Waiting for Callback Read online

  ‘Well, it’s not real. She’s not my agent.’ Neither of us could say the word ‘agent’ in a normal voice; it still sounded like it should be in italics or capitals or quotes or something.

  ‘She’s not your agent yet,’ said Moss with an optimism that owed everything to our friendship. ‘Today’s the day.’

  ‘I can’t even let myself think about it I want it to happen so much.’ Also it made me a bit sweaty. ‘And no, I’m not missing any lessons; my mum “kindly” arranged the meeting for after school.’ I rifled through my bag for the hundredth time. ‘Aaaargh, it’s definitely not here.’

  ‘What have you lost this time?’ Moss was used to this morning routine.

  ‘My French homework. I’ve forgotten it . . . again.’

  ‘Who cares? You’re going to be a Hollywood star.’

  That was true of course (sure), but right now it was Monday morning and there was a lot to be got through before five o’clock – including French unfortunately.

  ‘I’ll help you look.’ Moss dumped the entire contents of my bag on to the seat between us: a tampon that had exploded half out of its wrapper like a small escaping mouse (but, to the boys on the bus, scarier); two mini Oreo packets, sadly empty; a copy of Grazia (cover story: Alex Pettyfer on dating his co-stars – hopefully, useful at some point, but right now less useful than my French homework); random exercise books and textbooks for every subject except French.

  ‘Madame Verte will give me detention. That’ll make her happy – she’s such a cow.’ (Her real name is Mrs Green and she comes from Essex.)

  ‘I’ll keep you company. I got a detention from Mrs Lawal on Friday.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I was late for physics . . . again.’

  Figured. Moss and I spend a lot of bonding time in detention together.

  ‘Have you told Archie about the meeting?’ she asked.

  ‘Take a wild guess.’

  ‘That would be no then.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is that because you still haven’t talked to him?’

  I shook my head and she looked at me in despair. I’d been in the same class at ACT as Archie Mortimer for nearly a term, but it wasn’t that simple.

  Archie was fit. The sort of fit that is universally acknowledged – tall, good body (and yes, I’d Facebook stalked for evidence), face full of bones (I know that all faces are full of bones, but his are perfectly arranged). This isn’t subjective and I’m not exaggerating. I’m not saying this like it’s a good thing. It would be much better for me if I were the only one irresistibly drawn to his understated, outsider, in-the-eye-of-the-beholder charms. That would maybe work quite well all round. But no, nobody’s calling Archie Mortimer’s charms understated.

  Of course I hadn’t talked to him.

  In my head, we had entire conversations and I was witty and adorable with just the right number of quirks. Basically, I was every leading lady in every romcom and he was smitten and always followed the script.

  Imaginary dating: it’s the way forward.

  But in Real Life there was a Status Gap between me and Archie, and you should always respect the Status Gap. He had been in an episode of some BBC series about murders and scones or something (serious status points), he was at least one year older than me (more points – school years are like castes) and also there’s the universally fit thing, see above (many more points). I couldn’t risk talking to him in case I went red and/or blotchy.

  He did try to talk to me sometimes. Not talk as in ‘have a conversation’, just talk as in ‘say unavoidable words every now and again’. Stuff like, ‘Hey, Elektra, what’s up?’ (me – mumble, mumble)/‘Hey, Elektra, how’s school?’ (me – mumble, mumble)/‘Hey, Elektra, Lens wants us to [insert random teacher instruction that I’d missed because of Archie’s proximity] (me – mumble, mumble, blush). No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t categorize it as conversation, far less banter, far less flirty banter.

  ‘I can’t wait to get to school,’ Moss said, stirring me from my Archie thoughts.

  That was a first. ‘I’m guessing not because you’re excited about assembly.’

  ‘No. It’s because I’ll get to see Flissy’s face when you tell her about your agent.’

  ‘There’s no way I’m telling Flissy!’

  ‘Why not? She’ll be so jealous, her face will be hilarious.’

  Moss was right. Being approached by an actual agent had the potential to impress Flissy (only about half as much as if I’d been spotted by a modelling agent, but still a lot). Nothing I had ever done to date had impressed Flissy. It was tempting.

