Ruby Parker Hits the Small Time (7 page)

“Yeah, that was pretty funny,” I said with a last attempt at a smile. Danny looked like he'd really rather I left him alone and stopped forcing him to speak to me. At school the only times he's ever properly spoken to me was when Nydia was out sick and we had to do a chemistry experiment together, and then when we both got put on tea-and-biscuits duty at the Parents' Open Day. And even then all he did for two whole hours was describe how to build an electric guitar. Like, big wow, he's so interesting. Come to think of it, he never actually looked at me then, either. Why should it be any different here?

“So!” Liz bounded up to us. She does bound sometimes, despite being over fifty and quite heavy. Lots of her sort of jiggles when she does this, but she doesn't seem to mind at all. “You two know each other already from school, don't you? I wasn't allowed to mention Danny to you, Ruby. He was determined to get the part on his own without anyone putting a word in.” She patted Danny rather firmly on the back.

“I wouldn't have put a word in,” I said before thinking. “I mean, it wouldn't have mattered if I had or not. I'm not important at all, am I, Liz?” I looked at Danny, but he seemed to have hunched up his shoulders so much that his head had practically disappeared between them.

“Oh, but you
are
important,” Liz said with a smile.

“Danny, do you mind, I just need a quick chat with Ruby here …”

Danny more or less ran out of the room like he couldn't wait to get as far away from me as possible. I looked at Liz and waited.

“Well,” Liz began with a deep breath, “I didn't want to tell you this before, but we had a meeting about you the other day, Ruby—about where you're going and how you're developing.”

I nodded, only just managing not to say, “I know.”

“Well, we love you, Ruby. We think you just light up the screen!”

Talk about softening the blow.

“And so we've decided to bring your character forward through the rest of this season and build your part up so that by next year, when you're a bit older, you'll really be ready to get involved in some big story lines.”

I stared at Liz and opened my mouth, waiting for something to come out.

“But …?” was all that came out. I looked over at Brett, who was watching us closely. It must have been her; it must have been Brett who had convinced Liz to let me stay. When Liz said something about the problem and how she thought it was all over, she must have been talking about
me
. Brett must have just gotten so angry in defending me that it was taking her a long time to come out of it. Brett is a Method actress and frequently stays in character for a long time after filming is over, like she did when Angel's mum was drunk all the time. It must be something like that. I wanted to run over and hug her, but she still looked quite scary, so I didn't.

“So, the scripts are being edited now, but I wanted to give you a taste of where we're going with them so you can be as excited as we are,” Liz continued. “You know that Angel has had this crush on Caspian forever and used to follow him around? Well, we thought it would be fun if Angel decides she needs to show him she's growing up now. We thought we might do your hair a bit, Ruby, and get you a few new items for the wardrobe. A bit of lip gloss, too. I'll have to talk it over with your mum, but just something a bit more grown up.” I nodded, still dumbfounded. “And so then we thought, wouldn't it be lovely if Caspian realized that Angel was turning into a beauty
and—
you'll love this—gives Angel her first kiss! It won't be anything heavy, of course, hardly more than a peck, but …”

And that was the last thing I heard her say.

Chapter Nine

W
hat's worse than getting fired from the show?

Not
getting fired from the show. Not getting fired from the show and being told you're getting your very own story line.

“What's the problem?” you ask. “You should be jumping for joy!” OK, try this—
not
getting fired from the show and being told you're getting your own story line about Angel telling Caspian that she loves him! Still don't get it? Story line culminates in Angel's
very
first ever kiss
—with Caspian!

Which is
my very first ever kiss
with
anyone
. And it's
not
just anyone anyway. It's
Justin
, who I am so in love with that I nearly
die
when I look at him, never mind if I actually had to
kiss
him!

I mean, I'm glad I'm not getting fired from the show. Of course I am. It's just that when I was sure it was going to happen, it seemed so important, as if it was linked up with the rest of my life. As if Mum and Dad being together and me being Angel were all somehow linked. And so after Dad left, I was ready for it. I was even a little bit relieved.

