Beautiful Monster 2 (8 page)

Later, formally dressed and showered, Liam and I entered the Red Theater from two different sides. I smiled at him as he caught my eye and took his place in the front. Shuffling into the rows with Sarah, I had a sense of déjà vu. This was so much like my audition on the first day, the day my life changed.

“You used to dance, right?” I asked Sarah
, while Miss Katya, the head of the drama department, stood up to go over the procedures of the auditions. “Are you going to tell them that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it matters
. They’ll cast dancers for the dance parts. Are you nervous?”

I thoug
ht a moment, and then shrugged. “Not really. I’ve had worse. I think I’m more nervous about the… final show…” I gave Sarah a meaningful look. “Than the audition.”

“It’ll be fine.”
She took my hand, squeezing it. “We will kill that bitch dead.”

“Sarah!” My mouth fell open, and I laughed a little too loud. Katya gave me a look as she finished her announcement.

“Thank you for volunteering to go first, Amy!” she called. “The rest of you, exit by row and line up and we’ll see you one at a time.”

“Geez
.” I said, getting up.

I was perhaps a little nervous as I made my way to the front.
It’s not like I had a lot of experience auditioning. I had auditioned three times in my life, and gotten two parts out of it. Someone had once told me that a working actor only got ten percent of the parts they auditioned for, so I thought I was doing pretty well. Plus, no matter what part I got in this show, I would have to pretend everything was perfect and happy, while trying to orchestrate the ultimate vampire takedown plot and finish a grad school thesis.

My
father had warned me that grad school would be hard, but I didn’t imagine it would be like this.

When I got up there, however,
the first thing I saw was Liam’s smiling face, looking back at me with those warm eyes that had looked deep into mine all morning. I was never able to describe the connection that we shared that first day, as if we were meant to act together, both on and off the stage.

“And what do you have prepared for us, Amy?” he asked, as if he didn’t know
me.

M
y shoulders relaxed as I spoke, “A monologue from Beauty and the Beast.”

He waved his hand.
“Let’s hear it then,” he said, gently, and I knew all would be well.

*************

When Thursday came, however, I was a real bundle of nerves. The audition results would be posted at the end of the school day, which was about when I was supposed to be done filming. Even Liam didn’t know the results, having not sat in on the casting meeting. No matter how much I begged him, he declared that it wouldn’t be ethical.

“You wanted to
be chosen based on your talent alone, right?” he said, as the makeup artist that Sites TV had sent began to pin back my hair. “Now’s your chance.”

“If I’m a chorus girl, I’m going to cry.”

“Amy.” He reached out to take my hand with a smile. “You’re going to be much more than that.”

“So you say
.” I tried to grin, but my hand was shaking with nerves.

Last night, I had gone on Sites TV, only to find out that the show was broadcast every morning and seen by millions of people nationally, never mind
the international numbers. If I flubbed up today, it pretty much guaranteed I wouldn’t be cast in anything else ever again. Sites had a huge following. Celebrities often hosted segments on film sets or in their own houses, and the Sites vans were recognized everywhere.

“Take a deep breath,” he said, as foundation was being brushed on face. “The key here is to breathe. You’ve gone over a list of all the things you are going to say?”

“And spoken to everyone I’m going to interview about 6 million times. It’s kind of dumb, because I talk to these people every single day, and yet when it came time to rehearse interviews, I couldn’t come up with a thing to say to them.”

Liam smiled, reaching for a steaming cup of coffee he had brought with him.

“Sounds about right.”

I shook my head
, taking the coffee cup right out of his hand. “You’re not helping.”

It took half an hour to get my makeup done, and when she was finished, I barely recognized myself. I looked like a model, some glamazon version of myself with high cheekbones and long eyelashes.

“Wow, thank you.” I turned to the makeup artist, who was putting her stuff away.

“It was easy, you’re beauti
ful all on your own,” she said, and I blushed.

Liam
stood up, holding out his arm. “Ready?”

“Uh
-huh.” I took a deep breath. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Liam planted one last kiss on my lips, and then, with practi
ced ease, wiped away the lipstick that had gotten on him.

