The Truth About Hollywood

"Rise and shine!" Dad urged as he made his way across my room and pulled open the curtains, letting in the daylight.

The rays from the sun fell across my eyelids, and I let out a groan. Though I was excited because it was the first day of shooting, I wasn't so thrilled about getting up early. It was pretty much the bane of my existance.

"C'mon, Claire. I'm bringing you to the studio on my way to work, so don't dilly-dally. Otherwise, Mom'll have to bring you." He didn't even have to use a warning to tone to make that a threat. She was so moody lately, so the less amount of time I had to spend with her, the better.

"You got it," I laughed, getting up from my bed and glancing at myself in the mirror. My green eyes were bright, but my hair was quite the mess. Wincing slightly, I brushed it and threw it up into a sloppy bun that bounced when I walked, but not in an annoying, peppy way.

Since I was just going to be put in a different wardrobe anyway, I threw on some baggy sweatpants from my school and a Batman t-shirt.

When I finished getting ready, I creeped down the stairs as quietly as I could, since I really wasn't in the mood for Mom to lecture me on how much of a slob I looked. Not that it mattered, really, since they were going to make me all school-ish and preppy once I got there. Well, not preppy so much as brainy...hopefully I didn't have to wear stupid clothes. And I downright refused to wear a pocket protector.

"Breakfast's on the table," Dad announced when he heard me enter. Glancing at the table, I noticed a bagel with cream cheese all ready.

I grinned. It had been so long since I had one of those, since it was so fattening. Mom thought just looking at it would clog her arteries and cause a stroke.

After breakfast, we scampered out the door in order to get everywhere on time. Thankfully, when I got to the set, I was the first one there, so I looked super spectacular.

"Claire, right?" a tall woman with long fiery red hair questioned as I started gazing open-mouthed at the set. It all seemed too awesome to be real.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry."

"It's fine. Just come with me to wardrobe, then I'll do your hair and show you where makeup is. Sound good?"

"Sounds great." I thought for another second and continued, "Do you know if I'll be filming today?"

She nodded slowly, saying, "I'm sorry, but I'm not sure. We're supposed to get everyone in costume, whether they're actually filming today or not. I guess you'll just have to find out later."

"That's fine." I reached into my bag and pulled out the handheld camcorder that I'd gotten the previous Christmas.

"First day of filming!" I commentated excitedly. "Get a load of this set...I can't believe that. It's just kind of overwhelming right now."

"Alright, follow me," the red-head ordered, and I obeyed, following her down a long hallway. On the walls were a whole bunch of posters of movies and TV shows that had been filmed in the studio that we were walking through. I got a lot of footage of those, just because I thought it was so cool. Magic had been made here and, hopefully, it would be made again. If the pilot didn't get picked up, I'd definitely be bummed, to say the least.

"Right through here," the woman directed, gesturing toward a door labeled WARDROBE. Huh, how accurate.

There were racks and racks of clothes, each labeled with a different character. I braced for Diana's clothes. With all my hopes and prayers, I hoped there were absolutely no pocket protectors.

"Hmmm..." the woman, who I'd noticed from her name tag that her name was Terri, pondered, searching through my rack.

Finally, she pulled out a simple dark blue button down and a black skirt that went down about mid-thigh, then added a gray cardigan to go over it.

Maybe a little too conspicuously, I let out a sigh of relief. "You were thinking nerd clothes, weren't you?" Terri laughed.

"Not gonna lie...I definitely was." I grinned innocently as I took the clothes from her.

"Alright, let's see how they fit." I changed quickly, noticing that everything was perfect. "Oh, good news. You haven't gained weight in a week and a half. Good for you."

"Is it normal to gain weight in a little over a week...?" I questioned, my left eyebrow raised.

"Um, no, so you're good." Terri then patted the chair in front of the mirror. "Now I'll do your hair."

"Yayyyy," I expressed as I hopped up into the chair and again powered on my camera. "Actually...maybe I should start this as we get closer to the end..."

"Good thinking," she encouraged as she started pulling my hair out of the bun and fussing with it. "You have very pretty hair."

"Thanks," I granted kind of awkwardly.

Terri described that since my hair was already kind of wavy, we could just go with that and make it curly, then curl the ends of my bangs so that they fell correctly across my forehead, falling just below my eyebrows.

