Daydreamer

“What do you mean you’re going to be in a movie? A real movie? In cinemas? A Hollywood movie? How come we have heard nothing of this? When will you be filming? Have you filmed already? Will we have heard of it? Is there a trailer? Where’s your laptop? Is your internet working?” Robin listed off a whole host of questions as I sat in stunned silence.

A movie, a real movie in cinemas? Was she serious?

I decided to voice my thoughts, purposefully for once, “Trina, is this actually true? This isn’t
just one of your weird jokes that I don’t find funny?”

“What jokes don’t you find funny?” Trina asked

“You know... like that one where you made the cow rubber talk to the pencil case” I try and jog her memory.

“Ally, that was you.” Trina told me exasperatedly.

“Stop trying to change the subject!” I cry as I try and change the subject.

“Yeah,” Robin joins the conversation again “What do you mean you’re going to be in a movie? This just doesn’t make sense!”

“Okay, I’ll tell you everything” Trina says in a hushed tone. I move to the bed from my seat by the window and cross my legs ready for her tale.

“So you know how I really want to be an actress and everything,” She begins; Robin and I nod our head fervently.

Trina is really into her drama stuff, she’s always learning some script or other for drama club, and she always gets the main role in the school plays. She is actually really good, it must be said, I just never realised she was this good.

“Well, I’ve been thinking for a while it was time to take the next step you know? I mean, I’m never going to get anywhere just doing school plays am I?” Robin and I are nodding our heads, encouraging her to keep going. “Well, d’you remember that play I did last year, you know, ‘Guys and Dolls’?” Trina looks at us expectantly but we only stare at her blankly, “Oh come on you guys! You came to see it! You know the musical with all the gambling in it? It’s a classic!”

“Oh right, that one,” says Robin.

“Oh yeah, that one…” I mutter though I still have no idea which one she’s talking about. Trina’s in a lot of plays, okay?

“Right, well anyway, after the show, this woman came up to me and she gave me her card and told me to call her… so I did. And basically she works for this agency that takes people on for no pay as long as the company gets ten percent of the profits you get from the work they get you, it’s for people who can’t afford to get an agent straight off the bat, you know.”

She pauses for a moment, to check that we’re still following, I have been forgetting to blink and my eyes are starting to water, “Don’t pause, Trina, for God’s sake keep going!” I cry

“Okay, Okay, chill! Well, I phoned the place up and it was just this automated voice telling me that if I had received a card for this number I was welcome to come to an audition to see if I was ‘the sort of material we are looking for and please check the website for more information.’” She holds up her fingers as quotation marks as she talks. “So basically, they need everyone to audition to get an agent so that they know they’re not wasting their time on someone who sucks.”

“Well, I wasn’t entirely serious about the whole thing; I just wanted to see if I was good enough or whatever, if I would pass their test or something. I didn’t actually think I would get it! Well, when they phoned me saying that they would love to take me on I just kind of thought, why not? I mean, I wasn’t giving them any money so there wasn’t anything to lose, so I went in to talk to them and tell them what I wanted to do and stuff and they got me some auditions, just like that! They weren’t major ones, just small indie films and stuff like that. Well, I went to about five auditions but I didn’t get any of them.

“Then, about a month or so ago, my agent called me up and told me that there was this major film coming out and they were holding auditions for a girl that fit my description. The only reason I went was because Annette sounded so excited about it-“

“Woah, woah, hold up!” Robin throws her hand up, “Who’s Annette?”

“Oh right, sorry, Annette’s my agent. Anyway, I went to the audition place, I thought it was just gonna be like all the other auditions, a waiting room with a few dosen people, you know, a really chilled atmosphere - but there were tons of girls there! I mean at least eight hundred and this wasn’t even an open audition!” I was still trying to figure about how many eight hundred people was when she continued, “So basically I was just in this huge line with all these people who had been acting since they were two and all I was thinking was how much I wanted to just go home and call you guys.”

“You should have called us, we would have come and waited with you!” said Robin but I cut her off.

“Shh! Keep going, I want to know what happens!” I’m hunched over and I can actually feel my eyes stretched into orbs as I wait for Trina to start again.

