Hollywood Star (14 page)

I was excited about shooting it because throwing food at Adrienne could never be anything but fun, and apart from that it would take my mind off the things I couldn’t stop thinking about, like Danny’s letter and Sean’s arrival.

We’d done the first couple of takes which were really funny, and then we had to break while our stunt doubles took our places. (They put a wig and a school uniform on two very tough looking ladies who chewed gum and had scars.) Adrienne was having her yoghurt-caked hair restyled so I thought I’d get a glass of water from craft services (which is what they call the refreshments area on set).

I was standing, all covered in jelly and yoghurt, when this man in a pair of overalls who looked like he might be one of the lighting crew came over to me.

“How are you today, Miss Parker?” he asked, pouring himself a glass of water.

“Fine!” I said with a laugh, gesturing down at my food-covered self.

“Looking forward to the premiere of your film next week?”

“Um, yes, thanks,” I said, a little bit surprised because none of the other crew had ever asked me anything like that. Usually they Just told me to get out of the way and stop talking during takes. I looked around. Everyone else, including most of the crew, was busy watching the stuntwomen throw each other across a table laden with food. I wanted to watch it too.

“Well, must get on,” I said cheerfully, finishing my drink. “Bye!”

The man stepped in front of me. He was smiling, but suddenly I felt uneasy.

“It’ll be nice for you to see Sean Rivers again, won’t it?” the man asked me.

I hesitated. I didn’t want to seem rude, especially not to a crew member, because Jeremy always said it was important not to act as if you were a superstar on set, because no one was anybody without the support of the technicians. And apart from that he was a grown-up and I was a kid. Mum was always telling me to respect my elders and not be rude to adults. All the same, I wondered what on earth he, a lighting man, was asking me those kinds of questions for.

“Well, yes, Sean’s a good friend,” I said with a shrug. A cheer went up from the crowd around the set as Fake Adrienne landed head first on a crash mat.

“So it’s not true that he’s cut you off because of your betrayal and is only making an appearance on
The Carl Vine Show
because he’s been bullied into it by Art Dubrovnik? Are you saying he
doesn’t
hate you for ruining his life?”

I stared at the man. No one was supposed to know about the Carl Vine interview yet. Suddenly, I realised what was wrong. This wasn’t a lighting man. This was a Journalist who had sneaked on set to find me, deliberately to try and catch me out and make me say something about Sean.

“Leave me alone!” I shouted at him as loudly as I possibly could, thinking about the personal safety classes we’d had at the Academy one term. “GET AWAY FROM ME!”

I was aware of people running towards us, but in the seconds before they could arrive the man took a camera out of his pocket and a flash went off in my face, dazzling me.

“Thanks for the interview, Ruby,” he said with a laugh, before running off into the maze of sets and corridors that ran through the studio. The security guards chased him, but later Suzie said he must have known someone on the inside because he’d got out through an alarmed fire door – and the alarm had not gone off.

“Are you OK, Ruby?” Hunter asked. I had sat down with a cup of tea, yoghurt drying in my hair. I was shaking; I couldn’t believe that someone had posed as a lighting engineer Just to catch
me
out and try and make
me
say something he could use to upset Sean even more.

“Not really,” I admitted. Hunter sat down beside me and put his arm around me, which didn’t do much for my shakes, but did make me feel better.

“Don’t stress it, Ruby,” Adrienne said. “That kind of thing happens all the time. Actually you should think of it as kinda cool. They never pap B-Iisters. It means you’ve arrived!” She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I wish he’d approached me, I’d have given him a quote about Sean.” She caught Hunter’s look. “To protect Ruby of course. Poor Ruby.”

Suzie Blenheim came and knelt down in front of me. “I’ve called your mom and she’s on her way over. I know it was a shock and I’m really sorry that it happened to you here at work. We’ll find out how, I promise you. We take our security very seriously here, especially when there are minors being put at risk. When we find out who let that guy in we will fire them.” Suzie held my hands in hers and didn’t seem to mind their congealed stickiness. “Look Ruby, I hate to ask you, but do you think you can finish the scene? I
know you’re feeling pretty wobbly, but if you can carry on that would be Just great.”

