Waiting for Callback (27 page)

I’m not great at waiting.

Nothing. Revision. x

Stupid, I’d replied too fast. And with a text that was both boring and depressing. Also stupid because I should have asked a question; I’d killed the conversation. Basic texting
error. But moments later another text popped on to my screen.

Got my last paper next week. Seriously cannot wait. Life will begin again. x

Archie talking about GCSEs made me scared for next year.
Have they gone OK?

Who knows?

Thanks X

Capital letter kiss. Was that escalation or a typo?
You still coming to ACT this week? x
I admit that my failure to come up with witty text banter was beginning to look like a pattern,
but this was a bit stressful.

Don’t think so. x

Lower case x. Disappointing. Also very disappointing that I wouldn’t see him at ACT. And then a second text a couple of minutes later.

Are you going to Steph’s next Friday? Xx

Xx was escalation, wasn’t it?

If you’d asked me ten minutes earlier if I’d wanted to go to Stephanie’s house party, I would have said no. Chances were it wouldn’t be any good because none of us (at
least in my year) go to enough parties to behave anything like normal people at them. Everyone would be getting with everyone else and the girls wouldn’t have eaten carbs for a week and
wouldn’t eat anything at all for the whole party day so they’d look skinny and then they’d hit the smuggled-in booze (unless Steph’s parents just served it – it
happens). Somebody/many people would throw up. There would be at least one fight, although chances were nobody would get hurt because everyone (even the guys who played rugby) fought like girls.
Also I wouldn’t be able to get ready with Moss or gossip about it after with Moss. In my very limited experience, those were the best bits.

It’s not like I’d expected Steph to invite me because I didn’t know her that well. Anyway, she’d invited Moss and she probably thought there’d be another fight if
we were both there. (Maybe she
should
have invited me: we could have provided the entertainment.)

So, if you’d asked me ten minutes ago if I minded not having been invited, I’d have said no and I’d have meant it. Now I wasn’t so sure.

There wasn’t any point lying about it to Archie. Everyone knew everything.

Nope, not invited. x

You guys not friends?

We’re not exactly not friends, but it’s complicated.
I didn’t put an x that time because he hadn’t, but then an x would have looked a bit odd after a
question mark. Oh, God, maybe his kisses were just punctuation?

Minutes passed, long minutes, and he wasn’t replying. I’d killed the conversation by including an honest reference to the complexities of female friendship.

Stupid.

I might as well do my homework.

More long minutes passed. I was finding it hard to concentrate on the difference between ultraviolet and infrared radiation.

I doodled on my textbook (a little cartoon of Squirrelina dumping Colonel Kernel) and refreshed my phone again.

Nothing.

Did gamma radiation have the shortest wavelength or the longest? I was finding it very hard to care.

My phone barked.
Soz, parents around. Too complicated to come as my plus one? xx

Back to double x’ing and a plus one invite to a party. No way was this Friendzone. Or maybe it was. Maybe we were so deep in the Friendzone that kisses escalation was irrelevant. Maybe
Archie wasn’t carefully considering the nuance of every single character in every single text? I was so
confused
. There should be a manual.

Obviously, I needed to ask Moss, but obviously I couldn’t ask Moss.

I didn’t know what to do.

I typed
Sorry, too complicated. xx
, stared at it for a full ten minutes, deleted it and typed
Why not? Sure. xx
and pressed Send before I could change my mind.

The phone woofed immediately:
xxx

Even I was getting the message.

My phone barked.
Good luck for Straker callback.
Long scroll of fingers-crossed smiley emoticons. Not from Moss.

Thanks, Daisy, I’m soooo scared

Nah, you’ll be great. Text me after.

I was seriously nervous. Excited, sure, but mostly nervous. I still hadn’t seen the whole script, just some more casting scenes. The callback was at the offices of the production company
and they were quite cool offices, modern, with lots of glass and white walls peppered with posters from previous productions. We were all shepherded into a big room. I guess it was usually a
conference room, but they’d pushed back all the chairs to turn it into a rehearsal space. There were six of us in the room who were up for parts and I recognized three of them.

The two other girls were shorter and girlier than me (no surprise there). The girl I recognized was called Amy and the reason I recognized her was because she was beamed into my sitting room
every Thursday night as a regular cast member on
Sunningtown
.
Sunningtown
is this sort of rustic drama/soap series, not my sort of thing, but obviously people watched it because it
had been running for at least a decade and Amy had been in it all the time, growing up in front of us (despite at least two near-death plotlines – it may have been a small town, but it was
one that attracted an extraordinary amount of incident). She was glued to her iPhone and wasn’t making eye contact with anyone. Her mother was sitting beside her, reading a magazine with a
picture of Amy on the front. Just weird. Everyone else had got rid of their parent at the door.

The other girl, the one I didn’t recognize, came over straight away. She had a nice smile.

‘Hey, I’m Lana. Were you at the
Hetty Feather
casting? I’m
sure
I recognize you. You had, like, a purple uniform on.’

This was the first time I’d ever been recognized from my acting stuff, and it was from a casting for a part I hadn’t got and because my school uniform was tragic. Score.

