Starstruck (8 page)

All those days and nights slaving at the ballet barre, pushing through the pain, all that worrying that no matter what she did she was never going to be good enough? None of it mattered. Not a damn bit. God, it was almost a relief.

Gabby hauled herself to her feet, pushed open the door, and ran outside into the dazzling California day. The sun felt deliciously warm and golden on her bare skin.
How long has it been since I’ve been in the sun?
she thought.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Viola ran after Gabby as fast as her short legs could carry her. “Come back here this instant!”

“Leave me alone.”

Viola seized her by the arm. “And let you run out of a rehearsal? Over my dead body! You might not care about your professional reputation, but I’ll be damned if I got you all the way to Hollywood so you can throw it all away.”

I got me to Hollywood
, Gabby thought fiercely.
Me and my talent
. “Let me go.”

“Where? Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“To the doctor.”

“Gabby, listen.” Viola’s expression softened. “The space is only booked for another hour and a half. You said yourself it was nothing.”

“You’re right. I did.”

“Then come on. Before Tully gets so mad we can use him to cook hot dogs over.”

“No,
Mother
. You see, I’m not going to the doctor for my ankle.” Dimples sparkling, Gabby let out a terrible joyless cackle. “I’m going so he can make me
thin
.”

“F
robie! Hey,
Froooobiieee
!”

Evelyn Gamble came sauntering across the Orange Grove Academy hockey field. She was accompanied by Claire Prince and Mary Ann Nesbit, her two dimwitted henchmen: Claire, dainty as a doll, exactly three steps behind Evelyn to the right; Mary Ann, whose enormous, shelflike buttocks would have been her most salient feature if not for the competing gigantism of her chin, three steps back to the left. Their formation was so precise and unchanging that Margaret sometimes wondered if they employed a protractor to assemble a perfect isosceles triangle every time they made a move.

“Where you going, Frooobiiieee?” Evelyn brayed. “We just wanna talk to you!”

“Yeah, Frobie,” echoed Claire. “We just wanna talk!”

“Frooobiiieee,” added Mary Ann, apparently too uninspired to form a complete sentence.

Margaret felt Doris stiffen. It was difficult to face Evelyn with dignity at the best of times, but doing so while wearing the regulation Orange Grove gym uniform was especially hard. Consisting of an orange blouse paired with deeply unflattering Kelly green bloomers that reached the knee, the gym suits were supposed to be a tribute to the school’s namesake, and in one regard they were perfectly successful: in the right breeze, the billowy cut of the bloomers
did
make you look like you had on a diaper full of oranges.

“Hello, Evelyn,” Margaret said, drawing her spine into as regal a posture as she could muster.
Think of it as acting
, she told herself.
You are a queen, and they are
—her mind drifted to the lecture Mr. Hawthorne had given earlier that week in European history
—they are but three disfigured peasant women come to beg you to cure their scrofula
. Evelyn quickly fell into step beside her, drawing her wide mouth back in a horrible grin. Her teeth were remarkably long and sharp. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, we heard a rumor about you, and we want to know if it’s true,” Evelyn said coyly.

Margaret steeled herself for the worst.
Scrofula
, she reminded herself sternly.
They have it
. “What rumor?”

“Well …” Evelyn had a rare talent for making innocuous statements while sounding as though she were telling you a pigeon had just gone to the bathroom on your head. “We heard you’d been discovered. By
Hollywood
.”

“Oh?” Margaret felt a sudden stab of cold terror shoot through her throat, as though someone had injected a syringe full of ice
water into her carotid artery. It had to have been Emmeline. She must have said something to the Gambles’ maid at some kind of Pasadena maids’ symposium, where all the disgruntled neighborhood domestics gathered together to share cleaning tips and humiliating secrets about the personal lives of their employers. “How on earth did you hear that?”

“Oh, a little bird told me.” Evelyn winked at Doris.

Margaret turned toward her friend, whose flush was rapidly spreading to every part of her face, including her quivering—and very beaklike—nose.
“How could you?”