The food fight had lost all of its fun, but I wasn’t here to have fun. This was work, work they were paying me quite a lot of money to do. I
had
to get up and get on with it no matter how shaky I felt. The show had to go on. Brett Summers, Jeremy Fort and even Imogene Grant would have said the same if they were in this situation.

“Yes, of course,” I said to Suzie. “I’m fine to finish the shoot.”

“Great!” Suzie said, dropping my hands. “Make-up! We need to freshen that yoghurt!”

But not even shoving Adrienne’s face into a vat of custard could shake the feeling of fear and uncertainty that the journalist’s questions had started in me. It was bad enough that he had asked them. But what if…?

What if what he had said about Sean hating me
was
true?

By Wednesday Adrienne had formally launched plan “Get Zach to Take Ruby to the Dance Instead of Lisa”. Which involved me sitting with Adrienne, Nadine, Hunter and Zach for lunch. I had no idea how me saying nothing
and laughing at everything Zach said even if it wasn’t funny (which it mostly wasn’t) was going to get him to take me to the dance. I didn’t even
want
to go the dance with him, or anyone especially, not after what had happened on the set. I didn’t want to talk to anyone because I didn’t know who I could trust. But Adrienne and Nadine thought it was hilarious, and as I was certain their plan was doomed to fail, I went along with it.

Thursday I had more scenes with Hunter. Just the two of us (and the entire production crew, and some extra security, but still) in the set of his house. During the scenes Lady Elizabeth was supposed to get Hayden to fall in love with her by being all fake sweet and fake vulnerable, and telling him that Sabrina had done horrible things to her – which wasn’t true. At the very end of the scene Hayden had to lean in very close to Lady Elizabeth and almost kiss her, changing his mind at the last minute because he is an honourable boy who doesn’t kiss other girls behind his girlfriend’s back, even if it does look as if his girlfriend has suddenly become evil.

“Cut!” Suzie shouted to my mixed relief and disappointment as Hunter’s lips were millimetres away from mine. As usual, I blushed. I didn’t know what it was about Hunter that made me blush; he was nothing like
Danny – they were as different as day and night. Hunter wasn’t my type at all, not even back in the day when I was in love with Justin De Souza and had a thing for blond-haired, blue-eyed boys with dreamy smiles. And most importantly, he was the toughest girl in school’s boyfriend, a girl who I called my friend even if she did scare me half the time. And we all know that no true friend ever goes after her friend’s boyfriend; it just isn’t done.

Still, every time Hunter was near me, whether as himself or Hayden, it played havoc with my skin tone. Maybe I was allergic to him in the same way I was allergic to horses.

“Ruby!” Suzie told me. “I love that you blushed when he went in to kiss you. That is so sweet. And Hunter, you looked really tempted to kiss Ruby then. Good work!”

Hunter looked at me and shrugged. “That’s because I really was tempted to kiss you,” he said sort of under his breath as he walked off. I stood stock still for a moment or two and looked around in case anyone, particularly Adrienne, might have heard him. And then I checked the script just in case what he had said was a line. But it wasn’t.

Had Hunter just said that he was tempted to kiss me or had I been hallucinating?

The thought of it made my cheeks burn all the more brightly and I stuck my chin inside the neck of my T-shirt as I headed back to the girls’ dressing room. Luckily it was empty because Adrienne, Nadine and the others weren’t on set. I sat down and looked at myself in the mirror and told myself a few things to help me clear my mind.

1. I don’t even really fancy Hunter. He’s Just so good-looking in such an obvious way that me blushing whenever he is around is a purely physical thing that I myself have nothing to do with. It is my body’s work alone – exactly like getting goose bumps or heat rash.

2. Hunter is Adrienne’s boyfriend and even if she would drop him in a second to date Sean Rivers, at the moment he belongs to her. It doesn’t matter whether or not he thought about kissing me and whether or not I might have kissed him back. Neither or us has a choice in who we kiss if we don’t want to be killed by Adrienne.

3. It has only been a few days since Danny and I officially split up. And I don’t properly feel like we have split up yet because I haven’t seen him when we haven’t been going out together, so I don’t know how to feel. And anyway, I still miss him.