“I didn't see this coming,” I said after I'd filled Nydia in on the news. She looked as shocked as I felt.

“Hang on a minute. Let me look at your stars,” Nydia said, pulling her mum's copy of
Cosmopolitan
out from under the bed. I looked at the cover as she flicked through the pages. “Teens who have plastic surgery!” was one of the articles listed on the cover. I wondered if that was why Nydia had taken it; she was always going on about having liposuction. And even if she
was
just joking, she read and watched anything she could find on the subject with dogged curiosity. It might have been that, or “101 Ways to Increase Your Cleavage,” although Nydia didn't seem bothered about the size of her bust. What about ways to decrease your cleavage? After all, how am I even going to be able to kiss Justin in the first place if I can't get close enough to him to make lip contact, what with the Breasts getting in the way and everything. And then there's the whole nose and mouth placement and …and …and …

“Just as I thought,” Nydia said, distracting me before I dissolved into a puddle of panic. She read from the magazine: “Aries—you'll find yourself on a real roller-coaster ride this week as your emotions are pulled in a hundred different directions. Just hold on and everything will be all right, maybe even better than you imagined.”

“Ha!” I said without much enthusiasm.

Nydia tracked her finger down the page to her own star sign. “Gemini—nothing ever happens to you. Get over it.” She read it deadpan, pulling down the corners of her mouth.

“It doesn't say that!” I laughed despite my panic and grabbed the magazine out of her hand just to double-check.

“No, it doesn't,” she agreed, with a sigh. She crossed her legs and propped her chin in her hands. “But it might as well. Nothing ever happens to me.”

I put
Cosmo
down and looked at her. “Nydia, I'd do anything to swap your life for mine. At least
you
have a proper family that actually likes one another. Your mum and dad even still hold hands when you go out …”

Nydia rolled her eyes. “Ugh, I know. It's so disgusting …” she began, but then saw the look on my face and stopped. “I'm sorry, Ruby. I know you're having a tough week—like the toughest week ever in the history of your life.” She thought for a moment. “Actually, I'm surprised your mum even let you come over tonight. I didn't expect to see you all week. I thought you'd be ‘talking it through.'” Nydia made air quotes with her fingers.

I thought about the look on my mum's face when I asked her to drop me off at Nydia's instead of taking me home after I'd finished at the studio.

“But I'd thought that we could have something nice for dinner—Chinese or something. What do you say?” She sounded sort of desperate and hopeful—not how a mum should sound at all. It scared me. “And then we could talk about things,” she'd continued. “We haven't had a chance to talk about much really, have we, darling? I'm worried about you. About how you're handling this …”

I'd looked out of the car window and watched the dirt gray streets as we crawled our way home through the rush-hour traffic. “But there's nothing to talk about, is there?” I'd said bluntly. “I mean, it's already happened. You and Dad decided it and now it's done.”

I thought of Dad walking out on me in the garden.

“What I felt didn't matter, so I'd really rather just get
on
with things now, Mum, and try to forget about it, because nothing I say or do is going to make any difference, is it? What I feel doesn't really matter, does it?”

I looked back at her then and saw the look of sorrow on her face as she tried to think of something to say. I knew that I should just go home. I knew I should be with her and let her see that I was all right and that she hadn't done something
so
terrible to me that I would never get over it. But I couldn't; I didn't feel like that. I didn't feel OK. I didn't feel like being brave and I didn't feel strong enough to be there for
her
to lean on
me
. It was too much.
Much
too much.

I
was supposed to be the child.
I
was supposed to be the one who did the leaning on both of my parents. But last night they had just pulled that rug out from under my feet without thinking.

So I'd just looked out the window again at the passing blur of traffic and said, “Nydia's dad will drive me home before ten.”

“She's feeling guilty, so she's letting me out of all the ‘talking it through,'” I said to Nydia.

