Almost Famous, a Talent Novel

by Zoey Dean

  Emily’s mind was spinning with all the ways she needed to be a better Emily. She peeked at Mac’s screen and read the notes thus far:1. Start reading scripts—get E copies of Little Miss Hamlet and Running in Alaska.

  2. Talk to Valerie Waters—training regimen? Too soon?

  3. Remind A to talk to Warner Bros.

  4. Have generals with the top 20 casting directors. E has to meet Sheila Darrow!

  5. Headshots—is Scarlett’s photographer still on Abbott-Kinney?

  6. Consult with Xochi—branding her image.

  7. Hire a PR agency—call Cardammon re: Lindsy Smith-Zelman.

  8. Acting class. Is Larry Moss taking new students?

  9. Authenticity!

  While Mac was busy taking notes and Adrienne was fidgeting with her BlackBerry, Emily furtively held up her iPhone and took a picture of Jake. She couldn’t wait to show it to Paige, as part of her online L.A. scrap-book.

  Mac stopped sipping her smoothie and shot Emily a don’t do that again stare.

  Emily shrugged.

  “No, seriously, sweetie,” Mac said, speaking for the first time that breakfast. “If you want to fit in here, you cannot get excited every time you see a celeb, okay?”

  “Well, she can get excited, Mac,” Adrienne corrected her. “She just can’t play paparazzi.”

  “The only stars you can get excited about are the cult heroes,” Mac said, as though it were common knowledge. She took a sip of her smoothie. “Quentin Tarantino, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep—you know what I mean?”

  “Even PSH is too mainstream,” Adrienne observed, fluffing her reddish blond bob, “but definitely Quentin.”

  Emily couldn’t believe this mother-daughter duo were sitting at a table arguing about how much enthusiasm you could show when you saw a real, live movie star.

  “Got it,” Emily said with a brisk nod, wanting to end this lecture already.

  Adrienne took one last sip of her cappuccino and dropped her BlackBerry into her alligator-skin Birkin bag. “I love your energy,” Adrienne sighed wistfully. “I haven’t felt this way since Katie Bosworth arrived.”

  Emily smiled. She had never been compared to Kate Bosworth, but it was definitely a compliment. Especially coming from someone who actually knew “Katie.”

  Adrienne leaned into the table and focused her steely blue gaze on Emily. It was the first time all morning that she’d actually made eye contact. “And listen, I hate to dip into the clichés about Hollywood, but here goes: At the end of the day, it’s not who you know. It’s not even who knows you.” Her BlackBerry was buzzing again. She reached down to retrieve it, still piercing Emily with her laserlike eye contact. She pointed the device at Emily like a sword. “This town is all about who knows you and who adores you.”

  Emily swallowed her lemon-infused mineral water. The idea of making people adore her was scary. There wasn’t a coach for that.

  Adrienne’s eyes darted across the screen, reading her latest work e-mail. Then she stood abruptly. If it had been anyone else, the sudden movements would have signaled an emergency, but Adrienne just operated in a semipermanent state of 911.

  Apparently breakfast was over.

  Adrienne dropped the girls off at BAMS at 7:35 a.m. exactly. She had an 8 a.m. meeting at Initiative, and—as Emily knew from every Hollywood magazine profile she’d read about her—Adrienne Little-Armstrong was never late.

  The girls stood at the end of the BAMS driveway, in the cul-de-sac where parents and nannies dropped off kids, staring down at the school’s wide-open, wrought-iron gates, where one navy blue Team Mac banner hung loosely, flapping in the breeze. Emily could feel the other kids staring at Mac, sizing up her every move. Emily was admiring the Mac-frenzy when a familiar Rolls-Royce Phantom slid by the curb.

  “Let’s go make sure Team Tachman adores you,” Mac said lazily. She flipped on her Gucci aviators and buttoned up her Ron Herman cashmere cardigan. “This is gonna rock,” she added in a sarcastic voice. Mac always looked upon Kimmie interactions as a chore, even though the girl was just slightly dorky and tried a tad too hard. But, as Mac had already explained, everyone had to be kind of nice to Kimmie, because everyone’s parents wanted to work with her dad.