"Sound good?" Terri ran by me.

"Sure. Just do your thing."

Terri did as I said and went right to work. When she got about three quarters of the way, I started filming, watching Terri and my smiling faces as she curled individual clumps of hair.

Before long, I got to hop down from the chair. "Oh my God," I gasped, looking at myself closer in the mirror. "You did amazingly!"

"Thank you," Terri replied, pretending to curtsy. Her dark blue eyes were sparkling. "Okay, so now it's time for you to go down to makeup, which is the door across the hall and one door down." After a slight pause, she elaborated, "If you just understood that."

"I think I did," I laughed before thanking her once again and walking out the door. As I did so, I almost bumped into Stella.

"God, fresh meat, watch where you're walking," she sneered before pushing past me.

"Bitch," I muttered before shaking off my anger and going to the makeup room.

Danny was already in there, getting his face powdered. "I hate this," he muttered, his eyes showing how true that statement was.

"Well, it's either this or you look dead on camera. Be thankful enough that I barely put any mascara on you. Thank your parents when you get home for your gorgeous eyelashes," the makeup artist expressed, patting his face a couple more times. "Okay, you're set. Get gone."

"Thank God," Danny praised before bounding from the chair. He stopped dashing when he saw me though. "Hi, Claire. How are you?"

"I'm fine. I see you're just thrilled," I joked.

"Sure...Anyway, I'll see you on set, okay?"

I nodded, and Danny stepped past me into the hallway. The makeup artist, whose name was Ricardo, according to his name tag, grinned widely at me. "Alright, get in the chair. It's torture time."

My eyes widened slightly in fear. Ricardo let out a little giggle and patted the chair again. Reluctantly, I pulled myself up and looked into the mirror.

He started right away, putting on the eye makeup. "Your eyes," he told me, "are absolutely gorgeous."

"Thanks," I blushed. I had to agree that my eyes were nice though; they were my favorite feature. No one really had the color eyes I did, and that always made me feel special. Well, no one but my dad, obviously.

After about twenty minutes or so, Ricardo ripped the bib-thing off me and ordered, "Git, git. Out of my makeup parlor."

I laughed as I got up and out of the room. Since Ricardo hadn't told me there was another station, I just pulled out my camera again as I got to the set. "Isn't this cool?" I started to commentate again. "This is hopefully where we'll be spending a good amount of time, filming the show."

"Where we will be," Danny jumped in, popping up from nowhere right in front of the camera. "They have to pick up the pilot."

"I hope so," I smiled. In the back of my mind, I had to admit to myself that Danny was cute with his brown hair and dark brown eyes, along with his dimples.

"ALRIGHT! Who's on set?!" Levi called as he entered. Danny and I raised our hands, then looked around for others.

"I guess just us," Danny spoke up.

Levi sighed. "Okay. We can wait. No rush. No rush." He seemed to be trying to convince himself of that more than reassuring us.

"So, Danny," I voiced, turning the camera back on him, "how psyched are you to be starting the filming of the next teen drama Darwin High?"

"It feels great," he grinned. "I can't wait until we uh," he cleared his throat pointedly, "actually start the filming thing. And then I can take off all this crap."

"I believe," I corrected, "it's called makeup."

"Which is something that was designed for girls, I'm pretty sure."

"But also for guys on production sets, so suck it up, Danny." I stuck my tongue out at him, and he pretended to be appalled.

"I cannot believe you just did that. I'm downright shocked."

Suddenly, a hand came down in front of the camera, pushing it closer to my face. "Turn that damn thing off," Stella ordered angrily.

I did as she said, scowling. "What's wrong with it?"

"It screams amateur. It's one thing to be one, but it's another entirely to be so open and obvious about it."

"Come on, Stella. We were having fun," Danny defended.

"I'm sure you were." She looked between us before putting on a disgusted face like she smelled something foul and stalking off toward the set so she could get a closer look.

I let out a loud sigh like I was fed up. "I couldn't have said it better myself," Danny agreed, looking at me from the side of his eyes.

We laughed lightly before wandering over to the sets ourselves to look for where our lockers were on the set. The lockers actually worked. How cool was that?!