Take Two and … Rolling!

Make Me a Star, Book Two

Susan Beth Pfeffer

and for Beti Horvath

1

Molly O’Malley stared at her birth certificate and cursed. There was no getting around the fact. Her parents had lied about her age, even to her.

Molly had been prepared to find out she was fourteen, although in her heart of hearts she thought of herself as a minimum of fifteen, and probably a lot closer to thirty-two. She figured she’d discover she was fourteen and eleven months, or fourteen and ten months at the very worst. Almost fifteen. Just a blink away from fifteen. So close to fifteen as to be fifteen for all practical purposes.

But no. She was fourteen all right, and just barely that. Fourteen years and not quite two months, to be exact, and expected to be at Dick Goldstein’s office within a half hour. Luckily, the cab drove up right on time. She gave the cab driver the address of Richgold Productions and tried to relax through the twenty-minute ride. It wasn’t so bad that she was young, she told herself. It wasn’t like Dick Goldstein had cast her in Hard Time High because she was practically fifteen. She’d gotten the part of Kathleen because she was the best one for the role. And she was, too. Filming the TV pilot for Hard Time High had been a nerve-racking experience, but she’d held her own against a group of talented and experienced television actors. When it came to playing a musical comedy orphan, there was nobody to beat her, but Hard Time High wasn’t a musical comedy and Kathleen wasn’t an orphan. In fact, Kathleen was a mother, a genuine unwed mother who was trying to make it through high school while raising her child at home.

It was a great part, and Molly thanked whatever fates cast her in the series. She loved playing Kathleen, and she loved being in the pilot, and when the call came saying the series had indeed been slotted for Wednesday evenings at ten P.M., she loved knowing she was going to be a part of something special and exciting, with a huge, steady paycheck. Now everything in her life was going to make sense. The big payoff her parents had dreamed of for years was hers. All those endless, exhausting nights of song and dance and just a touch of acting had resulted in a featured part in a TV series. And that meant Molly was going to be able to make a home for herself and her parents. No more hotels. She’d buy a house for them to live in. She might even get a pet, a cat, maybe, or a dog. Or maybe a cat and a dog. A cat and a dog and a mother and a father in a house with room for all of them, and a bedroom of her own. No more suitcases with room for a single teddy bear. No more roommates who you shared your life with for a month or two, never to be seen again. No more aching loneliness to swallow down and try to pretend didn’t really exist. A real house with a real family and real birthdays to celebrate—that was the payoff, and she was entitled.

Molly paid the cab driver and walked into the office building. When she’d first seen Richgold Productions, she’d felt like a hick, but now people smiled at her and she knew some of their names and they all seemed to know hers. She was somebody there, and she loved it.

She could tell she counted because Dick hardly kept her waiting once his secretary told him she was there. She liked the way he stood up when she entered his office, as though she were a real lady. She liked everything about his office, but she especially enjoyed the family pictures he had on his desk. Even though two of them were of his wretched daughter, Susie Goldstein, the walking Jell-O mold, Molly still got a kick out of them. Dick Goldstein was a man with a camera, a man with a gift for snapshots. When her parents joined her, she’d be sure to buy each of them a camera. They could all hang out together, taking pictures of each other, to make up for all those years that they’d been separated.

“Sit down, Molly,” Dick said, and he gestured to a chair opposite his desk.

So Molly sat. If Dick told her to run through fire, she’d do it for him. She owed him everything, and she knew he knew it. If that gave him an unfair advantage over her, it was one she could accept. She and Dick exchanged the standard pleasantries, and then Dick got down to business.

“I have a couple of things I need to discuss with you,” he said. “First of all, let me tell you again how wonderful you were in the pilot. You have a quality about you, Molly, that simply leaps onto the screen. You can go very, very far in this business if you so choose.”

“Thank you,” Molly replied. Dick had told her that once or twice before, and she guessed he knew what he was talking about. Of course it was always possible he said that to all the Hard Time High actors, but she didn’t care. She still liked the praise.

