And that’s why I started at Highgate Comprehensive School three weeks ago, a school that doesn’t even have a drama society, let alone drama lessons. The nearest thing they have to anything theatrical is a choir and I hear even that is terrible. It’s a school where I can feel safe, which is funny really because on my very first day I discovered that someone here is really quite keen to beat me up.
It happened in the first minute of the first hour of my first day. I made mum drop me off round the corner, took a breath and marched the last few metres through the school gate on my own. I thought I was prepared.
I was prepared for the other kids to be a bit curious, to ask me questions about being on the telly and in a movie with famous actors like Imogene Grant or Sean Rivers. I was prepared for the fact that some kids would think I was posh and stuck up because I used to go to Sylvia Lighthouse’s Academy. But I wasn’t prepared for the threats of violence. Yes, that did throw me a bit.
“Are you Ruby Parker?” asked a tall girl, who appeared to be waiting for me.
This is nice, I thought. A welcoming committee. “I am,” I said with a smile, sticking out my hand. “Pleased to meet you!”
“I hate you,” the girl said. Well, more like growled.
I blinked at her. She had a sort of solid-looking body that would probably hurt you if you ran into it. As I was planning to run in the opposite direction, I hoped that wouldn’t be a problem.
“Really?” I asked her, with a grimace. “Was it the film? I know, I was terrible wasn’t I? That’s why I’ve given up acting, I just want to be normal now, like…”
The girl’s face didn’t move. “I just hate you,” she said, poking me in the shoulder with the tip of one long finger. “And I’m going to get you.” Then she turned on her heel, and stormed off.
I stood there staring after her, suddenly not sure that I could get my feet to go into Highgate Comprehensive School after all and wondering about the possibilities of home-schooling, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“That’s just Adele.” I jumped at the sound of a new voice and a saw another girl standing next to me. “You’re Ruby Parker. I’ve seen you on the telly,” she said. I couldn’t tell if she was friendly or not. “I’m Dakshima, I’m in your class. Adele tries to pick on everyone, but if you show her you’re not scared you’ll be fine. She doesn’t mean it really. It’s just her thing, being scary.”
I stood there stock still as Dakshima began to walk off again. After a few steps she paused and glanced back over her shoulder at me. She heaved a sigh and asked, “Do you want to come in with me?”
“If you don’t mind,” I said, sounding more than a bit pathetic.
“Come on then,” Dakshima said, turning and marching off ahead of me. “I haven’t got all day.”
I followed Dakshima, telling myself that I was doing the right thing, but I still felt sick with nerves and worried about making new friends. After all, I thought I’d made friends with Adrienne Charles at Beaumont High, my school in Hollywood, but she turned out to be my worst enemy and made my life a misery while I was there.
Dakshima doesn’t seem to mind me hanging out with her though. I have lunch with her and her friends, Talitha and Hannah, almost every day, and last week she even called me Rubes. It took a while for people to forget that I am Ruby Parker off the telly, but now I’m old news, like last month’s copy of Hiya! Bye-a!, and the more they forget who I used to be, the easier it is to fit in. Anyway, if you take away the whole fame thing then I really am a very average girl.
The teachers here are very different from the ones at the Academy, but they are mostly OK. I even like the schoolwork. Honestly I do, because when I’m immersed in biology or maths or something that would usually make me tear my hair out with boredom, then I’m not thinking about the past. I’m not thinking about Danny Harvey chucking me for new girl Melody. I’m not thinking about the horrible reviews I got in Hollywood, detailing just how bad an actor I am. And most importantly, I’m not thinking about my dream, or the fact that at almost fourteen-years-old, mine is already so over.
Come and audition for the school choir!
Lunchtime tomorrow in the main hall. Enthusiasm more important than talent. Find out that singing
CAN be fun!
Be there or Be square.
Mr G. Petrelli, Music Teacher.
NB: ATTENDANCE IS COMPULSORY
BY ORDER OF THE HEAD.
“So you haven’t heard from Hunter once?” Anne-Marie asked me as I screwed up the handout that was in my school bag and dropped it into the paper bin. (I have two bins now, one for paper and one for rubbish I can’t recycle. Me and mum are saving the environment; it’s our new thing we do together since I ran away from Hollywood and nearly scared her to death.)
I shook my head, “Nope,” I said. “Not even a text.”
“But after you got back from Hollywood he came all the way to London just to kiss you at the Valentine’s disco!” Nydia exclaimed. “I thought he really liked you.”
“He didn’t come all this way just to kiss me,” I said, feeling a little blush as I remembered the moment. “He came over to do publicity for Hollywood High and he might not have even come to the dance at all if you two hadn’t got in touch with him. The whole kissing me thing was sort of an accident. It’s not as if it we were meant to be or anything.”
To be honest, I was more sad about not hearing from Hunter again after the Valentine disco than I let on. OK, I told him I didn’t want to be his girlfriend, but I had thought he might not take it quite so literally. We had become good friends while I was at Beaumont High and we’d been through a lot together in Hollywood. But I hadn’t even had an e-mail from him, even though I’d sent him one when I found out that The Lost Treasure of King Arthur was the biggest grossing foreign language film in Japanese history.
“It’s just as well anyway,” I said casually. “Going out with yet another international teen megastar would not have fitted into my new life at all. I have a lot of homework these days.”
“About that,” Anne-Marie said, opening my wardrobe and going through my things with her usual wrinkled nose. “Are you still sure about leaving the Academy? Hasn’t three weeks with the public been enough to convince you to come back?”
I shook my head and laughed. Anne-Marie called everyone who wasn’t an actor/singer/model “the public”. She couldn’t understand how anybody would be happy just being an anonymous person just living an ordinary life.
“I like my school,” I told her. “It turns out I’m quite good at biology and I had a careers talk last week. I think I’m going to be a vet.”
“A vet!” Nydia shrieked. “I’m sorry, Ruby, I just can’t see it. You faint at the sight of blood.”
“Being a vet is not all blood,” I said, annoyed that I hadn’t spotted the rather obvious flaw in my plan.
“No, there’s vomit and pus too, I believe,” Anne-Marie said, laughing. “Ruby Parker, vet. Yeah, right.”
“This is so wrong,” Nydia said quite crossly. “You are meant to act!”
Of my two best friends, Nydia was the one who understood least why I had left school. And I knew