Hollywood Star (18 page)

It was raining in London when the plane landed. My mind was all muddled up and my stomach contracted as the plane taxied into the airport. I half expected to be arrested the minute the plane touched down, but then I thought it was too soon. Mum might have found the note by now that read, “Sorry, Mum, I had to go. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. Love Ruby.” But it would take her a while to find out any more than that.

And as for what would happen when she did realise what I’d done? Well, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. All I thought about was getting a cab, finding my way through the huge and frightening airport when all I usually did was follow Mum around and do what she told me.

Once I was on the plane I felt like my life had been put into suspended animation for those long hours. I didn’t worry, I didn’t think, I didn’t even care any more about how much trouble I would be in. I Just ate snacks and watched films, wishing that I could go to sleep.

When I walked out of the airport and into the damp London evening I felt dazed and muddled by Jet lag, and I was very tired because it felt like I hadn’t slept for days. I asked someone what the time was and adjusted my watch. It was just after eight in the evening. I went over to the line of black cabs and the first one in the queue rolled his window down.

“Where to, love?”

I had to think for a moment, then I gave him my mum’s address. After all, I had a key. I’d be fine on my own.

But when I got to our house I’d forgotten that I only had dollars and not enough of them to pay the cab driver even if he did accept foreign currency, which he told me quite crossly that he didn’t.

I burst into tears because I was tired and scared and a nervous wreck. Luckily the sight of my tears made him kinder. “Anyone who can help you out?” he asked me.

“My dad?” I suggested reluctantly, and he drove me round there.

When I got out of the cab I was nervous. This wasn’t exactly how I wanted to see my dad again for the first time in ages. Turning up on his doorstep a runaway and asking him for fifty pounds to pay a cab. But I didn’t have any choice.

I pressed the bell and waited. Dad opened the door.

“Oh, Ruby!” he exclaimed, hugging me tightly. “Oh, thank God you are safe. Oh, thank God!”

And then my dad was crying which made me cry again. And it took both of us quite a while to sort ourselves out and pay the cabbie, by which time the fare had gone up another six pounds.

And the minute I saw Dad all my nerves went out of the window. I was Just glad to be with him again.

“What on earth did you think you were doing?” Dad asked as he sat me down and handed me a cup of hot chocolate. I had heard him on the phone to Mum in the kitchen, telling her I was safe and with him. She must have wanted to talk to me, but Dad said, “I think it’s best if you calm down, Janice. She’s fine. That’s the main thing. Talk to her when you get here.”

“Your mum phoned me a couple of hours ago to tell me you had run away,” Dad told me. “She was worried sick, Ruby. They had the police out looking for you. They’ve only just found that you booked a flight home and that you boarded it safely. It had landed before they could get anyone to the airport. I was waiting here
hoping
that this is where you would come. I don’t understand, Ruby. This isn’t like you at all.”

“No one listened to me,” I told him as I sipped my drink. “Mum didn’t listen to me. I wanted to come home,
Dad. And for once in my life I thought I’d do what I wanted.”

“I’m sure your mum was trying to do the best for you, Ruby,” Dad chided me gently.

“But she wouldn’t
listen
to me,” I repeated wearily. “All I wanted to do was to come home. I didn’t want Hollywood, or film stardom, or any of that. I don’t want any of it any more, Dad. I’ve decided and I really mean it. I ran away because I was trying to get Mum, you and everybody else to take me seriously. I mean it – I’m through with acting.”

“Well,” Dad said, hugging me, “the main thing is that you’re safe and now your mum knows you’re safe. She was crying when I told her, Ruby. She’s coming back on the first flight she can. She’ll be here first thing in the morning. We will all talk then.”

“I’m sorry I was rude to Denise, Dad,” I told him, leaning my head on his shoulder and suddenly feeling exhausted.

“Were you?” Dad sounded puzzled. “Denise never mentioned anything. And anyway, I’m sorry that I haven’t called you more. I got cross and confused, but I hope you know how much I love you, Rubes, even if I’m not the perfect dad.”

“I loved that top you gave me for Christmas,” I told
him sleepily. “I’m wearing it – look.”

“It suits you, love,” Dad said. “Now try to get some sleep and we’ll sort everything out tomorrow when your mum gets here.”

