Free Action! by Carolyn Keene Page A

that one. It would have been much easier than trying to figure out why I was so nervous all the time on the set!
    I sighed and picked up the revised script pages I’d gotten last night. I only had one scene today, in the late afternoon. But the whole thing had changed a lot since the last time I saw it. Luther and Althea seemed to keep making my part bigger every time they did a rewrite. The original scene had contained only two lines of dialogue for Esther. The revised scene had two whole pages of new dialogue for me to memorize!
    There was a knock on my door, and Hannah stuck her head in.
    “Morning, Hannah,” I said.
    She stepped inside and frowned at me, her hands on her hips.
    “Uh-oh,” I said. “What did I do wrong?”
    “You ate the dinner I left you last night,” Hannah said.
    I nodded. She had left a whole plate of her meat-loaf and vegetables wrapped up in the fridge. I’d been so hungry by the time I got home that I stuck it in the microwave and gobbled the entire thing. “It was delicious,” I told her. “Thanks.”
    “You left your dirty plate sitting out on the table,”Hannah said. “With the dirty tin foil lying next to it, and the dirty utensils on the table too.”
    I grimaced. How could I have forgotten to clean up after myself? Hannah hates anything dirty on the clean table. “Yikes!” I cried. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I got home so late, and it was such a bad day …”
    Immediately Hannah’s frown disappeared. She studied my face for a moment, then took a seat on the foot of the bed.
    “Why was it a bad day?” she asked.
    “I kind of messed up a lot during filming,” I admitted.
    “Did you forget your lines?”
    “No.” I shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t even have any lines. I was just sitting there writing in a diary.”
    “So how did you mess up?” Hannah asked. “You never ‘mess up’ anything!”
    “Oh, come on, Hannah. I got nervous, so I didn’t look natural,” I told her. “The director helped me out a lot. In fact, if he hadn’t taught me a trick about how to do it, I wouldn’t have gotten through a single take.”
    “But you still think you did a bad job?” Hannah asked. “Even after he taught you his trick?”
    I nodded. “I could tell he was frustrated with me by the end of the day. They were just short scenes with no dialogue. It shouldn’t have taken so long toshoot them all. But I had to keep doing a lot of takes.”
    “Why?”
    “I got self-conscious in front of the camera,” I said quietly. “In fact, I
always
get self-conscious these days.”
    Hannah’s brow wrinkled in concern. “That doesn’t sound like you,” she said. “You’re the most confident girl I know.”
    “Not when it comes to acting,” I murmured.
    “What do your friends say?” Hannah asked.
    “Every time I try to tell anyone that I’m nervous, they say it’s normal,” I told her. “But I don’t think it
is
normal. This is more than just jitters. I’m really afraid I’m going to make a fool of myself.”
    “But Bess and George said that everyone on set considers you a natural,” Hannah protested.
    I shrugged. “I doubt Morris thinks I’m a natural after yesterday. Mostly I’ve just managed to muddle through.”
    Hannah looked skeptical. “I have a feeling that you’re doing a much better job than you think you are,” she said.
    “It’s just such a big responsibility,” I told her. “The film and the cameras are expensive, and the sets are expensive, and the salaries for all the crew members are expensive. Plus, after the rough beginning thismovie had, with Herman Houseman’s sabotage, everyone is working their hardest to make sure the final film is terrific.”
    “And you think that if you do a bad job, you’ll let them all down,” Hannah said. “Now I understand.”
    “Understand what?” I asked.
    “Why you’re so afraid.” Hannah reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze. “You’re not nervous about your acting talent. You’re afraid