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  “Good,” Sylvia Lighthouse continued, “because success is perhaps ten per cent luck, maybe even ten per cent talent…” She leaned across her desk and fixed me with her steely glare. “…But do you really know what makes a performer successful?”

  “Hard work and lots of it,” I answered automatically, before realising that the question was supposed to be rhetorical and I wasn’t supposed to answer at all but let her tell me. “I mean, probably…” I added hastily, “I don’t know really…um…what do you think, Ms Lighthouse?” Sylvia Lighthouse arched an orange pencilled eyebrow at me.

  “I do hope you are not too confident, Ruby,” she said, as she examined me. I shook my head energetically. “Acting in a so-called ‘soap opera’ and auditioning for a movie are two entirely different things. Your experience on Kensington Heights means nothing at all here.”

  “Um oh, right,” I said, trying to swallow as my throat tightened in fear. “Well, I know that, Ms Lighthouse, and I’m not too confident, not even a bit.” And then I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to say either so I added, “But I’ll give it my best shot.”

  I wanted to tell her that all I could think about was that very soon I’d be standing in front of award-winning film director Art Dubrovnik about to audition for a part in his next movie, quite a big part, with quite a lot of scenes that would be watched in cinemas all over the world. And that every time I thought about it my heart started thumping, my tummy turned to jelly, my mind went completely blank and I started to come out in stress-related blotches. It was almost exactly the same as the first time I had kissed Danny (only without the blotches luckily). Sylvia Lighthouse drew her lips together and looked at me down her very long nose.

  “I hope you don’t think you have any advantage over the other girls, Ruby,” she told me sternly, “just because you were once a TV star. It’s a level playing field out there, you know. And, besides, fame is a very fickle thing. I should know.”

  “I don’t,” I told her. “Honestly, I don’t, Ms Lighthouse. I’m nervous, I’m really, really nervous – look!” I pulled open the collar of my school shirt and showed the bright red marks that were flowering on my skin. She looked at them and wrinkled her nose slightly.

  “Well, that’s good,” she told me a little less harshly. “Fear is good as long as you use it. Don’t let it stifle you, Ruby. Just remember that this is your moment. This is your chance to be the best that you possibly can be.” She stood up as she finished speaking, flourishing her hands and gazing over the top of my head as if she had just performed the last lines of a play.

  I blinked at her. That part hadn’t been in everybody else’s pep talk.

  “I will, Ms Lighthouse,” I told her steadily. “I promise.”

  She smiled at me then, which looked almost as much like a scar as when she frowned.

  “Jolly good,” she said. “Well off you go then! You don’t want to be late!”

  When I walked down the front steps of the academy everybody else was already in the minibus. I looked at their faces peering out of the windows and I knew that I had exactly the same expression on my face – as if we were about to be driven to our certain doom, and not to take the chance of a lifetime.

  “Remember,” my mum had said that morning, “if you don’t get it, it’s not the end of the world. You’re still only a little girl after all.”

  “I know,” I said, letting the whole “little girl” thing go, because secretly she was just as nervous as me. But it was still hard not to think of it as the potential end of the world. What would the world be like if I didn’t get the part? Almost exactly the same as it had been before, which was not too bad a world – a world with a mum and a dad that were at least talking to each other and getting on quite well since Dad moved out. A world with good friends and a very nice, funny boyfriend. A world with a big fat cat, dancing and singing lessons in the morning and acting class right after maths. An ideal world for a lot of people.

  But it would still be a different world in one important respect. If I didn’t get this part, it would be the first time I had ever failed. Nobody outside the academy had ever really tested my talent before, not even when I was on Kensington Heights. I’d never done another real audition, and I had never expected my first one to be quite so big. So although I did know that it wasn’t the end of the world if I didn’t get the part, it certainly didn’t feel that way.

  “All set, girls?” Miss Greenstreet called out, as I climbed on to the bus and slid into the seat next to Nydia. She picked up my hand and squeezed it.

  “Yes,” we all chorused weakly, glancing at each other anxiously.

  “Excellent,” Miss Greenstreet said. “Off we go, driver!”

  None of us really knew what to expect when it came to movie auditions, me least of all. After all, I had only ever auditioned for Kensington Heights when I was six. At the time I thought I was just playing dressing-up, so I didn’t exactly feel any pressure. And I had been in Kensington Heights playing the part of Angel MacFarley, the world’s most average girl, ever since, until last summer. It was then that I decided to leave, because I realised that playing Angel wasn’t really acting, it was just being me in front of a TV camera. I wanted to stretch myself, to experience new challenges and take new chances.

  Except that morning on the bus I wasn’t quite sure about any of that. Challenges and chances and all that stuff didn’t seem half so appealing just then. In fact, just then, a career as a librarian seemed much more my sort of thing, as really, out of all the girls on the bus, I was the least experienced in auditions.