She laughs before continuing, “Well as I was about to go, I heard this girl in front of me who was talking to all her mates who were basically worshipping her and she was just going on and on about how she was definitely going to get the part and how her top agent had even had a special word with the director. And oh she was just so horrid in her fluorescent pink jacket and her silly bleach white hair it just made my blood boil! All I could think was that if I left now then she would probably get the part and I would just be the silly girl who went home, so I just sort of stuck in there.”

“Woo! Go Trina!” cried Robin, clapping her hands

“Keep going, keep going! I whined as I tried to shush Robin’s clapping

“Well, eventually the line got shorter and shorter and this girl in front of me went in and came out again, and she told all her friends how she had ‘totes got it gals’ and then it was me. And this girl had just dropped her empty paper coffee cup down by my feet and I could feel this little drip of coffee that had splashed onto my jeans and so I just walked straight on in and just thought that I had to be at least as good as this girl who dropped coffee on me so when they handed me the script I don’t know what happened but I just became this character, you know?”

She looked at us expectantly, “No, no we don’t Trina.” Said Robin

I just shrugged

“Oh, right.” Then Trina took a deep excited breath before she continued, “Well, the acting people called me a few days later telling me they wanted me for a call back! I was so excited; you have no idea how desperate I was to tell you! It was that day that we were meant to be having that movie marathon.”

I gasped, “So you didn’t have short term leukaemia! Trina, I researched homemade cures for you!”

“You told her you had short term leukaemia?” Robin asked Trina disbelievingly, before turning to me, “And you believed her?”

“Wait, what did you tell Robin?” I asked Trina

“I just said that I had a cold, I would have told you that but you asked me too quickly why, I had to think on my feet!” she tried to defend herself.

I could see Robin readying herself to continue the discussion so I cried out “Doesn’t matter! Keep going!” and Robin closed her mouth again.

“Okay, so I went for this call back and there were only about fifty other girls there – fifty girls down from like eight hundred! Oh, and you’ll not believe this part - the awful girl was there as well! The one who spilled coffee on me and she was still talking about how amazing she was at acting and how she knew that she was going to get the call back.”

“God, she sounds like a bitch,” muttered Robin, there was no time for talking anymore so I just slapped my hands over her mouth and nodded for Trina to continue.

“Well, the call back was way scarier! We were doing it in front of everyone, all the other girls so you saw exactly how good everyone was and wow, everyone was just unbelievable you have no idea. Even the awful girl – well, especially the awful girl, she was every bit as good as she had said. Oh and her name, god, you won’t believe it – Eliza Elderberry! How made up is that! Well, anyway, I was basically so nervous I could cry and I thought ‘I’m never gonna get this’. But they handed me the whole script this time and I was looking through it while the other girls were up and my character, she’s amazing! I don’t know what it is but I just feel like I… know her, is that weird?”

Robin let out a muffled “Yes” from beneath my palm but thankfully Trina was too much in her element now to stop. “Well, I must have done something right because I got the final call back and this was the serious one, you know, the private one in front of the director and all the supreme peeps. It was me and I think four other girls up for it but I didn’t see any of them. I had to do all these different scene with a bunch of guys going for the other role to see if the ‘chemistry was right’. That was nice, I was not complaining about that. But the thing was, before then I’d just been thinking, ‘well, it’s cool I got this far’ but I wasn’t really thinking that I’d really get it, but then, in front of the director, I don’t know, I felt like I needed this part. Like I needed to be Ilana, like it was a part of me, you know?”

Suddenly Robin broke free of my hand and shouted, “No I do not know! I have so many bloody questions but for god’s sake who the hell is Ilana!?” and then she added as an afterthought, “And do you have any of those guy’s numbers?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at Robin’s boy obsessed mind.

“Ilana’s my character, you know in the film, and no I don’t have any numbers, it was a bit of a blur that day.” Trina told her through giggles.

“Okay, story first, questions later” I say to Robin when we stop laughing

“Fine” agrees Robin

“Well, there really isn’t much left to tell, the hardest part was just coming home and not being able to tell you guys anything, you know how bad I am with secrets. But either way, I guess they thought I fit with Ilana as much as I did because they called up Annette and she phoned this afternoon to tell me I’d got it!”