  Mac and Emily stepped to the side of the Rolls-Royce. They waited while Kimmie stepped out, reached into the backseat for her white oversize Coach bag, and then shut the door.

  “ ’Sup, Mac,” Kimmie said, pulling her bag onto her shoulder. Emily opened her mouth to say hello, but before she could get the word out, Kimmie turned away. “Hey Emily sorry I’minarush,” she said as she darted off toward Main Quad.

  Emily glanced at her Swatch. It was still only seven thirty-eight. So why the rush to get to an eight o’clock class? She shot a confused glance at Mac.

  But Mac was useless at the moment—she’d started talking to a boy Emily instantly recognized as Lukas Gregory. Mac had already prepped Emily on all the cute boys. Just as Mac had described, he had dark hair and dark eyes, and the kind of perfect, all-natural tan that came from playing water polo in BAMS’s outdoor pool two hours a day. According to Mac, he’d spent the summer with his family in Tuscany, where he’d joined a local water polo team and learned to speak Italian. Mac was laughing and eyeing Lukas as though he were a new window display at Ron Herman.

  Emily stayed put, wanting to give Mac some space. Maybe the Kimmie brush-off was nothing, she told herself. After all, Kimmie had said hello. Just not in that usual overeager puppy-dog way she usually said hello. Emily had read how people moved to L.A. and became super paranoid about everything. She shivered—was L.A. already making her crazy?

  The Phantom was lurking in the driveway with the engine running. She looked up and spotted the famous producer staring at her through his rearview mirror. Actually, he was glaring. Emily looked at Mac for help, but Mac and Lukas were now watching a YouTube clip on Mac’s iPhone. Emily doubled-checked and confirmed on her own: Elliot was glaring.

  Does he think I blew off his daughter? Is he wondering why I haven’t said hello to him? Remembering Adrienne’s breakfast advice, Emily pushed up the sleeves of her teal Forever 21 hoodie, pushed her bangs out of her eyes, and stepped forward to show Elliot her positive energy. After all, she was supposed to have a meeting with him next week to discuss a role he’d handpicked for her. She might as well build their relationship now.

  “Hi, Mr. Tachman!” Emily chirped. “Good to see you!” The second she heard herself she wanted to hit delete. She sounded so fake, like she was trying way too hard. The “Desperado” song played in her head, the sound track to her life at that second.

  Elliot glared at Emily through his thin, rectangular glasses. She had never noticed how large his head was until that moment. He started to roll up the window. Just before the tinted glass slid all the way up, he said in an eerily calm voice, “Excuse me—I have a meeting.” And then he drove off, leaving Emily to wonder what had just happened.

  Emily spun around on her checkerboard Vans to face Mac who, at that moment, was putting a Team Mac pin on Lukas’s black Fred Perry polo shirt. “You have to wear it all day!” Mac said, fake-seriously.

  “Matches my shirt, huh?” Lukas patted the pin. “Laters,” he said, and gave a lazy head-nod to Mac as he walked off to class.

  Emily waited until Lukas was out of earshot before she leaned into Mac and whispered, “Did I do something wrong?”

  “What are you talking about?” Mac asked, still smiling from her Lukas encounter. She blinked her eyes twice as if to snap away the giddiness.

  “E-Tach wasn’t very friendly to me. He just blew me off.”

  Mac rolled her eyes. “What do you want? A goodie bag every time E-Tach sees you?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that,” Emily stammered, suddenly embarrassed. Maybe this was just how Bel-Air worked. In Iowa, friends’ parents didn’t roll up a window and drive away when you greeted them politely. But here, people were always rushing off places.

  Mac
started to type an e-mail on her iPhone. “Have you forgotten that Elliot Tachman is the most important man in this town?” she said without looking up. “He has more meetings in a day than most people have in a lifetime. You’re lucky if he talks to you.”

  Emily smiled and decided to act as though she felt better. Maybe then her emotions would catch up. But when she mentally rewound the memory and played it back, all she could remember was Elliot’s stony stare. It was a very negative essence.

  As Emily watched his sleek black car glide down the redbrick driveway like a funeral car, she felt a death-knot in her stomach. Even though Emily was brand-new to Bel-Air, she didn’t need Mac or Adrienne to explain that being on Elliot Tachman’s bad side was a very bad place to be.

