Ruby Parker Hits the Small Time

by Rowan Coleman

  “You might get a boyfriend one day,” Nydia said, trying her best. “I wouldn’t rule it out totally.” And I knew that Nydia couldn’t think of anything else to say when she said, “Yeah, and on the bright side, things can’t get any worse.”

  Want to bet?

  Chapter Eight

  Mum told me I didn’t have to go to the studio the next morning. She said she’d ring in and that Liz would understand, but I said that I needed to go. I didn’t tell her that, after this morning, I didn’t think I’d be going for very much longer.

  I just needed to get out of the house because it was so strange without Dad there, without him drinking his coffee on the way out of the house and leaving his mug on the gatepost. It was strange without his coat on the hook on the back of the kitchen door next to Mum’s and mine like it always had been, or without last night’s paper folded up on his favorite chair. So I had to go even though I knew Mum didn’t want me to—maybe because she didn’t want me to, and even though I was sure this would be the day they would fire me.

  Just then, it felt like too much for me to be strong for her. I haven’t worked out how to be strong for myself yet. I think it’s probably best to try not to think about it at all and just to think about everything else. There certainly was a lot to think about.

  It was quiet when I got to the studio; everyone else had been up early doing a night shoot before the morning rehearsal. (Minors like me don’t do that stuff a lot. We’re only allowed to work a set amount of hours a week, in case it turns into slave labor.) Vera, the canteen lady, made me a bacon roll and a cup of tea and I went to the rehearsal room, hoping it would still be empty. But Brett was there.

  “Hi, Brett,” I said. I was surprised how my voice came out, all small and sad; in my head I’d been bright and breezy. I didn’t want anyone to know about Dad leaving. I wanted everything here to be normal …until they fired me, that is.

  Brett glanced up from her script and she looked furious. But the moment she saw me, she quickly rearranged her face into a smile.

  “Are you OK?” I asked her tentatively. Brett some times has these “artistic episodes” when suddenly she can just go off, and anyone in the way will do as a target. She’d never targeted me before—what with me practically being like a daughter to her—but I suppose there could always be a first time, especially with the luck I’d been having. And then I realized: It must be because she’s tried to talk to Liz about not firing me but she’d failed.

  “I’m fine, darling, fine,” Brett said through gritted teeth. “OK, sometimes I wonder what on earth it is I’m doing in this flea circus, when no one listens to what I say. After all, who am I ?” Her voice was gradually increasing in volume. “I’m only the person who everyone switches on to see, the one they come back to watch, week after week. What do I count?”

  Luckily, just as I thought I might have to try to answer her, Liz, Martin, Justin, and the rest of the cast for that morning came in.

  “Brett,” Liz said with extra patience, just like my next-door neighbor does when her toddler has a tantrum, “is there still a problem? I thought we had resolved this.”

  Brett rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair, tossing her blonde hair so that the darker roots showed for a second.

  “There’s no problem,” she said, making it perfectly clear that somehow there was. As Brett lowered her voice to talk to Liz, I took the opportunity to scoot past them and sit in the farthest corner of the room, hoping that no one would notice me and consequently not fire me. (This plan would have backfired, mind you, when I had to start reading my lines.)

  “Ah, Ruby!” Liz gave me her shiniest smile. “I’m going to need to chat with you afterward, OK? I’ve got some fantastic news!”

  I looked at Brett, whose face seemed to have folded in on itself with anger. Fantastic. She’s going to try to make it sound great that they’re chucking me off the show, just like Mum and Dad tried to make it sound like it’s the best thing ever that they’ve split up. What is it with adults? Why can’t they just admit it when bad things happen? Why don’t they just all agree that, actually, thanks very much, things couldn’t be worse?

  “Er, OK,” I said glumly, sinking as far down in my chair as I could without actually falling off it. I had to wait until after read-through and my two lines for Liz to give me the “fantastic news.”

