Waiting for Callback (20 page)

‘You can help me bake,’ Mum said a bit too brightly. ‘We could make cupcakes.’

Great. Retro holiday activities. No wonder I wasn’t rushing to give up the acting.

‘
Babes
, poor you.’ The ‘sympathy’ was pouring out of Flissy as she met me at the door of our form room at lunchtime. I was suspicious right away:
even if it was the first day of a new term, Flissy did not meet me at the door of our form room; usually, she slammed the door in my face.

‘Sorry?’ I asked, but I had a bad feeling.

‘I heard what happened.’

I clung to the one per cent chance she wasn’t talking about
Open Outcry
. ‘Nothing happened,’ I said and I tried to push past her.

‘You’re being so
brave
. I would just have
died
of mortification.’

The one per cent followed the other ninety-nine into the pit of despair.

‘What happened in the holidays at your
filming
,’ she went on for the benefit of everyone who was listening (which unfortunately was most of the class). ‘Or what
didn’t happen.’ She laughed and lounged across the whole doorway so that I couldn’t get past.

‘Who told you?’ I asked.

‘A friend.’

She had friends? Wow. ‘Who?’ I asked because I knew for sure that it hadn’t started with Moss. I tried again to get past Flissy and reach the safe zone next to Moss and Jenny
and Maia who were watching with horror. I failed.

‘A girl I do dance classes with was in it as an extra – an extra just like you now I come to think about it. She knows we go to the same school so she thought I’d want to
know.’

‘The rest of us weren’t that interested,’ said Moss (which was supportive, but not that cheering because Flissy had obviously told everyone).

Of course Flissy had found out. Over eight and a half million people live in London so statistically the percentage I know must be irrelevant and yet
every single time
I do something
embarrassing it gets back to someone I know.

‘Oh, it wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t care. It was just a tiny part. I didn’t even have any lines—’

‘Really? When you were talking about it at the end of last term, you made it sound like such a big role. That’s . . . awkward. Anyway, you must still be
so
disappointed and
embarrassed
.’

Karma is a seriously mean girl. I should never have told anyone about
Open Outcry
. I’d worked out fast enough that talking about acting with anyone that didn’t do it was a bad
idea. At best, people thought I was a weird drama geek (to be fair I was), at worst, that I was up myself and showing off. I hadn’t specifically told Flissy, but I hadn’t restricted the
information to the circle of trust (Moss, Jenny and Maia) either. And even though Flissy and I don’t talk to each other somehow we always know what the other one is up to. Mum, who went
through a phase of reading teen psychology books (but somehow never learned about the need for healthy detachment), keeps saying we’ll end up friends. She’s wrong. She also keeps saying
that there must be more to Flissy than mean girl. She’s wrong about that too.

What I would have given right now to have been beneath Flissy’s notice.

‘Well, I got paid. And there’ll be other parts.’ I sounded like my mum (and she hadn’t had much luck with that line).

‘Of course there will,’ Flissy gushed. ‘Apparently, everyone was
really sorry
for you. Maybe you’ll get a
pity
casting.’

I hated her, I really did.

I should have left it at that. ‘What else did your “friend” tell you?’

‘That you cried.’ Long pause. ‘And that you sobbed all over Archie Mortimer and he had to be nice to you.’ She smirked, not even bothering with the fake sympathy
expressions any more.

I felt the tips of my ears go hot and red. ‘You know Archie?’

‘Yeah.’ She shrugged as if to suggest that she knew every hot guy in North London (maybe she did).

‘How do you know him?’ (Why did I ask? Why?)

‘He got off with Talia at Fran’s Halloween party.’ At Halloween, I had
voluntarily
worn a spider costume, this time complete with weird legs made from tights, and gone
trick or treating with Moss and Haruka. An image of Talia in some wrong sort of costume involving fishnets and little else crossed my mind and stayed there.

‘So . . . so Archie’s dating Talia?’ I tried to get past Flissy again, but she blocked me.

She shrugged. ‘It was just a get with at a party. It wasn’t like “true love”.’ She sniggered. ‘It’s what people do at
parties
. Do you go to many
parties, Elektra?’ And she sniggered again. ‘Maybe you’ll get to go to all the A-list acting parties now – with, like, Daniel Craig and people. Oh, no, wait! That’s
not going to happen, is it? Shame.’

Look, a saint would have snapped. A saint probably wouldn’t have slapped her though. But I’m not a saint so I slapped her.

Sort of.

In my head, it was a full-on, open-palmed, efficient single slap to her perfect, over-made-up face. In my head, it was a movie moment of exquisite revenge. There’d be shocked gasps of
admiration, Flissy would step aside and I’d pass with my head held high and pride restored. Or something like that.

But no. I missed her by a mile.

I’d yet to master the high five so why I thought I could pull off the full-on bitch slap I have no idea. I should have gone to that combat class.