“I’m sorry,” Doris whispered back, her eyes wide with fright. “But I was
defending
you, Margie, honest I was. This morning in Hygiene when we were learning about what not to do with boys, she started going on and on about how the reason you kept missing Schoonmaker’s class was because you were sneaking over to St. Paul’s and letting the football team do …”

“Do what?”

“I don’t know. The things we were talking about in Hygiene class. You know. Things only married people are supposed to do.”

Margaret closed her eyes. “What happened to ‘female trouble’?”

“That was last week. Anyway, I told her to shut her big fat mouth, because the reason was that you’d been chosen by Hollywood and she was going to be sorry when you were a big star.” Trembling with fury and fear, Doris bravely stepped forward to address their tormentor directly. “And anyway, it’s true! Margie
has
been discovered by Hollywood! And you’re just jealous because Phipps McKendrick would never do any of the things Miss Rumplemeyer tells us we’re not supposed to
do with boys with you. Not if you begged him! Not even”—Doris paused to take a deep breath, urging herself to deliver the knockout blow—“not even if you
paid
him.”

“Aw, Frobie. Look how your little woodland creature stands up for you.” Evelyn kept smiling her carnivorous smile. “It would almost be sweet if it weren’t so unnatural. You do understand what I mean by
unnatural
, don’t you, Frobie?”

On the other side of the hockey field, Miss Cumberland, the Orange Grove Academy gym teacher, a stout woman in her midfifties with a leg brace and severe male-pattern baldness, gave a piercing blast on the silver whistle that hung on a cord around her fat neck. A signal that the girls were now supposed to pick up their pace from an amble to a trot, it was universally ignored.

“Does it make you uncomfortable that your so-called best friend is an invert who is unnaturally in love with you, or is that just the way you two are together?” Evelyn asked while Claire and Mary Ann laughed.

Margaret didn’t bother to question the logic that had her doing unspeakable things with Phipps McKendrick under the St. Paul’s bleachers on the one hand, and on the other, embroiled in the Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name (to quote the title of one of the smutty books her father kept tucked away in his cigar humidor). Reasoning with Evelyn Gamble was like teaching a mountain lion how to crochet: you could try as hard as you pleased, but sooner or later they were both going to get impatient and rip your throat out. “Evelyn, what do you want?”

“I want to know about Hollywood. Is it true?”

“As a matter of fact,” Margaret said haughtily, “it is. I happen to have been offered a Hollywood screen test.”

Evelyn’s long face went white. Whatever she’d been expecting Margaret to say, it hadn’t been that. “By whom?”

“Why, Olympus Studios.” Margaret was beginning to enjoy herself. It was fun to see Evelyn squirm. “Perhaps you’ve heard of them? They boast such stars as Diana Chesterfield and Dane Forrest.…”

“And Jimmy Molloy,” Doris piped up.

“Shut up, dwarfis,” Evelyn said.

“A man called Larry Julius spotted me,” Margaret continued, in the same studiedly blasé tone of voice that Diana Chesterfield had used in
The HMS Cupid
, when she’d played a daffy countess pretending to be a stowaway in order to win the heart of the devastatingly handsome midshipman. “Obviously, I wouldn’t expect anyone outside the industry to recognize the name, but he’s the head of the publicity department over at Olympus.
Fearfully
important, you understand, a great friend of
practically
everyone who’s anyone, and he thought I’d be a natural. Of course, I haven’t decided to accept just yet, but it is terribly
flattering
, if I do say so myself.”

Evelyn was practically purple with rage. “I don’t believe you.”

Margaret stepped forward. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“That’s right, Frobie.”

“Nobody calls me a liar.”

Evelyn smiled her horrible crocodile smile. “Then prove it.”

Orange Grove’s only working phone box had been a gift from the outgoing senior class of 1934. A glass booth with a sparkling paintwork border of mimosa flowers, it was easy enough to access from the hockey field unseen.

