My heart hammering in my chest, I stood up, forced out of the row by the rest of them. My mind was already turning. Could I pull this off? I could at least try, just for experience. I was never going to get it, not with the likes of girls like Alicia in the crowd…but why not try? Just for fun. I had time, especially if it was only two minutes per girl. My lunch break wasn’t over for another forty five minutes and there were only twenty girls ahead of me. I could make it and then run back. Besides, Adam wouldn’t mind if I was five minutes late. Taking a deep breath, I went to line up against the wall with the rest.
“So,” Liam’s voice boomed as he spoke into the microphone at the panel table. “Two minutes, one of the judges will read opposite you, and then head over to the left exit. If Porsche asks you to give her your contact info, please do.” He waved his hand over to the redhead, and I raised an eyebrow at her name, giggling. Porsche?
“I’m guessing that’s his newest thing then, helping out,” Alicia whispered to me. “Lucky.”
“Who’s first?” Liam asked, silencing us. With a gulp, the first girl stepped forward. I closed my eyes, trying to calm down. This was it, I was trapped, and I had to go through with it. I just hoped I wouldn’t make a complete fool of myself.
CHAPTER 3: AMY
I was shaking as I inched closer and closer to the front. Each time a girl read, Alicia would either roll her eyes in disapproval, or shake her head, as if there was no hope left.
“That’s Candice Manther,” she said, as a new girl approached the panel of judges. “Her resume is about three times the size of mine, and she certainly has a salary from her last show. What the hell is she doing here?”
“Maybe she wants a chance, like everyone else?” I said, shrugging. My hands were clenched in fists, as I tried to control my nerves. “Hey, look, I think I changed my mind…”
“What? No!” Alicia turned around, grabbing me like we had known each other for years. “Don’t let the likes of Candice Manther put you off. You deserve a chance just like anyone else.”
“Right,” I replied. My heart was beating fast, and my mouth had gone dry. Of course I wanted a chance, I wanted to act, and it’s all I ever thought of. If Sarah were here now, she’d be bouncing off the walls. But in this crowd, I didn’t stand a chance. Not with girls who looked vaguely familiar, girls who already had tons of training and a resume longer than the line up to this audition. Still, as I looked over the script in my hands, I felt myself drawn to the words. Like many others in the line, I began to whisper the words over and over to myself in my head. It was a short script, only a couple of pages, and I quickly indentified that it was more about expression and body language than the actual words.
I became so absorbed in the script that I barely noticed how close I was to the front. However, when I heard somebody say ‘Next!’, and there was an awkward silence, I realized that it was my turn.
“Um. Me.” I said, moving forward.
The lights were bright, and I could barely see the panel in front of me. Liam looked at me with annoyance and I quickly realized I was standing too far back. Moving forward, onto the masking tape ‘X’ they had put down, I nervously held my ground. He was staring at me. He could probably see right through me and my lack of training.
“I’ll read now,” he said, and that surprised me. There had been twenty girls in front of me, and they all had someone else on the panel read opposite them. Liam had not uttered a word…until me?
“Right,” I said, folding the script and putting it in my back pocket. He raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t need it?”
“No, I uh…have a good memory,” I replied, which was true. I also didn’t want him to see how badly my hands were shaking.
“Whenever you’re ready then,” he said, never taking his sharp eyes off me.
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes as the lines flashed through my mind. And then, opening them to face him square on, I started talking.
“You think I’ve ever cared what you are?” I said. I surprised myself, the first line of a monologue was always difficult for me. But here it was, flowing through me. The words just spilled through my mouth, almost as if I had nothing to do with them. “I have never cared what you are or what you look like.”
“And what kind of future do you think we would have?” Liam snapped, as the Beast to my Beauty.
“I don’t care about the future,” I said, meeting his eyes. “I came here, prepared to hate you…but all that’s changed. All of it. I feel things about you that I have never felt before, not with any man. All of a sudden, the world is real. The fairy tales I’m reading are coming true.”
“Are you not frightened?” Suddenly Liam was on his feet, growling at me. “Do you not know what awaits you, if you choose this fate? This life with me?”
“Yes,” I said, holding my ground. “You.”
There was silence, and internally I panicked, wondering if I had forgotten a line. He stared at me for an impossibly long time, and although it made me incredibly uncomfortable, I tried not to break his gaze. Acting was about looks as much as the words that came out of your mouth, and so I continued to meet his eyes with what I thought was love and support; things I thought Beauty would feel for her Beast. No one said anything for quite awhile, and then Liam left the table without another word. Everyone watched as he went over to Porsche and whispered something in her ear.
The girl nodded and then crooked a finger, beckoning me over. I went, in the silence, over to her, as Liam passed me, calling “NEXT!” in that gruff bark that was startling to everyone.
“What’s your name?” Porsche asked, when she had taken me out into the hallway. I panicked, thinking I was in trouble, that they had caught me, until I remembered that this was a good thing. Had I actually done well? Out of all the girls who had auditioned so far, he hadn’t sent one of them over here yet.
“Amy,” I said, and spelt my last name for her. She asked a few more details and then scribbled them down as well, making sure my phone number and email were correct. My heart began to sink when she asked for my experience and resume. Of course, having none, I babbled about my work in the kitchens. Maybe all she wanted was to know I wasn’t a complete spoiled deadbeat teenager who never had a job? In a last ditch effort, I mentioned my father, and homeschooling, hoping anything I had would help. It was when she asked about my mother’s profession that I shook my head and tried to change the subject. Outside of the house, I never talked about my mother. I was afraid that the very few memories I had of her, a scent, a happy feeling, would disappear, if I exposed her to the public. They were my memories, all I had left.