4. Sean is coming on Friday and he hates me. I don’t have time to think about kissing anybody! I have to try
and work out how to make Sean my friend again so that at least something will be OK back at home when – if – I ever get back there.

It was that last point which focused my mind, and it was all I could think about for the rest of Thursday and all of Friday morning at school. I trailed around after Nadine and Adrienne, sat where they told me to sit, nodded and laughed at all of Zach’s Jokes and avoided looking Hunter in the eye, which as it turned out was easy because he didn’t look at me either.

But I did all of that stuff like a robot stuck on autopilot because inside my head my mind was somewhere else completely. It was racing, galloping, hurtling towards the moment when my mum would pick me up from school and drive me to
The Carl Vine Show
studio where Sean would be waiting for me.

When you know something like that is happening, something that you don’t want to happen very much because you are scared of it, something strange happens to time. It slows down and speeds up at the same time.

On a normal day you might not think that thirty minutes until home time was very long at all. But on a day when you have to do something you don’t want to face, something you’re scared of, you count every single precious minute that stands between you and your
appointment with fate. You stretch it out and slow it down, hoping that if you can Just concentrate hard enough you’ll be able to turn back time. Yet despite how scared I was at the thought of seeing Sean and the look on his face when he saw me, I couldn’t wait for it to be over too. I was wishing away the very minutes that I wanted to hold on to because ever since I had turned on the report on C! the Celebrity Channel and seen what I had accidentally done to Sean, that had been almost all I could think about. It had been the cause of my break-up with Danny and the fact that my two best friends didn’t seem to be speaking to me. It was the reason I’d been stalked by a journalist. Nothing had gone quite right since that moment, not even getting the part on
Hollywood High.

So I hoped that whether or not I managed to make things OK with Sean again, at least after I had seen him I’d be able to stop worrying about seeing him. It was a small comfort, but it was the only one I had to hold on to.

“So you’re going to Wide Open Universe Studios now, aren’t you?” Adrienne asked me as we walked out of school. “Can’t I come with you?” She had ditched Nadine whom she was supposed to be supporting in her soccer game to try and persuade me to let her tag along.

“No,” I said, forcing myself to be firm with her, which she really didn’t like. “I’m sorry, you really can’t come. It’s film stuff. I’m not allowed to take friends.”

“Are you meeting Sean?” she asked, looking at me acutely.

“Yes, I am,” I said, seeing no point in lying about it.

“I
really
want to meet him,” Adrienne said, her tone just on the edge of a threat.

“Well, you will at the premiere, when you’re all dressed up and looking even more beautiful than usual.”

“I guess,” Adrienne said, half pouting, half smiling. “Well, tell him all about me, OK?”

“I will,” I assured her because it was pointless saying that Sean wouldn’t be interested in her. She’d never believe it.

And then my mum pulled up at the curb and I realised that all those minutes between me seeing Sean were almost up.

This was it.

THE CARL VINE SHOW EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SEAN RIVERS AND RUBY PARKER APPROVED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

FOR SEAN RIVERS

1. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR NEW FILM,
THE LOST
TREASURE OF KING ARTHUR.

2. IS IT A FILM YOU ENJOYED MAKING?

3. WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT THE RUMORS THAT ART DUBROVNIK BULLIED YOU ON THE FILM SET FORCING YOU TO WORK WHEN YOU WEREN’T PHSYICALLY OR MENTALLY ABLE?

4. WHILE YOU WERE SHOOTING THE FILM YOU AND YOUR CO-STAR RUBY PARKER PARTIED HARD SO HARD YOU ALMOST GOT ARRESTED FOR DIAMOND THEFT. CAN YOU TELL US WHY THAT HAPPENED?

5. IS IT TRUE THAT YOUR MOTHER FORCED YOU TO LEAVE ACTING AGAINST YOUR WILL?

6. TELL ME THE REAL REASON YOU DECIDED TO LEAVE ACTING AND RETIRE FROM THE PUBLIC EYE.

7.
HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW THAT YOUR PRIVACY HAS BEEN SO CRUELLY INVADED?

8. WHO DO YOU BLAME?

FOR RUBY PARKER

1. THIS IS YOUR FIRST MAJOR FILM ROLE – HOW DOES IT FEEL FOR YOU TO BE IN THE FULL GLARE OF THE MEDIA AT SUCH A YOUNG AGE?