  The rehearsal went well, like a normal day, really. First we did a read-through—just read the words like we’re reciting from the phone book or something. That’s when the main actors ask questions about motivation, make notes on the scripts, or change their lines slightly. Then we read again, sort of half acting this time, so we save the best until we’re on the set. It all went like clockwork.

  “Right, that was great, everyone,” Liz said, clapping her hands together and bouncing a little bit so that her jewelry jangled. “Really felt the energy in the room today. Just before you go for filming, I’ve got a couple of things I want to say.”

  I felt my cheeks begin to smolder with the beginnings of a blush. I couldn’t believe she was going to announce it in front of everyone—especially in front of Justin! I tried to look at him while I still had the chance, but he’d let his fringe flop over his eyes this morning and he was looking far too beautiful for me to be able to properly stare at him. So I just braced myself for the final humiliation.

  “I want you all to meet Danny,” Liz said instead.

  “Come in, Dan!”

  My head snapped up and my jaw dropped. It was Danny—Danny Harvey from school. He looked around the room and, when he caught my eye, raised an eyebrow and half smiled at me. I was so surprised I just sort of blinked back at him like I had grit in my eye. By the time I’d managed to smile back he was his usual scowling self again.

  Liz dropped her arm around Danny’s shoulder and gave him a squeeze. “Danny will be joining the cast for the rest of this season’s shooting, playing the part of Marcus Ridely, Caspian’s bad-influence younger cousin.”

  Everyone smiled and waved at Danny and said something along the lines of “welcome” and “hello.” He just about managed to smile back but, unlike Justin, who can walk into a room and just know that everybody loves him, Danny looked a bit awkward. He even sort of blushed a little, which is something they would never believe at school. Danny is really cool there. He’s so not the sort of boy who blushes.

  As everyone filed out for a quick break before filming, I made my way over to Danny. I wanted to be nice to him because he seemed a bit lost and I knew how it felt to stick out somewhere and not quite fit in.

  “Hi,” I said to Danny. He sort of shrugged back a hello and looked at the floor.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “So, you never said you were coming on the show,”

  I said.

  He shrugged again and looked at the door this time.

  “I didn’t know,” he said to the door. “Didn’t find out until later on. There were all these auditions. I didn’t want to say anything in case I didn’t get it and I’d look like a loser, like Michael Henderson did when he said he was definitely going to be on The Bill and they picked that other kid from Grange Hill …” He trailed off and looked around the room—everywhere, I realized, except at me.

  “Yeah, that was pretty funny,” I said with a last attempt at a smile. Danny looked like he’d really rather I left him alone and stopped forcing him to speak to me. At school the only times he’s ever properly spoken to me was when Nydia was out sick and we had to do a chemistry experiment together, and then when we both got put on tea-and-biscuits duty at the Parents’ Open Day. And even then all he did for two whole hours was describe how to build an electric guitar. Like, big wow, he’s so interesting. Come to think of it, he never actually looked at me then, either. Why should it be any different here?

  “So!” Liz bounded up to us. She does bound sometimes, despite being over fifty and quite heavy. Lots of her sort of jiggles when she does this, but she doesn’t seem to mind at all.
“You two know each other already from school, don’t you? I wasn’t allowed to mention Danny to you, Ruby. He was determined to get the part on his own without anyone putting a word in.” She patted Danny rather firmly on the back.

  “I wouldn’t have put a word in,” I said before thinking. “I mean, it wouldn’t have mattered if I had or not. I’m not important at all, am I, Liz?” I looked at Danny, but he seemed to have hunched up his shoulders so much that his head had practically disappeared between them.

  “Oh, but you are important,” Liz said with a smile.

  “Danny, do you mind, I just need a quick chat with Ruby here …”

  Danny more or less ran out of the room like he couldn’t wait to get as far away from me as possible. I looked at Liz and waited.

  “Well,” Liz began with a deep breath, “I didn’t want to tell you this before, but we had a meeting about you the other day, Ruby—about where you’re going and how you’re developing.”

