Happy Birthday to You (Birthday Trilogy, Book 3) (9 page)

And today, while
she found herself stuck
in the horrendous 405 traffic,
she felt confident about her big Santa Monica audition coming up at 4:00. It
wasn’t for a movie, unfortunately, but it was for a brand new Disney Channel
pilot, a chance at the lead role. She thought of breakout stars from the Disney
Channel, like Selena Gomez, Shia LaBeouf, and, of course, Miley Cyrus. She
couldn’t particularly sing very well, but her acting had improved enormously,
and she could feel, in her heart, in her soul, that today was going to be her
day. She was going to prove to that casting director that she could play this
part. And before she could scream, “STAR ON THE HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME,” she’d
be the newest Hollywood somebody,
a somebody
whose
life would be changed… forever.

“You’ve got
this,” Charisma said to herself as the traffic finally started clearing a bit.
“I don’t care if everyone’s focused on the economy, the state of the world, all
those little babies looking older. Pretty soon, everyone’s focus is going to be
on
me
. And I won’t be able to walk
down the sidewalk to grab a freakin’ Pinkberry without the paparazzi snapping
my every move. Today… it all comes down to today…”

She smiled to
herself and started applying more lipstick as she turned on the I-10 and started
heading toward Santa Monica. Thankfully for Charisma, all the traffic was
headed in the opposite direction. She couldn’t believe her eyes, as there were
hardly any cars going toward the ocean. It looked as if everyone was trying to
get out of town, as if a giant tidal wave was headed for the coast. Charisma
laughed and realized, even if she was minutes away from death, she’d still
deliver an amazing audition at the casting space. She’d still get the final
word, no matter what.

It took her ten
minutes to find the building, two streets over from the beach. She parked her
car, analyzed her make-up in the rearview mirror one last time, and grabbed her
four-page scene, even though she had memorized all her lines the night before.

She stepped out
onto the sidewalk. It was a gorgeous eighty-degree day. If she wasn’t running a
little late for her audition, Charisma would’ve taken a minute to enjoy her
final hour on Earth. But she was in a rush.

“Hello,”
Charisma said to the assistant on the fifth floor. “I’m here for the role of
Valerie.”

“Yes, of
course,” the young woman said. She seemed sad, like she hadn’t been able to
poop in days, or maybe because she wanted to be the all-powerful casting
director, not some unpaid intern spending her whole day greeting actors and
sitting bored at her desk.

Charisma took a
seat next to the other twenty girls, all with blonde hair, all looking, more or
less, like her. She couldn’t help but think the other girls looked a few years
too old for the part. The character was supposed to be only sixteen, and
Charisma felt positive at the young age of nineteen that she would be perfect
physically for the role. Once she brought her acting chops into the room, the
rest would be history.

“Academy Awards,
here I come,” she whispered to herself.

“What was that?”
a girl with a noticeably flat chest asked next to her.

“Nothing.”
Charisma didn’t want to say anything, but as she crossed her legs and turned to
the girl next to her, she just had to. “How old are you, anyway?”

“I was about to ask
you the same thing,” the other girl said. “You look too old for this part.”

“Excuse me?”
Charisma said with a chuckle. “I’m nineteen. How old are you? Thirty-five?”

“You’re
nineteen? Gosh, I feel sorry for you.”

“You better shut
your mouth.”

“I already
have.”

Charisma smiled,
knowing she had won that war, as she waited another forty-five minutes for her
big audition. Finally, her moment arrived.

“Charisma
Kellog?” the assistant asked.

“That’s me,”
Charisma said, standing up and taking a step forward. “
Finally
.”

“Uhh, you can go
right in.”

“Well, duh.”

She didn’t mean
to be so nasty with the assistant, but she couldn’t help it. She never had to
wait forty-five minutes.
Ten, maybe.
Fifteen at most.
She felt tired and hungry now, not as on
her acting game as she liked to be. But she had winged it before. It was time
not just to wing it again,
but
to make the role hers.
Charisma stepped inside the small casting room.

She knew that
the warm bodies sitting all day in the casting area could sometimes look dazed and
cynical, but Charisma had never seen anything like this. An older man on the
right looked like he was sleeping, and the young woman manning the camera on
the left looked depressed enough to throw the heavy object, as well as the
tripod, right at Charisma. The casting director Patricia Stead sat in the
center, and she looked the most animated of all, even though it was clear
within seconds she didn’t want to be here either.

“Headshot?” Ms.
Stead asked.

“Yes,” Charisma
said, handing it over. Charisma felt good about the headshot. She had just
taken some new pictures three weeks ago, and she had updated the resume last
night.
 

The casting
director looked down at the headshot, then up at Charisma. “How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“No, I mean,
your real age.”

Charisma opened
her mouth to speak, but nothing came out for a second. Finally: “
Nineteen
.”

The casting
director just shook her head. “Sorry, you just look too old.”

“What?”

“We need you to
look sixteen. You look too old. I’m sorry.”

“I look sixteen,”
Charisma said. “Hell, I could pass for
twelve
!”

“Not in this
town, missy.” The casting director darted her eyes toward the waiting area.
“Andrea! Next!”

Charisma looked
back to see another girl already making her way into the room. She glanced back
at the casting director. “You mean… you won’t even let me read—”

She hadn’t even
finished her sentence when she saw Ms. Stead start chatting with someone on her
cell phone in a somber manner. There was no use. There was nothing she could
do.

Charisma stormed
out of the room, out of the waiting area, and down the main hallway to the
elevator.

“Too old?
Too
old
?
I’m not
too old for
anything
!”

Charisma exited
the building and headed straight for her car, her rage intensifying,
her
desire to start screaming increasing by the second.