“Now, I have something to tell you about Kathleen, and I hope you won’t regard it as bad news,” Dick continued.

Molly immediately tensed up.

“I’m afraid Kathleen has lost her baby,” Dick said.

“What do you mean?” Molly asked.

“The network decided it was simply too much for the show to have such a young unwed mother on it,” Dick said. “Naturally there was no talk of writing Kathleen off altogether, so it was decided she simply wouldn’t be a mother.”

“Is she pregnant?” Molly asked. She’d heard it was horrible playing pregnant people. You had to wear a pillow all the time.

Dick shook his head. “No pregnancy, no baby, no nothing. Instead, Kathleen’s going to be the oldest of four kids and her mother’s going to have run out on the family, so Kathleen’s going to be the surrogate mother. It’s a little more traditional than I would have liked, but the network’s comfortable with it and it explains Kathleen’s maternal streak. Do you think you can handle that?”

“Sure,” Molly said. “But I’ll miss my baby.”

“I’ll miss him too,” Dick said. “Half the reason we cast you was because of the way you handled that imaginary baby during the first audition. But you know networks.”

Molly didn’t, but she nodded anyway.

“Let me assure you, the part of Kathleen is going to be every bit as important as it was in the pilot,” Dick declared. “In fact, since the predicament she finds herself in is in no way of her own making, there’ll probably be more audience sympathy for her. And although I don’t want you to get your hopes up, there’s a chance of a possible incest story line between Kathleen and her father. My wife tells me that happens a lot in households where the mother reneges on her responsibilities. Surrogate mother, surrogate wife. In any event, we’re open to the idea of exploring it. With sensitivity and taste, of course.”

“Of course,” Molly said. Poor Kathleen.

Dick smiled. “Now that that’s taken care of, we can discuss other things,” he said. “I have the results of your testing, Molly.”

Molly had suspected that was what the meeting was going to be about. Because she’d been on the road all her life, she hadn’t had a chance to go to school the way normal kids did. Miranda Newgate, for example, had every single one of her report cards from nursery school on. Molly, on the other hand, had little to prove that she was a high school sophomore, the same as T.J. Tyler and Miranda. So Dick had insisted that she undergo a battery of tests to determine what her academic level was.

“I’ve had the tests analyzed and the analysis explained to me,” Dick declared. “In fact there are at least three educators who want to meet you, the results were so remarkable.”

Was it possible she’d done better than she thought she had? Molly had taken those tests in an agony of sweat and terror.

“They’ve never seen such erratic scoring in their lives,” Dick continued. “In fact it was suggested that perhaps two, or maybe even three, people took those tests. But I told them it was just you, all alone.”

“What do you mean erratic?” Molly asked.

Dick looked over a sheet of paper. “Your verbal abilities are excellent,” he said. “Your reading comprehension, for example, is on the college level. Your prose style is outstanding, very mature for your age. But you spell on the fourth-grade level.”

Molly gulped.

“Your American geography is outstanding,” Dick continued. “You seem to know every city in every state in the country. On the other hand, you think Paris is the capital of Italy and that Australia is a country in Asia.”

“It’s around there, isn’t it?” Molly asked.

“It’s on the same planet, that’s true,” Dick replied. “Your knowledge of American history consists of Washington and Lincoln, and you seem to be under the impression that World War Two was the first world war. On the other hand, when you were given some historical facts to analyze, you wrote an excellent essay about them.”

Molly allowed herself a smile.

“Except for the fact that you misspelled every third word,” Dick said. “Your basic arithmetic is sound, but you don’t seem to have heard of algebra. And while you have an unusual knowledge of astronomy, you’re under the impression that the liver is a drinking condition and that only women have kidneys. Molly, what’s going on?”

“I can explain,” Molly said. “You know how it is.”

“No I don’t,” Dick replied. “Do you care to tell me?”

Molly licked her lips. Would it help if she told Dick she was younger than she thought she was? Somehow she doubted it.

