Page 16 of Script
You and many others.“Okay?” Why was I here then? Was this some kind of setup? Had someone decided to show me the slim chance of getting this part only to laugh in my face? Heat bloomed inside me, a mix of embarrassment and anger.
“You’re wasted in those,” he added. Which sounded a bit better than implying me in theRapidfilms was a crap idea.
“Okay?” Oh my god, is that all I’m going to say? “Thank you,” I added with caution because I thought he was giving me a compliment.
“Hmm,” he murmured and nodded. “Do you recall when Tony was kidnapped by aliens?”
I blinked at him, not quite putting things in order to make sense of that, until it hit me. He meant the character I played in theAngel Covesoap for fifteen years, Tony, who indeed was kidnapped by aliens. Twice. Although one of those times it was his evil twin brother—also played by me—who was spirited away, never to return.
“InAngel Cove?”
“Yes. Yes,” He nodded, and the grip on his script eased and his knuckles weren’t so white. “I was ten when I started watching that, the same episode where you turned up as the heir to the family fortune who was actually the twin disguised as the original heir who he’d kidnapped. You were ten then as well.”
“I was.” I’d had no idea what I’d been doing when I was ten, plucked from obscurity after winning a local talent show in which I did some breakdancing before launching into a scene from theTwilightmovie.
“We grew up together, me and Tony.”
I smiled at him, and he winced, so I dropped the smile for being one hundred percent serious. “So did I.” I startedAngel Coveaged ten, left at twenty-five, was inRapid1 at twenty-six, and now heading for thirty-one I’d never really known life away from the camera.
“So, you remember the alien thing?”
“For me or my evil twin?”
“Both.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“I liked that.” He slipped into silence and then smoothed out the script on his desk, the bigconfidentialon the front along with much smaller writing I couldn’t see, faced me. “So, I saw something in you, when you were standing in the backyard and you did that whole monologue about your heart being destroyed by knowing you’d never find love like the one you did with the alien, Sapphire-Ray. It was seminal. A moment on camera that I can’t forget. I mean, I was high when I watched it the first time, but it made me cry.”
I blushed then. Yes, it might not make sense for a daytime soap to have an alien romance in it, but then daytime soaps never professed to be high art, and they often ran out of ideas.
“Thank you.”
“And that’s why I want you to read for the part, because I think if you can bring that emotion to this script then you’ll be amazing.”
A PA came in with herbal tea and a plate of vegan cookies (or so the little flag stuck into one explained). Said cookies were not on my approved diet list, but I took one anyway, and nibbled at the edge. I’d make up for the taste of whatever the hell this was—cardboard—later in the gym. Or not. Hell, I still ached everywhere from the skate this morning, and I could imagine that when I woke up tomorrow I’d be one messed-up dude. Shame I was only messed up and achy from hockey, when I’d rather be messed up and achy because Cameron bent me over the back of a sofa and pegged my—
“So, it’s the last game of seven,” River interrupted my fantasy.
I focused on what he was saying. “Okay.”
“You’re thirty seconds from the final buzzer. You’ve put everything into the team, you’ve led them from adversity at the beginning of the year, and the score is tied at three goals each. You have the puck, you ache, your chest is hurting, you’re gassed, and you have a broken ankle.”
“A broken ankle.”
“It’s okay; it’s taped up.”
“That’s good,” I said, because he seemed to expect an answer.
“So, you shoot the puck. Imagine it in slow motion.” He made a square of his hands as if he were checking through a viewfinder. “The crowd is a blur, sweat trickles down your face, the pain is insane, and you have the puck on your stick, and you shoot.” He slid his fingers to one side and then back. “We don’t follow the puck, we follow your expression, and there’s a montage of failure in your head, and then the puck—BANG!”
I jumped in my seat.
“BANG! It hits the metal and ricochets away from the net minder, and you’ve lost. In the last few seconds you’ve lost, and it’s on you. You’re the captain, you’re the star, the weight of it all is on you.”
I was tearing up, lost in his words, and shit, this poor captain with his missed shot.
“Now read this to yourself and then I want to see you act this out with that emotion you conveyed over losing your alien lover.”
