Star Rider (7 page)

“Nice wasn’t what motivated him,” Skye explained. “He can’t afford to have anything happen to me. Any delay in production would cost a bundle.”

“Oh,” Lisa said. “Your world is totally turned upside down, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Definitely. That’s one of the reasons I like being with you and your friends—uh, Carole and Stevie, I mean, not those guys.” He gestured out the window. “Your world isn’t upside down at all. It’s just the way it ought to be.”

“I always thought my world and my friends were pretty normal,” Lisa said, “but when I saw Caitlin take your water glass and announce she had your fingerprints—well, I don’t know anymore!”

Skye laughed. “That was a new one, I have to admit it. It’s going to cramp my style, too. I
was
planning some daring daylight robberies of local establishments, but now that my fingerprints are on file …”

A silly image flashed in Lisa’s mind. It was a picture of Skye, dressed as a cat burglar all in black, mounting the rose trellis of a local house. He was being followed by forty screaming teenage girls. She told Skye about her mental picture, and they both agreed it would make a career change to cat burglary very tough.

The limousine pulled into the driveway of Lisa’s house and drew to a stop.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Lisa said to Skye. “Thanks for the lift. But I’m really sorry about what happened. It was awful, and I should have realized—”

“Don’t worry,” Skye said. “It was worth a try. Living normally is always worth a try. Thank you.”

The chauffeur opened the door for Lisa, and she walked into her house. Movie sets, dressing rooms, special classes, and limousines were fun, but home was best and she was glad to be there. The limousine was gone by the time she turned for a final wave.

L
ISA TRIED TO
answer all of her parents’ questions about her day on the set, but what she really wanted to do was get to the phone and call Stevie. Parents were okay and hers were better than most, but what she needed was a friend. Besides, she was dying to hear about all the wonderful things Stevie and Carole had found at the mall.

Lisa’s parents persisted.

“You mean you really got everybody working there to touch that dirty horseshoe?” her mother asked.

“I did, and it worked,” Lisa said. “It made everybody laugh.”

“So, just exactly what did you learn in the so-called school today?” her father asked.

“Earthquakes, for one thing,” Lisa said. “I learned how to figure out where the epicenter is.”

“Well, that’s certainly an important thing for those Californians to know,” her father said. “After all, the entire state could end up in the Pacific because of an earthquake. No wonder you spent the whole day studying earthquakes.”

“Uh, Dad, the tutor was from Virginia, not California, and we spent class time on a lot of different things. For instance, I won the spelling bee. I also worked on math. The tutor showed me how to figure out square roots. My regular math teacher said it was one of those things you should use a calculator to do.”

“Well, the tutor was right,” her father said, conceding the point. “You should know how to do all those functions mathematically and then check your work on a calculator.”

“And did you get to meet any
stars
in the movie?” her mother asked.

“How about Skye Ransom?” Lisa asked. “I spent a lot of time with him.”

“No, I mean
real
stars,” her mother said. Lisa knew that what she meant was adult stars. Mrs. Atwood didn’t consider a teenager—even a multimillionaire teenager—a
star
.

“Mom, Skye
is
the star of the movie. Nobody else in it is as famous as he is.” She was tired of the questions and wanted to talk to Stevie. “Look, I’ve got to study my lines
for tomorrow, okay? And I’ve also got some homework to do. I’ll see you later, okay?”

Before her parents could object, she headed for the stairs and the privacy of her room. She settled in comfortably on her bed and reached for the phone on her bedside table. The tutor hadn’t assigned any homework, and the line she was going to have to memorize for the next day was securely in her memory. Although Lisa wasn’t certain whether they’d be working on the “Beautiful dog!” scene or the “Aww!” one—she was pretty sure she didn’t need to do any further memory work on either one.

“Stevie? It’s Lisa,” she said when her friend picked up the phone.

“Oh, how are you? How was it? Tell me everything you couldn’t say when Skye was there!” Stevie said, sputtering questions at an amazing rate—amazing, that was, for anybody but Stevie.

“I’m fine. It was fun, and interesting and incredibly boring, and exciting all at the same time. I’ll tell you everything, but first of all, I’m so sorry that I couldn’t come along with you guys to the mall. What happened? What did you do?”

Stevie was more than a little surprised that Lisa would even care at all what had happened at the mall this afternoon, and she was embarrassed that they accomplished
so little. “Well, nothing, really,” she said quite truthfully. “Now, tell me about Skye and the life of a glamorous star.”

“Did you buy anything for the party? I sort of worked out a list last night and I meant to give it to you and Carole because I thought it might help a little, but everything was so crazy when you got to the set—I mean Pine Hollow—that I just forgot. Did you make a list?”

Stevie had always known that Lisa was superconsiderate and superorganized, but this was beyond super. She just couldn’t believe Lisa was actually worried about the party when she was working so hard all day long on a movie starring Skye Ransom.

“Come on, Lisa,” Stevie said. “You don’t have to worry about the party. You have to worry about being a Hollywood star. That’s much more glamorous and important than a few hours that Carole and I wasted at the mall. Carole and I can handle this without you.”

Lisa was surprised by what she was hearing from her friend, but she decided it was just Stevie’s curiosity. “I took Skye to TD’s,” she began.

“I heard,” Stevie told her. “Three people called me and told me about it. It must have been awful!”

