Starbird

Chapter 2

The plane was dim and it seemed like the entire world evaporated into the clouds we were now sailing through. First stop was London. Well. They were filming outside of London, but for the next few weeks, London was where we were going to call home. True, I was excited for London. What girl wouldn’t be excited to live in London with a celebrity brother who could introduce her to other celebrities? But the fact that I was missing out on seeing all my friends back home home, made this trip slightly unbearable. I can only be surrounded by celebrities for so long before I realize I will never be one of them.

“Hey Cam.” James poked my shoulder.

“Yo.”

“I really am sorry about this. I know you were looking forward to Grandma and Grandpa’s house.” I sighed and shrugged my shoulders.

“It’s a great opportunity for you. I can’t help having the new heartthrob as a brother.”

“I’m not getting hired because I’m a heartthrob.” James said, defiantly.

“I believe the appropriate answer for that is, ‘I’m not a heartthrob.’”

“No, that’s the humble answer. But you’re my sister, I don’t have to be humble.” I slapped James’ arm and scowled.

“One day you’re going to get in trouble for that comment.” James merely shrugged.

“Everybody loves a bad boy.”

“You’re an idiot.” I said, shaking my head.

“But you love me.” He wagged his finger at me.

I laughed and replied, “Yeah, sure I do.”

“Anyway, I’m going to go read over my script a couple more times. You should get some sleep. I have a feeling, when we land, it’s going to be a little cray-cray.” I wrinkled my face in disgust.

“Never say ‘cray-cray’ again.”

“Deal. Good night!” He plugged in his iPod and flipped open a giant script to somewhere in the middle. All I saw were swirling lines and notes and high-lighter markings.

“Dude. How do you manage to read the actual script?” I remarked on the messiness of the papers.

“It’s not that difficult. Green high-lighter means where I’m supposed to be, blue are my lines, pencil markings are what I think would be good ideas to try, and the post-it notes are questions.”

“This looks worse than when I studied for AP Exams last year.”

“Trust me, it is.”

“Really?” Raising an eyebrow, I snatched his script. “Ok then, so if I read any of your cue lines, you’ll know exactly what happens next?” I rehearsed so many times with James to know that, typically, he didn’t know exactly what happens next. He would slack so badly sometimes, that I was always surprised when he could pull off scenes so effortlessly.

“Like you could do that with any of your AP exams.”

“Uh, yeah, I could. But can you?” I shot him a sly look, daring him to let me test him.

“Of course I can. Fire away, Cammie baby.” Skimming through the script, I found a page that didn’t have many notes or colors and thought this would be the best place to start.

“Alright, so this is,” I squinted at the name of the character, “Mr. Z.” I raised an eyebrow at James. “Sounds so mysterious.”

“Mr. Z. scares me to death, ok? That character is legit so creepy.”

“Alright, so it’s Mr. Z and he says, ‘You believe you tricked me Xavier,’ Ooh! Is that your name?”