  I nodded, only just managing not to say, “I know.”

  “Well, we love you, Ruby. We think you just light up the screen!”

  Talk about softening the blow.

  “And so we’ve decided to bring your character forward through the rest of this season and build your part up so that by next year, when you’re a bit older, you’ll really be ready to get involved in some big story lines.”

  I stared at Liz and opened my mouth, waiting for something to come out.

  “But …?” was all that came out. I looked over at Brett, who was watching us closely. It must have been her; it must have been Brett who had convinced Liz to let me stay. When Liz said something about the problem and how she thought it was all over, she must have been talking about me. Brett must have just gotten so angry in defending me that it was taking her a long time to come out of it. Brett is a Method actress and frequently stays in character for a long time after filming is over, like she did when Angel’s mum was drunk all the time. It must be something like that. I wanted to run over and hug her, but she still looked quite scary, so I didn’t.

  “So, the scripts are being edited now, but I wanted to give you a taste of where we’re going with them so you can be as excited as we are,” Liz continued. “You know that Angel has had this crush on Caspian forever and used to follow him around? Well, we thought it would be fun if Angel decides she needs to show him she’s growing up now. We thought we might do your hair a bit, Ruby, and get you a few new items for the wardrobe. A bit of lip gloss, too. I’ll have to talk it over with your mum, but just something a bit more grown up.” I nodded, still dumbfounded. “And so then we thought, wouldn’t it be lovely if Caspian realized that Angel was turning into a beauty and—you’ll love this—gives Angel her first kiss! It won’t be anything heavy, of course, hardly more than a peck, but …”

  And that was the last thing I heard her say.

  Chapter Nine

  What’s worse than getting fired from the show?

  Not getting fired from the show. Not getting fired from the show and being told you’re getting your very own story line.

  “What’s the problem?” you ask. “You should be jumping for joy!” OK, try this—not getting fired from the show and being told you’re getting your own story line about Angel telling Caspian that she loves him! Still don’t get it? Story line culminates in Angel’s very first ever kiss—with Caspian!

  Which is my very first ever kiss with anyone. And it’s not just anyone anyway. It’s Justin, who I am so in love with that I nearly die when I look at him, never mind if I actually had to kiss him!

  I mean, I’m glad I’m not getting fired from the show. Of course I am. It’s just that when I was sure it was going to happen, it seemed so important, as if it was linked up with the rest of my life. As if Mum and Dad being together and me being Angel were all somehow linked. And so after Dad left, I was ready for it. I was even a little bit relieved.

  “I didn’t see this coming,” I said after I’d filled Nydia in on the news. She looked as shocked as I felt.

  “Hang on a minute. Let me look at your stars,” Nydia said, pulling her mum’s copy of Cosmopolitan out from under the bed. I looked at the cover as she flicked through the pages. “Teens who have plastic surgery!” was one of the articles listed on the cover. I wondered if that was why Nydia had taken it; she was always going on about having liposuction. And even if she was just joking, she read and watched anything she could find on the subject with dogged curiosity. It might have been that, or “101 Ways to Increase Your Cleavage,” although Nydia didn’t seem bothered about the size of her bust. What about ways to decrease your cleavage? After all, how am I even going to be able to kiss Justin in the first place if I can’t get close enough to him to make lip contact, what with the Breasts getting in the way and everything. And then there’s the whole nose and mouth placement and …and …and …

  “Just as I thought,” Nydia said, distracting me before I dissolved into a puddle of panic. She read from the magazine: “Aries—you’ll find yourself on a real roller-coaster ride this week as your emotions are pulled in a hundred different directions. Just hold on and everything will be all right, maybe even better than you imagined.”

  “Ha!” I said without much enthusiasm.

  Nydia tracked her finger down the page to her own star sign. “Gemini—nothing ever happens to you. Get over it.” She read it deadpan, pulling down the corners of her mouth.