“And you promise you’ll listen to me?” I mumbled almost asleep.

“I promise,” Dad said.

“But you have to come,” Nydia said firmly, trying to pull me up off my bed.

“No, I don’t,” I replied, yanking my arm from hers. “I can’t think of one good reason why I should go to the Academy’s Valentine disco to be a gooseberry. Anne-Marie will have Sean, you’ll have Greg, and Danny will have ‘Me-Io-dy’.”

I said Danny’s new girlfriend’s name in the same high-pitched squeaky voice that me and Anne-Marie always did. Nydia, while not actually befriending her, wouldn’t be openly mean about her, so she didn’t Join in.

“Plus, I’ve had the worst reviews ever written about anybody
and
I got dropped from
Hollywood High.
Why would I want to face Jade and Menakshi now when half-term’s coming up? I’m grateful I’ve been allowed time off as it is. The longer it is until I have to see those two and their cronies, the better. In fact, if I never have to see them again, that would be fine…” I trailed off.

There was something I had to tell Anne-Marie and Nydia that I hadn’t yet, something that I couldn’t quite bring myself to say.

“But you have to come!” Nydia said urgently.

“Look, you can wear this.” Annie Marie threw a red dress on the bed. It was one that Mum had brought back from Hollywood along with all of the stuff I’d left behind.

When Mum had arrived at Dad’s flat the day after I ran away, it had been strange to see her again because the Mum that turned up that day wasn’t the Mum that I ran away from. She looked like herself again, as if she’d left the Hollywood version of herself checked in at the airport.

“Oh, Ruby!” she said crossly, before crying and hugging me. “You stupid, stupid girl! I’m so sorry!”

We talked for a long time in Dad’s living room, the three of us. When I saw how worried and upset I’d made Mum, I realised for the first time how terribly dangerous what I had done was and how easy it would have been for something really bad to happen to me. And then I sort of got scared, even though there wasn’t anything to be scared of any more, and I cried. I cried and cried and cried. It wasn’t Just because I’d frightened myself, but also because with my mum and dad’s arms around me at last, I
could
cry properly
about everything that had happened to me. And a lot had happened.

I felt as if I’d been trodden on a million times by a million people wearing two million stomping boots. When you’re thirteen it’s easy to feel bad about yourself. If your skin’s broken out or your hair’s all wrong or if you haven’t got the right outfit or friends, it can feel as if the world is ending. But nothing could compare to the total and utter humiliation I faced in Hollywood. If ever I’m feeling a bit fat or frumpy or bored or grumpy again, I’m Just going to remind myself about that time. The time when I got completely squished and it felt as if the whole world was watching. Because everything that happened to me out there has changed me. It’s changed me for good.

And now that I am changed, I have decided what to do. After Mum and Dad and I talked they agreed to back my decision, even though they didn’t like it or agree with it, because they’d both promised to listen to me and what I wanted, and I would not change my mind.

Mum said she was moving back into our house with me and Everest and that was where she was planning to stay from now on, with Jeremy visiting when he can. Dad told me he was decorating his flat next weekend along with his so-called…with Denise and asked me if I’d like to help them pick colours.

Dad wasn’t even that cross with me any more. He said that probably if he’d been a better dad, he would have called me when I was in Hollywood instead of sulking. He said now I was growing up I had to realise that we are all only human – adults too. And he asked me if I’d forgive him.

I pretended to think about it for a second Just to make him laugh and then I hugged him tight.

It was a funny and a hard thing to realise: that Mum and Dad sometimes got things wrong. That all three of us had got things wrong recently, but that it didn’t mean we didn’t love or need each other just as much as always.

“No matter what,” Mum had said to us on the day she came back, “you and me and Dad, we’re still a family. That will never change. And if you ever think that either of us are forgetting that, then you have to tell us, OK?”

“OK,” I said. And that’s when I told them my decision.

“I’m not wearing that,” I said, looking at the red dress. It was one I got free after I appeared on
The Carl Vine Show
and it reminded me too much of everything that had happened.

“Oh, so you
are
coming then, if we can find something you like?” Nydia asked me. I was puzzled.