She started
grabbing for her keys, when she stopped, and noticed the guy parking his car
right behind hers, so close she could tell the front of his car was tapping her
bumper.

“Hey!” Charisma
shouted.

She walked up to
the passenger side window and started incessantly tapping on it. The guy was
bent over the passenger chair, separating quarters from nickels and dimes.
Charisma knocked again, but he wouldn’t turn to her.

“Why is everyone
ignoring me? I’m Charisma Kellog for Christ’s sakes!”

She raced around
the back of the man’s car and over to his driver’s side window on the other
side.

Charisma went to
tap again, when she stopped, and noticed her reflection in the window. It
wasn’t, astonishingly, the image she had made herself believe it to be for the
last few days. She saw what everyone else was seeing. Charisma didn’t look old,
but she appeared older, lines running down her forehead, cheeks, and chin. She
looked tired and weak, like she hadn’t exercised in years, and hadn’t eaten
much of anything, either. She didn’t look like the high school bombshell
anymore. She looked normal. As average as every other girl in this town.

Tears welled up
in Charisma’s eyes. She placed her hands on her face, and she took a few steps
back.

“I can’t…” she
started.

The man rolled
down his window. “Did you need something, ma’am?”

“I can’t just be
normal
!” Charisma shouted at the top
of her lungs, staring with intense hatred at the man in the car. “I’m Charisma
Kell—”

Charisma didn’t
feel any pain when the gargantuan FedEx truck struck her frail body and sent
her flying in the air nearly two hundred feet.

6.

Liesel avoided most of the bad traffic by
taking side streets, and by the time we reached the I-5 Freeway, the congestion
had broken up almost completely.

“What…” I started.

“Hmm?”

I just stared at her, having put off my
question for a good twenty minutes or so. I couldn’t hold back any longer.

“Leese… what the hell
was
that?”

“What?”

“Those freakin’ karate moves!
Duh
!”

“Oh.” She laughed as she pulled the
4Runner into the left hand lane of the freeway. “Did your wife impress you,
Cam?”

“Impress me? It was amazing! Where did
you learn to do that?”

“When we got back from Europe, I knew I
needed to learn some basic fighting skills, particularly since Hannah took all
my powers. A lot of mornings when you thought I was working at Uncle Tony’s?”

“You were…”

She nodded. “I was taking karate lessons
at this hole-in-the-wall in Wingfield Springs. It was just for a few weeks. So
I could defend myself.”

“Defend yourself from an all-powerful
witch? What’s a drop kick gonna do when she pummels you five hundred feet in
the air by just a flick of her own hand?”

Liesel smiled at that one, but quickly
re-focused her thoughts. “Cam, I didn’t train so much because I thought it
would help me defeat Hannah. It’s
gonna
take the
paint, and a whole lot of luck, to stop my sister. I trained to defend myself
against all the others who will try to keep us from getting to our
destination.”

“Like who?”

“Like… that security guard. And it’s only
going to get worse.”

“What is?”

“Have you put any thought into what’s
actually going to happen to us when everyone our age starts aging into their
forties and fifties, when we stay exactly the same? We’re going to be met with
opposition from here on in. Trust me. You’re going to be very happy I learned
some fighting moves.”

I crossed my arms and stared forward for
a moment. “Leese… I know… but why didn’t you let me join you in the karate
classes?”

“I didn’t want to have to tell you about
Hannah’s plan. Not until the last minute.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to give you a few more weeks of
peace, OK? I didn’t want you to worry.”

I shook my head. “Well I’m not going to
be doing much worrying if I’m dead in the middle of a bloodbath, now am I?”

“If there’s a bloodbath anywhere, I’ll
likely be dead, too. It’s not like our paintball guns will be able to fight off
anyone other than witches.”

“There you go with the plural again. How
many witches
are
there, Leese?”

“There’s… a lot,” Liesel said, passing
two trucks before pulling the car into the right hand lane. “I know of at least
three in California alone. There has to be many more out there, and Hannah is
bound to know of more. And it’s just like anything in life; some are good witches,
and some are bad witches.”

“Like in
The Wizard of Oz
?”

“Yes, doofus. Like in
The Wizard of Oz
.”

“You’re Glinda the Good Witch, and your
sister is Elphaba the Bad Witch.”

“Elphaba?” Liesel asked, dumbfounded.

“Nevermind. So what does this mean to
us?”

“It means…” She took a deep breath,
turning her gaze away if she was holding onto a secret.

“Leese… what is it?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you this until we
got there.”

“Got where?”

Liesel slowly veered from the I-5 to the
CA-14 freeway.

“Where are you going?” I asked. “We just
came from this way.”

“We needed the weapons.”

“We’re not going all the way back to
Reno, are we?”

“No.”

“Then where?”

I looked at the determination on Liesel’s
face, and I realized just how helpless I was in the current situation. It
reminded me of when I was a child, both back when I was a real child years ago,
and back when I was an eighteen-year-old in a baby’s body last April. I was
able to make decisions for myself in both of my previous aging conditions, but this
time, I was a blind traveler in the midst of a never-ending forest. Without
Liesel, I wouldn’t have a clue how to accomplish anything—how to find
Hannah, how to kill Hannah, even that I
needed
to find and kill Hannah. I would’ve watched my little sister and parents
grow a year older every day, until they passed away, until everyone I knew lay
dead in front of me, and I’d be left with nothing. Liesel was the key to fixing
this unthinkable problem. I needed to just sit back, shut up, and let her do
the talking and decision-making. I knew she wasn’t God, but I knew she was my
best chance for ensuring the safety of my loved ones.