Soap Star (5 page)

Mum told me I didn’t have to go to the studio the next morning. She said she’d ring in and that Liz would understand, but I said that I needed to go. I didn’t tell her that after this morning I didn’t think I’d be going for very much longer.

I just needed to get out of the house because it was so strange without Dad there, without him drinking his coffee on the way out of the house and leaving his mug on the gatepost. It was strange without his coat on the hook on the back of the kitchen door next to Mum’s and mine like it always had been. Or without last night’s paper folded up on his favourite chair. So I had to go even though I knew Mum didn’t want me to: maybe because she didn’t want me to, and even though I was sure this would be the day they would fire me.

Just then it felt like too much for me to be strong for her. I haven’t worked out how to be strong for myself yet. I think it’s probably best to try not to think about it at all and just to think about everything else. There certainly is a lot to think about.

It was quiet when I got to the studio, everyone else had been up early doing a night shoot before the morning rehearsal. (Minors like me don’t do that stuff a lot because we’re only allowed to work a set amount of hours a week in case it turns into slave labour.) Vera, the canteen lady, made me a bacon roll and a cup of tea and I went to the rehearsal room, hoping it would still be empty. But Brett was there.

“Hi, Brett,” I said. I was surprised how my voice came out, all small and sad; in my head I’d been bright and breezy. I didn’t want anyone to know about Dad going, I wanted everything here to be normal…until they fired me, that is. Brett looked up from her script and she looked furious, but the moment she saw me she quickly rearranged her face into a smile.

“Er, are you OK?” I asked her tentatively. Brett sometimes has these “artistic episodes” when suddenly she can just go off on one and anyone in the way will do as target. She’d never targeted me before, what with me practically being like a daughter to her, but I supposed there could always be a first time – especially with the luck I’d been having. And then I realised: it must be because she’s tried to talk to Liz about not firing me but she’d failed.

“I’m fine, darling, fine,” Brett said through gritted teeth. “OK, sometimes I wonder what on earth it is I’m doing in this flea circus at all, when no one takes a blind bit of notice of what I say. After all, who am
I
?” Her voice was gradually increasing in volume. “I’m only the person that everyone switches on to see, the one they come back to watch week after week – what do I count?” Luckily, just as I thought I might have to try and answer her, Liz, Martin, Justin and the rest of the cast for that morning came in.

“Brett,” Liz said with extra patience, just like next door’s toddler’s mum does when he has a tantrum, “is there
still
a problem? I thought we had resolved this.” Brett rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair, tossing her blonde hair so that the darker roots showed for a second.

“There’s no problem,” she said, making it perfectly clear that somehow there was. As Brett lowered her voice to talk to Liz, I took the opportunity to scoot past them and sit in the farthest corner of the room, hoping that no one would notice me and consequently not fire me. This plan would have backfired, mind you, when I had to start reading my lines.

“Ah, Ruby!” Liz gave me her shiniest smile. “I’m going to need a chat with you afterwards, OK? I’ve got some
fantastic news!” I looked at Brett, whose face seemed to have folded in on itself with anger.
Fantastic news,
I thought bleakly.
She’s going to try and make it sound great that they’re chucking me off the show, just like Mum and Dad try to make it sound like it’s the best thing ever that they’ve split up.
What it is with adults? I wondered. Why can’t they just admit it when bad things happen? Why don’t they just all agree that, actually, thanks very much, things couldn’t be worse?

“Er, OK,” I said glumly, sinking as far down in my chair as I could without actually falling off it. I waited through all of that read through and my two lines for Liz to give me the “fantastic news”.

The rehearsal went well. just like a normal day, really. First we did a read through; Just read the words through like we were reading from the Yellow Pages or something. That’s when the main actors ask questions about motivation, make notes on the scripts or change them slightly. Then we read again, sort of half acting this time so we save the best until we’re on set. It all went like clockwork.

“Right, that was great, everyone,” Liz said, clapping her hands together and bouncing a little bit so that her jewellery jangled. “Really felt the energy in the room today. Just before you go, I’ve got a couple of things I
want to say.” I felt my cheeks begin to smoulder with the beginnings of a blush. I couldn’t believe she was going to announce it in front of everyone. In front of Justin. I tried to look at him while I still had the chance, but he’d let his fringe flop over his eyes this morning and he was looking far too beautiful for me to be able to, so I just braced myself for the final humiliation.

“I want you to meet Danny – come in, Dan,” Liz said instead. My head snapped up and my jaw dropped. It was Danny – Danny Harvey from school. He looked around the room and, when he caught my eye, raised an eyebrow and half smiled at me. I was so surprised I just sort of blinked back at him like I had grit in my eye. By the time I’d managed to smile back he was his usual scowling self again. Liz dropped her arm around Danny’s shoulder and gave him a squeeze.