“Look, Nydia, you are a really good, kind and sweet friend to try and make me come to the dance,” I told her, “but I know you’d rather be alone with Greg – and that’s fine. I’ll be OK here. I have chocolates and a DVD.”

“Right, how about this then?” Anne-Marie said, throwing a pale-blue dress with diamante around the neckline on the bed. “This one would be
perfect.”

“Perfect for what?” I exclaimed. “Perfect for standing about on my own watching my ex dance to his own single with Me-Iod-y?”

“Listen to me,” Anne-Marie said, sitting on my bed and putting her face close to mine. “There comes a time in every girl’s life when she has to make a stand. When she has to show Jade and Menakshi, Danny and Me-Iod-y and the rest, that she’s still standing tall. That Hollywood chucked all it could at her and that, even though her boyfriend chucked her for some drippy chick too, she isn’t beaten because she is still tough and cool and ready to party! You
have
to go to the dance, Ruby. You
have
to show them that you’re still alive!”

Nydia applauded and I thought about what I had to tell them and hadn’t quite been able to yet. Anne-Marie’s speech might have only been a ploy to get me to go with
them, but she did have a point. I didn’t want anyone to think that what I planned to do was cowardly. I wanted them all to see I was doing it for me, because it was the right thing to do. Not because I was scared.

“OK then, I’ll go,” I said, feeling the knots in my tummy tighten.

“Oh what a relief,” Nydia said, hugging me. “This is going to be so cool!”

“Nydia, chill,” Anne-Marie told her firmly. “It’s a school dance, not the Oscars. She looked me up and down. “Right then, let’s get you ready.”

The Valentine’s dance was being held in the main hall of the Academy. Unlike the one that was planned for Beaumont which had had a decorations committee and live music planned, the hall was decorated with some disco lights and a few balloons that were being kicked around the floor by some boys. It was already full of people when we arrived and I found myself stuck in the doorway, not quite able to make myself walk into the hall full of students who I knew would all be thinking the same thing about me:
loser.

“Go on, Rubes,” Nydia said encouragingly, holding my hand. “You look great!”

But it was Anne-Marie’s firm shove in the small of my back that finally got me to move through the door.

I could feel everybody’s eyes as I walked into the room and I wasn’t sure if Anne-Marie’s arm, now firmly linked through mine, was for support or to stop me bolting.

“Be strong,” she said in my ear. “Nobody will say anything to your face because if they do, I’ll deck ‘em.”

“That’s a comfort,” I said to my friend, who looked like an angel, but had the venom of a vengeful cobra when provoked. “But it’s more what they are saying behind my back I’m worried about.” I thought about Tina. “It’s horrible to know that people are talking about you, even if you can’t hear what they are saying.”

“Just block it out,” Anne-Marie instructed me as she spotted Sean over the other side of the room and treated him to a dazzling smile. “Focus on being fabulous. So what if you are washed out in Hollywood – you still look great in that dress.”

“Ladies,” Sean said, greeting us as we approached. Nydia’s boyfriend Greg, who I hadn’t met but who I had heard A LOT about, was with him. His face lit up when he saw Nydia.

It was then that I realised what good friends I had. How many other girls would have forsaken being picked
up for the Valentine’s dance by boyfriends bearing flowers Just so that they could drag their sad and broken, rubbish friend along with them in a futile bid to cheer her up?

Suddenly I felt a bit of a wobble about my so far still secret plans. I wondered if I was doing the right thing after all? Maybe there was something to be said for just staying the same. Except that after what happened to me in Hollywood I wasn’t the same any more, and if I wasn’t the same, then how could anything else be?

Besides, good friends are friends whatever happens. And nothing could change that for me, Nydia and Anne-Marie, no matter where we were in the world. I was sure of that.

We stood around sipping fruit-juice cocktails for a while, Nydia deliberately not holding hands with Greg, and Anne-Marie shooting evil stares at anyone who dared even glance in our direction. I was starting to relax and even to enjoy myself. Greg was pretty funny and Sean was always entertaining, especially with Anne-Marie as his perfect foil.