2. DO YOU REGRET GIVING AWAY INFORMATION THAT LED TO THE INVASION OF SEAN’S PRIVACY?

Suddenly, there Sean was, standing right in front of me.

It wasn’t Just him and me though. It was his mum, my mum, Lisa Wells, a whole load of people from Wide Open Universe and some Carl Vine production people, all standing around in the celebrities’ reception talking at once. Except for me and Sean that is. We didn’t say anything. We just looked at each other from opposite sides of the room.

Sean’s face was perfectly still, no hint of his trademark smile. But I didn’t think I could see any flash of anger or hatred either. He did look tired though, and no wonder because he had only got off a plane an hour or so earlier.

“So,” the producer said, “let’s get you two into make-up. Follow me, guys, and I’ll show you your dressing room.” As Sean and I did as we were told, I realised that the whole entourage of parents, publicists and goodness knows who else was coming too.

“Hold on,” Sean said, raising his hand as he noticed the same thing. Everybody fell silent. “We don’t need all of you in make-up, do we? If you don’t mind, I’d like a few minutes to talk to Ruby on my own anyway. We have a few things we need to discuss.”

Sean walked off alone towards the dressing room and, full of trepidation, I followed him.

Once we were alone I made myself look at him.

“Look, Sean,” I spoke before he could, “I know you hate me, but please believe me when I say that I am
so
sorry. I really, really am – it was a silly mistake. I had no idea—”

“I don’t hate you, Ruby, you idiot,” Sean said, and for the first time I saw the hint of a smile around his mouth.

“You don’t?” I asked him, amazed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Sean chuckled briefly before his face grew serious again. “When it first happened, when I got up that morning, pulled back my drapes and was nearly blinded by the camera flashes – the photographers had climbed up
ladders – then
I hated you. Until that moment I was really happy. I liked being anonymous, living it that little house with Mom. Going to school with almost regular kids. Being an almost regular kid myself. And when I realised that it had been blown wide open byyow? Well, I was angry. But I didn’t hate you for long.” This
time Sean’s smile was sad. “I wish you hadn’t said anything, Ruby, but I know you didn’t do it to hurt me. Of course I don’t hate you.”

“But I broke a promise,” I protested as if I wanted him to be angry with me, which I suppose partly I did. “I promised that I wouldn’t talk about you to anyone, and I did, on national TV, in front of twenty million viewers!”

Amazingly Sean laughed. “I know – that was a pretty radical way to break a promise!”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Sean, don’t be nice to me Just because you are a nice person. Shout at me, call me names if you want. I’m ready for it. I
deserve
it.”

Sean shook his head and sat down heavily in one of the black swivel chairs. He revolved slowly for one complete circle.

“No, you don’t deserve that,” he said. “Nobody deserves that. Anyway, like Danny said, it wasn’t really your fault. There are a whole lot of other people that want a piece of me that come first on the blame list. My dad for stirring things up with Art and trying to ruin my life with Mom, Carl Vine for asking you those questions, and the whole of the press who think it’s OK to go and camp outside the house of a fifteen-year-old kid and bully a thirteen-year-old on the set of her show. Those are the people I blame, not you.”

“Oh, you heard about that,” I said. “I didn’t say anything!”

“I know you didn’t. It must have been horrible.”

“It feels wrong that you’re being so nice to me,” I said. “Like I’ve got off too easily.”

Sean shrugged. “Don’t worry. When you get back, Annie still wants to scratch your eyes out.”

“And Nydia?”

“Nydia is worried about you, Ruby. She gave me a letter to give you. Their PC has broken and her mum confiscated her phone because she ran up a massive bill calling this boy she met at the auditions of
Totally Busted.
He lives in – wait for it – Glasgow!”

“Nydia’s met a boy! Cool!” I exclaimed, then I realised what he’d said. “You mean Nydia doesn’t hate me either? She’s still my friend?”

“I don’t think you’ve fallen out with either of them really,” Sean said. “Annie is angry on my behalf and said a few typical Anne-Marie style things in the heat of the moment, but she didn’t mean them. And Nydia is Just worried that the longer you’re here, the less likely you’ll be the same old Ruby when you get back.”