  ‘And Talia too. Go on, pleeeease. I will literally pay you.’

  Flissy and Talia were inseparable, a sort of power couple of meanness (Flissy) and hotness (Talia). They didn’t like us and we didn’t like them. We all knew where we stood.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, not literally, no.’

  ‘Not worth it. They’ll just persecute me for a whole term.’

  ‘If it was me, I couldn’t resist,’ said Moss, but then she was always braver (stupider?) than me.

  ‘I’m not going to tell anyone.’

  ‘You have to tell Jenny and Maia,’ said Moss. She looked guilty.

  ‘So, what you mean is you’ve already told Jenny and Maia?’ No answer. It was maybe OK; we hung out with them quite a lot. Jenny was sweet and chill; Maia was really funny and our number-one source of gossip. I don’t know how Maia did it, but she knew everything about everyone. That was a life skill.

  ‘Tell them not to tell anyone else,’ I said sternly, ‘especially Maia. Seriously. It’ll just be humiliating if nothing happens.’

  Even though I had the meeting set up, I wasn’t counting my chickens. I couldn’t even see any chickens yet.

  I always spend a lot of my day at school watching time pass. This is partly because every single classroom has a huge clock on the wall the better to terrorize us in exams and partly because there are very few lessons that wouldn’t be improved by being at least ten minutes shorter. But today I was even more time-obsessed and time was not helping by running way more slowly than it usually did (even on a Monday). Double history felt like we were experiencing the Franco-Prussian War in real time; chemistry went a bit faster only because I managed to google ‘teen actor red carpet fails’ on my phone under the desk; French was livened up by the handing down of the predicted detention at 11.52 a.m.; I’m not even going to talk about sports or double maths. I knew that geography, the last lesson of the day, was going to be a long forty minutes.

  ‘So, five more problems that might be faced by residents of shanty towns. Come on, who’s going to volunteer?’ asked Mrs Gryll. ‘Nobody? I’m thrilled to see you’ve all prepared so comprehensively for this lesson. Right, who’s going to give me just one? Elektra?’

  The pressure. OK, admittedly it wasn’t that hard a question, but I was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate as we got closer to the bell. Also I was involved in a particularly distracting bit of list-making (potential Romeos to my Juliet).

  ‘Elektra? Do I have to wait until global warming has melted the ice caps before I get this answer?’

  I think that was geography banter. ‘Er . . . fires?’ I offered, putting Archie out of my head and scribbling down ‘RPatz’. No prizes for originality. I folded the paper and passed it under the table to Jenny.

  ‘Excellent. Fires are indeed a serious risk and problem in overpopulated areas. Jenny? Jenny, are you even here with us? What is wrong with you all?’

  Jenny looked up guiltily. ‘Sorry. Erm, what was the question again?’

  ‘You’d know if you weren’t so busy with whatever else is going on in this classroom today. Why don’t you share what you’re writing with all of us?’

  Classic. It’s like there’s one big teacher script.

  ‘It’s just a list . . . for English?’ Poor attempt at a save by Jenny.

  ‘I do enjoy English,’
said Mrs Gryll, wandering out from behind her desk and stretching out her hand for the note.

  ‘“Hot guys to play MY Romeo. Suggestions, please”,’ she read. ‘Whose Romeo would this be? Yours, Jenny?’

  ‘Mine,’ I said in a very small voice.

  ‘You’re playing Juliet?’ Mrs Gryll asked me.

  ‘Yes . . . In my head.’

  ‘Freak,’ muttered Flissy, not quite quietly enough.

  ‘And this is for English? Strange. I could have sworn your set play was Waiting for Godot.’

  How did teachers know so much?

  ‘“Douglas Booth . . . RPatz.”’ She began to read out the names on the list.

  ‘Sweet to see you’re still making lists of imaginary boyfriends, Elektra,’ said Flissy. ‘It’s like a throwback to Year Seven.’

  Brutal. I ignored her.

  ‘Aaaw, Flissy, it’s like that time when you wrote all those poems in your maths book to that guy Hen—’

  ‘Oh my God, shut up, Talia,’ hissed Flissy.