  CHAPTER Seven

  coco

  Wednesday September

  7 AM Last-minute shopping for dance mtg brekkie

  7:55 AM Meet Mom to get my iPod (must do bag check before I leave the house!)

  8 AM Dance mtg

  12 PM Vote for Mac!

  6:30 PM Have we figured out where we’re celebrating MASC (Mac As Social Chair)? I suggest Katsuya. Double check SpoiledinLA website to be sure

  Coco was still on a high from yesterday’s first dance practice as she bounded down the gray stone steps to the Clubhouse, the little café reserved exclusively for BAMS activity groups. It was a pine-colored wooden shack that served espresso drinks and homemade chocolate chip cookies. Attached was a terrace with white iron tables and a view overlooking Stone Canyon.

  This morning was Coco’s first meeting as dance captain, and Coco was half an hour early because she wanted to have breakfast waiting for the girls when they arrived. She had read in the New York Times that people did best at meetings when there was food. Which was why Coco held baskets of Bagel Broker bagels (for the girls who still ate carbs), containers of Stonyfield Farm cottage cheese (for the girls who were off carbs), and Susina Bakery croissants (for the girls who still ate good food). Coco’s mind had been so abuzz preparing for the meeting that she’d forgotten her mini Bose speakers on the marble fireplace back home. She’d intended to use them (along with her handy little iPod nano) to get the girls pepped up despite the early hour. Luckily her mom was headed that way and was going to bring her speakers to BAMS, just in time for her meeting.

  It was amazing how much could happen in a week, Coco thought, as she clicked down the slate steps in her Lanvin ankle boots. Ruby was on the injured list, and “far too busy” to come to practices, as she’d announced in an e-mail to the team—which Coco knew meant she was too proud to sit and watch Coco act as captain. But without Ruby, the team was so much happier than last year. Coco felt better not having to wonder what her archrival thought of every choice she made.

  Coco couldn’t stop thinking about how great practice had been the day before: The girls seemed to be really excited that she was captain, and they’d agreed upon the routine for the fund-raiser in twenty-three minutes (a new BAMS record! Historically it took several hours, many meetings, and a few tear-jerking sessions for the Bam-Bams to agree on anything). The choice had been so simple because the girls wanted to use Coco’s choreography from her audition for their performance at ExtravaBAMSa. (A huge compliment!) Haylie was still being a pain, but Coco knew that no one really took Haylie seriously, and that any self-confidence the girl had was probably a temporary ego boost from her sketchy membership in the Thinner Circle.

  Fund-raising Day, better known as ExtravaBAMSa, was Coco’s favorite event of the year. It was a daylong showcase of the school’s world-class athletes and artists. Mac always joked that it was just a reminder to parents why BAMS was worth the tuition—they paid a hefty sum to have their children surrounded by excellence. Because the groups really were excellent: The culinary club had a cook-off, the thespian society—run by Kimmie Tachman—put on a one-act play, the surf team put on an exhibition, and of course the Bam-Bams performed, all in the name of raising gazillions of dollars for the charity voted on by the BAMS student body. This year’s cause was Save Darfur.

  As Coco’s patent leather ankle boots landed on the last step to the terrace, she was thinking about where she could get her little speakers set up so they wouldn’t get drowned out—she was excited to play “Umbrella” for the girls and talk about ways to tweak her routine for a group show. She looked up to check the status of the gazebo and then gasped—all eight dance team members were already there, sitting at the white iron tables in their black Lululemon workout pants and navy dance team hoodies. They stopped talking when Coco arrived. In eerie silence, she observed the scattering of mostly empty glasses of orange juice and a few scraps of toast on people’s plates.

  Coco checked the time on her iPhone. It was definitely twenty minutes before the meeting was supposed to start. So why were they already finishing up? Coco set the ginormous baskets of food on the ground. She stood there, wondering what was going on and how long it would take for someone to acknowledge her. This was definitely not a good sign.

