The Truth About Hollywood

"Alright, I need..." Levi started to announce, "Danny and Claire on set!" It was the third day of filming, and this was the first time that I'd been called to the set. The butterflies were almost eating my stomach alive, since they were there from both excitement and fear. I was so nervous that I was going to mess up and lose the part.

Danny and I exchanged smiles before walking onto the set. Then, I let out a sigh as I felt a small blush spread across my face. If I was filming with Danny, then I knew what scene we were doing.

It wasn't a hard deduction, since Danny was supposed to be my love interest, Logan, and I only had one scene with him in the first episode. That was where I was walking out of a classroom and bumped into him, sending all my stuff sprawling. How embarrassing...

"Alright," Levi started once we were both in position, "and...action."

Smiling slightly, I opened the door to the hallway from the classroom set and stepped out. In perfect timing, as I took my second step, Danny smashed into me. What didn't work out as planned was that one of my textbooks came back and hit me in the face.

I burst out laughing, and Levi yelled, "CUT!" while chuckling a little himself.

"Are you okay?" Danny snickered.

I nodded and checked for nose bleed, which turned to be negative. Always a good thing. "That was so graceful," I said sarcastically, looking around the set for a second.

"Now that the fiasco is out of the way, let's resume filming, shall we?" Levi clapped his hand to get everyone at attention, then the marker was set and clapped. "And...action."

I repeated what I did last time, and Danny bumped into me hard again. This time, the books managed to fall in their correct places.

Danny shot me an annoyed look, like I was just a mere speck of dust that kept popping up in his line of sight that he wished he could massacre. Then, to top it all off, he kicked one of my books down the hall.

In response, I glared at him with as much venom as I could muster from my crouched position. "Jerk," I muttered under my breath as I stood up.

Danny looked over his shoulder at me and smirked. Our eyes met, his mocking and mine contemptuous. After a second of that, he turned and walked away, shaking his head at me.

"What happened?" Annabelle ran in from behind me, a book held against her chest. She looked down at me, then stared down the hallway.

"Logan's just a loser," I answered, rolling my eyes. "It's no big deal."

She shook her head before kneeling down on the ground to help me pick up my stuff.

"Cut!" Levi called, clapping his hands. "That was great. Just do it again because, Claire, you had a slight smirk on your face when you were staring down with Danny. You're supposed to be angry, not about to laugh."

"Whoops," I let out in a breath, getting up from the ground.

We ran the scene a couple more times, but none of the other mess-ups were my fault. Annabelle, when she was running in during one take, slipped on one of my books that were scattered on the floor and fell on her butt. And in another, Danny made a funny face at me when the camera wasn't on him, and I started laughing. Okay, so that last part was kind of my fault...but it also wasn't because Danny started it.

At the end of the day, I skipped off to wardrobe and got changed into the jeans and t-shirt that I'd worn to set that day.

"See you tomorrow!" Danny called after me as I escaped back down the hallway. I hadn't brought back my camera since the first day, since I didn't want Stella to bitch me out, but I did want to bring it back. If this process wasn't going to last, I wanted to preserve it.

I turned and waved before walking out of the back door and hopping into the passenger's seat of my dad's Hybrid SUV.

He laughed at me and called me a klutz when I told him about the book coming back and hitting me in the face.

"Thanks, Dad." I rolled my eyes.

"Wait, look at me," he ordered. I followed his directions, and he took my chin in his hand. "You have a bruise coming in on your cheek."

"Perfect," I laughed. "Ricardo'll have a bunch of fun covering that up, while giving me a bunch of crap about getting it in the first place."

"Oh, that's what makeup artists are for," Dad shrugged off. We pulled out of the parking lot and arrived home pretty soon.

"What did you do?!" Mom snapped as I walked through the door.

Dad put his hands on her shoulders and gently explained what happened, then mumbled some stuff that I couldn't hear. I was pretty sure that was intentional, but I was still curious.

Mom nodded, sniffling and wiping her eyes. What the hell was going on? There was nothing I hated more than being left out of something, especially something that was clearly important.

"What's up?" I asked, my eyes darting between the two of them.

"Do your homework," Dad ordered mechanically.

My eyebrows drew together. "We don't have our tutor yet..." I trailed off.

Dad's eyes looked blank for a second before they regained their sparkle. "That's right...I forgot. Go look up in your room. I got you a present."

Oooo...present. I darted up the stairs to my room and closed my door behind me. On my bed was a cheap bag, one that can be bought at any drugstore.

Eagerly, I flopped on my bed and started fishing through it. At the bottom, underneath about a mile of brightly colored tissue paper, was a small box.

When I opened it, there was a small, delicate gold necklace. The pendant was an emerald, my birthstone, and was surrounded by small diamonds.

My breath caught. It was the most beautiful necklace that I'd ever seen in my life.

"We just wanted to congratulate you properly for getting that part," Dad's voice explained from the hallway. I started slightly, since I hadn't known that he was there.

"You don't even know if the show will be picked up!" I reminded them, still gawking over the jewelery draped over my hands.

"Yeah, but we just wanted you to know that we're proud of you." I ran over to Dad and threw my arms around him. He fastened it around my neck, and I ran over to the mirror. Though the necklace wasn't the same color as my eyes, it still accented them in some strange way that I couldn't explain.

As I turned, I realized that my mother wasn't with him, though he kept using the pronoun, 'we.'

I finally exclaimed what had been on my mind for a long time. "Does she hate me or something?"

Dad got taken aback. "What are you talking about?"

"She's always nagging me and yelling at me and now, she just doesn't seem to want anything to do with me at all. I know we don't get along all that well, but that doesn't really give her a right to hate me."

"Mom is just under a lot of stress right now," Dad told me, closing the door behind him and sitting in the chair at my desk.

"What stress? Everything is the same as it's always been. If anyone should be stressing, it should be me, worrying about learning lines and having the time to juggle work, school, and friends. But she's always the one moping around, yelling at everyone."

Dad took a deep breath and looked at me intently. "Claire, I know that you're a teenager and you think you know everything. You are very bright, but there are some things that you don't know."

"Then why don't you educate me?" I pleaded. "I'd like to know."

"Now's not the time. But you'll find out soon enough." With that, Dad got up, pushed in the chair, and walked out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.

Letting out an angry huff, I threw myself back on my bed and glared at the ceiling. Then, I sat up and looked at myself in the mirror across my room. Running my fingers over the necklace, a single tear fell down my face. "Why don't they just tell me what's wrong?"

They were starting to worry me.