Free Waiting for Callback by Perdita Cargill

roll away, but that’s just tactics. Mmm . . .’ Moss finally caught one. It was obviously the start of a beautiful
relationship.
    ‘Are you practising for this evening? The chase part, not the stingray part obviously.’
    ‘I live in hope. Also I’m a bit bored. I mean, I don’t have a Hollywood action film to keep me occupied.’
    ‘Yeah, right. I wish. I’m so not getting that
Straker
part. The clue is in the word “action” which isn’t exactly me.’ I was pretty sure that none of my
sports teachers would have endorsed me for a role requiring ‘tough inner and physical resilience’. ‘Anyway, Stella phoned to say the audition’s been postponed again so
it’ll probably never happen.’
    ‘It
has
to happen. It’s got everything: post-apocalyptic harrowing events, romance,
psychological damage
.’
    Of course I’d told Moss about my ‘confidential film project’. More than half our conversations were about ‘secret’ things (and about half of them actually were
secret). And, not only had I told her, I’d shown her the scenes and practised them with her too. I would not have been a true friend if I hadn’t given her the opportunity to try and say
the line ‘EAT the bugs, Straker. Just EAT the bugs!’, with a straight face (she failed).
    ‘Well, if it does happen, it won’t be with me. It’s a big part so it’ll go to someone who actually knows what they’re doing. And literally
nothing
else is
happening on the acting front.’
    ‘Does it get to you?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Waiting.’
    I shrugged. I knew it was part of the process, so I wanted to be all cool about it. But I was no good at being patient. At all. Ever.
    ‘If you want a lift, you need to come now,’ called my dad from the bottom of the stairs.
    We stampeded down and there was a bit of pause when Dad saw us. I like to think it was awe. Well, it was something anyway.
    Mum came out of the kitchen to check us over. ‘I think I may have had that very skirt,’ she said. As ‘that very skirt’ was a ball of lime-green taffeta that made me look
like I was half girl-half Granny Smith apple, I hoped she was joking.
    The hall was all decked out with random garlands. I think the ugliest ones had been put there to add to the eighties vibe, but the highest-up ones were just left over from
various sporting events. It was dark which was a sound design decision. Most of the girls had gone all out with so much neon netting and Lycra it was a full-on fire hazard, but the boys had ducked
the theme. (Except for one boy wearing tight orange leggings. Brave but misguided. He was like a walking biology diagram.)
    Moss and I made a beeline for the food, partly to give us time to acclimatize to the shock of being in the same room as the opposite sex, but mostly because, well, it was food.
    ‘Ohmigod, they have Party Rings.’ I hadn’t seen those things since Year Two birthday parties and it was irrationally exciting.
    ‘Shall we just take the bowl and go and eat them at home?’ asked Moss hopefully.
    Tempting but no. Socials were a rite of passage. We needed to experience at least one – if only so we could be as rude about them as all the girls in the upper years.
    ‘This is like some messed-up, twenty-first-century version of the Meryton Assembly in
Pride and Prejudice
,’ I said, surveying the room. (Surveying the room is very much what
people do in Jane Austen novels and
Pride and Prejudice
was our set text for English.)
    ‘That is a freakishly geekish thing to say,’ said Moss. ‘And
how
is it like that?’
    ‘
One
, all us girls have been looking forward to it for weeks because we never get to see boys.
Two
, more girls have turned up than guys and that fact is really annoying the
girls and they’re becoming competitive with one another to get the most attention.
Three
, there are lots of single-sex groups and occasionally two girls “take a turn about the
room” to increase their chances of getting pulled.
Four
, the