‘Yeah, I didn’t get the part.’

‘Me neither. So we’re up against Amy Underhill.’

We both looked over at Amy, who didn’t look back at us. Now she was doing some rather ostentatious vocal warm-ups.

‘She’ll get it,’ I said resignedly.

‘Yep,’ said Lana. ‘I’m definitely looking at today as a free masterclass and nothing more.’

I already liked Lana. She seemed sane and normal. Also it was true: money couldn’t have bought a masterclass with the director of this film. Looked at that way, today was going to be good.
Oh, and we were missing school. I thought of Flissy in double physics and smiled. Win-win.

My phone barked.
Good luck for today. xx
Not Moss (bad). Archie (good) – two kisses (not as good as xxx but still good). I switched my phone to silent (it was a very demanding
ringtone).

‘She’s wearing make-up,’ said Lana, looking over at Amy.

She was right. Amy had on
at least
foundation and mascara and probably liner and lippy as well. We’d been told quite firmly not to wear any, but maybe different rules applied to
actual actors with jobs. Lana and I were both wearing black leggings and white T-shirts. Amy was in skinny jeans and a teeny tie-dyed T-shirt.

‘Maybe we’ll get her autograph,’ I suggested just a little sarcastically.

‘Well, that’ll make it all worthwhile,’ replied Lana in the same tone, offering me half a Mars bar. A girl who ate Mars bars for breakfast was a girl to swap phone numbers
with.

The three guys had clustered together on the other side of the room. Pack-animal instinct?

I sort of knew two of them. Alex was Jenny from school’s older cousin and I’d met him a couple of times. I was a bit in awe of him because he was two years above and seriously hot in
that English blond, blue-eyed way. He’d modelled for some T-shirt brand. I hadn’t known he acted, but I wasn’t surprised. He would have been perfect in war movies playing the
heroic RAF fighter pilot who does eventually die, but not until the last scene and not until he has saved his best friend and not until he has seen his newborn son in the arms of his girl-next-door
sweetheart wife (preferably played by me, but probably played by Amy).

The other guy that I recognized straight away was called Damian. I’d met him at castings before and he’d been on
Casualty
(he died in that one; there’s a strange,
positive correlation between the gruesomeness of your screen death and the success of your future career – his was a nasty incident with a lawn mower if I remember rightly so he’d
probably do well). I’d never really spoken to him. He wasn’t nearly as good-looking as Alex, but he was passable.

The third guy was the fittest. He was black so the three guys had – weirdly for a casting – completely different looks. It made me think that they probably hadn’t cast
‘Jan’s’ parents yet.

None of them were Archie, but none of them were ugly either, and although I was in the throes of a major crush I did still have eyes. Hypothetically, this attraction thing mattered because of
Straker and Jan’s young love subplot (which was a distraction from the whole flesh-eating-survival stuff apparently dominating the rest of the script).

I didn’t think I was going to get this part, but I can’t pretend I wasn’t thinking about plotlines when I was checking out Alex, Damian and the mystery guy.

‘OK, guys, gather round.’ Janey, who we’d met at the first casting, did that sort of clapping thing that primary-school teachers do when they’re trying to get their class
to come to order.

‘Right, you all know me and this is Sergei Havelski,’ she gestured, ‘and sitting either side of him are Selim and Rhona.’

So the short, middle-aged guy sitting quietly in the corner was the director, Mr Havelski. In his photos on the web, he’d looked more vivid, more powerful. In real life, he appeared fairly
ordinary, a bit older, shorter and a lot more tired. I hadn’t recognized him. To be fair, he’d probably just flown in from LA or been up all night mentoring an Oscar winner or divorcing
his fourth wife or something. He was clutching the most enormous mug of coffee so he’d probably perk up later. As far as I could work out, Selim and Rhona were his sidekicks – there to
fill the coffee mug and take notes.

Janey went on. ‘
We
all know who each of
you
are, but I know some of you haven’t met before so can we just go round and each of you introduce yourselves? Just say a
couple of sentences that really sum up who you are.’

I got really nervous and blotchy doing this sort of thing. It was meant to be casual, but we were already being tested and we all knew it. Who was going to be the wittiest/have the best
voice/projection/delivery/eye contact, etc. etc.

Amy went first as befitted her star status. ‘Hi, everyone.’ She broke off to give us all a saccharine smile. ‘I’m Amy Underhill and I guess what’s important about
me is that I live for acting.
It’s my life
. I’ve played Kelly in
Sunningtown
for years now and it has been an
awesome
experience. The cast are like
family
to
me, but I really want to
stretch
myself as an
actress
and take on more
demanding
roles and I think that the role of Straker—’

‘Thanks, Amy,’ Janey cut in and motioned to Alex to take over (which was just as well as much more of Amy talking
emphatically
about what mattered to her and I would have
thrown up).

‘I’m Alex, I’ve got four brothers and . . . I live in London and . . . this is my first shot at trying to do some acting. Er, if it doesn’t work out, I’m quite into
football.’