Crushing Candies - Chapter 1

Chapter One - Mean girls don’t go to Heaven

Three minutes late. I was three bleeping minutes late.
          I cursed my history teacher under my breath. If he hadn’t babbled too much about how George Bush didn’t sign the Kyoto Protocol, he could have released us ten minutes earlier. Who actually cares about some stupid Bill that doesn’t even work? Only Mr. I-Am-A-Walking-Talking-History-Book Blauner, of course. If only I hadn’t failed that stupid history test last week, then I needn’t have to go to his extra lesson today and waste two hours of my time – two hours where I could have prepared for my big audition while waiting for my turn.
          Rushing out of the dingy classroom, I started going through my lines in my head. There wasn’t much for the role, but I added some of my own well-thought out lines to give an extra kick to the dialogues. I mean, with the whole production team going to twenty different states and hundreds of high schools trying to perfectly cast the characters, what are the chances that they will pick me over others when I had been repeating the same lines that thousands of girls had just delivered for the past few hours? Exactly my point.
          The audition was being held at the school’s dance studio. That’s two minutes away from where I was. So that means I’d be five minutes late when I actually get there. Didn’t they say that two minutes is the maximum ‘leeway’ time we actor-wannabes ever get? Ugh…! I’m so going to flunk history again if they’re not accepting my audition due to my tardiness!
         I started breaking into a jog, hoping I wouldn’t sweat too much by the time I reached the dance studio. I saw less and less students loitering around as I got closer to the studio. Did Melanie not say that my audition was the very last one? Maybe today’s audition went faster than expected. Maybe the director and producers gave up waiting for me and packed up already. Maybe –
          Bang. Splash. Ouch…!
          Something hot and liquid splashed all over the front of my clothes, burning my skin. I gaped at the brown stain forming on my fifty-dollar clothes. This was the only outfit I had that cost more than eight dollars, and now look at what has happen to my precious one… All drenched and brown… A surge of pure fury engulfed me as I glared at who was the idiot who spilled his drink on me.
          He was at least half a foot taller than me, his blue eyes looking as shocked as me. The black tuxedo he was wearing was also wet from the spilled coffee. I couldn’t care less why he, who looked too young to be a teacher, was wearing a tuxedo in a school. All I cared was to slap that face of his hard.
          “Watch where you’re going, you blind-eyed… fat head!” I immediately regretted my choice of the words ‘fat head’ as an insult because his head was about as fat as any normal person’s head. He just stared at me, his expression a mixture of bewilderment and confusion. Maybe he was even amused at my little comment about the size of his head. Feeling slightly embarrassed, I tried to think of something witty to add on. Then I saw he was holding onto a cup with ‘Starbucks Coffee’ imprinted on it.
          “Just because you can afford some seven-dollar lattes per day doesn’t give you any right to bang and spill your drinks on people, you overly-pampered, obnoxious… blue-eyed moron!” I snapped. So I lost a little bit of the momentum at the end back there, but it wasn’t like I ever scolded anyone anything remotely negative before. Ever.
          Rich Boy was now looking at me with a curious expression in his eyes. Probably thinking if I was crazy, I thought. I was fully aware that there was quite a crowd looking at our little commotion, but maybe that’s just because they were not used to seeing friendly old me taking my temper out on anybody. I couldn’t care less and quickly stormed off, calling my best friend on speed dial.
          “Melanie? I need you to go to the toilet near the dance studio now!” I called and quickly hung up before she could ask why. As I dashed to the dance studio, I saw five girls sitting outside the studio, practicing their lines aloud. Phew! Looks like the audition went a little slow today.
          Two minutes later, Melanie arrived at the toilet where I was waiting for her. When she saw the stain on my clothes, her eyes widened in horror and she let out a gasp.
          “Ooh, thank goodness you are here, Mel!” I almost cried, walking over to her and almost giving her a hug before stopping myself when I realized that I would soak her clothes too if I did. Then I gave my best puppy face and begged her with my eyes.