  “Oh, hiyeee, Coco!” Haylie Fowler baby-talked. She always sounded like she was delivering bad news. Haylie pushed back her white iron chair, stood up, and walked over to face Coco, her rectangular body blocking the view of the canyon and the sunlight. She was wearing a trucker hat turned sideways and an ill-fitting wifebeater. Somehow she’d missed the memo that the Tara Reid look was so 5Y (five years ago). And even then it hadn’t worked.

  Coco gulped, feeling like an animal about to be killed. The fact that Haylie Fowler, aka SSD, was about to tell Coco what was going on with the Bam-Bams, in front of the whole dance team, was beyond a bad sign.

  “I guess we forgot to tell you. . . .” Haylie trailed off. She cocked her head to the side and looked at Coco with a fake pout, as though that explained everything. “Oh?” Coco said, pursing her lips. She couldn’t bear to look at Haylie’s squinty eyes. She looked around the terrace, scanning the faces of her friends. Lucia, Maribel, and Taylor’s lips were pursed, their faces stony. They looked massively uncomfortable, like they were staring at smog over the Hollywood Hills in August. Eden twirled her fork. They all looked guilty. The knot in Coco’s stomach tightened. “What did you forget to tell me, Haylie?”

  “Oh, just, you know . . . that we changed the time and stuff.”

  Changed the time? Without her? “Actually, Haylie, I’m the captain. I need to know about this,” Coco said, trying to hit that note between scolding and making a point. “Someone needs to call me next time.” She spoke calmly but her heart was doing pirouettes.

  There was a long beat of silence during which Coco could feel everyone looking at her. The only sound was the chirping of black parakeets in the canyon. She took a sip of her Voss water to calm herself down.

  Haylie scrunched her face up as though Coco had just picked her nose. “Um, actually, Coco, you might want to go easy on that?”

  “Go easy on what?” Coco asked, taking another sip. The other girls giggled. Coco wondered if she’d accidentally spilled on her shirt. She looked down, but it was all clear. She wiped her nose to make sure there was nothing gross hanging out.

  Haylie shook her head. “Never mind. We all have our issues.” She took a deep breath. “Actually, Coco, what I really wanted to say is that, due to creative differences, we kinda had a re-vote,” Haylie whined. Coco’s heart beat wildly. Re-vote? Haylie’s pale face was scrunched, like she’d bitten into a lemon. “And, long story short, um . . . I’m kind of the captain.”

  “Is this kind of a joke?” Coco glanced around the terrace frantically, trying to lock eyes with Lucia and then Maribel, and then Taylor or Eden. Lucia was stirring her coffee, her legs and arms crossed so that she looked like a pretzel. Maribel stared into her lap, her head hung low in shame. Eden looked out at the canyon. Taylor was robotically coating her lips in Burt’s Bees. The other girls were looking down into their empty water cups, pretending to be fascinated by the clear plastic.

  Coco felt like someone had squeezed the ai
r out of her. She knew it would be too unkind to scream what she was thinking, which was BUT YOU ARE THE WORST DANCER ON THIS TEAM. WE CALL YOU SEVEN-SECOND DELAY! Instead she decided the only safe choice was to stare until SSD said something that made sense.

  Haylie played with the yellow Lance Armstrong bracelets on her chubby arms, shying away from eye contact. “I’m sorry, Coco,” she said, tilting her hat even more sideways, and sounding not at all sorry. “But there’s a bright side. Even though you’re no longer captain, we’ve discussed this.” She put her hands on her hips. “You can still totally be on the team. As alternate.” She smiled, a little too gleefully. Coco felt as though she’d been hit with a stun gun. Everyone—and especially Haylie—knew alternates didn’t perform. Coco might as well have had one leg: That was all you needed to be an alternate.

  Coco scanned the terrace again, hoping for a friendly face, but everyone was quiet. The team’s silence hurt the most, since apparently they had all discussed her moments ago. It was never, ever a good feeling to know that you had been discussed. She rubbed her lucky Macedonian sun necklace, a gift from her father when he’d opened his Athens hotel, summoning her courage.

  “I joined this team to dance,” Coco said carefully. “So if I can’t do that, I quit.” She spun on her Lanvin heels, willing herself not to cry. Without another word, she ran up the stone trail to the BAMS driveway, past the new bonsai trees dotting the path.