“I know,” Anne-Marie squealed. “Read it out! Read it out!”
I looked from one girl to the other. They both looked like they might explode.
“And also starring will be Hollywood’s hottest teen heart-throb Sean Rivers!”
“Arrrrrrgh!” the two girls screamed in unison and danced around me in a little circle.
“Sean Rivers, Ruby! Only Sean Rivers!” Nydia exclaimed. “Oh my gosh!”
I smiled at both of them. It was starting to hurt.
“Wow,” I said, the edge in my voice floating over the tops of the heads of my two friends. “Sean Rivers. The Sean Rivers. We totally love him.”
“Just think…” Anne-Marie said, hooking her arm though mine as we approached the changing rooms. “One of us could be working with Sean Rivers, the very same Sean Rivers we all went to see in A Cheerleader’s Destiny.”
“And Last Summer’s Love,” Nydia added wistfully.
“And The Underdogs,” Anne-Marie said. “Oh, he was so lovely in The Underdogs—that bit when he thought he might not be able to play in the final because of his leg and he cried…?”
“Oh my gosh, I love him,” Nydia added sincerely.
“I love him,” Anne-Marie said.
“I love him more,” Nydia said with a giggle.
“Who loves who more?” Danny said, jogging up to us in his football kit. He had a big smear of mud across his nose, and I have never been so pleased to see my normal lovely real-life boyfriend before in my life. My smile for him was a real one as he dropped his arm around my shoulders and raised a dark eyebrow at the girls.
“Don’t tell me you’re going out with Michael Henderson again?” he asked Anne-Marie, who made a sour face at the mention of her ex-boyfriend’s name.
“Read this.” Nydia handed Danny the now grubby clipping and he read it quickly.
“And?” he asked, looking mystified.
“Sean Rivers!” Nydia exclaimed. “We all love him.” She gestured at the three of us.
“I don’t,” I said, looking at Danny fondly.
“Oh yeah, so why has she got that poster of him over her bed then, hey, Danny?” Anne-Marie said, teasing me gently.
Danny shrugged.
“Has she?” he said. “I hadn’t noticed.” He neglected to mention that in fact he’d never been in my bedroom because my mum wouldn’t let him go in there with me unless we were accompanied by at least three adult chaperones.
Still, Danny was determined to be unimpressed by Sean Rivers, and I knew it was partly because he was worrying about how I was feeling after blowing my chances of ever meeting him, let alone working with him. Knowing that made me feel a lot better. Even almost happy.
“These two are going all gooey at the thought of actually possibly meeting him,” I said with a laugh, to show him that I didn’t mind talking about the film.
“Over Sean Rivers?” Danny mocked them. “He’s just a bloke, you know. Like me.”
Nydia and Anne-Marie screeched with overexcited laughter, and Danny’s face coloured a little.
“A bloke who’s got millions of fans all round the world!” Anne-Marie said.
“Yeah,” Danny said a little defensively. “Like me.”
“Like you!” Anne-Marie hooted, and even I couldn’t hide my smile.
“Yeah, like me,” Danny said. “I am on Britain’s favourite soap, you know. Last month I got as many fan letters as Justin.”
That shut us all up. None of us had known that before.
“You got as many letters as Justin de Souza?” I stared hard at Danny. Yes, he was still the same normal lovely real-life boyfriend I had five minutes ago. But Justin? Everybody knew that Justin got hundreds of fan letters nearly every month.
“Hang on,” I said. “You mean problem letters like I used to get, don’t you?”
Danny seemed to consider his answer for a moment, but then he looked at Nydia and Anne-Marie’s bright laughing faces and said, with a hint of pride, “No, I mean I get actual ‘I love you, Danny’ fan letters. Not that they mean anything at all,” he added quickly.
“Of course,” I said, checking back on my mum’s criteria for what constituted the end of the world. If stupendously fluffing the most important audition I would probably ever have didn’t count, would finding out that my normal lovely real-life boyfriend was now the object of affection for thousands—maybe millions—of girls, sixty per cent of whom at least would be thinner and prettier than me, qualify?
“We’ll be late for English,” I said, shrugging Danny’s arm off my shoulders and heading for the refuge of the girls’ changing room.
I didn’t want to react that way. I wanted to laugh it off and say something witty and funny about how of course he had loads of fans, he was my boyfriend, wasn’t he? But I couldn’t. I suddenly felt cross and jealous all over, and I just wanted to go somewhere Danny wasn’t until I could feel normal again.
“Ruby!” Danny called out after me as I marched off.
“Don’t worry,” I heard Nydia say as I went through the door. “She’s just having a bad day, that’s all.”
By the time we had filed into the classroom, I had given myself a good talking to, washed the frown off my face and brushed the irritation out of my hair. It wasn’t my friends’ fault that they did well at the audition and I didn’t. It wasn’t Danny’s fault that he was really good in Kensington Heights and very photogenic, causing swathes of young girls to dream about him. I shouldn’t be jealous, I should feel lucky. Lucky I have such talented friends and such a great boyfriend. If a year ago, when I was so unpopular I only had one friend and I was officially the least likely girl in the academy and quite possibly the world to ever have a boyfriend, I could have seen myself now—in with the in-crowd (mostly) and with Danny on my arm—I would have thought I had reached the pinnacle of happiness. But I knew it wasn’t really those three that I was angry with—it was myself; I was furious with myself.
Try as I might I couldn’t help going back over and over my twenty minutes in front of Mr Dubrovnik, replaying and replaying them until I finally got it right, until I was brilliant and triumphant and he jumped up from his seat and offered me the part on the spot. And for a few short moments I would feel enormous relief, until I remembered it was only a daydream. A lot of things have happened over the past year, things that I would rather hadn’t happened. Mainly Mum and Dad deciding to separate. But even then, even when it came down to my parents splitting up, I sort of knew deep down, through all the anger and the hurt, that it had to happen; that that was the way it had to be. Mum said so often enough since it had happened. I can’t say it doesn’t hurt at all any more; it does. But I feel like I can live with it.
But what happened at the audition was not scripted. It wasn’t supposed to be like that at all, and the only person I could blame for it going wrong was me. And there was nothing I could do to change it.
That moment had been for real and not just a rehearsal. It was a chance that had gone for ever, and knowing that stung, like a hard cold slap. Mum was right; I hoped there would be other auditions, other chances, but that one would never come round again.
Danny was already sitting at his desk as I walked in. I offered him a small apologetic shrug.
“I’m sorry,”