Waiting for Callback (18 page)

I didn’t sleep the night before the
Open Outcry
shoot. Mostly, I just lay awake, worrying that I would look tired. Mum kept coming into the room and asking in a
whispery voice (being her, it was still pretty loud) if I was asleep yet. I even resorted to the relaxation CD that she’d bought me when I was doing secondary-school entrance tests.

It didn’t help. I just lay awake for hours, worrying about an enormous big red barrage balloon of (unsolved) worries floating up from my house. It was a disturbing image.
Also the ‘soothing’ voice was annoying.

My call time was a frankly cruel seven a.m. and the location was an hour away so that, combined with my sleepless night, meant I was exhausted and, more importantly (given this
was a purely non-speaking role), I looked
hideous
. I supposed there’d be make-up people, but they’d have to be miracle workers to cover up the purple shadows under my eyes.

The location was just an ordinary street in a quiet (usually quiet, not so much when an entire film crew shows up) bit of South London which had been cordoned off with huge red Road Closed signs
everywhere. In the script, it said that the scene I was in took place in the middle of the City in among glittery skyscrapers, basically streets paved with gold, but this was just a pretty ordinary
street with a school, an office block and some red-brick houses. Maybe they’d changed the script? Or maybe they’d just work some sort of film magic. There were about ten huge trucks
parked nearby and lots of chunky men wearing chunky black clothes and chunkier black boots sitting smoking outside the school hall.

The hall was where they’d set up base camp and it smelled of sports kit and damp and (oddly) bacon. There were loads of kids there already and it was really noisy. There were two hot
blondes at the door who looked scarily similar with their hair twisted up into messy buns right on top of their heads (which I only mention because it’s a hairstyle that seems to make other
girls look effortlessly cool, but which I seem unable to achieve without either looking like a cow has pooed on my head or I’m sporting a very small reproduction of the leaning tower of
Pisa). They wielded clipboards and had earpieces (which oddly didn’t get in the way of the hair) and had loud, posh voices and seemed to be in charge of all of us.

I filled in a form with my name and all sorts of details that they must have already had and handed it to one of the girls who didn’t even look up as she took it. She was too busy talking
to her friend. She had a real posh girl’s lisp, but, from the little I managed to make out, they were obviously still recovering from a legendary night out. (‘Thecily was
tho
pithed last night. It was hilariouth. Tham had to hold back her hair when she was thick all over hith coat . . .’)

My mum, who was all fluttery and nervous (why? Nobody was going to ask her to do anything except sit and gossip with all the other parents), tried to encourage me to eat one of the bacon
sandwiches that they were handing out at a long counter at the far end of the hall, but I felt a bit sick and for once the smell wasn’t doing it for me.

‘Well, go and get a banana or something.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘You need to eat something,’ she said (as she so often did).

‘I can’t.’ (I didn’t say that very often about eating.)

‘You should: it would be really embarrassing to faint.’

She had a point; I would do just about anything to avoid public embarrassment and there’s something about someone just raising the possibility of fainting that always makes me feel a
little peculiar. I went over to the catering table and joined the queue.

‘Hey, Elektra.’ I turned round to find Archie in the queue behind me. ‘So, are you nervous about your starring role?’

No point pretending so I nodded.

He looked good. Obviously, no sleepless night for him. He was just wearing jeans and some random T-shirt and a big parka, but the jeans were really nice jeans . . . Yep, Elektra, maybe
concentrate on his face. He’s too fit to look at for long: concentrate on the floor. Trip over your own feet. Pretend to be doing a small and interpretive dance move to show your inner
confidence for the shoot. Smooth.

‘Don’t worry, you’ll be great. Anyway, it’ll be over before you know it.’

He didn’t know how prophetic that was. I just thought it was sweet. Was there a chance that Archie was that rarest of combinations, hot and nice? Probably not, but he was definitely hot
which was enough to be going on with.

We got to the front of the queue and he collected three bacon sandwiches and gave me one. Boys were hollow. Not fair. I didn’t ask for a banana (obviously).

‘Do you want a drink?’

‘I’ll get them – you haven’t got any hands left. What do you want?’

He nodded at an apple juice and I picked up two cartons and we went and slid down against a wall to make our own little picnic area. I handed him the juice.

‘Bloody hell, Elektra, your hands are freezing.’ He caught them up in his. ‘Let me warm them up for you,’ and he folded them into his parka, warm from the fleecy lining
and from his body.

At this point, my hands might have been cold, but you could have fried an egg on my face. I mumbled, ‘Thanks,’ and sat there stiffly, utterly unable to enjoy the moment.

And it was a moment.

It took me a good five minutes to calm down from the whole hand thing and be able to string together a sentence. But after we’d sat there for a bit I did start to get used to Archie, like
some weird sort of reverse aversion therapy (attraction therapy?). And no question he was speaking to me. We were having a proper conversation. There were plenty of other girls there and most of
them were trying to get his attention (which was fair enough), but he was talking to
me
. It was all just chat about ACT and school and stuff and I was trying hard to reply like a rational
person while also working out whether he was sending me any deep meanings at the same time. It was good.

Stressful but good.

There was a lot of milling around going on. All the filming was happening outside, but the huddle of kids here for the schoolchildren scene were being kept strictly inside and didn’t have
a clue what was going on. Every so often, there was a sort of reverential hush because one of the celeb actors would come into the room and try really hard to look ordinary and we’d try
really hard not to stare at them and no one would succeed.

