Jane Austen Goes to Hollywood(15)
Author: Abby McDonald

Theo gestured for her to join him, and she scrunched in close; backs to the city. He held up the phone. “Say ‘chocolate truffles’!’ ”

Grace laughed. He clicked to take the shot, then showed it to her. “No, wait, I look like I’m possessed.” Grace laughed.

“You look fine!”

“For a demon. Take another,” Grace insisted.

“Girls.” Theo sighed. He put an arm around her shoulder to pull Grace in closer, then held up his phone. “Three, two, one . . .”

The flash went.

“Let’s see,” Grace demanded. Theo scrolled to the photo. “You weren’t looking!” Grace cried. She was smiling at the camera, caught midlaugh, but Theo’s head was turned toward her.

“I was.” He shrugged. “I was just looking at you.”

Their eyes met, and suddenly Grace felt just how close he was: his arm, still around her shoulder, his face, just inches away. His eyes were dark in the shadow of the streetlight, but something in them made Grace’s pulse skip.

“I, umm, should . . .” Grace blinked, but she didn’t leave.

“Right,” Theo agreed. But he didn’t step away either.

The city hummed below them. Somewhere in the distance, Grace could hear the grind of a garbage truck — brakes squealing — but to her, it seemed like she and Theo were the only people in the world.

She could kiss him.

The thought bubbled into Grace’s mind, and in a split second, she could see it. The possibility. She could kiss him: just move in those last few inches between them, press her lips to his, reach out to touch his face . . .

She reeled back. “I should go!” she exclaimed, face burning. What if he could tell what she’d been thinking? What if he knew? “But, thanks. For tonight. It was fun!”

“Sure.” Theo seemed thrown. “I . . . Will I see you again, before you leave?”

“Maybe?” Grace gulped. “I don’t know. I mean, we’ll be busy. But . . . take care!”

Theo blinked. “Uh, you too.”

There was another pause.

“OK, then!” Grace backed away. “Bye!”

She turned and fled up the front path. What was she doing? Why did she have to go and ruin everything? This was good-bye; it was supposed to matter.

“Theo?” Grace turned, but he was already walking away, a silhouette against the city lights.

Her heart fell. It was over.

She let herself into the house.

Hallie didn’t understand her sister. There they were: delivered from poverty to the land of fame, fortune, and twenty-four seven valet service, and Grace was moping around like someone had just died.

Which, OK, someone had, but as far as Hallie was now concerned, dropping dead of a heart attack was the best thing their lying, cheating disgrace of a father had done in a long while.

“Will you just relax?” Hallie emerged from her new bedroom to find Grace heaving boxes up the guesthouse stairs; her face set in that mousy little frown she’d been wearing ever since their U-Haul had left San Francisco city limits. Hallie had been tired enough of it after the first hour, but now, three weeks into summer, it was seriously threatening her good mood. “We’re not in a prison camp somewhere,” she reminded Grace. “Let someone else do the heavy lifting.”

“Like who?” Grace stubbornly shoved the box down the hall.

“I don’t know.” Hallie shrugged. “The housekeeper, maybe, or the gardener. . . .”

“They’re Uncle Auggie’s staff, not ours,” Grace reminded her. Hallie just rolled her eyes. Details!

“Hasn’t he told us, like, a hundred times? What’s his is ours — and that includes Julio. You’re looking at this all wrong.” She grabbed Grace’s arm and steered her to the window. “See?”

Grace tried to tug away. “Hallie . . .”

“No, look!” Hallie insisted, opening the window out onto the courtyard below. “How can you not be happy right now? This is heaven!”

It was. Pure paradise. Uncle Auggie’s mansion was in the style of an English country estate, all crumbling red bricks and billowing clouds of white roses. It struck Hallie as kind of ridiculous — given that they were five thousand miles and at least a hundred years away from Victorian England — but she guessed that when you were that rich, the usual rules of taste and decency didn’t apply. And what her newly beloved uncle lacked in substance, he certainly made up for in style. The back of the house was all folding glass partition: opening out onto a patio area large enough to entertain two dozen of his closest friends on the white calico-covered couches. Beyond that, immaculate green lawn stretched down to the pool area, a perfect rectangle of gleaming tile and sandstone, with canopied sun loungers and a dining area.

Their guesthouse was at the back of the property: a sweet cottage adorned with a thatched roof and white shutters, overlooking a tiny paved courtyard filled with ceramic cherub statues. Hallie breathed in the faint scent of roses and felt utterly content. “Everything’s going to be OK now.” She beamed at Grace. “I told you everything would work out, and it has!”

“Sure, except for how we’re going to support ourselves,” Grace replied, in her familiar depressing refrain. “And if Mom’s going to be able to get a job, or if we can —”

“La, la, la!” Hallie covered her ears. “I’m not listening!”

She went back into her room to collect her sunglasses and her well-worn copy of Sarah Bernhardt’s memoirs. Leaving San Francisco had been heart wrenching, but it had taken only a few days of poolside reflection for Hallie to realize that L.A. was her destiny. There had to be a reason for all the misery she’d been through this last year. Her father, Portia, Juilliard . . . Hallie sometimes felt like she was the princess in a cruel fairy tale — suffering one needless punishment after another, as if the universe had conspired against her and the Fates were laughing at her pain.

But no more. The heartache was over; her evil stepmother was far away, and Hallie was finally right where she was supposed to be.

Hollywood.

Sure, it had taken her a while to come around. Los Angeles was, as all her friends agreed, a cultural wasteland: the domain of fake boobs and even faker smiles. Everybody knew that to become a real actress, you had to go to New York. Chicago, maybe, in a pinch. But L.A?

Never!

Hallie had despaired. How was she supposed to embrace her destiny as a true artiste in such a shallow, superficial place? This was where people came to become (and she shuddered at the word) famous — not serious actors, dedicated to their craft. Here, people read tabloid magazines, and thinly veiled celebrity “novels,” if they read at all! Here, women starved themselves half to death and injected bacteria into their faces, as if their wrinkles were something to be ashamed of, and not the canvas upon which great works of theater could be painted! Here —