Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) by Helena Newbury Read Free Book Online

Emma just a bad dream. I wasn’t going to tip the balance back the other way.
    So I told myself I wasn’t being a heartless bitch and moved on, careful to never be that late for class again. But every time I saw a drug rehab program, or a soup kitchen, or a homeless guy in the street, the guilt welled up inside me like freezing, thick oil.
    I closed my eyes and opened them again. No, still no Nick. Nothing but annoyed commuters on the other platform. And then, thanks to karma or maybe just the cruel desire of the universe to fuck with me, they announced that the next train had been delayed due to a breakdown.
     
    ***
     
    When I eventually made it to Fenbrook, I was forty-five minutes late. That should have given me a whole fifteen minutes of Gazpacho’s class to apologize to him, but everyone was already in the corridor. I could see Gazpacho walking away, so they’d obviously only just come out.
    “What happened?” I asked the crowd in general.
    Nina grabbed my shoulders. She has a blonde bob, big blue eyes and can do a mean femme fatale if you put her in a dress or an Oscar-worthy troubled single mom if you put her in jeans. “ You missed it! ”
    I blinked. “It’s only Gazpacho. I mean, I like some method acting as much as the next girl, but—”
    “That was cancelled! There was a casting! With a really big producer! For TV! ”
    Spontaneous, no-notice castings happened a lot at Fenbrook—the faculty was very proud of them. Producers would drop into an acting class to find fresh faces, often at a moment’s notice. My heart was suddenly thumping. “Okay, if you don’t stop doing that thing with the last word, I’m going to kill you. What casting? What for?”
    She bit her lip, so I knew it was bad. “A cop show,” she said in a small voice.
    I felt my body freeze inch by inch, from my toes all the way up to my ears. A cop show. My dream gig. My own voice grew small, now. “What were they looking for?” I asked.
    Nina could barely speak. “Cops. Female cops. Our age.”
    I was devastated. I couldn’t find any words. I could only gape at her in silence.
    “He said...someone very vibrant, ” Nina whispered. “I thought of you. Even Gazpacho mentioned you. But you weren’t here.”
    I bent over at the waist as if I’d been punched in the gut. I’ve actually been punched in the gut, many times, and I swear it never hurt as much as this.
    “FUCK!” I finally yelled, making the whole corridor lapse into silence. People looking understandingly at me. A few even patted me on the back. Down near the end of the corridor, Mr. Gizacho even turned around and looked sadly back at me.
    At Fenbrook, there’s a general feeling of camaraderie. Everyone celebrates the successes and we don’t gloat when others fail. I knew the others sympathized, but that didn’t mean they could help. They could offer the old reassurances: that there’d be other auditions, that the show probably wouldn’t get past the pilot anyway. But when I heard that the guy behind it was A.K. Dixon, the hotshot producer who’d wowed everyone with his gritty war drama the year before, I wanted to weep.
    I’ve never liked cops. No, wait: I’ve never trusted cops. Back in Chicago, they were either the enemy, getting fat on my dad’s bribes, or oblivious, more interested in handing out parking tickets than helping a girl in need. And yet cop shows: the excitement and the fast-moving dialogue and the jargon...those I eat up with a spoon. Playing a cop, or a detective in a procedural, was my all-time dream role and everyone at Fenbrook knew it.
    Which is why, when I went to sit on the Fenbrook steps and the tears started to roll down my cheeks, everyone understood. Nina came and stroked my back until the next class started, but eventually she had to go inside. I couldn’t face it—not a solid hour of voice work with my throat hot and raw from crying. I stayed outside.
    There was a female cop strolling along the street a few hundred yards