Also I think I had my eyes closed.

At least there was no teacher there to witness it (even my flouncy, failed, girly attempt would have got me into serious trouble) so I was going to get off scot free, right? Well, no. Much
worse. Some random girl had been filming on her iPhone.

There’s always some random girl filming on her phone. Always.

‘It’s not all bad,’ pointed out Moss as she handed me yet another tissue and we examined the footage it had taken someone
seven minutes
to upload to
Facebook. ‘Flissy comes off way worse than you.’ Moss had rescued me out of the doorway and into the corridor. We sat with our backs against the too-hot radiators and everybody took one
look at my face and left us alone.

‘At least Flissy just comes over like a horrible person. I look like a complete fail at life.’

‘Nah, everyone hates Flissy. People will be pleased that someone finally fought back.’

‘
Tried
to fight back.’

‘Your technique does need a bit of work. I’d have another go if I were you.’ No. That was not happening. ‘At least you surprised her – look at her mouth hanging
open when it’s over.’ She froze the screen at a particularly unflattering-to-Flissy frame. ‘It’s even wider than normal so you can tell how stupid she is.’

I’m not sure Flissy
is
stupid. One minute she’ll be saying something spectacularly thick (‘Taiwan’s a factory in China where they make fake Vuitton bags’
being this week’s genuine example) and the next minute she’ll be coming out with some whip-fast verbal takedown. It’s confusing.

‘She’s not as pretty as Talia,’ I said pettily.

‘
Nobody
is as pretty as Talia.’

That’s true and I don’t know if it made her getting with Archie better or worse. It wasn’t hard to visualize them together; in fact, it was going to be hard to stop visualizing
them together. Talia will probably get spotted by a model agency any day now and they’ll
beg
her to do the Burberry campaign or something because she’s got that rich, useless
look. I couldn’t stop watching the video. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t had audio, but you could hear every word because the entire class was holding its breath. No
sound and I could have lied about what happened and nobody would have cared. But basically the whole world could not only watch, but also listen to me being crushed over
Open Outcry
and
melting down over Archie Mortimer.

Moss’s phone buzzed. She looked at the screen.

‘Was that Torr?’ It was always Torr.

‘Yep.’

‘Tell me that he hasn’t seen it.’

She didn’t say anything.

‘He’s seen it. What did he say?’ And I grabbed her phone.

Hahaha Classic Elektra

Great. It wasn’t just funny that I’d completely humiliated myself, it was
typical
that I’d humiliated myself. And this from a guy I’d met all of three times (and
it’s fair to say I hadn’t been the focus of his attention). Also Moss had nearly laughed when she’d read it. I took another tissue and watched the likes mount up – 80, 85,
92 . . . Well, it was lunchtime; people had nothing better to do. In less than twenty-five minutes, it had approximately fifty more likes than any other status I was tagged in, but it was the
Comments (mostly directed at Archie) that destroyed me. Here’s a sample:

And there were others that I just can’t repeat.

‘Hi, Elektra.’ Nelly smiled at me. She ran the office at ACT and hassled us when we missed more than two classes in a row. ‘What have you lost this
time?’

‘
Nothing
– I’m a reformed character.’ She looked doubtful. ‘It’s just that Daisy wasn’t in class today,’ I said. It was the first ACT class
of the summer term. Nobody ever missed first class back because a) there was cake and b) there was gossip. In the wake of
Open Outcry
, maybe I should have missed it.

‘She wasn’t?’

‘No and she missed the last class last term.’ Nobody ever missed the last class of term because of, well, cake. Daisy hadn’t been at a class since
Fortuneswell
and I
wanted to check she was all right. ‘Do you know if anything’s the matter?’

‘I’m sure Daisy’s fine,’ said Nelly in a voice that meant that even if she knew anything she wasn’t going to tell me.

‘I’ve lost her mobile number and I just want to check she’s OK.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to give out students’ phone numbers.’

‘But it’s me, Nelly. It’s not like I’m some dodgy stranger.’

‘I’m
really
not allowed, Lecky. Message her.’

‘She’s not on Facebook.’

‘Respect. Well, I could give her
your
number if you want?’

I wrote down my mobile number on the edge of her pad. I too had a new mobile number because it was a new phone. A shiny new iPhone, my
Open Outcry
pressie from Eulalie, inscribed on the
back, ‘
Mieux vaut faire, et se repentir/Que se repentir, et rien faire
.’ Basically, this translates as YOLO and was the only good thing to have come out of that whole painful
episode. Now we could skype on the go. I wasn’t sure where my actual phone was at that precise moment (slight but familiar panic), but I knew the number off by heart. ‘You won’t
forget to give it to her, will you?’ There was something messy and fun about Nelly that made it hard to trust her powers of organization.