Star Power

Table of Contents

 

 

 

Starpower

RAZORBILL
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group
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eISBN : 978-1-101-15735-0

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emily

O
“kay, my future star, we're almost done!” Mackenzie Little-Armstrong whipped around from the front seat of the silver Prius to face Emily Mungler. “Just a few more Hollywood rules.”

Emily nervously twirled her cinnamon brown hair around her index finger. She was scrunched in the back seat between her two other best friends in Los Angeles, Cordelia Kingsley (aka Coco) and Evangelina Becks (aka Becks), on the way to rehearsals for her new movie,
Deal With It
. Mac was teaching her the cardinal rules of making it in Tinseltown, which were turning out to be more complicated than Lindsay Lohan's love life.

“Okay. Last one: Hollywood is very clique-y. It's like BAMS,” she added, referring to their junior high, Bel-Air Middle School, “but with waaaaay more ego.”

“So true.” Mac's assistant, Erin, who was driving them across town, nodded in agreement. Erin was twenty-seven, and she had green eyes and extraordinarily pale skin. Technically, Erin worked as one of four assistants to Mac's mother, Adrienne Little-Armstrong, the most powerful agent in Hollywood. But the reality was that Erin spent most of her days schlepping around Mac and her entourage.

“Let's review one more time,” Mac said, twisting her waist-length blond hair into a knot. “What does everyone love?” she quizzed.

“Confidence,” Emily shot back. “Even if I have to fake it.”

“Great.” Mac looked down at her iPhone and read from her notes. “What's the rule about hanging out with extras?”

“I can't be too friendly, or my star power will go down.” Emily winced. Mac's rules were a tad snobby.

“Perfection!” Mac cooed. “When can you gossip?”

“Never?” Emily asked, even though she hadn't meant it as a question.

“Trick question.” Mac tilted the rearview mirror to make eye contact with Emily. “Never gossip
unless
you need information. Then you give a little to get a little. You just have to be
strategic
.”

Emily's heartbeat quickened. She was an actress, not a spy. Besides, nothing she'd done here in Hollywood had been strategic. It had all happened by accident a month ago, when Mac discovered Emily at a premiere party. Back then she was just Emily Mungler, from Cedartown, Iowa. Now she was Emily
Skylar
—Mac, her agent and best friend, had assigned her a catchier stage name—and she lived with Mac in Bel-Air, one of the ritziest neighborhoods in the world.

“Just remember.” Mac turned to face her, her lightly freckled face stern and her light blue eyes serious. “When you step on set, you're entering a no-trust zone. Kimmie Tachman is live-blogging her experience as an assistant ‘producer.'” Mac made air quotes around the word
producer
because everyone knew that Kimmie's dad, who was actually producing
Deal With It
, had just given her the title so she'd see her name at the end of the credits. “Just because she goes to BAMS with us does not mean she's safe. In fact, quite the opposite.”

Emily nodded and thought about how her mom, Lori, would tell her to “just enjoy the now.” Her mother was always reading self-help books, by everyone from Deepak Chopra to that guy Oprah loved with the weird name. Emily tried to “enjoy the now” while she stared out at the palm trees. She hadn't even realized her leg was twitching until Coco put a hand on her knee.

Mac started again. “Oh, also—”

“Snap, Mac!” Coco cut her off. “Do you need a Yoga Power Hour? You're scaring Em!” Coco was always the first to rush to someone's defense when Mac got too bossy, which was why Emily loved her.

“You're freaking
me
out,” Becks said. She looked like a model but only cared about two things: surfing and her friends.

“We're almost done,” Mac insisted. She removed an invisible fleck of dust from her navy Ella Moss Collection dress. “Last but not least: Who is always, always, always right?”

“The director,” Emily said quickly. That, at least, was a no-brainer.

“Congrats, babe. You're almost in.” Mac flashed a devilish grin. “You'll know you're
really
in Hollywood when you're stabbing someone in the back or you're getting stabbed in the back.”

Just then, Mac's phone blared its Fergilicious ring-tone.