TV Stars!

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“Sure do!”

“Do you know Tom Collins then?” I asked.

“Oh don’t tell me that you like him too! Isn’t he gorgeous? I think he’d make a really good actor. He looks a bit like Brad Pitt, don’t you think? I keep trying to persuade him to come along to the workshops, but he won’t!” declared Juliet with a giggle.

Kenny and Frankie were both sniggering. I couldn’t believe that my stupid brother could have such an effect on girls. I mean, Juliet looked normal enough, but there must be something seriously wrong with her if she fancied Tom.

But before I could say anything, Fliss shrieked, “Lyndz doesn’t like Tom – he’s her brother!”

You ought to have seen poor Juliet’s face. Talk about beetroot! She just didn’t know where to put herself. For the rest of the class she was sort of distracted and didn’t take much part in the role-playing we were doing.

When we left she came up to me and said, “Don’t tell Tom what I told you, will you? But try to persuade him to come along to the class next week.”

Yeah, right! Some hope! The last place he would want to be is somewhere with his kid sister. And I wouldn’t want him to come anyway. I was definitely going to go back though, because we’d had a totally cool time. Angel was great and everybody was really friendly. The others thought so too.

“That was so fab!” squealed Rosie, who had got over her dishcloth mouth.

“What did I tell you!” said Fliss smugly. “I knew it would be brilliant!”

“And Angel seems to know a lot about football too,” said Kenny admiringly. She started to speak like Angel, in a really deep voice. “If we go on like this we’ll be starring in the next blockbuster movie – no problem, darlings!”

For the next week we pretended to be Angel all the time. We even tried to perfect her laugh, which was sort of all thick like treacle.

The drama classes were our highlight of the week. We were doing something we were all interested in, and we were doing it all together. For once we were all happy and we didn’t fall out at all.

Well, surprise, surprise – that didn’t last for long!

For the first couple of weeks, everything we did at Angel’s drama class was completely new to us. I’d thought we might have to learn loads of lines for a play, and I’m no good at that. In school plays I always end up as a tree or something because I’m hopeless at remembering lots of words. Well, Angel’s class wasn’t like that at all. We did loads of improvisation exercises which were really great. Sometimes we split into twos, and one of us was a hairdresser and the other was the client who’d just been given a disastrous perm. Or we were in a big group and we had to act out an emotion, like being happy or sad, and everyone had to guess what it was and then copy what we’d done.

One class was so funny. Angel asked us to pretend that we were angry ducks. I know that it sounds weird, but Angel likes to make you look at the world a bit differently. Anyway, everyone in the class was waddling around the room quacking in people’s faces. It was a riot. Well, when I say everyone, what I mean is everyone except Kenny. She was making screeching noises and going “BEEP BEEP!” at the top of her voice. It was hil-arious.

Eventually Angel stopped the class and asked Kenny to show everyone her interpretation. Well there she was, screeching and beeping, and everyone just fell about laughing.

“That’s very interesting Kenny,” said Angel, trying not to laugh herself. “Can you just remind everybody what that was?”

Kenny looked kind of embarrassed. “An angry truck,” she said. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Frankie and I just totally collapsed into fits of giggles. It’s a wonder I didn’t get hiccups.

“That’s what I thought she’d said,” explained Kenny, sounding a bit injured when she came to sit down next to us.

“Didn’t you realise that everyone else was pretending to be a duck?” gasped Rosie, still holding her sides and giggling.

“I was so into being a truck, I didn’t notice what anyone else was doing,” admitted Kenny. “But I was good, wasn’t I?”

We had to agree that she was the best angry truck that we’d ever seen!

It was after about the third drama class when Angel called us all together.

“I’ve got some very exciting news!” she said in her deep throaty voice. She was wearing a big beaded choker and it moved up and down on her neck as she spoke. “How would you fancy auditioning for a television advert?”

There was a stunned silence. Then the hall kind of exploded.

“Really?”

“Excellent!”

“Fantastic!”

“What’s the advert for?” asked Frankie, who always gets down to the serious stuff first.

“Good question!” said Angel, smiling at her. “I’ll be able to give you more details next week. All you need to know at the moment is that the advertising company are looking for a ‘bright, sparky girl who is approximately ten years old’.”

That description covered most of the drama class. I looked around and everybody was chattering eagerly with their friends about it. Juliet smiled at me and came over.

“You lucky thing, I wish I was ten again. Fancy being able to go up for a commercial when you’ve only been coming to drama classes for a few weeks,” she said. “You sound like just the kind of person they’re looking for too!”

She was just being kind to me because I was the wonderful Tom’s sister, but it was nice of her to say that anyway. When she’d gone back to her friends I joined the others.

“Just imagine,” Fliss was saying, “I’m going to my first audition!” She patted down her hair as though a casting director was watching her already.

“Well if it’s bright and sparky they want, they won’t have to look any further than me!” Kenny pranced up and down the hall.

“Not if they see me first!” Frankie bumped her out of the way.

Angel was getting ready to lock up so we all bundled out of the door.

“’Bye darlings, see you next week!” she called after us.

By the time we got outside, Fliss was totally hyper about the whole thing.

“Don’t you see? It’s another sign!” she shrieked. “First I tell you that I want to be an actress and Angel’s drama class pops up, and now she tells us about this audition. It’s like this part already has my name on it! What do you think?”

“I think you’ll have some competition from the rest of us,” said Kenny. She sounded quite serious too. I didn’t say anything.

Dad picked us up in the van and dropped everybody off. And all the time Fliss was twittering about the stupid audition for the advert. The more she went on about it, the more sure I was that I didn’t want to go for it. And what a big mistake that proved to be!

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I guess I should explain why I didn’t want to audition for the commercial. I’ll try, but to be honest I’m not a hundred per cent sure myself. It was more a sort of feeling I had, really. I know that I usually just go with the flow, but this time I didn’t want to. I suppose the problem was that I couldn’t face my brothers teasing me about the audition. You know what they’re like. They just go on and on about things and never let them drop. That’s OK sometimes, like when they tease me about spending so much time with horses. But with other things – like this TV commercial – well, it’s just not worth the hassle.

I didn’t mention anything about the audition to Mum or Dad because they’d have made me go for it. Even though I didn’t want to. They like me to stand up to my brothers you see. But it was one thing keeping my decision from my parents. It was quite another keeping it from my friends.

I was really panicking when I went to school the next morning. I knew that the commercial was all they would be talking about and I didn’t want to feel left out, but I didn’t want to lie to them either.

Sure enough, when I got into the playground Fliss was already in full flow.

“I’m going to smile at the advertising people like this…” (she did this big cheesy grin) “because Mum says that then they’ll be able to see that I’m bright and sparky, and that I have good teeth.”

“I bet they will!” muttered Frankie.

“They’ll probably barf up their breakfast, more like!” grinned Kenny.

Fliss ignored them. “This means a lot to me,” she said firmly. “You know how much I want to be an actress.”

We all rolled our eyes.

“I’m not sure how I’m going to approach it yet,” chimed in Kenny. “Should I do this?” She pulled down the corners of her eyes and stuck out her tongue. “Or what about this?” She curled back her top lip until it was touching the base of her nose.

“You’re so gross!” laughed Rosie. “I think being natural is probably best.”

“I’m sure Angel will tell us what the advertisers are looking for,” said Frankie. “We’ll probably practise in class anyway.”