“Danny will be joining the cast for the rest of this series’ shooting, playing the part of Marcus Ridely, Caspian’s bad-influence younger cousin.” Everyone smiled and waved at Danny and said something along the lines of “welcome” and “hello”. He just about managed to smile back, but unlike Justin, who can walk into a room and just know that everybody loves him, Danny looked a bit awkward. He even sort of blushed a bit, which is something they would never believe at
school. Danny is really cool; he’s so not the sort of boy that blushes.

As everyone filed off for a quick break before filming, I made my way over to Danny. I wanted to be nice to him because he seemed a bit lost and I knew how it felt to feel like you stick out somewhere and don’t quite fit in.

“Hi,” I said to Danny. He sort of shrugged back a hello and looked at the floor.

“Hi,” he said, directing his gaze over my shoulder. I was disappointed; I thought he might at least want to talk to me here, where he was new and I wasn’t. It wasn’t like at school where no one talks to me very much unless they have to. But apparently he was still too cool for me, even here. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. At school he’s too cool for anyone.

“So, you never said you were coming on,” I tried again. He shrugged again and looked at the door this time.

“I didn’t know,” he said to the door. “You don’t know until late on. There were all these auditions. I didn’t want to say anything in case I didn’t get it and I’d look like a right plum, like Michael Henderson did when he said he was definitely going to be on
The Bill
and then they picked that other kid from
Grange Hill
…” He trailed off and looked around the room: anywhere, I realised, except at me.

“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.
Why should it be any different here?
I thought. At school the only time he’s ever properly spoken to me was the time when Nydia was off 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.

“So!” Liz bounded up to us. She does bound sometimes, despite being over fifty and quite heavy. Lots of her sort of jiggles about 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 he had 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 inside 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 series and build your part up, so that by the next series, when you’ll be a bit older, you’ll be ready to really 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 did. I looked over at Brett who was watching us closely. It must have been her; it must have been Brett. She must have talked Liz round. The problem there had been and Liz saying she thought it was all over, she must have been talking about
me.
Brett must have just got so angry 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 a bit 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. You know that Angel has had this crush on Caspian for ever and used to follow him around? 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, get you a few new items for the wardrobe, Ruby. A bit of lip gloss. I’ll have to talk it over with your mum, but just something a bit more grown-up.” I nodded, still dumb. “And so then we thought, wouldn’t it be lovely if Caspian realised 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.

What’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 actually have 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 together. And so after Dad went I was ready for it – prepared.
I was even a little bit relieved. In fact, the only reason I even went into work that morning was because I couldn’t stand the thought of being in the house.

“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 front 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
decrease
your cleavage?
I thought.
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 then there’s the whole nose and mouth placement and…and…and…

“Just as I thought,” Nydia said, distracting me just in time 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 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 do. Nothing ever happens to me.” I put
Cosmo
down and looked at her.

“Nydia,” I told her, “I’d do anything to swap your life for mine. At least
you
have a proper family that actually like each other. Your mum and dad even still hold hands when you go out…” Nydia rolled her eyes

“Yeugh, I know. It’s so disgusting…” she began, but then saw the look on my face and stopped. “I know, I’m sorry. 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 round here tonight. I didn’t expect to
see you all week. I thought you’d be ‘talking it through’.” Nydia made inverted comma signs with her fingers and did her Trisha impersonation.

I thought about the look on my mum’s face when I asked her to drop me round 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 – a 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 things really, have we, darling? I’m worried about you. About how you’re handling this…” I’d looked out of the car window away from her and watched the dirt-grey streets slip away from us 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 happened. You and Dad decided it and now it’s happened.” 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 come into it, 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, 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 security rug out from under my feet without thinking. So I’d just looked out of the window again and at the passing blur of traffic and said, “Nydia’s dad’ll drop me back before ten.”

“She’s feeling guilty so she’s letting me off all the ‘talking it through’,” I said to Nydia with my own much less-good impression of Trisha.

“OK, so let’s try to put the negative aside,” she said. “We should just focus on the positive.” Nydia tucked her
legs underneath her on her bed and clapped her hands together, her eyes gleaming. “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 which 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 towards my feet and I felt sick.

“I feel sick,” I said.

“But why?” Nydia exclaimed, her eyes wide. “It’ll be great. Your lips will meet his, he’ll look into your eyes and realise that, yes, it’s you and only you that he’s loved all along; he’ll chuck that stupid girlfriend of his and go out with you and you’ll get a two-page spread in
OK!
” she finished dreamily. I shook my head.

