Jane Austen Goes to Hollywood(59)
Author: Abby McDonald

“And a first read . . . ?” Grace joined Hallie at the table, pushing aside the stack of Amber’s magazines. Hallie forgot, her sister didn’t read the trades like she did.

“Is like the very first stage,” Hallie explained. “Then you get callbacks, until you make the short list, then cast reads — where they have you try out with the other people they’ve already hired — and then you get test shoots, in front of the camera. And then, if you’re still in the game, you read for the producers and network heads.”

“Wow.” Grace blinked. “That’s . . . a long process.”

“Yup.” Hallie scooped up a spoonful of creamy topping. “But I made it to the third round of callbacks on the last thing I went out for, remember that cough syrup ad?”

“The taste to chase your tickles away,” Grace quoted. “You were saying nothing else for two days straight. Believe me, it’s burned into my brain,”

Hallie laughed. Sure, these weren’t the Oscar-worthy roles of her dreams she was trying out for, but everyone had to start somewhere. These were the bit parts that would get her an agent, which would get her speaking roles with more than five seconds of screen time. Who knew? By the end of the year, she might even have more than ten lines of dialogue in a major network show!

Grace glanced absently at the pile of magazines, then froze.

“What?” Hallie asked.

“Nothing!” Grace yelped, flipping the magazine over.

Hallie sighed. “It’s OK. I know they went to that premiere of hers together. The photos are all over the Internet.”

Grace looked at her cautiously. “You can talk about it, if you want. You haven’t really said anything for a while about . . . him.”

Hallie rolled her eyes. “You can say his name. Or just call him the Heartless Sellout with No Soul. Either way, talking won’t help. Double-double-chocolate cheesecake, on the other hand . . .” She took another mouthful. “What about you? Have you heard from Theo since New York?”

There was a pause. Grace took a spoon, carved out a chunk of dessert, and then shook her head, mouth full. “Lucy’s e-mailed a bunch of times, though,” she said, swallowing. “You know she quit to go work for Portia? Portia looooves her theories on organic early-childhood education. They’re practically new BFFs.”

“Bitch.”

Grace didn’t disagree.

“So what now?” Hallie asked.

Grace shrugged. “I don’t know. Back to normal, I guess. School. Work. Friends. The usual.” She glanced at her phone. “I should go meet Palmer. We’re going to go see a movie at the Grove, maybe get some food.” She paused, looking at Hallie again. “You can come, if you want?”

Hallie waved her off. “I’m fine. Go, have fun.”

Alone, she turned her attention back to the pressing issue in front of her: cheesecake. But the lure of those magazines was too much, and despite her every instinct, Hallie found herself reaching for them. Dakota’s face stared back at her from the glossy cover of the latest Us Weekly. talia’s new love heats up! the headline screamed, above a photo of them together on the red carpet. Dakota looked dashing and hot, and Talia was gazing up at him with such a giddy expression of bliss that Hallie had to hurl it through the open French doors into the backyard so she didn’t have to look at them another moment longer.

There was a muffled yelp, and then a crash.

“Hello?” Hallie went outside to investigate, and found Brandon collecting a box of small canisters, now scattered over the lawn. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you were out here.”

Brandon laughed. “You sure it’s not just payback for making you watch Hellfire 3?”

“There was no plot!” Hallie cried, for what felt like the fifth time since going to the movies with him. “It was just two hours of stuff blowing up!”

“Yeah, well, what did you want us to see, that French thing?” Brandon curled his lip. “I don’t do subtitles.”

“Philistine,” Hallie declared, helping him pick up the canisters.

“Snob,” he teased back. She shook her head in despair.

“One of these days, you’re going to raise your cultural awareness higher than robots and zombies.” Hallie straightened up, handing him the final roll. “What are you doing with all this . . . ?”

“Film,” Brandon finished. He showed her the box, full of canisters like the ones Hallie remembered from when she was a kid, and cameras came with film and negatives and trips to the drugstore, instead of digital memory cards and USB cables. “I’ve been taking a bunch of new shots,” he explained. “Now I get to spend the week in the darkroom, getting high off chemical mixes.” There was a pause. “That was a joke.”

“Duh.” Hallie weighed a roll in her palm, amused. They’d been hanging out more, but Brandon was still awkward sometimes, fumbling his words or jolting if she brushed against him. She guessed he wasn’t used to people these days, period: Amber said that when he came back from Iraq, he barely left the house for months. “Can I come see your stuff?” Hallie asked hopefully. “It’s OK if you don’t want to,” she added quickly. Brandon hadn’t offered to show her yet, and she knew some of it might be personal. “But, you did always say you’d help me with my headshots. . . .”

To her relief, Brandon didn’t seem reluctant. “Admit it,” he teased. “You want to see if I’m up to the job.”

“Well, sure.” Hallie smiled back. “I need to have complete creative synchronicity with my artist.”

“I don’t even know what that means.” Brandon laughed. “But sure, step into my office. . . .”

He led her across to the far side of Amber and Auggie’s house, and a small side door that led into a windowless passage. Hallie looked around at the unfamiliar walls. “What is this place? I can’t believe I’ve never been out here.”

“Servants’ quarters, storage, I don’t know.” Brandon opened another door into a small, dark room. He flipped on a lone lightbulb, revealing trays laid out on a bench, and walls lined with shelves of chemicals and paper. Photographs hung across the room, pegged to a laundry line. “Auggie had it light-proofed a few years back, but no one ever used it, so he said I was welcome.”

Hallie reached up to look at the photos, drying on the line. The line nearest to her was a series from the beach. Surfers preparing for the waves: pulling on wet suits, waxing down their boards. Brandon had captured their focus, a calm concentration painted in black and white against the far gray sky. “These are good!” she exclaimed.