The Sites crew had arranged to meet us in front of the school, where the first shots would take place.
Liam kept me chatting the whole time, keeping my nerves at bay, and it worked so well that I didn’t notice that there was an insane amount of noise outside. In fact, it wasn’t until we rounded the corner that I clued in to what was happening. We rounded the corner and I was blinded by a sea of camera flashes. I let out a scream, startled as a wall of people that I had never seen before, at least one hundred people, met us.

They weren’t students of the school; the students were trained to behave better than this. I had seen, mostly on YouTube, the paparazzo’s reaction to Liam wherever he went. But this time, it wasn’t just his name they were screaming, it was also mine.

“Amy! AMY!” They shoved cameras in my faces, and autograph pads, and I froze, tightening my grip on Liam’s arm.

He seemed unfazed by the whole scenario, and
dipped his head down to my ear. “Is this ok? Do you want me to get you out of it?”

“Why I am I suddenly a celebrity?” I asked
.

He smiled.
“You’re my girlfriend. You were in Gatsby. You’re now hosting Sites. You go to this school. You were Beauty. Take your pick.”

“Aye-yi yi
.” I plastered a fake smile on my face as Liam signed a few autographs and wrapped his arm around my waist and posed for a few photographs. “If this doesn’t piss Selene off, I don’t know what will,” I said.

“So smile,” he said, as he gently led me through the mob towards where the camera crew was set up.

“Amy, it’s nice to meet you.” A woman who I could only assume was Aphrodite stuck out her hand. “Are you ready? We pretty much do things in one take, go with the flow and all. You’ve seen the show?”

“Yep
.” I shook her hand, sure that she could feel my sweaty palms. “And this, of course, is Liam.”

“Nice to meet you
.” Aphrodite didn’t seem dazzled by him at all. “Shall we get started?”

“I guess
.” I took the microphone that was handed to me and looked at the crowd that was being pushed back. “Will this work over the noise?”

“Don’t worry about it
.” Aphrodite smiled. “Let me just give the cue to the camera crew and then we’ll be all ready to go.”

“Alright
.” I stood on the mark she pointed out and stood in front of the camera, trying to hide my shaking hands. I was going to interview Liam first, which helped my nerves a little, but I was still terrified that I would make a mess of the whole thing.

“Alright, Amy, we’re ready
.” Aphrodite smiled at me. “Camera is on, so whenever you are ready.”

I took a deep breath and then nodded, looking directly into the camera, as Liam had taught me. He was standing beside me, completely at ease, as if millions of people wouldn’t be watching.

“Hi, I’m Amy and welcome to another great episode of Sites! We’re here at Leopard Academy, the top acting school in the whole world. Leopard admits children from kindergarten all the way through to grad school, and they turn out some of the best actors in the world. With me now is the headmaster and former Hollywood star, Liam…”

I turned to Liam and everything fell into place.
The interview went smoothly, and when they praised me on my style, I realized that this was no harder than leading Sarah through the school on her first day.

That was until we actually went into the Red
Theater on camera.

“So, this is the Red
Theater, probably one of my favorite theaters, as well as Liam’s, and I… oh!”

As the lights turned on, I was startled to find Sarah, sitting in the
center of the stage, and practically sitting on Connor. Both of them scrambled to their feet as soon as the lights came on, but not without guilty looks on both their faces. I didn’t miss the glint of Connor’s wedding ring as he stood in the light.

“And we have two of our
advanced students here...”

I realized as Amy’s interview went on that this was a worse and worse idea. If Selene had any brains in her head, she would realize that I had several vampires enrolled in my school. She could see it on the episode. On top of that, I knew she would choose to play on our weaknesses, which at the moment, all had names. Nina, Connor and Isabelle and Sarah, all stood out as people she could attack and use as bait for the rest of us to fall into her trap. And so, the plan had to be revised.

“Make it public,” I said to Amy, as she
paced in my office, waiting for the cast list to be posted for Phantom. “Every time you get an audition, we’ll pull strings to take one of the vampires alongside. I don’t want Selene to think that we are hiding anything.”

“But we
are
hiding something,” she protested.

“But I don’t want her to think that we are. So let’s put it all out in the open. The only thing that she can’t know about is Sarah. That’s our trump card.”