“He won’t because I…I
can’t
kiss him, Nydia. I have no, 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, and how can I
act
kissing him if I can’t even kiss in real life? And he’ll hate me for making him look like a fool,
and instead of mostly ignoring me, he’ll hate me for ever and my life will be ruined.”

Nydia looked puzzled. “Hang on a minute,” she said. “But when Ms Logan made us stand outside for twenty minutes before letting us in to get changed the other day, you said then that you’d kissed a boy! So what’s the problem, silly – you
have
done it before. You might be a bit rusty but—”

I cringed at the memory. It was true – at least partly. Everyone had been standing around waiting to get changed after hockey. (Ms Logan makes us wait outside a lot; she’s says it’s a life lesson, but really it’s because she’s gone off for a cigarette break. I’d like to tell her that she’ll
never
get a boyfriend when she smells of stale smoke all the time, but as I’m not exactly one to talk when it comes to getting boyfriends I’ve never got round to it. Besides, she’d probably put me in detention for life.) All the girls had been going on and on about kissing: what it was like to kiss a boy, who’d kissed the most boys and who was the best kisser. Of course Anne-Marie and Menakshi made themselves out to be the experts, acting all giggly and flicking their hair round like they were so cool. And most of the other girls said they’d kissed someone too, even if in one case it was just their older cousin at a family wedding. I knew
what was coming even before Anne-Marie locked eyes on me.

“What about these two?” Anne-Marie had said with that evil-genius grin of hers. “Let’s ask them who they’ve kissed.
I
would have refused to answer but Nydia still works on the principle that you should never overturn a gesture of friendship, even if it’s clearly a thinly veiled means of inflicting more ridicule on us. Nydia always thinks people are basically nice. Even people like Anne-Marie who have all the warmth and human compassion of a cannibal alien lizard from outer space. So of course she told everybody happily that the only boy she’d ever kissed was in her dreams, as if she was oblivious to the sniggers and giggles all around her. I was so horrified that when it came to my turn, I lied, I out and out lied to try and save not only my dignity but Nydia’s too, even if she didn’t know it needed saving.

“I’ve kissed a boy, OK?” I said. “So can we leave now?”

“Kissed who?” Anne-Marie demanded incredulously, looking around at the other girls with carefully staged disbelief.

“No one you know,” I said, hoping they wouldn’t spot that it was obviously a lie and put my bright red cheeks
down to embarrassment rather than deceit. “It was when we were on holiday,” I blustered on. “It was a boy I met at the ice rink. It was then, OK?” Anne-Marie raised one of her plucked eyebrows and looked around at the other girls.

“It’s a miracle,” she said archly. “Some poor dope actually locked braces with little Ruby here. I bet he’s still getting over the trauma.” Everyone laughed and Anne-Marie tossed her hair again, clearly loving herself more than ever.

“I don’t wear braces any more,” I’d said angrily, praying for Ms Logan to finish her cigarette and open the changing room door.

“No,” Anne-Marie agreed. “But you’re still really ugly.”

It was a painful memory, one I’d tried hard to forget, even if, quite clearly, Nydia hadn’t.

“I was lying, you idiot,” I told Nydia, maybe a bit abruptly. “So I didn’t look so bad in front of the others?” I squirmed uncomfortably. I should have told Nydia straightaway instead of just telling her I wasn’t ready to talk about my first kiss yet.

“Like I did, you mean,” Nydia said, obviously feeling a bit 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,” I told her. “But, well, I mean it doesn’t matter now, does it, Nyd? 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 to the ceiling and thought for a moment. “I know,” she said, holding up her balled fist. “We can practise 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 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 a moment longer.

“We could practise 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 many pink and lilac pillows.

“I know, what about when you have a rehearsal? It doesn’t matter if you’re crap in the rehearsals, does it? After all, that’s what they’re for,” she said. “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 realise that he’s really been in love with me all this time if I kiss like a cross between a vacuum cleaner and a turbot!” Nydia laughed so much she nearly fell off the bed.

“You’ve never kissed
anyone,
apparently,” 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.

“Nydia! I haven’t got time to write in to a problem page, and anyway, what with all the letters I get, my life
practically
is
a problem page. I might as well write to myself.” Nydia stopped, mid-rummage, and looked at me.

“There you go, that’s a plan. Let’s write to you and see what you say.” She was still giggling: for some reason she wasn’t taking me completely seriously. I buried my head in my hands and closed my eyes.

“Nydia! I can’t answer my own problems! If I could, I wouldn’t be here in the first place having a panic attack about the most important moment of my life!” Nydia sat back down on the bed and thought for a long moment. At least she’d stopped all the hysteria at my expense.