“I’ve been on the road,” she said. “And sometimes, when I was in a show that had a lot of kids and was on a long tour, they’d hire a tutor and we’d get lessons wherever we went. But when I was in a show where there were only a couple of juveniles or where I was the only one, they’d take me to the local school and register me and I was supposed to get there on my own on days when we didn’t have rehearsals or matinees. Only then, in a month or a week we’d leave that town and go to the next one and I’d get registered all over again, and sometimes they were teaching the same thing and sometimes they were teaching something else altogether different, and once I was understudying and the lead broke her foot and I had to go on and they rehearsed me for thirty-six hours straight. I gave two performances, and they let me have three naps, and the rest of the time I rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed, and they felt so sorry for me they told me I didn’t have to go to school at all if I didn’t want to. So I didn’t for the rest of that tour. It was only a couple of months, and then I went back, but I didn’t know anything they were talking about anymore, so I just stopped going. When I was in Annie the first time and I was playing the littlest orphan, we had a tutor who taught us all about astronomy. I loved it, so I kept on reading about it. Sometimes I’d find the local library and go there and borrow their astonomy books. I didn’t have a card, but I’d always leave the books in my hotel room so they’d get returned after I left. You know how it is on the road. You have a lot of time to read.”

“And to learn American geography,” Dick said. “The hard way. By going to all those different cities.”

“And I know arithmetic because my parents made sure I did,” Molly continued. “So that I wouldn’t get cheated. Before I left them the first time, my father made sure I knew my dollars and dimes and quarters. I always double-check my change at a store. But I really did think only women had kidneys. Are you sure men have them too?”

Dick laughed. “They definitely do,” he replied. “All right, Molly. I understand better now, but there’s something you have to understand. As long as you’re a cast member on Hard Time High, you are to regard your education as being as important as your acting. Even more important. There’s going to be a full-time tutor on the set for all of you, and I’m going to get regular reports on your education.”

“All right,” Molly said.

“And because you’re so far behind, you’re going to get special tutoring this summer,” Dick declared. “The other kids won’t have to, but if you’re going to catch up with them, you’ll need it. Then in the fall, we’ll decide whether you should join the older kids or whether you and Susie should share a tutor. Although, to be perfectly honest, unless you do a lot of catching up, it might not be fair to Susie to have to study with you.”

Molly scowled. When she’d thought. about this conversation, she’d assumed she was sufficiently older than Susie that she could demand to be taught with Miranda and T.J. But now she’d lost that advantage. And special tutoring that summer wasn’t going to be any fun. How was she going to have the time to find a house for her family if she had to learn algebra instead?

“I gather your parents didn’t keep track of your academic progress,” Dick said.

“We were apart,” Molly replied. “When we worked together, they’d go over my spelling words with me and stuff, but the rest of the time they weren’t there to do it. We all had more important things to worry about.”

“Nothing is more important than your education,” Dick said sharply. “I would have thought your parents knew that.”

“They did,” Molly said, but it was a lie. She’d met Miranda’s parents, and they knew all about education. She’d seen the look of horror in their eyes when she’d tried to explain about how she’d gotten her schooling. It just had never occurred to her that Dick would feel that same way.

“Speaking of your parents, have they made arrangements to move out here?” Dick asked.

“Not yet,” Molly admitted.

Dick stared at her.

“Well they couldn’t give up everything just because I was in a pilot,” Molly said. “And they’re both in shows now, and they can’t walk away from their obligations.” If there was one thing she knew, that was it. You never walk away from your obligations, unless by some miraculous chance a better part comes along. Molly had left a touring dinner-theater production of Fiddler on the Roof as soon as she’d heard she’d been cast as Kathleen.

“You can’t stay at the hotel indefinitely,” Dick told her. “Some changes are going to have to be made.”

“It’s okay for me to stay at a cheaper place,” Molly said. She could live without skirt hangers, and if she had to, she could buy her own soap. “I bet there are some really cheap motels around here.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Dick replied. “You can’t just stay in a hotel all by yourself indefinitely. As it is, it’s been going on far too long. I’m going to have to make some other arrangements for your living conditions, at least until your parents can move out here. You need adult supervision, Molly. You’re too young to be living on your own.”

