Shooting Stars

stars

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A L L I S O N R U S H B Y

shooting

stars

WALKER & COMPANY

NEW YORK

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Copyright © 2012 by Allison Rushby

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published in the United States of America in February 2012

by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.

www .bloomsburyteens .com

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Walker BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data available upon request

ISBN 978- 0- 8027- 2298- 0 (paperback) • ISBN 978- 0- 8027- 2375- 8 (hardcover) Book design by Regina Roff

Typeset by Westchester Book Composition

Printed in the U.S.A. by Quad/Graphics, Fairfi eld, Pennsylvania 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 (paperback) 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 (hardcover) All papers used by Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc., are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well- managed forests. The manufacturing pro cesses conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

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shooting

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1

I crouch behind some thick green shrubbery to do my fi nal check. Sunglasses camera, check. Fake iPod camera, check.

Real camera (I pat my backpack to make sure), check. That’s it then, I’m ready to go. With a silent it’s-gonna- be- a-long-night sigh, I reach forward and push the shrubbery aside so I can peer through. The paparazzi are there, lying in wait, like vultures. They hover around the white marble entrance to the hot venue of the week, jostling and pushing each other. They are all here to get The Shot— the one that will earn them squil-lions of dollars, or at least fi ve hundred if they’re lucky.

I push the shrubbery farther aside so I can see them all at once. There are more than when I arrived twenty minutes ago, ten minutes after I received my tip- off. To night, the group 212-47604_ch01_1P.indd 1

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includes more than fi ve people I don’t know, and considering how long I’ve been doing this, that’s saying something.

Look at them out there. The overcrowding is getting worse every week. Now that the whole world has a camera phone, everyone somehow assumes they’re a paparazzo . . .

. . . like me.

Well, technically a paparazza, if you want to be all gender correct about it, but it’s better not to be female in this line of work, so I stick to “zo” like everyone else, thanks very much.

My cameras stowed within easy reach, it’s work time.

Let’s go, Jo, I tell myself, fi ngers crossed that my tipster has the reliable sources she says she does and all this will be worth it. I’d just been settling down for a rare night in with a pizza when the call came that I needed to haul my butt back out onto the star- studded streets.

I remove my hand now and let the shrubbery fall back into place, then wait for a second or two until another big black SUV pulls up in front of the steps. One, two, three people get out. Two women and a man. As each of them appears, my paparazzo gaze fl icks over them and then dulls. No one, no one, no one. Three nothings. No ka- ching noises here.

The other paparazzi do the same. You can almost see their eyes register “$0” as they look away. The three people are stared at for a fraction of a Hollywood second and then no one is interested in them anymore. Kind of a shame when you consider how long they probably spent getting ready to night, but you know, that’s LA for you, right? These people 2

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knew that before they moved here. Or if they didn’t, they would have learned the reality of this place quickly enough.

Anyway, it’s not like the truly famous don’t have it just as tough. In LA, it doesn’t matter who you are— there’ll always be that feeling that someone more famous is lurking two steps behind you, ready to steal the limelight. Kind of like your shadow.

Okay. Concentrate. This is it. When the three nonfamous people hit a certain crack in the pavement, I get into a starter’s position. And then, bang, I’m off. As fast as my short legs will carry me, I race over until I’m right behind them. I make sure I enter the scene using their blind spots and then carefully match my pace to keep in time with their movements, staying back just the right distance. I don’t want them to notice me, but I still need to look as if I’m part of their group.

The two women clippity- clip their stilettoed way over the paved entry, getting closer to the paparazzi. After a few more steps, the crowd starts to become denser on both sides.

The newer paps and those who can’t really be bothered to night are hanging back and we pass by them fi rst.

One of them notices me, does a double take, and opens his mouth. “Hey, isn’t that Zo Jo over—” he starts, before my friend Mannie moves over to give him a swift shove to the back and he swallows his words. “Zo Jo” (as in, paparazzo Jo) is the nickname Mannie coined for me, and everyone, including the media to some degree, has picked up on it. I give Mannie a quick wink and the guy an equally quick 3

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sideways glare before returning to what I’m trying to perfect here now that I’ve got my walk down— my surly “I don’t want to be here, this sucks” expression. To add to the effect, I whip out my fake iPod camera (aka the fauxPod) and stare at it as if my game of solitaire holds the answers to all the questions in the universe.

We keep walking and the paparazzi are getting thicker now. I can hear them talking, hear my name being mentioned.

But I don’t look. Not now that I’m immersed in my character.

Soon enough, we’re going up the steps. Two steps, three steps. The fi nal step and then . . . the bouncer.

“Hey, you.” An arm juts out rudely in front of the game I’m playing. A big, hairy arm with a tattoo that reads “Ava” on one side and “Emily” on the other. A single date from three years ago runs in a fancy script, intertwining them. “You on the list, kid?”