Squeezing five people, two of them rather large, into a booth designed to accommodate one fashionably petite young lady of Orange Grove posed a more significant challenge. Margaret and Evelyn crowded around the receiver, so close they were practically locked in an embrace. Doris was wedged in a ball under the phone itself, like a walnut in its shell; Claire was flattened against the glass like a fly that had caught the wrong end of a swatter. Mary Ann, unable to fit, had to stand outside to keep watch.

Fingers shaking, Margaret maneuvered her arm up the front of Evelyn’s blouse to deposit the nickel, still warm from when it had been fished from the depths of the pocket of Mary Ann’s capacious bloomers. In her other sweaty palm, she clutched the greasy reconstituted remnants of Larry Julius’s card.

“This is the operator. How may I direct your call?”

“Burbank 4716, please.”

“Just a moment, please.”

The phone seemed to ring for an eternity. Margaret could feel Evelyn’s hot breath on her neck. Her own gathered in droplets on the lip of the receiver. Finally, a woman answered. “Olympus Studios. How may I direct your call?”

“Larry Julius’s office, please.”

“One moment.”

Another ring that felt like it lasted a lifetime. From the floor of the booth, Doris let out a little whimper of pain, which Evelyn silenced with a swift kick.

“Ow!” Doris shrieked.

“Larry Julius’s office.”

“What’d she do that for?”

“Doris, shhh! Hello? Owww!” A set of sharp teeth had just sunk into the flesh of Margaret’s ankle.

“Sorry, Margie,” Doris whispered. “I was aiming for Evelyn.”

“Be
quiet!
Um, is this—”

“May I help you?” The woman sounded annoyed.

“Yes!” Margaret practically shouted. “I mean, hello! I mean, um, who is this?”

“This is Gladys, Mr. Julius’s secretary.”

“Is Mr. Julius available?”

There was a long, deliberative pause on the part of Gladys. Margaret couldn’t blame her. It must have sounded as though she’d just gotten a call from a cage at the zoo. “Who may I say is calling?”

“Frobie! Tell him it’s Frooobiiieee!”

“Evelyn, shut
up
!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There must be something wrong with this connection,” Margaret said desperately.
Isn’t that the truth
. “Please tell him it’s Margaret Frobisher calling.”

“Very well, Miss Frobisher. Please hold.” There was a brief pause before the woman came back on. “I’m afraid Mr. Julius doesn’t know anyone by that name.”

Anxiously, Margaret glanced toward Evelyn, but this close, all she could see was teeth. Huge, curving, predatory teeth. “Tell him it’s the girl he met at Schwab’s last week,” she said. “The girl he rescued from Wally the jerky soda jerk. Tell him.”

“I really don’t think—”

“Tell him!”

Gladys sighed. “One moment, please.”

“Duchess!” Larry Julius’s voice came bubbling down the line, brighter and brasher than she remembered it, but Margaret didn’t care. She could have cried with relief. “Ain’t this a treat! I figured you chickened out.”

“No, of course not,” Margaret said. “I just had to …”
What? Be threatened by a playground maniac? Risk being grounded forever by my terrifying parents?
“I just had to think things over, that’s all.”

“Well, your caution speaks very well of you.” Larry Julius sounded amused. “Wait … hang on just a second, will ya?” Larry put his hand over the receiver. Margaret could hear talking in the background. The voices were muffled, but she made out a few clear words: “meeting” and “Chesterfield.” Margaret gasped.
Diana Chesterfield
. There was some kind of meeting about Diana Chesterfield! Perhaps she’d been around all this time after all? Or perhaps …

“What is it?” Doris whispered. “What’s he saying?”

“Margaret, you still there?” Larry’s voice came back clearly on the line.

“Yes,” Margaret said shakily. “Yes, sir.”

“Listen, honey, something’s come up and I’ve got to run. But you just give your particulars to Gladys and we’ll be in touch.”

“M-my … particulars?” Margaret stammered. “Couldn’t we arrange everything now?”

“Now?” Larry sounded annoyed. “Look, honey, I’m a busy man. You got me on the phone once, but I’m not exactly a social secretary, you get me?”