          “I need your clothes…” I said, trying to sound not too desperate like my life depended on it. She shook her head. I nodded mine. She shook her head again before finally sighing and giving in. “Alright, but if anything happens to this baby, you’re soo going to pay!”
          Three minutes later, I was wearing Mel’s ridiculously skimpy clothing while she was wearing mine. History was already the last class of the day anyway, so Mel just had to bear having a huge stain on her clothes till she get home. I looked at myself in the mirror for the tenth time, turning myself around and around. No matter which angle I looked myself at, her clothing still looked too skimpy. Her yellow top showed too much skin for my taste and her skirt was beyond ‘mini’. God, out of all the days, why did she have to wear such a revealing outfit today?!
          “Ashleigh, it’s not my fault that I wanted to look sexy in front of Dirk today!” Mel grumbled childishly. Dirk, or better known to her as ‘McDreamy’, was her April crush. Her crushes are seasonal: they pretty much change every month.
          “Come on, you should start doing your character breakdown mentally!” Melanie quickly urged me. Even though Melanie looks and acts like a complete bimbo most of the time, she actually knows acting. In fact, we’re in the same drama class since the start of junior school. Maybe that’s why, despite the vast differences we have in many fields, Melanie and I am the best of friends since we were five. Opposites kind of fascinate each other, I guess.
          Then she started to do funny noises with her lips as she flickered her fingers beside my head in a repeated up and down motion, before she gave a loud ‘muack’ sound. I was very familiar with that routine of hers – she called it the ‘Ashley Tisdale’ style and claimed that it helps to calm people down, but it only annoyed me every time. This Ashley person is supposedly a famous actress, yet funnily enough, an actress-wannabe like me hadn’t heard of her before. I should just accept that I’m a completely outdated person because when I admitted to the girls in my class that I only realized the existence of the Jonas Brothers a month ago, they looked at me as if I was an alien.
          “So, who are you playing…?” Melanie began testing me with that teasing tone.
          “I’m playing an angel named Karie Islachey and she’s born in the United States of America. She, however, moved to a magical world when she was six, after she was revealed as the Angel. She’s seventeen, innocent as a deer, badass at heart and –”
          “In love with Andy Rexaldo!” We both said together and giggled. This was the one part of teenage culture that I do know of – the Angels and Devils book series. Andy Rexaldo is the protagonist of the series, Karie’s handsome protector and also the love of her life. He’s the perfect everything, except he’s also a demon, which made the whole thing a heart wrenching forbidden love story.
          The door suddenly slammed open and a girl went in the toilet. She was crying almost hysterically, her hair looking like it had been pulled in fifty different directions. I looked at Melanie and she stared back at me.
          “They said I acted worse than a cow…!” the girl cried, and Melanie, being Melanie, gave an ‘awww’ and a big hug. After getting a better look at the girl, I realized it was Jenny, the toughest girl in our school. Never once had she cried, not even when a basketball broke her nose till it was quite disfigured. And now, the movie crew had actually torn her into this state?
          I tried not to think of what I would look like when I come out of that studio and quickly got out of the toilet. There were only three girls left in the unofficial line and all of them were from our drama class. That was why there wasn’t a long queue: only students from the drama class or students with recommendations from a drama teacher are allowed to audition. However, I heard that this was a new rule just recently implemented as they claimed it was too ‘inefficient to be searching for a talent from a mindless pool of students’. Previously, before they came to our school for this audition, they must have already gone to a hundred schools and seen thousands of random people auditioning for the major and minor roles in the books.
         I still could not believe that they had not found someone who was fitting of the role of Karie. According to the Life and Style magazine, it was the only role left unfilled, although I didn’t bother to check who the people that were already casted are. It wasn’t like I would really get the role, so why bother researching on people that you may never even going to work with in your life?
          But the one thing I do know of is who the director of the movie was going to be: Beltran Ermenegildo. I had always been an avid fan of Beltran ever since the start of his career. There was absolutely no movie of his that I didn’t memorize the lines.