“So that was the phone call!” I beam round at the two of them, my curiosity finally abated.

They both stared at me for a second before Robin remembered herself and her soul-consuming need to ask questions, “Why didn’t you tell us before?” which all in all, was a pretty good question in my opinion.

“Well it all sort of snowballed, I guess, I mean when I got the card I wanted to check they were you know a decent company before I told you guys about, and then I had to audition so I wanted to get into it before I told you, and then I wanted to do a few auditions before I told you… and I guess I just didn’t want you guys to be rooting for me and for me to not be any good.” Trina mumbled.

There was silence for a few moments but Robin didn’t have time to wait for any sympathy; she was already onto her next questions, “What’s the movie about? What’s it called? When will you be shooting? How long will you be shooting? Will you have to be out of school? Who got the guy role? Is he hot? Can we visit you on set? Do you have his number? What’s your role about? Will there be any famous people in it?”

“Wait, wait, wait, I can’t remember all these, write them down for me,” says Trina as she gets up to find a pen and paper.

When Robin’s finished writing them down, Trina goes about answering them systematically,

“Okay so, it’s based on this short story “Something Awful” but with like an extended plot but I think they’re still deciding whether to name the film after it. And I’m not sure the exact date that we’re going to be shooting it or how long it will take, I have a meeting with my agent tomorrow, she’s going to tell me all about it. I don’t know who exactly is going to be in the film either, but my agent said that there were quite a few familiar faces going to be in it or something like that.”

“Okay, but what about your role? That’s what we care about!” I exclaimed, not caring she was probably about to tell me anyway.

“Well, she’s the same age as us and she’s basically just and ordinary teenager but she’s got such interesting view points of the world and she reads strange books and paints all the time, oh and she watches old movies and hums when she’s happy and doesn’t care really what people think about her.” she told us, her eyes glistening. She honestly sounded like she was describing herself.

“Wait, what’s the movie actually about?” Robin asked, almost before Trina had finished talking.

“I don’t really know how to explain it… There’s this boy, Evan, and this girl, Ilana, and it they’d be just the classic high school sweethearts apart from Evan thinks that he’s done something awful – you know, the title and all that – but he can’t remember what it is but he gets all these visions and he’s really scared that he’ll end up hurting Ilana. It’s just so interesting, because all about the mind and love and what really matters, your past, heart, soul, mind… I just, it’s amazing.”

We were all silent for a few moments as we take into account the enormity of what Trina’s just told us.

I mean, my best friend was going to be in a movie, a real movie! I was going to see her in a cinema!

“I really can’t believe this!” said Robin, voicing my thoughts.

“Yeah, me neither,” agreed Trina in a hushed tone. They fell into silence, lost in their thoughts.

I began to fidget but I managed to sit in silence for a few minutes, (ok a minute) before I blurted out “What are we doing? We must celebrate! To the ice cream parlour!” and ran out the room, trying to get to the front seat before Trina. The only other alternatives were to sit in the open back of the truck or to squeeze yourself uncomfortably in the sliver of space between the two seats and the metal back of the front. Trina and I were forever fighting each other over who got to sit in the front seat.

I was half way through the window, my legs dangling out the truck, before the other two managed to catch up with me. Trina grabbed onto my feet and attempted to pull me out of the truck. “Get off me you numpty!” I shouted back to her, though somewhat muffled as my face was pressed against the seat.

Trina was now holding onto one of my legs and trying to lift me out of the car, needless to say, she was failing. “You will never succeed, puny mortal, you are weak!” I taunted.
Trina dropped my leg in defeat and I scrambled into the truck and sat up. I grinned at Trina and Robin, very pleased with myself.

“Get out of the truck.” Robin ordered.

“W-what?” I asked, shocked.

“I said get out of the truck; we are going to the ice cream parlour to celebrate Trina so Trina gets to sit in the front.” Robin told me firmly.

Trina grinned at me smugly.

With much cursing and muttered threats towards both of them I clambered into the back and squeezed my body into the tight space. Trina scrambled through the window and got in into my place. I glared at her and she stuck her tongue out at me.

Robin meanwhile got in through the perfectly functioning driver door; I really don’t know why we both insist on climbing through the window.