  ‘And then you wanted him to notice you so you—’

  Flissy hurled her exercise book at Talia to make her stop. It was a harsh blow, not least because the exercise book probably weighed about the same as Talia.

  ‘Yeah, well, at least some of us have moved beyond crushes,’ said Flissy, reasserting her position in the class hierarchy. She’d have batted her eyelashes had the weight of mascara not made that a physical impossibility. ‘You’ll understand when you have a boyfriend. Sorry, if you ever have a boyfriend.’

  Moss and I looked at each other. Flissy talking about her boyfriend (which was something she did multiple times a day) was enough to make anyone want to die alone with cats.

  Mrs Gryll had been ignoring this little exchange in favour of a close study of my Romeo candidates. ‘Well, girls, if you want my opinion, this is a predictable and slightly insipid list.’

  Seriously? Did she even know who these people were? Insipid?

  ‘Who’d be on your list, Mrs Gryll?’ asked Maia.

  ‘Gregory Peck,’ said Mrs Gryll and smiled in a way that was troubling in a teacher.

  ‘What’s he in?’ I asked because we seemed to have forgotten about shanty towns and that could only be a good thing.

  ‘He’s dead,’ she replied.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said because a) it was obviously a recent loss and still painful for her and b) I was potentially still in a bit of trouble.

  ‘Gregory would have been my perfect Romeo,’ said Mrs Gryll (you could practically see the little heart emojis).

  ‘Show us a picture, pleeease.’ Maia was teacher’s pet so perfectly placed to keep us off topic.

  ‘We should get on . . .’ But Mrs Gryll was weakening. ‘OK, just one then we’re straight back to inadequate infrastructure.’ She searched on her laptop and then there he was in all his black-and-white glory on the smart board.

  That is not sarcasm. Gregory Peck is so going on my Romeo list. Anyone that looks like that (even if they’re dead) deserves a wider fan base than middle-aged geography teachers.

  ‘As an actor, you get to try all sorts of different hats on and share hats and own hats and rent hats and give them back. And have them taken from you. And I think that’s wonderful.’

  Shailene Woodley

  Just like Stella’s email had said, the agency offices were above a dentist’s surgery. There was just a small sign by the side doorway that we’d have missed if we hadn’t been looking for it:

  Second Floor

  The Haden Agency

  Leading Children’s Theatrical Agency Since 1990

  Maybe they’d camouflaged it on purpose to avoid hundreds of hopeful candidates with newly washed hair and a copy of the Wicked lyrics dropping by on the ‘off chance’. The whole by-invitation-of-Mrs-Haden thing should have made me less nervous, but it didn’t.

  This meeting still felt like a test.

  But then quite a lot of things I have to do feel like a test.

  1. Actual tests (obviously) – and at my school there are loads. A bad experience with a physics test (hydraulics – I got my pascals mixed up with my newtons) was fresh in my mind.

  2. Appearance tests (subcategories virtual and actual, virtual being the way more important category). I’ve got a bad feeling that weight had it’s own category too – but not on my list.

  3. Daily fashion tests – I was resigned to failing this Monday to Friday because nobody could persuade me that it was worth making any effort to style and accessorize our gross school uniform.

  4. Social tests – ‘You didn’t get invited to Talia’s house party? Seriously?’ ‘Your profile pic only got thirty likes? Seriously?’ Ability to pass social tests was brutally correlated to results in 2 and 3 above.

  5. Endless ‘good child’ tests – ‘No, I didn’t say you had to be back before ten o’clock, but if you were half as responsible as [insert the name of any of my friends] you would have been’ (Mum) or ‘If you spent more time on geometry, you’d find it infinitely more rewarding’ (Dad – and no, actually, I wouldn’t).

  This list could be a lot longer, but it’s too depressing.

  No question this meeting was a test. And the whole fear factor wasn’t helped by the dentist smell in the stairwell. (What was that? Formaldehyde? Antiseptic? Weird mixture of bone and mint?) The agency office was just a small room with two tables facing each other, both laden with bulky, old-fashioned computers with wires pooling everywhere. It wasn’t how I’d imagined it; not exactly Hollywood glamour.

