Drinking on the night before your big audition? You’ll have bags under your eyes! You’re competing with perfect little seventeen-year-old sluts for this part. We can’t afford mistakes like this, Katharine.
If my ancient twenty-two-year-old ass can’t land this shitty part because of a few beers, I’m sure my darling mother will still manage to spin it to our advantage. She’s a pro at it. I’ll be enrolled in rehab for a nonexistent drinking problem before I can blink, in some elaborate scheme to rebrand me as a bad girl and “broaden my image” — something she reminds me at least twice a week is in severe need of a makeover if I want to land any kind of steady role during pilot season.
I snort at the thought and lean back on my elbows.
There’s very little allure in the prospect of securing the lead as a teenage airhead on some vacuous new network television show — a last-gasp effort at appealing to a generation much more inclined to binge-watch on their laptops than tune in every Tuesday at eight for yet another vampire show. That’s not my dream — hell, that stopped being my dream about six years ago, when I realized my stint on a short-lived kids’ show called Busy Bees was not going to impress the casting directors of edgy indie films or big Hollywood blockbusters.
Frankly, I’d like nothing more than to fade quietly into my mid-twenties, working nights as a bartender at Balthazar, the trendy nightclub downtown where I regularly serve bottles of champagne that cost more than my rent, and slowly scraping together enough money for college tuition.
Unfortunately, Cynthia is not quite so eager to relinquish her dreams of stardom. Despite my apathy, she remains doggedly determined to make her only daughter into an A-list celebrity, come hell or high water. Hence the audition tomorrow.
Another role I won’t get, another disappointment she’ll bear with all the grace of a blunt battle axe.
If you’d just smile more enthusiastically, Katharine…
If you’d just put in a bit more effort, Katharine…
If you’d just…
If you’d just…
If you’d just…
A deep sigh rattles out between my teeth as I rise, collect the empty bottles at my feet, and head through the sliding glass door into my dingy kitchen. The glowing green numbers on the microwave panel inform me it’s nearly three thirty. Going to sleep now will probably leave me groggy and exhausted when my alarm blares to life at seven, but with the beer humming in my system I can’t quite work up enough energy to care much.
If I manage to make it to the audition, it’s sure to be a disaster.
Cynthia is going to be livid.
I smile in the dark as I collapse onto my lumpy mattress.
Self-sabotage is my middle name.
A psychiatrist would have a field day with me.
My Honda makes a scary noise as I punch the gas and hurtle toward downtown LA — a death-rattle, of sorts. Fitting, since this will go down in history as the day Kat Firestone finally managed to kill her acting career. Twenty-five minutes late, with last night’s mascara still caked beneath my eyes and hair that hasn’t seen a brush since well before my little balcony-bender last night, I know I’ll probably miss my audition slot and, even if by some miracle I get there in time, I’ll look more like a crack addict than the “fresh faced All-American girl-next-door type” they’re looking for, according to the call sheet.
I press the gas pedal harder, wincing when the Honda begins to shudder, and pray I don’t hit traffic. Though, not hitting traffic in LA would mean something ghastly has happened.
The nuclear apocalypse, perhaps.
Or, worse… rain.
I am self-aware enough to admit the irony of my race to read for a part I don’t want, my headlong flight to salvage a career I severed all emotional ties with long ago. Yet, here I am. Hurtling down the freeway full-speed toward the demise of something inevitable. Racing toward an ending I don’t necessarily want to reach.
That’s life though, isn’t it?
We’re all in such a damn hurry to grow up — to turn eight and strap on a big-kid backpack and declare yourself too old for naps and dolls and dress up; to turn sixteen and get angry because, god, Mother, I’m old enough to stay out until midnight with my friends; to turn twenty-five and squeal yes, honey, of course I’ll marry you and settle down in a suburban house far from the city lights in a marriage I’m not sure I’m ready for because, well… what’s the alternative?
We move. We rush. We run.
Sharks in the water: stop swimming and you die.
And then quite abruptly we are old and wrinkled and frail, lying on our death beds looking back at a life we didn’t even pause to enjoy. We are so busy speeding toward that damn finish line, trying to keep up with everyone sprinting alongside us, we forget sometimes that the finish line is death and the trophy is a coffin six feet beneath the earth.
I press the pedal a little harder and the Honda groans precariously. A strange smell has begun to emanate from the vents in my dashboard. By the time I screech to a stop in the parking lot of the talent agency holding the casting call, it’s a quarter-past eight and my head is aching from the fumes. At a run, I drag my fingertips through my dark tangled mane and scrape it up into a pony-tail at the back of my skull. The weight of it tugs at my temples, exacerbating a headache from a hangover that hasn’t even properly hit me yet.
I skid to a halt just inside the doors. They slam shut at my back with a bang loud enough to make me flinch, drawing the gazes of nearly everyone in the starkly decorated waiting room.
There are a few dozen girls scattered along the aluminum seats lining the wide hallway, waiting for their turn inside the thick double doors — biding time until they get their shot to read lines they’ve likely memorized and rehearsed a thousand different ways, for a character with the emotional complexity of a hamster. They all look nearly identical — glossy blondes in sweater sets and heels. A few of them are wearing pearls for god’s sake, which says something about the role we’re reading for. Between my mussed, chocolate brown waves, thready jean cut-off shorts, and faded Ramones t-shirt, I don’t exactly blend with the crowd.
Damn Cynthia to hell for signing me up for this.
A wave of smug condescension crashes over me as sets of eyes coated with two perfect swipes of mascara scan my disheveled appearance from top to toe. Immaculately-lined lips purse in amusement and self-affirmation. Their thoughts are thinly-veiled as they examine me like a wad of gum stuck to the bottom of a Manolo Blahnik slingback.
I may not get the part, but at least I don’t look like her.