Katie looked around as if her friend had gone completely insane. ‘What beach? We’re hundreds of miles from the coast.’
Charlotte seemed to teeter on the edge of a breakdown. ‘Um . . . strappy sandals . . . cocoa butter . . . I don’t know! Let’s just go!’
She rushed off, following the rest of the crowd as they left the hall. At last Olivia could breathe. Her eyes locked with a girl from her grade, Jenny, who scurried over, several big ring-binders pressed close to her chest.
‘Hi, Olivia. I was wondering . . .’ She ground the toe of her shoe into the floor. ‘Would you like to be involved in planning the dance? You could even be chairperson if you wanted. You’d be great at it!’
Wow! Olivia hadn’t so much as applied and she was being offered a lead position.
‘What does a chairperson do, exactly?’ asked Ivy, frowning at the piles of folders the girl was clutching.
‘Chooses decorations, discusses colour schemes, themes, music and agrees it all with the principal. It’s a very important position.’ She waved her hand through the air. ‘We have to turn all this into a dance hall by next Friday!’
Ivy shuddered. ‘Not my idea of fun.’
But Olivia was already picturing the perfect centrepieces and hundreds of lights sparkling over the dance floor.
‘So, do you want to?’ Jenny asked, bobbing on the balls of her feet.
‘What about your film?’ Ivy whispered out of the side of her mouth. Olivia’s visions of a romantic dance disappeared into thin air.
‘I’m sorry.’ And she genuinely was. ‘But I’ll be too busy learning lines for my film role.’
‘OK.’ Jenny nodded slowly, her shoulders sagging. ‘I understand. Thanks anyway.’ Olivia felt a twinge of guilt as Jenny pushed her way through the other students. But this was going to be her big break. She needed to give it her all, and that meant rehearsing and re-rehearsing until she knew her lines better than she knew her own name!
As the four friends were making their way out of the hall, Olivia felt the phone in her pocket vibrate again. She slipped it out of her jeans and touched the flashing message to open it. The message was from Jacob Harker, the studio head giving Olivia her shot at Hollywood: Olivia, my rising star, we need to catch up. Stuff ’s going down. Call the office. 818-350-4917.
Olivia tugged at her sister’s elbow, pulling her to a stop. ‘Harker wants me to call him.’
Ivy read the message over Olivia’s shoulder. ‘Even for a V, that guy’s a little kooky. Shouldn’t he have, like, a whole squad of minions taking his calls and sending his memos? At least that’s what I would do if I was that powerful.’
‘Well, then, let’s hope you’re never that powerful,’ Olivia teased. ‘You’d be a slave-driver!’
‘Hey!’ Ivy dropped her chin and tried to shoot Olivia a death stare, but instead burst into laughter.
Olivia’s stomach flip-flopped as she punched the keys for Harker’s number. She couldn’t believe that she, Olivia Abbott, was calling the head of a major Hollywood movie studio. How cool was that?
After three rings, the sound of Harker’s drawling voice eased on to the line. ‘Duuuude, what’s up?’
Olivia didn’t know the proper response to that. ‘Nothing . . . er . . . man,’ she replied uncertainly, hoping it didn’t sound weird.
‘Bad news.’ Harker’s voice became grave. Oh no . . . Am I getting fired? Is Jackson OK? ‘The Hollywood writers have gone on strike,’ he announced.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Olivia tried to sound sympathetic, although she had no idea what this really meant.
‘No worries, my friend, but you’d better start watching reruns of your favourite shows, because it looks like it’s going to be a while before you get any new episodes.’
She hadn’t expected that. Olivia’s mouth went dry. ‘And movies?’
‘Kaput, too. With no one to write the scripts around here, we’re like bums on the beach. No choice but to relax and put everything on hold.’
Olivia stopped dead. ‘No more movie shoot?’ It felt as if a sumo wrestler had climbed aboard Olivia’s shoulders and taken a seat. She was crushed.
Ivy turned and shot her sister a worried look.
‘The movie shoot will still go forward – just a year later.’ Harker’s voice was silky on the other end of the phone. ‘Until then, we all just chill.’
Olivia couldn’t tell him that she had been counting down the days until she got to work with her boyfriend.
‘No problem,’ she fibbed, though her voice was wobbling and she knew how miserable she must look. At least Harker couldn’t see her down the phone line. ‘I’ll see you in a year!’ She ended the call and buried the phone in her pocket.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ivy rushed towards her. Sophia and Brendan crowded round, too.
Ivy squeezed her sister in a tight hug.
‘It’s bad,’ Olivia told them. ‘The writers are on strike and there’ll be no new movie shoots and no new television episodes until it’s over.’ She wanted to flop to the floor.
Ivy’s grip tightened so much that Olivia felt her eyes bugging. She could hardly breathe, her sister was hugging so hard.
‘Ivy!’ she yelped.
‘Does this mean there won’t be any new episodes of Shadowtown?’ Ivy asked through gritted teeth. Shadowtown was a show about vampire teens, and Ivy’s new guilty pleasure. She never missed an episode. ‘How will I survive?’ She pulled away from Olivia.