But after a little while I started to get a bit jumpy. I might not have had any lines as such, but I was the most important kid in this scene and I’d expected a director (even just the
third
assistant director), someone/anyone to tell me what was going to happen and well, if I’m honest, kind of make a teeny fuss of me. It’s not like I’d expected a
dressing room with my name on the door, but I’d thought someone would be checking out what I was wearing and whether my chosen ‘
age-appropriate casual wear
’ ( jeans/sloppy
navy sweater – basic enough not to distract from my own utter fabulousness) met the brief they’d mailed over. And surely they weren’t going to let me loose in front of the cameras
without doing something about my face. I knew the best actors were meant to be free of petty narcissism (really? Really?), but I’d be in
high definition
and on
big screens
. What
if I’d had a massive spot that needed concealing? That sort of thing could have messed up the aesthetic for a whole scene.

But nobody was checking me over, nobody was masking the shadows under my eyes, nobody was saying anything to me. I was just hanging around with all the others – the extras. It wasn’t
all bad; firstly, because I didn’t actually have a spot, massive or otherwise, and secondly because of, well, Archie. But I just had this worried feeling that all was not quite as it should
be.

‘What’s that mark on your arm?’ asked Archie.

I blushed – for two reasons – firstly, because the mark was where I’d scrubbed at my arm really hard that morning when my dad had noticed that I had
Elektra <3 s
Archie
scribbled on it in black ink, worse, permanent marker (Maia has a thing for writing inappropriate
and untrue
things on other people) and secondly because Archie
touched
my
arm when he said it.

‘It’s just a mark,’ I managed to say, concealing the tiny mental breakdown I was suffering as a result of The Touch and The Hands. ‘Erm . . . it was just my homework
pages for maths. I didn’t have my homework diary so I just, you know, scribbled it on the nearest thing to hand . . . which was my hand – well, arm.’ I prayed he couldn’t
see the faint outline of the heart as clearly as I could.

‘I do that too,’ he said and it took me a moment to realize he didn’t mean draw hearts on his arm. He was definitely being super friendly – if I could have stood to walk
away (and if they hadn’t made us switch off our phones), I would have texted Moss immediately.

‘Happy birthday for yesterday,’ I said, desperately trying to move the conversation on to safer ground.

‘How did you know it was my birthday?’ he said, looking confused.

‘Facebook.’ Oh, God, now he’d think (know) I was a stalker. Also there’d been some seriously wrong posts about how his life was going to change in all sorts of ways now
he was sixteen.

‘You’re blushing.’

Of course I was blushing. ‘It’s just hot in here.’

He raised an eyebrow and for one fleeting (and worrying) moment reminded me of my dad.

I looked around the room again, partly because I was not cool with all the eye contact without a script to hide behind and partly to see if there was any sign of someone coming to get me for my
big moment.

It took a bit of time for the horror of what was happening to dawn on me.

The Clipboard Girls seemed to be paying a lot of attention to a girl at the front of the room, even having her make-up done in an area separated off from the rest of us by a row of chairs. A
crew member’s kid? Whoever the girl was, it looked like she was getting special treatment.

Unlike me, because now I was being herded along with all the other kids outside.

‘Elektra, shouldn’t you be . . . ?’ began Archie but, before I could answer, a big guy with a ginger beard and an earpiece called out: ‘Can the girl in the big navy
jumper stand back a bit?’

Stand back?
‘Sorry? Me?’

‘Yes, you. Could you stand back?’

He really did mean stand back, not stand out.

The girl who was getting special attention was now talking – actually talking – to Daniel Craig and she wasn’t getting his autograph. This did not look good. No? Surely not?
Please
don’t let this be happening.

‘Quiet on set . . .’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

I can’t quite believe
I
was apologizing to them, the two blonde Clipboard Girls
who’d screwed up my movie debut
.

What was I sorry for?

Sorry for having a stupid name?

Sorry for not screaming out after the first take and instead just starting to sob silently by the third and final one.

Sorry for leaving it to my mum
and Archie
(I could crawl away and die) to suggest there might have been a teeny bit of a mix-up.

Sorry for not getting in the face of the other malicious, duplicitous girl called Elektra before she
stole my role
?

Yes, it did seem like a genuine misunderstanding and I know it wasn’t really her fault, but the fact that she was in tears too and getting as much sympathy as me was really doing my head
in. How had this happened?

Chloë Moretz wouldn’t have apologized – Chloë Moretz would have kicked ass. But then this wouldn’t have happened to her.

What are the odds of there being two girls called
Elektra
in a group of not more than thirty kids? Infinitesimal I’d have thought. But the odds of unlucky things happening
don’t seem to work with me – I mean, what were the odds of being called Elektra in the first place? How many parents look down at their tiny pink bundle of newborn girl and think,
‘Honey, let’s name her after a Greek woman who plotted to murder her mother’? And my middle name’s
Ophelia
– the unfortunate maiden who loved Hamlet, went mad
and killed herself. Upbeat choices.

Speaking of trauma . . . I was now angry, upset, still tired, still jealous and still hungry (I hadn’t been able to eat the bacon sandwich in front of Archie in a bout of paranoid fear in
case my eating wasn’t attractive enough). I just wanted to get out of there. I wanted to run away home and hide under my duvet. I definitely didn’t want to listen to any more lisped
excuses. They weren’t going to reshoot, my feelings just weren’t worth that much money and anyway they would have problems with the light if they shot any later so there really
wasn’t anything they could say to make me feel better. The nicer they were, the more I just wanted to
howl
. And all this was going on in front of
everyone
. They’d moved us
all back inside and that huge hall that had seemed so horribly noisy before was spookily quiet now as everyone listened in.