  “It doesn’t say that!” I laughed despite my panic and grabbed the magazine out of her hand just to double-check.

  “No, it doesn’t,” she agreed, with a sigh. She crossed her legs and propped her chin in her hands. “But it might as well. Nothing ever happens to me.”

  I put Cosmo down and looked at her. “Nydia, I’d do anything to swap your life for mine. At least you have a proper family that actually likes one another. Your mum and dad even still hold hands when you go out …”

  Nydia rolled her eyes. “Ugh, I know. It’s so disgusting …” she began, but then saw the look on my face and stopped. “I’m sorry, Ruby. I know you’re having a tough week—like the toughest week ever in the history of your life.” She thought for a moment. “Actually, I’m surprised your mum even let you come over tonight. I didn’t expect to see you all week. I thought you’d be ‘talking it through.’” Nydia made air quotes with her fingers.

  I thought about the look on my mum’s face when I asked her to drop me off at Nydia’s instead of taking me home after I’d finished at the studio.

  “But I’d thought that we could have something nice for dinner—Chinese or something. What do you say?” She sounded sort of desperate and hopeful—not how a mum should sound at all. It scared me. “And then we could talk about things,” she’d continued. “We haven’t had a chance to talk about much really, have we, darling? I’m worried about you. About how you’re handling this …”

  I’d looked out of the car window and watched the dirt gray streets as we crawled our way home through the rush-hour traffic. “But there’s nothing to talk about, is there?” I’d said bluntly. “I mean, it’s already happened. You and Dad decided it and now it’s done.”

  I thought of Dad walking out on me in the garden.

  “What I felt didn’t matter, so I’d really rather just get on with things now, Mum, and try to forget about it, because nothing I say or do is going to make any difference, is it? What I feel doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  I looked back at her then and saw the look of sorrow on her face as she tried to think of something to say. I knew that I should just go home. I knew I should be with her and let her see that I was all right and that she hadn’t done something so terrible to me that I would never get over it. But I couldn’t; I didn’t feel like that. I didn’t feel OK. I didn’t feel like being brave and I didn’t feel strong enough to be there for her to lean on me. It was too much. Much too much.

  I was supposed to be the child. I was supposed to be the one who did the leaning on both of my parents.
But last night they had just pulled that rug out from under my feet without thinking.

  So I’d just looked out the window again at the passing blur of traffic and said, “Nydia’s dad will drive me home before ten.”

  “She’s feeling guilty, so she’s letting me out of all the ‘talking it through,’” I said to Nydia.

  “OK, then let’s try to put the negative aside,” she said. “We should just focus on the positive.” Nydia tucked her legs underneath her and clapped her hands together. “After all, you’re going to kiss the love of your life! Ohmygodhowexcitingisthat! ”

  I felt a sudden rush of adrenaline surge through me and fizz in the tips of my fingers and toes. Just the thought that the dream that sent me off to sleep every night might actually come true made me feel like floating a couple of inches above Nydia’s bed.

  And then it was as if I was on the roller coaster Cosmo had predicted, and my stomach plummeted toward my feet.

  “I feel sick,” I said.

  “Why?” Nydia asked. “It’ll be great. Your lips will meet his and he’ll look into your eyes and realize that, yes, it’s you and only you that he’s loved all along. Then he’ll chuck that stupid girlfriend of his and go out with you and you’ll get a two-page spread in OK magazine,” she finished dreamily.

  I shook my head. “He won’t because I …I can’t kiss him, Nydia. I have literally no idea how to kiss him! I haven’t kissed any boy—ever—except for Danny in the school play and that was just on the cheek!” I bit my lip hard. “What am I going to do? I mean, they’ve given me this second chance to make it on the show and I really have to be brilliant, but how can I act at kissing him if I can’t even kiss in real life? He’ll hate me for making him look like a fool, and instead of mostly ignoring me like usual, he’ll hate me forever and my life will be ruined.”