  Anne-Marie had done quite a few commercials, and just recently Nydia landed her first TV part in Casualty as “girl with food poisoning” (She was completely brilliant by the way.), so they both knew more about what might happen than I did.

  I thought we might have to stand on a stage in a theatre a bit like when we did audition practice at school, or maybe even go to Mr Dubrovnik’s suite in some posh hotel. But we didn’t. The minibus stopped on Wardour Street in Soho, and Miss Greenstreet smiled at each of us and patted us one by one on the shoulder as we filed out on to the pavement and then up some dark and narrow stairs to the rehearsal rooms which were above an Italian restaurant.

  “I thought it would be more glamorous than this,” Anne-Marie hissed in my ear as she glanced around her.

  “Being an actor isn’t about being glamorous,” Nydia said, repeating one of Ms Lighthouse’s favourite phrases, “it’s about creating it.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked. Nydia and Anne-Marie shrugged simultaneously. Sometimes Sylvia Lighthouse’s pearls of wisdom could be, well, rather mysterious to say the least.

  At the top of the stairs there was a small waiting room with five orange plastic chairs that were probably older than each one of us who were lined up against the wall. The fluorescent lighting flickered every now and then, and hummed loudly. A lady with wiry orange hair, and with thick black-rimmed glasses perched on top of a long pointy nose, magnifying a pair of scarily pale blue fish-like eyes, was waiting for us. She was wearing a very short tartan kilt and green holey tights, and was armed with a clipboard and a scowl that knitted her thick brows into one.

  “Hi, I’m Lisa Wells, assistant director on The Lost Treasure of King Arthur,” she said briskly in an American accent, leading me to guess that she must be American. “This is how it’s going to be. I hope you are all properly prepared and that you know your lines because I’m going to be sending you in one at a time in alphabetical order.” I sighed inwardly. That meant I would be the last to go in again. And the one with the longest time to get nervous and blotchy and forget my lines.

  “You go in,” Lisa continued, “stand on your mark, and deliver your lines to the camera. Don’t worry, I’ll be in there to read with you.” Somehow knowing that didn’t make me worry any less. “And that’s all you do, OK? I don’t want any procrastination, no preamble, and certainly none of that chit-chat you Brits are so fond of. No on
e here cares whether or not you can do ballet or tap, or recite Juliet’s soliloquy, OK? You do your lines, you move on. Anything that might waste Mr Dubrovnik’s very precious time will result in you being automatically disqualified.” Lisa Wells paused for a moment to eye each one of us closely, just to make sure she knew we understood her. “Once you’ve done, I’ll show you the way back out to your teacher. I don’t want any discussions or giggling going on out here, OK? I want total silence from all of you, except the one who’s reading. Any questions?” We all looked at each other, but nobody spoke. Probably because if the others felt anything like I did, they had all lost the power of speech entirely, too.

  “Don’t worry, girls,” Miss Greenstreet said kindly, “I’ll be in the café just across the road with a hot chocolate waiting for you when you come out.” She shot Lisa Wells her best attempt at a cross look, which wasn’t very good because Miss Greenstreet is one of those people who is never actually cross with you, just disappointed. “I’m sure it’s not going to be as frightening as you think it is,” she said, trying to reassure us.

  “Oh, it is,” Lisa Wells said, her voice as sharp as her nose.

  She scanned her clipboard. “Now, who’s first? “Nydia? Which one of you is Nydia?”

  Nydia sat perfectly still for a moment as if she hoped that she might blend unnoticed into the orange chair.

  “Go on, Nyds,” I told her. “You can do—”

  “No talking!” Lisa Wells interrupted me. “Nydia, go in now or go home!” Nydia took a deep breath, winked at me and disappeared through the door into the audition room. I scowled surreptitiously at Lisa Wells and wished that I was more like the character I was auditioning to play, Polly Harris aka Ember Buchanen – initially prim and proper, when faced with danger, her character became fearless, cool, calm and collected, even after she finds out that she’s not really who she thought she was. In fact, her father isn’t her father at all, but an evil historian who kidnapped her as a baby and is planning to murder her on her fourteenth birthday. Polly/Ember was a brave-sassy-no-nonsense-adventurer. She would have just gone up to Lisa Wells and told her what she thought, and quite possibly even kicked her in the shins…

  But I, plain old Ruby Parker, did not do any of that, because I never have been any good at rebelling. I just sat on my plastic chair and waited quietly. I watched Nydia, Anne-Marie and the others go in and come out again without even looking at me, until I was the only one left.

  “Ruby Parker,” Lisa Wells said inevitably. “It’s your turn. Go!”

  Also by Rowan Coleman

  Ruby Parker: Film Star

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain as Ruby Parker Hits the Small Time by

  HarperCollins Children’s Books 2005

  This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2007

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  Text copyright © Rowan Coleman 2005

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