Amy bit her lip. “And what if Sarah’s not strong enough? Or worse, what if Isabelle finds out that she’s having an affair with her husband and slaughters her in the night?”

I winced.
“I know Isabelle, and she won’t wait until night time to do that. In any case, Amy, they are both adults and so we have to let them make their own choices.”

Just
then, a knock came at the door and my secretary appeared.

“Cast list is up.”

I had never seen Amy move so fast. For someone who had spent the summer in a major production, she seemed overly excited about finding out what part she got in a school play. Mind you, her Gatsby closing night would be nowhere near as spectacular as the closing night of Phantom if all went well.

Seconds later, a shriek came from outside and she came hurtling back into my office. I laughed, despite the tension.

“Well?”

“Meg Giry!”
she said, and then stopped as my face contorted. “What?”

“T
hey didn’t give you the lead,” I replied, shaking my head. “I would have thought for sure they’d give you the lead.”

“The lead spends half the play singing at the top of her operatic lungs
.” Amy perched on my desk, looking adorable.

I raise
d an eyebrow, reading her mind. “They cast Sarah, didn’t they?”

“Yep!” She had such a grin on her face that I couldn’t help but smile. “You don’t understand, Liam
. It’s perfect. My dream has been to act with Sarah since we met. And she’ll be a much better Christine than me. On top of that, that’s perfect for the plan. Christine is on stage almost the whole time, so anything Selene tries, Sarah will be there to stop her. It’s much better this way.”

“Still
.” I wrapped my arms around Amy and kissed her head, running my hands through her hair. “I would have cast you in a heartbeat.”

“Mmm
.” She leaned against my chest. “But you’re biased.”

“I am
… a bit,” I admitted, closing my eyes and just enjoying the feeling of her wrapped in my arms.

I never got tired of Amy, n
ever felt annoyed by her presence, never felt like I needed time apart from her. If I could spend the rest of my life just here, with her in my arms, I wouldn’t think it would be such a terrible thing at all.

“Who’s the
Phantom?” I asked, after a moment of silence.

“Charlie,” she said, looking up at me.

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Charlie, a grade 10 student, and not the best actor, was the last person I would have cast for the Phantom. But Charlie was also ignorant and gullible and desperate to pass the semester. While he could act well enough, he seemed to be an idiot when it came to the rest of his subjects. So, likely, he would go along with whatever seemingly stupid thing we had him do in order to make our plan a success.

“Hmm,” I said, finally letting her go
, so she could hop down. I took her hand though, not quite willing to be separated from her. “Should we find the others so we can celebrate?”

She looked at the clo
ck and then out the window. “Do you have time?”

I shrugged, squeezing her hand three times in our secret sign for I-Love-You.
“For you, I have at least an hour.”

Amy gr
inned, pulling me out the door. “Then I know just the place.”

*************

“Alright, guys, that’s it for today, except for the Stage Hand party scene. So if you’re not in that, you can go.”

The rest of the cast gathered their belongings and began to head out.
The Stage Hand party scene was a scene I had concocted, a code for the fact that the vampires and the girls and I needed to be alone in the theater. Katya had nearly punched me when I had told her I thought this scene would be a great addition. I listened to her rant and rave for nearly an hour about how it wasn’t in the original book or show, and how I couldn’t just go making up scenes. Eventually, I pulled rank on her, although I hated to do it.

The premise
of the scene was this: the vampires would play attendees in a peasant party and then two girls would stumble into the party. Charlie would swoop down at the end of it to ‘kill’ someone, selected from the audience to join the party. It was genius if we orchestrated it right. But done badly, Selene would figure it out in a moment and so I needed it to be perfect. Which was hard to do when working with mostly a cast of non-performers.

Once the
theater was clear, the rest of them came in closer to listen to me.

“Alright, so this scene has to go off perfectly when we bring Selene up on stage,” I reminded them. “You all got my email with the
choreography for it?”

“But it made little sense,” Connor said
.

I nodded.
“I know, it always makes little sense until you see it done. So what we’re going to do right now is run through it a few times. I’ll play Selene…”

Amy snickered, burying her head
on her knees.