“I’ve only been here five minutes,” I said sadly, sitting down next to him. “How can I have changed that much?” We both made one slow revolution in our chairs.

“The thing is, Rubes,” Sean said, “this town can change you completely before you’ve had time to even take a breath. Trust me, I know.”

“That is true, I suppose,” I said. “Have you
seen
my mother?”

Sean laughed and nodded. “Your mum does look different,” he said. “But then again – have you seenyow?”

“Me?” I laughed. “I don’t look different.”

“Ruby,” Sean said. “Look in the mirror.”

Confused, I turned my chair to face my reflection in the big make-up mirror and looked at myself with fresh eyes. And to my surprise, Sean was right. In the few short weeks I had been here, the old Ruby, with her scruffy hair and misbuttoned cardigan, had vanished. The girl looking back at me now had her hair styled to perfection and natural-look eye make-up and a touch of lip gloss expertly applied. Ruby, the girl who refused to be ruled by fashion, was dressed in a mint-green twinset and white denim miniskirt with white low-heeled pumps. I looked like every other Beaumont girl. No, that wasn’t true. I didn’t look like Tina, who had her own personal style. I looked like a clone of Adrienne, only much less beautiful and, more importantly, much less comfortable than she did.

I didn’t look like me at all any more.

“Oh,” I said, my eyes widening.

“I’m not saying you don’t look good,” Sean said. “You actually look pretty cute. But you definitely look different.”

I turned to him. “But I am me, Sean,” I told him. “I look like this because this is how people look out here – you know that better than anyone. Look at you in your electric-blue suit and white T-shirt. You haven’t worn that because that’s ‘naturally you’, have you? But it doesn’t matter about the costume as long as you’re true to yourself on the inside.”

Sean nodded slowly. “You’re right, Ruby,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. I’m Just worried about you, that’s why I’m saying this stuff. I don’t want the same thing that happened to me to happen to you. But as long as you’re still sweet, slightly mental, totally cool Ruby on the inside – you’re right, it doesn’t matter that you look like brunette Barbie.”

I thought about “Tragic Tina”, a perfectly nice and probably very interesting girl that I had been mean to for no good reason except that it made my life easier with Adrienne. And I thought about how I’d been doing everything that Adrienne and Nadine told me to do because I was too scared to stand up to them and be myself. That wasn’t like me at all. Perhaps I
had
changed
on the inside. I thought I was Just going along with Adrienne for a quiet life, but maybe I was starting to become like her too.

“I want to go home,” I said out of the blue. “I don’t like it here, Sean. Mum’s gone all power-crazed and there are these two girls in
Hollywood High
who I’m letting turn me into a personality zombie, and I haven’t spoken to Dad in ages.”

“Then go home,” Sean said, as if it were that simple.

“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t just go home.”

“Why not?”

I had to think for a second. “Because I have four more weeks of shooting to do for
Hollywood High,
and there is no way my mum will let me drop out of that even if I could, which I don’t think I can because of contracts and stuff. And anyway, I think she likes it here with Jeremy. She keeps looking for ‘my next project’. I’m sure she wants us to live here.”

“But if you’re unhappy…” Sean said.

“I can’t,” I said. “Not yet. But when I’ve finished
Hollywood High
I’m going to tell Mum I want to go home.”

“OK,” Sean said. “I have just one other thing to say, Ruby, that I want you to remember.”

“What’s that?” I asked him.

“In Hollywood one minute they love you and the next
minute they hate you. And you never know when everything is going to change. So Just be ready and remember you can’t take it personally because whatever they say about you, none of them really know you. And anyway you have four friends at home who care about you, even if one of them thinks she isn’t talking to you at the moment.”

“Three friends,” I reminded him. “Danny chucked me.”

“I know, but Danny still thinks of you as a friend,” Sean said.

“Really?” I asked him, brightening a little. “Do you think he regrets finishing with me?”

Sean looked down at his feet. “Look, Ruby, Danny didn’t want me to tell you in case it upset you – but I think you should know. He’s dating someone else. This new girl on
Kensington Heights.
Her name is Melody something.”