          The minutes seemed like hours as I waited for my turn outside the dance studio. I was so anxious that it was ridiculous. But I had my reasons: the first girl went out crying as hysterically as Jenny. The second girl came out looking like she had just seen a ghost. Now, the last girl had gone in the dance studio. I was the only one waiting in the line.
          By then, a lot of people had gathered around the studio. They were all jittery and excited to see the casting crew and the director, but nobody could see anything of course. The whole dance studio was closed off with curtains and the only way to get in was the front door, which was guarded by two enormous bodyguards. They would only let the people with the stamped letter of acceptance inside.
          “Good luck, Ashleigh!” I could hear people, mostly boys, screaming me well wishes. I gave them a weak smile, not registering anything that they say to me. All I could think of was how to impress the casting crew. My life does depend on this. If I can make it into any one of the cast in such a huge movie, I can finally pay off the months of bills in my apartment. I can finally pay for Lily, my little sister’s tuition fees. I can finally pay for –
          “Ashleigh Summers? You’re up next,” said one of the bodyguards. I blinked as I realized that the third girl just went out of the studio. She wasn’t crying or looking pale. Instead, she was shivering violently, hugging herself as if she was in the snow. Poor girl. That could be me next, looking as shaken as her…
          I took a deep breath, and then exhaled slowly. This is it, I told myself as I slowly got up from the floor. This will be my break it or make it moment... It felt like the whole world was watching me enter the hall when in actual fact there were no more than a dozen students watching me.
          As I walked past the two giants guarding the door, my heart raced faster than ever before. Duk-duk. I placed my hands on the handle of the door. Duk-duk. I pushed the door open. Duk-duk. I was inside the dance studio.
          This was only my second time inside the dance studio of Princeton High School, and I was surprised at how much bigger it was from what I remembered. The flooring was made of solid pale wood, the four white walls semi-matted.
         There were two huge spot lights shining in the middle of the studio. Apart from two crew members fixing the spot lights and some others carrying huge equipments out of the studio, there was only me and the people who were going to judge me.
          The dance studio was completely silent except for the occasional twitching sounds of the spot lights. I could hear the rustles of my clothes as I took three steps forward. There, sitting on top of the stage, behind a long table top were the three judges whose verdict meant everything to me.
          It was too far away for me to make out the faces of the three, but I could tell that all three of them were men. As I gave my most confident walk towards the judges, I got a clearer look at their faces. The judge on my left was recognizably the bald genius Mr. Ermenegildo, with his trademark moustache only on the right side of his face and wearing his one-eyed glasses on his left. He was writing something on his notepad furiously, and he seemed oblivious of my presence in the studio.
          My heart skipped a beat as I realized that I had finally got a chance to meet the big shot director. It suddenly became more real to me that I actually have a chance to work with this god of a man. I gulped down my excitement and hoped that I wouldn’t pounce on the director, screaming for his autograph.
          The judge on the right was a young Latino man, probably no more than three years my senior, and he was visibly the most relaxed one out of all the judges. He was leaning back on his chair, his expression a little bored, but I could see that beneath the bored expression, there was a cheeky monkey inside.
          The last judge, the one sitting in the centre of the stage, was another young man of about the same age as the second judge. His skin was slightly more tanned than most white males – but not as nearly as tanned as his Latino friend – and his short black hair was in a mess. As I got closer to him, I felt that his facial features were all too familiar to me, yet I couldn’t put a name to the face. Was he some old neighbor of mine? No… Maybe an old crush? No, that’s impossible considering I have stopped crushing on anyone since I was ten. Was he –
          Oh god.
          Now that I only stood five metres away from him, I could finally see his face clearly. He wasn’t wearing the black tuxedo anymore, but a clean crisp white shirt. But those blue eyes of his were undoubtedly the same ones I had seen just minutes ago.
          Rich Boy was looking straight at me with eyes narrowed, his expression unfathomable.