  ‘Mrs James, Elektra, thank you for taking the time to come in and meet with us.’ Mrs Haden motioned for us to sit opposite her. She was seriously tall and the sort of skinny that would get me on the lunchtime watch list at school. She looked pretty serious; yep, definitely a test (I’d found a new hardcore category – ‘professional tests’).

  ‘Thank you for seeing us, Mrs Haden,’ Mum said, putting on her too-polite voice.

  ‘Please, you must both call me Stella.’

  I was too intimidated to call her anything.

  ‘And this is Charlie,’ Stella said, gesturing to the woman at the second desk who was practically hidden behind her computer. Charlie, who was a lot younger than Stella and a whole lot shorter, just waved vaguely at us and went back to whatever she was doing.

  One entire wall of the office was covered in headshots of kids of different ages. Under each was a name and some had code-like dates and initials scrawled under them too. Stella saw me looking. ‘They’re our clients. You must know Daisy Arnold? She’s at ACT with you, isn’t she?’

  I nodded. Daisy was gorgeous and tiny like a doll – all blonde ringlets and big round blue eyes. She had a sort of retro-perfect thing going on and never had smudged mascara or a fist-sized hole in her tights like the rest of us. Daisy was also so lovely that it was impossible to hate her for any of that.

  ‘Your photo could be going up there too, Elektra.’

  If that involved looking like most of the kids on that wall, then maybe not. Daisy fitted right in.

  ‘So tell me, Elektra, how did you get into acting?’

  The first question in any test is usually the easy one, but I was already struggling. I mean, how much backstory did she want? I could tell her all about my early Barbie voice-over years, the intense doctors and nurses phase with Freddy from next door (he’s moved away now, probably to be nearer to his therapist), but that might be oversharing. I just really liked acting, I always had – and no question I was better at it than at lots of other things (netball, maths, ballet obviously). I hadn’t given it up which was more than could be said for any other after-school thing I’d started. But what ‘got me into it’? I should have said something/anything a) because silence is scary when you’re the one meant to be filling it and b) because I handed my mum the opportunity to jump right in and answer (loudly) for me. Basic error.

  ‘Well . . . Elektra has just always loved the opportunity to explore being other characters . . .
’

  At that precise moment, I did want to explore being another character – like someone else’s daughter.

  I quickly cut over Mum and started waffling on about my classes at ACT. I was selective. For example, I didn’t tell Stella that it had been kind of grim at first because most of the other kids thought I was weird and posh. I didn’t tell her that I wasn’t that keen on warming up to retro Britney Spears compilation tapes or that I struggled with some drama ‘games’ (usually the ones that involve pretending to be any non-human form). I was pretty sure Stella didn’t need to know any of that, so I just told her that I liked making words come alive and I especially liked it when they were so real that I was suddenly someone or something completely different. And that was true.

  ‘And what made you choose the monologue I heard last week?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Um . . . well . . . my teacher, Lens, chose it.’ Which I know wasn’t the ‘right’ answer. I should have said something about being touched by the raw energy of the spider/carrot’s spiritual journey. Because I was ninety-nine per cent sure the monologue was an extremely meaningful metaphor. I just wasn’t sure what it was a metaphor for.

  ‘Well, it was very good.’ Stella must have seen the look on my face because she added, ‘But obviously we try to find our clients non-vegetable parts too.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I probably blushed; I blush easily. I definitely blushed when my phone started barking.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’ I began a frantic search in my messy bag.

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Stella, raising her voice over the woofs.

  Mum’s glare would have melted girders. She fished out my phone in seconds and switched it to silent. It felt like every perfect child on The Wall was looking at me. This was all making me a bit sweaty.

  ‘But you had fun doing it?’ Charlie put me out of my misery. She pulled her chair over and came to join us.

  ‘Doing what?’ It’s possible I was not at my most impressive. Also I found Charlie quite distracting. She was working a sort of gothy headteacher look: jet-black hair; very tight black skirt; unchipped black nail polish; three tiny crosses in her right ear and a skull tattoo that stretched all over the back of one hand.