is
huge
!” Nydia exclaimed as our minibus drew up to the front door.

“It’s amazing,” Anne-Marie said, sliding her sunglasses down her nose so she could get a better look at the house. Back in London Anne-Marie lived, more or less by herself, in one of the biggest, grandest houses I had ever seen, so for her to be impressed by Jeremy’s place was pretty unusual.

“All the houses round here are like this,” I told her. “This is where all the film stars live.”

Looking at Jeremy’s house made me feel a bit funny in the pit of my stomach. The last time I was here it was the most unhappy I’d ever been, even more than when Mum and Dad were splitting up, because at least then I knew they loved me. When I ran away from Hollywood,
I didn’t think that anyone did. This time would be different I told myself. This time if I didn’t enjoy it out here, I knew Mum would take me straight home. And anyway I was different now. I was fourteen and I wasn’t a little girl any more.

“Oh my God, what is
that
!” Anne-Marie shrieked as David raced out of the front door and leapt into my arms. I grimaced as he licked me all over my face with his tiny rough tongue.

“This is David,” I managed to say. “He’s Jeremy’s dog. He look likes a rat, but actually once you get to know him he’s quite nice.”

“He hasn’t forgotten you,” Augusto said as he walked out to greet us, followed by Marie. “I think he sensed you the minute you got off the plane; he’s been waiting by the door for an hour.”

“Augusto!” I said, giving him a big hug that nearly squeezed David to death. “And Marie, it’s so nice to see you two again!”

“We’re very glad to have you and your friends stay with us,” Marie said, smiling at everyone. “Especially you, young lady. You gave us such a fright the last time. Come on, I’ll show you your rooms and then Augusto and I thought some cool drinks and sandwiches by the pool.”

“Woohoo!” Gabe whooped and Nydia laughed as everyone ran off to find which room they would be staying in.

“Coming in, honey?” Sean’s mum watched as Sean crouched down on the drive and made a fuss of David, rolling him on his back and tickling his little tummy.

“Be right there,” Sean said.

I knelt down next to him as he stroked the dog. “Feeling weird?” I asked.

He nodded, but didn’t look at me. “You?”

“Yeah, I am, but I reckon I’ll be OK. I’m not on my own this time, am I?”

Sean smiled at me, his blue eyes twinkling. “I’ll look out for you,” he said.

“So have you worked out how you’re going to give your mum the slip, go and find your dad and see if you can work things out with him, all while somehow managing not to get the lead part in a film that would be perfect for you and getting your picture in every single magazine on the whole planet?” I asked him.

Sean shook his head. “Nope. But I’m working on it.”

“Well, let me know when you do,” I said.

“Don’t you worry, Ruby, you will be the first to know,” Sean told me, standing up and offering me his hand. Somehow that didn’t make me feel any better.

Half an hour later and all of us kids were in the pool, while the adults sat around it eating some of Augusto’s amazing BLTs. David was sitting up on his hind legs and begging for scraps.

“This is the business,” Mr Martinez said. “You get yourself a life like this, son, and I’ll be happy.”

“I will do when I’m playing for Arsenal,” Gabe said, winking at Nydia and making her laugh. I noticed that those two had started to spend quite a lot of time together lately.

“We’ve got an early start tomorrow,” Mum said. “We all have to be at the studios at eight, so you all need an early night tonight.” Everyone groaned. “I’m serious. No midnight feasts or talking after lights out.”

“Mum!” I protested. “We’re not babies any more. We don’t do midnight feasts.”

“Mmm well, good,” Mum said. “Come on, you lot. Out and get ready for bed. It’s a big day tomorrow and you’ve had a long day.”

Moaning, the five of us pulled ourselves out of the pool and wrapped ourselves in bathrobes.

“You can actually see the Hollywood sign from here,” Anne-Marie said, smiling at Sean. “This place
is so amazing, aren’t you glad that you’re back?”

Sean looked, his face expressionless. “I don’t know yet,” he said.

“Of course you are,” Anne-Marie said. “It’s going to be great! You’ll get the lead in the film and you’ll be famous again, and the whole town will love you and me, your girlfriend, and I’ll get my big break and nothing will ever be the same.” Anne Marie flung her arms around Sean and hugged him.

“We’ll see,” Sean said, glancing at me over Anne-Marie’s shoulder.

“Don’t be silly,” Anne-Marie said. “When have you ever not got a part that you’ve gone for?”

“There’s always a first time,” Sean said.

Later, while the parents were still downstairs, Anne-Marie, Nydia and I lay on my bed with the balcony doors open, letting the warm night air in as we ate a packet of cookies that I had snaffled from the kitchen when no one was looking. I was feeding crumbs to David who had curled up on my feet as if he was really pleased to see me.

“What will it be like tomorrow?” Nydia asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t done this before either.
Every single audition I’ve ever been to has been different. I have no idea what they ask you to do at a screen test.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Anne-Marie said. “Because we are prepared, aren’t we?”

Nydia and I looked at each other. For the last month Anne-Marie had made us meet at her house three times a week to learn the lines from the play and rehearse all the songs over and over again. “No one knows
Spotlight!
better than us. They’ll have to choose us, they’ll just
have
to.”

“But they might not,” I said carefully. I had the feeling that getting a part in the film meant more to Anne-Marie than anyone else. “They might want American kids and I heard that Sunny Dale might be up for Arial.”

“She’s
rubbish
,” Anne-Marie said. “I can knock spots off her any day of the week, and if they think I’m going to have that girl screen-kissing my boyfriend then they’ve got another think coming.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Nydia said. “If you or me got the lead we might have to kiss Sean too, Ruby. How disgusting would that be!”

“Yuck!” I said, and I pulled a suitable face. But worryingly, the second Nydia mentioned it I realised I didn’t think it would be too awful to kiss Sean Rivers at all. I thought of that twinkly, blue-eyed smile he’d given me earlier that day and for the first time since I’d known him it made my tummy lurch. But not in bad way.

“Oh no, that’s a terrible, terrible idea!” I said out loud before I realised it. “That would be really, really bad.”

“He’s not that bad a kisser,” Anne-Marie giggled, whacking me with one of my pillows.

“Well, he’s been kissing you for nearly a year so he can’t be
that
good,” I teased her, keen to get the stupid feeling out of my tummy.

“Attack!” Nydia yelled, launching herself at me with the final cushion.

There were feathers all over the floor by the time my mum caught us.

Ext. Evening. Fire escape at the back of the drama school. ARIAL is sitting on her own, crying. A figure appears at the window. It’s SEBASTIAN. He hesitates and then climbs out of the window and sits beside her. He considers putting a hand on her shoulder, but in the end is not brave enough.

Arial, why are you crying?

ARIAL looks up at him, as if she’s only just realised that he is there.
Hastily she wipes her tears away and tries to smile.