“But I’m used to hotels,” Molly said. “I’ve always lived in hotels.”

“That is no way for a child to grow up,” Dick declared. “And no matter what you think, you are a child. So I’m just going to have to find you some other place to live. Some place where a grown-up can keep an eye on you, make sure you do your homework, practice your spelling words with you.”

“But where?” Molly asked.

“Don’t worry,” Dick said. “I’ll find someplace.”

“All right,” Molly said, knowing she didn’t have a choice in the matter. Besides, as soon as she told her parents Dick expected them out there, they’d move to California right away. And then she’d have a home and parents and lots of chances to practice her spelling words in the privacy of her own bedroom.

2

“So I thought maybe I could stay with you,” Molly said to Miranda the next day. They were on the Hard Time High set, waiting for their next scene together. T.J. and Rafe were rehearsing their scene, and Molly occasionally glanced over at them. T. J. had a nice quality onstage, in addition to his blond good looks, but Rafe was the one with magnetism. “It wouldn’t be for very long, just until my parents move out here and we get a house.”

“I’d love to have you,” Miranda replied, “but I just can’t. I could never impose on my aunt and uncle that way.”

“I wouldn’t be an imposition,” Molly declared. “I could help in the kitchen. I could wash dishes.” She never had, but she doubted there was much of a trick to it.

“You don’t know what it’s like there,” Miranda said with a sigh. “My cousin Wendy’s still upset that I got cast and she didn’t. She only talks to me when her parents are around to hear. They think everything’s fine, so they tell my parents that. Not that I want my parents to think any different. If they did, they might try to yank me out of the series.”

Not for the first time, Molly marveled at the Newgate family. When Miranda had been cast in Hard Time High, her parents had insisted on flying out, meeting everybody, and being reassured over and over again that Miranda’s education wouldn’t be interfered with and that her morals would remain intact. If Molly’s parents had ever made half as much fuss about the working conditions, she would have had a lot fewer jobs and a lot fewer interesting memories.

“As a matter of fact, I was kind of hoping that after your parents moved out here I might move in with you,” Miranda continued. “It would be so great to have you as a roommate. We could rehearse together, and you could teach me all those things you know.”

Molly grinned. If she taught Miranda half of what she knew, the Newgates would be out to yank her out of the series in record time.

“Acting things,” Miranda said, interpreting Molly’s grin. “I still get so scared when I realize I’m starring in a big TV series and I’ve never done any acting before.”

“It doesn’t bother Alison,” Molly said, glancing over to the corner, where Alison Blake was reading her script. As always, Alison’s mother hovered by her side.

“Nothing bothers Alison,” Miranda replied. “Have you ever noticed how her hair is always permanently in place? She must use a pound of hair spray every day.”

“It isn’t hair spray,” Molly said. “It’s her natural hair. It doesn’t have the nerve to move without her permission.”

The girls giggled. Alison looked up at them and frowned. That only made Molly giggle harder. Alison Blake was, in her way, even more of an opposite than Miranda. Miranda at least bit her nails. Alison Blake had given up her title as Miss Young America to take the part of Jenny, but she didn’t seem to have left her perfection behind. She and T.J. were playing the beautiful couple on the show, and they looked physically right together—tall, blond, with perfect bodies. Molly, on the other hand, was short and had the figure of an underdeveloped fourteen-year-old. To her astonishment, and presumably the astonishment of everybody else connected with the show, she was the one T.J. was interested in. They’d even gone out on a couple of dates, like two normal American teenagers. Molly couldn’t figure out how Alison felt about that, but it was obvious it drove Mrs. Blake crazy. Which was just fine with Molly. She didn’t trust a parent who insisted on hanging out with her daughter all the time.

“So do you think I’ll be able to move in with you?” Miranda asked. “After your folks move out?”