“Oh,” I said, stunned. It took a few seconds for the words to sink in and then I realised what they meant. That was the something that Danny had been trying to tell me on his webcam. “You mean he didn’t chuck me because of what happened with you?”

“No, Ruby. He just met this other girl and he liked her. When he told me I was more surprised than anyone. I
mean, Danny was so into you, but this Melody, she is
really
into Danny. I think she was out to get him from the minute they met.”

“Melody,” I said. “After all the things he said to me I Just thought…Look, I know we’re only thirteen, but I just thought we’d survive me being away on holiday!”

“Well, yeah,” Sean said, looking a little uncomfortable. “She’s a nice girl, but Danny’s been different since Melody came along. And since the number one record. If it helps, Annie doesn’t like her and Nydia barely speaks to her. And no way is she as cute as you.”

“Well, OK, that’s OK,” I said, finally feeling reality kick in. “That’s good actually. I think that’s really good because now at least I know it isn’t anything I’ve done. He’s gone off me.” My voice cracked a little at this point.

“Ruby,” Sean said, “he’s an idiot. You’re a great chick.”

“It doesn’t matter, not really,” I said, shaking my head to stop the threat of tears. “We’re just a couple of kids. We’re not Romeo and Juliet, after all.”

“Thank you, Sean,” Carl Vine said, shaking Sean’s hand after we had finished the interview. “I really respect you
coming over here and addressing these questions. I know it took a lot of guts. I think the public will feel that they now know the truth and will let you get back to the life you want. Who knows, maybe the paps will even let you alone.”

“Thanks, Carl,” Sean said, switching on his light bulb smile. “And maybe next time you are interviewing an inexperienced thirteen-year-old making her live TV debut on your show, you won’t ask her questions you have no business to.”

“Ouch,” Carl nodded. “I deserved that, kid.”

“So,” I said to Sean after Carl had gone to talk to some of the production staff, “one last thing to do and then you get your life back.”

“Yep,” Sean said. “You and me, Ruby, walking that red carpet again!”

“It feels like a lot has changed,” I said sadly, “since we walked down the red carpet the first time.

“Well, a lot of things have changed,” Sean said. “Changing your life is easy in this business. It’s keeping things the same that’s impossible.”

Later that night I stayed up with Mum and Jeremy, David on my lap, as
The Carl Vine Show
aired our interview. I say “our interview”, but all I did was back Sean up and answer my two questions. It was really all
about him and I for one was glad about that. He handled it brilliantly, and no matter how much he might hate it, Sean was the definition of a natural in front of the camera.

“He is an amazing boy,” Jeremy said as he watched Sean talk about what life with his father had been like, the endless months of work, the cruelty, the punishments. And how Art Dubrovnik and Imogene Grant – not forgetting his good friend Ruby Parker – had helped reunite him with his mom and escape to a new life.

“And so talented,” Jeremy added. “It will be a great tragedy if he never returns to acting.”

“But he is still acting,” I said. “He acts every day at the Academy. Only now he’s doing it just for himself and he’s happy.”

“What’s the point of that?” Mum said. Jeremy and I looked at her. “I
mean,”
she added quickly, “what’s the point of having all that talent and hiding it away? Obviously, there’s a lot of point to being happy.”

“Good, I’m glad you think so,” Jeremy said with a dry smile, winking at me. “He is only a boy after all.”

“Well, girls are tougher than boys,” Mum said. “Isn’t that right, Ruby?”

“Sometimes,” I replied. “And sometimes they aren’t.”

“Anyway,” Mum put an arm around me and hugged me to her, “I thought you did really well and the best thing is that now no one can blame you for anything. All we have to do now is keep our fingers crossed and hope that the reviews after the premiere of
King Arthur
won’t keep the public away.”

“Even if they do,” I said, lifting my chin, “I know it’s a good film and I’m proud of it.”

“And so you should be, Ruby,” Jeremy said, smiling at me.

“Then go and be proud in bed,” Mum said. “You need your beauty sleep. It’s a lunchtime premiere so that means up at six for a shower. Julian, Cary and Simone will be here by seven to start getting us ready.”

“Five hours to get ready!” I exclaimed. “Who needs
five hours
to get ready?”

“Film stars do, darling,” Mum told me. “So get used to it.”