Uh- oh.

Things aren’t exactly going as planned— I had been hoping to slip past unnoticed. Still, it’s nothing I can’t handle.

Hey, I’ve done this at least fi fty times before, right? Mostly successfully.

I glance up at him and, instantly, I know how to play this.

There’s something about this guy that just screams “family man.” He’s married, judging by the wedding ring on the hand that just stopped me from walking any farther. Then it comes to me—

the tattoo. Ava and Emily are twins. His twins. I bring my hand down, pinch my thigh hard, and my eyes start 4

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to water. I crane my neck as if trying to look inside for the no ones who have just entered the party, then I move my eyes back to him again. “Where’d my mom go?” I whimper.

For a second, his expression reads confusion.

“Mommy?” I whimper a bit harder, ramping up the vol-ume. I really need to get into this party. If Ned Hartnett is here to night and I miss these shots . . . He’s never made many appearances, but lately he’s been completely MIA and the drug rumors are really fl ying. I need this. “Mommy?

Mommy???!!!” I try again. I’ve got to get in. Got to.

“Dude,” a paparazzo calls out from behind us all, making me jump. “Have some respect for Hollywood royalty. Don’t you know that’s the newly minted adopted daughter of one of our favorite star couples?”

Seriously, I almost laugh out loud. Now there’s a benefi t to being half- Japanese I’d never thought of. A couple of the more clueless, newer paps start taking shots of me and I pinch myself again, this time so I don’t laugh. But I manage to pull myself together enough to have one last crack at it.

“Mommy?” My voice is truly pathetic. Time to drive it home.

“Mister, I need to go to the bathroom.” I cross my legs for good mea sure and look the guy straight in the eye.

With this, the security guard cracks, a horrifi ed look coming over his face. “Oh man . . . all right, kid, you’d better go in.

I don’t think the people running this show are puddles- on- the-marble kind of people.”

The arm barrier comes up. And . . .

5

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. . . I’m in.

Sometimes I really love this job.

★ ★ ★

Suppressing my grin at the whoops that emanate from my few friends, I ignore the evil glares that I can feel burning into my back from the others— the ones that hate me and my sneaky ways. I don’t blame them, really. I can’t say I’d love anyone who had such a distinct advantage over me at work, either. And that’s the thing— I do have an advantage going here. Where being a paparazzo is concerned, I use my age and height to get the pictures no one else can get. Sure, I’m sixteen, but I can look eleven if I put my mind to it: wear kid’s sandals and a baseball cap and keep my eyes glued to my fauxPod camera. Like I did to night.

I trot into the restaurant/nightspot/lounge/place-to- be-

seen. The venue is spread over three levels, and you have to hand it to the organizers— the place looks stunning. Garlands of lights twist from the ceiling down to the middle of scattered small tables, creating an intimate atmosphere (not good for me workwise, but I guess they’re not trying to impress party- crashing paparazzi). Keeping my head slightly lowered and trying to act invisible, I make my way over to a dark corner, half hide behind a bronze sculpture, and get down to business.

Head still lowered, my eyes move up to scan the faces in the crowd. Nope. No Ned Hartnett here. Not yet, anyway. I 6

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know he hasn’t come in the front door, but with these guys, you could never be sure. Sometimes they’ll genuinely not want to be seen (usually when they’ve gained some weight in between movies), and then they’ll get cagey and fi nd back and side entrances.

I spend the next fi fteen seconds forming a plan that is short, to the point, and goes something like this: lie low and leave after two hours max. Lying low is important because I don’t want to blow my cover. There’s not really anyone here that’s A-list enough to blow it for. Sure, there’s the usual famous actor here and another famous actor there, but I came out to night for the big fi sh, the guy everyone’s talking about—

Ned Hartnett. For now, I’ll be patient and sit back with my line in the water. I’ll give him two hours, and if he doesn’t show, I’m going home to nuke my cold pizza.

Plan duly formed, I settle myself into a cross- legged position, still behind the statue, and get in some serious quality time on my real iPod (what did people do before these things, anyway, stare into tuneless space?). I’d prefer an iPad or a DSi or something, but I need to pay attention to what’s going on around me, which rules out the iPad, and I also can’t risk being seen with any kind of actual camera, which means there goes the DSi. If anyone guessed my fauxPod was a shell only, gutted to be equipped with a fi fteen- hundred- dollar camera, I’d be thrown out of here in three seconds fl at.

As the minutes tick by and Ned Hartnett remains out of frame, no one gives me a second glance, even though it’s 7

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9:47 p.m. and should be way past my bedtime, considering how old the bouncer thinks I am. But, no. No one bothers to question me. They’re all so caught up in themselves that they barely even register my existence (at least two people step on me on the way to the bathroom). I know that even if they did notice me, they’d just assume someone’s nanny had, oh so annoyingly, been sick, and my parents had dragged me along to the party.