“Do you think your parents will let you?” Molly asked. “I think they thought I was a little weird.”

“Not weird,” Miranda said, but from the look of discomfort on her face, Molly knew weird was just the right word. “Different, maybe. And you are different. But they could see you were a very nice person, and I’m sure after they got to meet your parents, they’d approve.”

Molly tried to picture her parents being examined by the Newgates. Miranda’s parents were so classy, they both had Ph.D.s. Molly’s mother, on the other hand, had dropped out of school in tenth grade to run off to New York and become a star. And while her father had a genuine high school diploma, he wasn’t much for intellectual discussions. As a matter of fact, she was sure he was the one who told her Australia was in Asia.

“Let’s see what happens first,” Molly said. “Even if my parents get out here right away, we might not find a house for a while. Houses cost so much out here, we’ll probably have to look a long time.”

“Where will you live in the meantime?” Miranda asked.

Molly shrugged her shoulders. “Wherever,” she said. “We can all stay in a hotel once they get here. Dick only minds my staying in one by myself. That’s why I was hoping I could move in with you.”

“I wish you could,” Miranda said. “You have no idea how much I wish that. It’s awful staying with relatives.”

Molly took Miranda’s word for it. The only family she had were her parents. Her mother described her childhood as a mess, and once she left home, she broke off all contact with her parents. Molly’s father’s family had never approved of his desire to be an actor, and when he married out of his faith, they disowned him. Molly’s father went once a year to visit them and get depressed, but he never took his wife or daughter with him. Which was fine with his wife and daughter.

“Maybe I could move in with Alison,” Molly said. “That way she could wake up every morning and see me and feel even more perfect.”

That time she and Miranda laughed so hard they had to leave the set before they disturbed everybody else.

They were called back ten minutes later, and the director put them through their paces. The scene called for Miranda’s character, Sally, to find Kathleen sitting alone in the stairwell, crying. Since Kathleen was usually the one comforting people, it was a pleasant change of pace for Molly to do the weeping.

Television acting was a lot different than stage acting, and Molly wasn’t sure yet how she felt about it. She’d done some straight dramatic roles, including one glorious summer when she’d played the little murderer in The Bad Seed all over the Midwest. But no matter what kind of show it was, even though the rehearsals started out jagged and out of order, scene three first and then scene two of act two, pretty soon you were rehearsing all of act one and then all of act two. And of course when you performed, you performed it straight through.

On television, though, things stayed jagged. The scene they were rehearsing was the next to last one Molly was in in that episode and they hadn’t rehearsed any of the scenes that built up to Kathleen’s crying. And when they shot the show, there was no reason to assume they would film the scenes in their proper order. So even though when the show was finished it would all make sense, it never felt quite right while you were doing it.

And everything moved so fast. Fortunately, Molly was accustomed to things moving rapidly. In summer stock, a lot of times there would be only one rehearsal onstage before the play went on, but the stakes weren’t as high. She’d been a kid, for one thing, and kids were forgiven if they goofed up, just as long as they didn’t make a habit of it. And the actors and directors she’d worked with were almost never great. Sometimes she’d get to be in a show with an elderly movie star, but for the most part she didn’t know who they were, so she wasn’t intimidated.

But on Hard Time High everybody intimidated her. Molly wasn’t about to admit that to anyone, but there were times the sight of one of the other actors on the show made her quiver with fear. Neither Miranda nor Rafe had any acting experience, and Molly felt comfortable working with them. But Alison, who didn’t have any acting experience either, always made her feel inadequate just because she was so gorgeous. T.J. had starred in his own TV series when he was a kid—Mischievous Mike. Molly had even seen it on TV years back. And Bill Douglas, the sixth kid on the series, was practically a walking history of television, he’d appeared on so many different shows.

And that was just the kids. The grown-ups on the series all had loads of experience. They weren’t impressed just because she had once spent three months pretending to be a boy for a touring production of Oliver! If they saw all that greatness Dick Goldstein claimed she had, they certainly hadn’t mentioned it.

