Rowan Coleman - Ruby Parker - Shooting Star

“What will it be like tomorrow?” Nydia asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t done this before either. Every single audition I’ve ever been to has been different. I have no idea what they ask you to do at a screen test.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Anne-Marie said. “Because we are prepared, aren’t we?”

Nydia and I looked at each other. For the last month Anne-Marie had made us meet at her house three times a week to learn the lines from the play and rehearse all the songs over and over again. “No one knows Spotlight! better than us. They’ll have to choose us, they’ll just have to.”

“But they might not,” I said carefully. I had the feeling that getting a part in the film meant more to Anne-Marie than anyone else. “They might want American kids and I heard that Sunny Dale might be up for Arial.”

“She’s rubbish ,” Anne-Marie said. “I can knock spots off her any day of the week, and if they think I’m going to have that girl screen-kissing my boyfriend then they’ve got another think coming.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Nydia said. “If you or me got the lead we might have to kiss Sean too, Ruby. How disgusting would that be!”

“Yuck!” I said, and I pulled a suitable face. But worryingly, the second Nydia mentioned it I realised I didn’t think it would be too awful to kiss Sean Rivers at all. I thought of that twinkly, blue-eyed smile he’d given me earlier that day and for the first time since I’d known him it made my tummy lurch. But not in bad way.

“Oh no, that’s a terrible, terrible idea!” I said out loud before I realised it. “That would be really, really bad.”

“He’s not that bad a kisser,” Anne-Marie giggled, whacking me with one of my pillows.

“Well, he’s been kissing you for nearly a year so he can’t be that good,” I teased her, keen to get the stupid feeling out of my tummy.

“Attack!” Nydia yelled, launching herself at me with the final cushion.

There were feathers all over the floor by the time my mum caught us.

Ext. Evening. Fire escape at the back of the drama school. ARIAL is sitting on her own, crying. A figure appears at the window. It’s SEBASTIAN. He hesitates and then climbs out of the window and sits beside her. He considers putting a hand on her shoulder, but in the end is not brave enough.

Arial, why are you crying?

ARIAL looks up at him, as if she’s only just realised that he is there. Hastily she wipes her tears away and tries to smile.

I’m not crying, I just have…um hay fever. That’s all – it makes my eyes run.

SEBASTIAN hesitates again. He knows that ARIAL is lying, but he doesn’t want to embarrass her.

Look, I know you haven’t got very many friends here yet, and that some of the girls are giving you a hard time – but that’s only because they are jealous.

Only because you are more talented than they are. Kinder, nicer, funnier and more beautiful…

ARIAL looks up sharply at SEBASTIAN.

Pardon?

SEBASTIAN looks scared and then his face changes as he makes a decision to say what he’s really thinking.

I said I think you are really beautiful.

They look at each other for a moment longer and then SEBASTIAN loses his courage. He climbs back in through the window, leaving ARIAL sitting alone once again.

Cue production number four SEBASTIAN and ARIAL’S 1ST DUET “I’m in Love!” Sung as a duet but shot in two separate locations: SEBASTIAN’S room and the fire escape.

“I’m in Love!”

“Right,” I said to everyone as we sat in the waiting room right outside where the screen testing was, with a slight note of panic in my voice. “All we have to do is act, sing and dance. It will be fine.”

“It won’t be fine,” Nydia said anxiously. “This isn’t a scene, it’s a whole act! I thought they’d give us less to do and more time to prepare. I thought we’d get the scene and then at least have a chance to rehearse. I didn’t think they’d hand us a huge script and then tell us we’ll be seen on set in about five minutes. And that was four minutes ago!”

“Don’t panic,” Gabe said, taking her hand. “This is your role. You’ve played Arial on TV in front of millions. OK, so this is a new song and a new scene that none of us have ever seen before, written especially for the film. But it’s still Arial, and you still know how to play Arial better than anyone.”

Nydia smiled at him and I thought that I really had to get her on her own soon and ask exactly what was happening between those two. But now wasn’t the time.

“Gabe’s right,” I said. “We’ve prepared as much as anyone could. Now we just have to do our best.”

“How can you be so calm?” Nydia asked, dropping Gabe’s hand as if she’d only just realised that she was holding it.

“By pretending mostly,” I said. “Look, if you don’t want to do it, just say. Nothing bad will happen, except that you definitely won’t get a part in the film and will have to spend the summer in London.”

“I want to do it,” Nydia said, biting her lip. “Only in about two weeks , not two minutes!”

“I really wanted to do my scene with Sean.” Anne-Marie spoke for the first time since she’d been handed the script. “We’d be so good together in this scene. I can’t believe that he’s not here.”

That morning Sean had woken up with a temperature and a sore throat. He’d told, or rather croaked to, his mum that he wouldn’t be able to screen test-after all. His mum had phoned the studio to tell them and they said they had to go ahead and start the casting process today, but that they’d be happy to wait for Sean to get better before they made the final decision on male roles. By which they meant the part of Sebastian, because there would never be any way that Sean Rivers would get any part in any film that wasn’t the lead.