I cracked a smile.
“You’ll just have to use your imaginations because I don’t look a thing like her. She’s going to know who you all are, so we’ve abandoned that plan. But she won’t know about Sarah, and that’s the link we are going to need to take her down. She’s going to be overconfident and think that she can beat us. So let’s use that. So everyone, take first positions, and let’s try this.”

They scrambled to seemingly random places on the stage, and Sarah and Amy linked arms on stage right. I stood at the edge of the stage and pressed the play button to start the music for the scene.

Nobody moved.

After waiting an a
wkward moment, I pressed stop. “Um, Connor? That’s your cue? You’re the one who’s coming to invite our audience guest into the party.”

“Right
.” He let go of Isabelle’s hand and whispered a few words to her in her native tongue, I guessed, and then moved forward to retrieve me.

I started the music again
and waited. This time Connor came to bring me to the center of the stage to join the supposed party for a few minutes. Except there was no party and all the others were standing awkwardly on the side of the stage. I sighed and pressed stopped.

“Ok, change of plans,” I called, motioning for Sarah and Amy to come over.
“So, clearly, girls, we have a lot of uneducated performers. So what I’m going to do is separate you two. Sarah, you’re going to be on one side and Amy on the other, and you’re going to pretend to be swept in by a crowd of stage hands, until you find yourself in the middle of this party that you aren’t supposed to be at. Once you’re in this party, someone push Connor to go and get an audience member.”

“Right
.” They nodded, separating, and we tried the scene for a third time.

This time, with the girls leading, it worked a little better. I realized that the things we performers take for granted, such as a lack of stage fright, and the ability to speak in front of large crowds, as well as the knowledge of where to stand, were all things that regular people had no idea what to do with. Even watching the scene from the
center of the stage, where they were supposed to surround Selene and leave no gaps or holes, it looked awkward. I shut off the music, waving my hands.

“Alright, what we’re going to need is a distraction,” I said. “In case something goes wrong, or we accidentally leave a gap and the audience is looking right at us.”

“Isabelle can dance,” Connor volunteered.

I saw Sarah twitch at him mentioning his wife’s name, and they exchanged a look, but nothing more happened.

“Can you?” I looked to Isabelle and Connor translated. She nodded, and I turned the music back on.

To my surprise, this girl was incredibly talented indeed. It was more than just a vampire’s grace and strength that she had; there was pure talent and training in her moves. In the hundreds of years that she
had lived, she must have been a dancer at some point, and I questioned Connor. He smiled, sadly.

“In many lives, she was. As soon as women could be dancers
then it became their profession. But since the age of cameras and digital files, it would be too hard to be in the public eye and immortal. And so, she stopped. I have not seen her dance in many years.”

“She’s very good,” I said, watching her. “Tell her that’d be perfect if she could do a small solo, enough to get the audience’s attention away from the mob.”

“I could do a solo,” Sarah volunteered, stepping forward.

I tried to smile, despite the fact that I realized this was a fit of
jealousy. “Sarah, you’re our star, you have enough solos, don’t you think? Also, I need you in that mob, grabbing a hold of Selene’s wrist, remember?”

“Right
.” She stepped back to Amy and the two of them whispered.

I raised a hand.
“Let’s try it once more from the top and see how it goes!”

I thought that this time would go better than the l
ast few times, and it seemed to, until all of a sudden, I heard Amy’s startled gasp from the crowd. Knowing her voice above all others, I rushed forward, pushing the others out of the way, my heart pounding. It wasn’t quite sunset, so her blood wasn’t appetizing at all, even when fully transformed, but she was in a group of vampires. What had I been thinking?

Getting to the middle of the crowd, I found it wasn’t Amy in dist
ress, but Nina. Her small, birdlike body was crumpled into Amy’s arms. My girlfriend had sunk to the floor, looking panicked and frightened. Amy had been taught that the show must go on, no matter what, but this was something that was hard to ignore.

“Nina!” I folded down to my knees as well, reaching out to take her into my arms.
It took me a moment to come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t dead, she was immortal. Still, pale and cold, she seemed as if the life had left her. “Nina!”