“It was,” Lisa agreed. “The worst part of it, aside from watching some people I thought I knew well behave like total idiots, was seeing how they thought that I had
somehow changed—that I wasn’t myself anymore.” Lisa paused and then went on. “I’d hate to think that some people I do know well might feel that way, too.”

Stevie got the message right away. “You mean you really do care what we got done at the mall?” she asked.

“Yes, I do. I want Colonel Hanson’s party to be perfect. I promised to help you guys work on it, and I didn’t like finking on the promise. So, tell me, what did you get done?”

Stevie sighed deeply. “Not much. We missed you and we needed your list and your organizational skills. We tried on dresses and earrings. We listened to a few tapes. We even looked at paper plates. But we didn’t accomplish anything. I don’t know how we’re going to put together a party for the colonel on Saturday.”

“Now I feel better,” Lisa said.

“Because you were missed?” Stevie asked.

“Partly. But mostly because you’re going to have to try to go shopping again and this time I can come along. That’s what makes me feel better.”

“Ah, the joys of having your cake and eating it, too!” Stevie said wistfully.

“Speaking of which, what kind of cake are we going to make for Carole’s dad?” Lisa asked.

“Make? You think we’re going to make a cake? Like with batter and an oven?”

Lisa recalled a number of adventures in cooking that she’d had with Stevie and Carole. One in particular had ended with a lot of gingerbread batter on the window of Stevie’s kitchen. Another had produced pancakes—instead of a layer cake. Those were fun times, with a lot of laughs, to say nothing of cleanup, but perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to take risks with the colonel’s birthday cake.

“How about an ice-cream cake from TD’s?” Lisa suggested.

The two of them had a good, long discussion about TD’s ice-cream cake versus the bakery’s almond torte, topped by TD’s toasted almond ice cream. They didn’t want to make a decision without Carole, but they did take the time to discuss all the advantages of each. Lisa’s mouth was positively watering by the time they moved onto possible decoration schemes.

Eventually, the conversation turned back to Pine Hollow. Lisa told Stevie every detail of her day on the set—from Jeanette in makeup to Jesse’s explanation of “break a leg.” She told her about school and rehearsal and the lights and the director. She talked about how there was so much waiting and then, how it was all over in a few seconds—until they had to do it again! She talked very fast, the words fairly tumbling from her lips, but Stevie listened to every bit of it.

“… and then there was the incident at TD’s,” Lisa
said. “The only good part about that was escaping in the limousine.”

“Limousine?
Tell
me,” Stevie urged her. So Lisa did.

When almost every minute of the day had been covered and Stevie’s curiosity had been satisfied, she told Lisa to call Carole and repeat it all. Lisa said she would. Stevie promised her that she and Carole would schedule another trip to the mall. They would come over to Pine Hollow after school, and this time they would all go to the mail—no matter what time Oliver let her leave.

Later, after talking with Carole for a satisfying half hour, Lisa scrunched down on her bed and looked at the ceiling of her room, enjoying the quiet. She thought about herself and the girl she had been yesterday—just plain Lisa. She wondered how being in a movie with Skye Ransom had changed her. Then, when she thought about her two best friends, she understood that one of the nicest things about being friends with Stevie and Carole was that, no matter what happened, she was still just plain Lisa. On that thought, she fell asleep, exhausted.

“U
P ALL NIGHT
practicing your lines?” Skye asked when they met in makeup early one morning later in the week. This was the last scheduled day of shooting. Lisa was a little sad, and a little happy to think that it was all going to be over soon.

“ ‘Aww’,” Lisa said. “Or is it ‘Beautiful dog!’ ”

“I think you did ‘Aww’ yesterday, along with Thank you’; it’s ‘Beautiful dog!’ today.”

“Stop talking or I’ll put on the wrong shade of pancake and make your lips crooked,” Jeanette said.

“You have to watch out for her,” Skye told Lisa, almost seriously. “She spent years doing the makeup for horror films. She’ll have hair sprouting out of your cheekbones in an instant!”

Jeanette grinned mischievously. “Do you want it curly or straight?” she asked.

“Curly. And I want pointy ears like Mr. Spock, too,” Lisa said.

“Hmmmm,” Jeanette mused, working hard to make Lisa look exactly the way she had looked the day before, and every other day of her life.

Then, while Jeanette put down her pencils and brushes to examine her subject, Lisa dared to speak again. “How come I’m admiring your dog today—as in ‘Beautiful dog!’—when I already saw him in the scene we shot the first day?” she asked Skye. “I mean, shouldn’t I have remarked on Maverick’s beauty before instead of saying, ‘Your horse is ready, Gav’?”

Skye smiled. “Seems that way, but remember, this is a movie. Although everybody who sees the movie will see you admire Maverick before you deliver my horse, we don’t necessarily shoot the scenes in the order in which they happen. Shooting a movie isn’t like performing a play. Everything is done in the most economical order, not the most sensible order. See, the filming is planned so that all the scenes that can be done in one place at one time are done at once. Also, they take into consideration who is in each scene. I’m scheduled for filming for these two weeks and then for another two weeks later next month. They don’t want me sitting around, going to
classes and collecting a salary for a minute more than they need me. It’s all very complicated.”

“And fascinating,” Lisa said. “I hadn’t thought about filming in those terms, but, of course, it makes sense. It’s sort of like—”

“Shhh,” Jeanette said. “I’m about ready to do the hair sprouting out of your cheekbones.”