Molly positioned herself in the stairwell and sighed. “Give me energy, Mol,” Jerry Zigler, the director, instructed her. “Let’s see some life behind those tears.”

Molly bent her head back and closed her eyes. There was no need to go all-out for a rehearsal, but if Jerry wanted energetic tears, she was happy to oblige. Her father had taught her how to cry onstage. “Think of the saddest thing that could ever happen,” he’d told her when she was seven. “Think of your mother and me dying and your having to look at our dead, mangled bodies.”

Molly had burst into hysterical tears on the spot.

“That’s it!” her father said, and rewarded her with a kiss on her forehead. “Always remember how awful it would be if your mother and I died and you were homeless and unloved, and you’ll be able to cry whenever you need to.”

So Molly sat on the stairwell and pictured her parents’ dead, mangled bodies. They’d never have the chance to enjoy the rewards her stardom would provide. No, the plane had crashed before they ever moved out to be with her and she was all alone, with no one to love her, no one to help her with her spelling words.

Sure enough, the tears started forming. Molly encouraged them, along with feelings of abandonment and despair. She noticed from the corner of one eye that Miranda was genuinely upset to see her crying so, but that didn’t stop her. She wept openly, bitterly, cursing the fates, the airplanes, and her parents, who didn’t have the common sense to live with her in the first place.

Miranda just barely got her line of dialogue out. She patted Molly awkwardly on the shoulders and stared at the director for further instructions.

“All right, Molly,” Jerry said. “You made your point. A little less energy.”

Molly grinned.

“You creep!” Miranda screeched. “I thought something was really the matter. You were just faking.”

“I was acting,” Molly replied loftily. Poor Miranda. She was still an amateur. It really wasn’t fair to put her on the spot like that.

She limited her crying to polite little tears, and Miranda got through the scene just fine. Molly had to admire Miranda’s talent. She didn’t know what she was doing, but unless you were aware of that, it didn’t show. Brains obviously counted for a lot, even in acting.

The next scene they rehearsed was one with her, T.J., and Alison, so Molly didn’t have a chance to wash away her tears. Instead, she put away the image of her parents’ dead and mangled bodies, and concentrated on how much Kathleen disliked Jenny. That was easy enough, since she wasn’t crazy about Alison. T.J.’s character, Kevin, was supposed to enjoy having the two girls squabble over him, and Molly could see T.J. was taking the scene quite literally and enjoying it himself. It drove Molly crazy, but she had to admit T.J.’s pleasure in the scene worked for Kevin as well.

Alison still didn’t know how to act, but neither did Rafe, and that didn’t seem to concern anybody except Molly, who felt she had to carry them when they did a scene together. Alison was never totally there when she was performing. There was no sense of her intelligence or ambition. Molly didn’t know Alison well and was hoping to keep it that way, but she knew Alison was smart and had big plans. It was a shame she didn’t know how to show that side of her on camera.

Jerry didn’t seem to mind, though, and Molly, for the thousandth time, cursed a world where good looks counted for at least as much as talent and experience. She was happy when Jerry announced that they were going to rehearse Miranda’s scene with Alison next. Molly hated to admit it, but television was tiring.

She walked off the set with T.J. They found a quiet corner and sat down together to work on their lines.

Midway through their scene, Molly had a bright idea. She put her script down, looked at T.J., and said, “Could I move in with you?”

“What?” T.J. asked, obviously startled by the question.

“With you and your father,” Molly said. “Could I stay with you until my parents move out here and we get our own place?”

T.J. smiled at Molly. “You’re not serious,” he said.

“Sure I am,” she replied. “You and your father are moving, aren’t you? There’d be room for me.”

“We’re still looking,” T.J. said. “I told you, we need a three-bedroom apartment, one located near the studio. And the rent has to be reasonable. Apartments like that aren’t easy to find.”

“They’re not impossible, either,” Molly said. “You just go to a rental agency and they find you one. What’s hard about that?”