“No,” she replied and, keeping her focus, said, “I want to dance with you, but I don’t want to lose this seat.”
“I’m not really a good dancer; definitely not to a song like this,” Faye said as Stella.
“It’s just holding on to the other person and moving to the music,” Dana said with a little confidence building now. “I’d lead.”
“Maybe another time. It’s a great seat, after all, so I don’t want to lose it, either. Besides, I’m worried that if you see me dance, you’d leave me on the dance floor for someone else.”
“I don’t think that would happen,” Dana said the next line as she focused intently on Samara’s bright blue eyes.
“You know what? I think we’re good for now,” Reed said out of nowhere.
“Sorry?” Dana asked, having to force her eyes off Samara and back to the rest of them. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, nothing wrong,” Faye replied. “I think we have enough for now. Will you be around the rest of the day if we need you?”
“I’ll be in catering, yeah,” she said.
“Okay. I’ll send a PA later, maybe. We have a few video auditions we asked for last night that are rolling in now, so I’m going to watch those, and then, we’ll let you know the next steps, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” she said.
Dana hadn’t known about the video auditions, but she should have expected that they weren’t just going to rely on her being good enough when she had no real experience.
“Hey, I’ll walk you out,” Bryce added.
“Cool,” Dana replied and walked anxiously out of the room, with Bryce following quickly behind.
Her adrenaline was through the roof, and she knew she needed to calm herself down because if they only needed her for six minutes, she wasn’t getting the part and shouldn’t be getting used to this high that she always felt when she got a chance to act.
“Hey, great job in there,” Bryce said.
“It lasted, like, six minutes,” Dana replied. “Shouldn’t I have read more? That’s just when they meet and really start getting into it.”
“Honestly, I don’t think you need to. At least, not now. You killed it, if you ask me. I’m not trying to tell you that I know you’ll get it, so don’t see this as a guarantee – we have at least ten videos that we need to watch – but you really did great. And I love how you stared at Samara like that. Badass. Even when they were doing chemistry readswithher, they had a hard time actually looking at her. Vanessa didn’t, but Grace and Cynthia both did. I think they’re intimidated by her. Anyway, that was great.”
“Why didn’t she just read Stella’s lines with me? Does she think I’m some rookie and not worth her time? And why would she be sitting there if that was the case?”
“What? No. She’s the one who gave us the idea to have you read,” Bryce said.
“Who?” Dana asked as she stopped walking.
“Samara,” Bryce replied with a laugh. “The woman we were just talking about.”
“Samara Barber?” She pointed back toward the building they’d just left. “ThatSamara Barber? She told you to let me read? Why?”
“Because she thought you might be good at it, I guess. She was right. After we watch these other auditions, we’ll see where we stand, okay? It’s likely we’ll want you to read with her, even if we still want to see a few more people. You’re here and ready to go, so it’s smart to move you forward.”
“That’s good to know, I guess. Now, I have to go back to my real life, where I’m on the catering staff and help get lunch ready for everyone.”
“If we don’t have our Bray pretty much decided on by tomorrow, we’ll be moving on with other scenes with just Stella and her friends until we can get her. Reed is reworking the schedule now with the crew, trying to make all the location changes work, so can you let Josh know that for me? We might need to make some changes to catering.”
“Oh, sure,” she said, feeling like the audition had been a fluke.
She was being asked to relay a message to her boss, which was what sheshouldbe doing, not auditioning for a role she had never had a chance of getting.
“Great. I’ll talk to you later. Really good stuff,” Bryce said and patted her on the shoulder before she turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 7
