Read Waiting for Callback Online
Authors: Perdita Cargill
Waiting for Callback
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd
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Copyright © 2016 Perdita and Honor Cargill
Quotes used throughout by kind permission of Guardian News & Media Ltd, News Syndication and Telegraph Media Group Ltd. Full details for individual quotes are listed at the back of this
novel.
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Perdita Cargrill and Honor Cargill to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Design and Patents Act, 1988.
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Dead-ication
Scraps 2001–2015
OK, you never mastered ‘fetch’, but you were an all-round excellent dog and the best writing companion ever. We miss you (and if we earn you’ll get your
urn).
CONTENTS
I’m dressed as a spider, waiting to go onstage to impersonate a carrot.
It could be worse: I could be dressed as a carrot, waiting to go onstage to impersonate a carrot. That would be even more humiliating, but even in a black leotard I’m feeling pretty
exposed. This carrot monologue was absolutely not my choice. I’d have chosen just about anything else (maybe something with death or trauma or at least an abusive mother in it), definitely
not something that involved an arachnid pretending to be a vegetable. It isn’t exactly a meaty role.
This is entertainment.
Or what passes as entertainment on gala night at ACT.
I’m sweating right down into my black tights and I very much want to go to the loo.
Again.
The dance number that’s on before me is winding up and I’m running out of escape options. My mind is a complete blank. I can’t remember a single word. I think I might be sick.
Not just a little bit sick in my mouth, but projectile-vomit sick.
‘You’re on, Elektra,’ says someone from the wings.
And somehow I am on and I open my mouth and the words are there . . .
‘It’s dark and it’s cold.
And under the ground nobody
can hear you scream . . .’
And then I don’t want to escape. I don’t want to get off the stage. I remember how much I love this feeling. I’ll just stay here with my face turned up to the
lights and soak up all the energy until I’m the sort of spider who can take on the world and win (well, it’s been known).
I’m high on drama.
‘I mean nothing really happens in your life until you’re fourteen or fifteen.’
Chloë Moretz
‘Funny to think she wants Elektra.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad.’ There were times in this house when not enough respect was given to my fragile teenage psyche.
‘What worries me is where it will all
end
,’ said my mum. (I take it back: please continue to ignore my fragile teenage psyche.) ‘I just don’t know how healthy it
is. Look at Lindsay Lohan.’
‘You told Mrs Haden it was “all very exciting”,’ I said.
‘Well, it is exciting.’ Mum looked a bit shamefaced. ‘I just
worry
.’ (She still worried if at fifteen I took the bus on my own.) ‘And Mrs Haden didn’t
say she
definitely
wanted you. She just invited us in for a chat. She did sound keen though.’
‘You
have
to say yes.’
Tactical error.
‘We don’t
have
to do anything,’ they said together.
‘Please. It would be my
dream
.’
‘Would it really?’ Dad sounded sceptical.
‘I want to be an actor.’
‘What, more than being the editor of
Vogue
or discovering the cure for cancer?’
‘Actually, yes.’ (Well, obviously, I would quite like to ‘discover’ the cure for cancer, but unless I literally stumble upon it I don’t think that’s going to
happen.)
‘We should at least listen to Elektra,’ said Mum. She pulled up a chair for me at the big white kitchen table and we all sat around it like it was some weird, domestic board meeting.
Our kitchen was
very
white and plain with just one large black-and-white photo of a tomato on the wall. All the photos in our house were black and white; colour photos would have offended my
architect dad’s aesthetic sensibilities. Even our dog (Digby – my parents’ son substitute and favourite) was a Dalmatian; a red setter would have been out of the question. He (Dad
not Digby) has a very low tolerance for colour and mess; to him they’re the same thing. It’s a sort of chromatic traumatic thing. It is genuinely painful for him to enter my
bedroom.
I tried to look rational and adult, although I wasn’t feeling either (or looking the part – I was wearing an old nightie which only just covered my bum and dated from my Snoopy
era).
‘Are you sure this isn’t just another phase? What if you go off acting like you went off climbing and . . . ballet?’ Mum whispered the last word.
Dad let out a snort. ‘Ha, I’d forgotten the climbing lessons. Bit of a low point.’
‘To be fair,’ said Mum, ‘acting’s the one thing that Elektra hasn’t gone off. She’s been going to ACT every Thursday for years.’
ACT (or Act-up Children’s Theatre) was just a local, after-school theatre group, not the sort of Academy for the Performing Arts where they fitted maths and physics round the
students’ bursts of spontaneous and yet perfectly choreographed song and dance routines. And I loved it all the more for that.
‘Remember when she played Tinkerbell?’ Mum added.
‘That was the time she fell off the stage, wasn’t it?’ said Dad.
They both laughed a little bit too much. ‘I am still here,’ I said. My Tinkerbell had been inspired. I’d just relied too much on my wings when I was caught up in the
moment.
‘Sorry, darling,’ said Mum. ‘You were brilliant last night.’
‘Well, this Haden woman obviously thought Elektra was a credible carrot.’ Dad’s tone suggested he didn’t necessarily share her opinion.
‘She should know; apparently, she’s been an acting agent for ages. She’s got her own company – she gave me her card.’ Mum dropped it on to the table and we all
looked at the little white rectangle nervously as if the woman herself might materialize. ‘Lens knows her.’
Lens was our teacher at ACT. I loved Lens (not just because he looked like Will Smith, although that helped). He was the only person who could have persuaded me that the carrot monologue was the
way to go. He was probably also the only person who could have persuaded an acting agent to come and see a show featuring performing vegetables.
‘It all seems legitimate,’ said Mum.
God, I hadn’t imagined the agent might be
il
legitimate. What did that even mean?
‘Maybe she’s just got a space on her books for a performing vegetable,’ Dad suggested.
I ignored him. ‘You think we should say yes, don’t you, Mum?’ It was always important in our family triangle to try and get on the right side of the 2:1.
‘I don’t know, darling. We don’t want anything to interfere with school. It’s not long until your GCSEs . . .’
‘It’s
ages
till I have to worry about my exams.’ Thank God, because I was still some way off mastering circle theorems. ‘And look at Emma Watson; she’s meant
to be, like, really brainy.’