“OK, then let's try to put the negative aside,” she said. “We should just focus on the positive.” Nydia tucked her legs underneath her and clapped her hands together. “After all, you're going to kiss the love of your life!
Ohmygodhowexcitingisthat!
”

I felt a sudden rush of adrenaline surge through me and fizz in the tips of my fingers and toes. Just the thought that the dream that sent me off to sleep every night might actually come true made me feel like floating a couple of inches above Nydia's bed.

And then it was as if I was on the roller coaster
Cosmo
had predicted, and my stomach plummeted toward my feet.

“I feel sick,” I said.

“Why?” Nydia asked. “It'll be great. Your lips will meet his and he'll look into your eyes and realize that, yes, it's you and only you that he's loved all along. Then he'll chuck that stupid girlfriend of his and go out with you and you'll get a two-page spread in
OK
magazine,” she finished dreamily.

I shook my head. “He won't because I …I
can't
kiss him, Nydia. I have literally no idea
how
to kiss him! I haven't kissed
any
boy—
ever
—except for Danny in the school play and that was just on the cheek!” I bit my lip hard. “What am I going to do? I mean, they've given me this second chance to make it on the show and I really have to be brilliant, but how can I
act
at kissing him if I can't even kiss in real life? He'll hate me for making him look like a fool, and instead of mostly ignoring me like usual, he'll hate me forever and my life will be ruined.”

Nydia looked puzzled. “Hang on a minute. You said you kissed that guy you met on holiday. You said so when we were all talking about kissing in the locker room last term, remember? So what's the problem, silly? You
have
done it before. You might be a bit rusty, but—”

“I was lying, you idiot,” I told Nydia, maybe too abruptly, “so I didn't look so bad in front of Anne-Marie. She knows everything about kissing.” I squirmed uncomfortably.

“Like how I looked bad, you mean,” Nydia said, obviously feeling hurt that I hadn't told her the truth at the time. “So
that
was why you were so cagey about the details. You didn't have any.”

I gave her my best apologetic look. “I'm sorry, Nyd,” I told her. “But, well, it doesn't matter now, does it? The point is, I haven't kissed anyone ever and I don't know what to do!”

Nydia gave me the same look she gives her brothers when they've been especially irritating, and then she rolled her eyes and thought for a moment. “I know,” she said, holding up her balled fist. “We can practice on the back of our hands!”

I looked at the back of my hand and made a “yuck” face. “How are the backs of our hands anything like Justin's lips?” I asked her. “Only kids try snogging the backs of their hands! Anyway, slobbering all over my own hand isn't going to give me any tips. It's just going to make me feel icky.”

Nydia bit her lip and thought for a moment longer. “We could practice on the back of each other's hands?” she suggested mischievously.

I picked up one of her pillows and threw it at her.

“Nydia! Don't be so disgusting!”

She laughed and flopped back against her pillows. “I know! What about when you have rehearsal?” she asked. “It doesn't matter if you're crap in the rehearsal, does it? After all, that's what they're for. You can rehearse your kiss, and by the time you come to shoot it for real, you'll be a pro.”

I shook my head and sighed with exasperation.

“First of all, we never actually rehearse things like kisses; we leave them until filming so they look all spontaneous and fresh. Second of all, I have to be brilliant the
very first
time I kiss him, not after a hundred takes. He's not going to realize that he's really been in love with me all this time if I kiss like a cross between a vacuum cleaner and a fish!”

Nydia laughed so much she nearly fell off the bed. “You've never kissed
anyone
,” she said once she got her breath back, “so how would you know
what
you kiss like?”

“It's a wild guess,” I told her. She was still laughing. “Nydia, pull yourself together and think of something! I really need your help here!”

Finally, after several deep breaths, she calmed down and picked up her latest copy of
Elle Girl
for inspiration. “I know! How about we write in to the problem page here and ask them. I'll get some paper,” she said, and before I could comment she had leaped off the bed and begun rummaging around under the mess that was her desk. I considered banging my head against her bedroom wall.