I was on the point of agreeing to dance with the girls when Danny walked in, with Melody on his arm. My heart sank like a brick. It was the first time I had laid eyes on him since I had got his letter and I was disappointed to see that
he was still the Danny I missed. He hadn’t been avoiding me. If anything, it was the other way around because he had called me a few times on my mobile. But each time I rejected the call because I decided I was depressed enough without having to listen to him saying things like, “We can still be friends” and “It’s me, not you”. And besides, I’m only thirteen. I don’t have to be mature about relationship break-ups until I’m at least seventeen. So I ignored him.

But he was a lot easier to ignore when I couldn’t see him or Melody. Or him with Melody. And now here they both were, looking like the perfect Valentine’s couple, Danny in a black suit, black shirt and tie, and Melody in a red dress with black polka dots and glossy golden hair. Cow.

“I think I might go,” I said, dropping my gaze as Danny spotted me looking at him. But both Anne-Marie and Nydia clutched my arms and held me still.

“You can’t go,” Nydia said.

“Look, I’ve arrived and people have seen me and they know I’m not dead of shame so…” I tried to move but Nydia actually stood in front of me, barring my way.

“You are not going,” she said, biting her lip because she was not the most confident bossy person in the world. “Please, Rubes. Just wait ten more minutes and if you still want to go then, that’s fine.”

“What difference does ten more minutes make?” I asked.

“Listen,” Anne-Marie said, mingling a smile and a mildly threatening tone perfectly. “You’re staying till I say you can go – got it?”

“But
why?”
I asked. No one answered.

It was Just as Danny, with his relentless determination to be good friends with me, was bringing Melody over in our direction that the lights dimmed and the DJ put the first soppy song of the night on. My eyes met Danny’s and for a split second we looked at each other before his eyes turned to Melody. As they began to sway, other couples paired off, even ones who weren’t going out with each other, and I felt like I was the only girl in the whole world who had no one to dance with on Valentine’s day.

“You can dance with Sean if you like,” Anne-Marie offered as Sean swept her by.

“No,” I shook my head. “I’m fine. You two dance. I’m waiting for my ten minutes to be up.”

As they slowly turned around, I caught Nydia smiling at Anne-Marie and I couldn’t think what they found so funny about their best friend standing about, chucked and alone on Valentine’s night.

That was when I felt the tap on my shoulder.

I turned round.

My jaw dropped and if I hadn’t been rigid with shock I would have fainted.

Hunter was standing before me in a tuxedo and bow tie holding a red rose in his hand.

“Ruby, may I have this dance?” he asked me, offering me the rose.

“May you…I mean…is it…? Are you…Hunter?” I struggled to speak because he was the very last person in the whole world that I expected to see here at this precise moment and for a second I feared that I had gone barking mad.

“You’re
here,”
I said in disbelief.

“Yes, I’m here,” Hunter told me with a slow smile. “Because when I say I’m taking a girl to a Valentine’s dance, I mean it, even if I have to cross the Atlantic to do it.” He grinned at me. “And because it just so happened that the studio is bringing some of the cast over to promote the show here. When I found out, I asked my mom if we could come a few days early and luckily for me she was happy to spend an extra weekend shopping in London.”

“I can’t believe it!” I said, starting to laugh. I took the rose from Hunter’s hand. “But I’m glad you’re here, Hunter. I’m really, really pleased to see you.”

“Does that mean you’ll dance with me?” Hunter asked again. “Or should we stand here all night so that all your schoolfriends can stare at us?”

“Let’s dance,” I said happily.

Hunter was right; everyone was watching us, but this time I didn’t care. This time I wanted them to watch me because I was the only girl who was dancing with a mysterious, handsome stranger. It was like a dream. No, better than that, it was like the end of a film and I was the heroine.

Then I saw Nydia and Anne-Marie’s faces and I knew that was why they had been so keen to get me to come to the dance. They had known about Hunter’s arrival all along.

I swirled around with Hunter to the slow dances and was twirled around by him to the quick ones until I was giddy. Jade and Menakshi looked completely disgusted, which was good enough, but even better, nobody in the UK knew who Hunter was yet. So right now we could stop being Ruby Parker Failed Actress and Hunter Blake Rising Superstar and just be Ruby and Hunter, two kids at the school disco.

Hunter had gone to get me some juice when Anne-Marie dug me in the ribs and whispered in my ear, “Look at Danny.”