There were very few times when the Hollywood Arts crowd appreciated the presence of Trina Vega. She was known for being vain, irritating, utterly oblivious, and entirely insufferable. With even her own sister sharing these views, it was fair to say that Trina wasn't exactly popular.
However, Trina was, somehow, fairly well-connected. She always seemed to know of the ongoing drama and important issues occurring at Hollywood Arts, which made her useful to Tori and the gang, in some ways.
These characteristics combined, it was therefore not until she started speaking that the gang treated her arrival at their lunch table with anything other than disgust.
"Big news you guys, you wanna hear it?"
Tori raised an eyebrow. With Trina, this could mean anything from the school was closing down, to she'd bought a new pair of Fazzini Boots and wanted to show them off.
"No? No one wants to know this huge news that could change the trajectory of your career?"
Beck smirked. His developing career meant he could only laugh at comments like this. He knew where the real opportunities were.
"I wanna know." Cat said, eagerly, almost buzzing out of her seat.
Next to her, Jade rolled her eyes. The news could be that Martin Scorsese had decided to cast every single Hollywood Arts student in main roles for his next blockbuster and she still wouldn't give a damn. She would just be grateful if Vega Senior and her annoying whining voice would fuck off far away from their table.
"Well, there's a film crew coming to the school because they want to film a documentary about the school. About us!" Trina beamed.
There was collective chatter around the table, with the various members of the group having to admit that that was some pretty cool news.
"How does it work then, this show? They film everyone?" Andre asked.
Trina shook her head. "Mandy told me that they do a kind of overview of the school but mainly pick just a few stars to follow. Her uncle is the driver for one of the producers so she knows everything. She said that there's no way we wouldn't get picked."
Again, Tori raised an eyebrow. This was typical Trina, although she had to admit that it wouldn't be out-of-character for the American public to enjoy watching a clueless teenage girl make a fool out of herself on national TV.
"Auditions are on Friday. Get going, people!" Trina buzzed, suddenly standing up with a twirl and almost skipping away. It seemed that nothing had quite yet dimmed her sparkle. Tori wasn't sure she'd leave the auditions with such a smile in her step.
"Pretty cool, right?" Cat smiled, looking round at the rest of the table.
"Yeah. Real life TV! That would be awesome!" Robbie beamed.
"Yeah, even I have to admit that Trina's got a point - it sounds pretty exciting." Tori added. "Is everyone gonna audition?"
There was a resounding chorus of yeses around the table, although if anyone had been paying attention to Jade, they would've seen that she didn't even look up, let alone answer.
Beck's uncertainty, however, was noticed.
"Beck?" Tori asked.
"Not sure." Beck shrugged. "I don't know if I'll have time because of the show. Or if there's any point, really."
Jade rolled her eyes. She wasn't sure when her ex-boyfriend had decided that appearing in a teen show made him the next DiCaprio, but she really wasn't a fan of his new attitude.
"Really? I'd have thought that this was a great way to get yourself in the public eye before the show comes out?" Tori said, in that insufferable helpful tone.
Jade almost groaned as Beck's eyes lit up.
"You think?"
Tori nodded.
"Yeah. Yeah." He said, running a hand through his hair. "That could be a good idea. Thanks Tori."
Tori blushed, and Jade thought if perhaps she had eaten anything that day, she would've puked there and then.
"What kind of things do you think they'd ask us at the audition?" Cat asked.
"I assume they'd be trying to figure out what we're into, to see whether we'd appeal to viewers. Ask us about our hobbies and ambitions and stuff." Andre replied.
"Yeah, plus a couple of questions to work out if we're not too crazy to be on TV." Tori laughed.
Cat furrowed her eyebrows. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, just they won't want people with a load of baggage that could look bad for the show." Tori explained, matter-of-factly. "The last thing these type of shows need is the fan favourite being revealed to be some kind of nutcase."
Cat shrank into herself, perceptible only to those who kept an incredibly close eye on her. Unfortunately for Cat, the one person that had earned that label had also chosen to tune out the droning voice of Vega Junior and instead focus on her itinerary for that evening.
"You really think that's a big deal for them?"
"Absolutely. You see these scandals in the news all the time. It's not a good look for the shows." Tori shrugged, absent-mindedly taking a bite of her burrito.
"Oh, yeah, of course." Cat replied. She didn't read the news - it was full of stories she didn't quite understand which made her head hurt.
"So, we'd better get rehearsing for these auditions." Andre laughed. "Nothing harder to perfect than your true, authentic self."
By the following morning, official posters had been placed around the school, advertising that Friday's auditions process. In addition, Wednesday saw a film crew traipse around the school grounds, deep in conversation with Principal Eikner.
Come Friday, so many students had expressed their intention to audition that they were split into small groups, who would be taken to audition throughout the day. Through what she could only believe must have been divine intervention, Tori was placed in the same group as Beck.
She'd known that he was a smooth talker, and wise beyond his years, that's why she had fallen for him after all. However, she hadn't quite realised the depths of his emotional intelligence, and the ability of his soulful words to conjure such profound imagery. That was, until he spoke in the audition.
Tori was placed at the back of her auditioning group, meaning, to the relief of her bubbling nerves, that she could observe the audition process before attempting it herself. Beck, second in line, positioned himself on the stool before the producers and flashed them the same million-dollar smile that made Tori weak at the knees.
Whilst Tori was sure that this would have had the same effect on the producers, particularly the woman, whose long brown hair she could see from her position at the back of the room. Nevertheless, she was prevented from finding out by their immediate launch into interrogation.
The question was simple: 'where do you see yourself in ten years time?'
Beck tilted his head to the side, his jaw flexing as he appeared to ponder a question that the whole gang had practiced throughout the week. Despite knowing that he almost certainly had an entire monologue prepared in response, Tori half-believed from his reaction that he had never even considered being asked such a question. God, he was a good actor.
"I think…" Beck began, with a wistful smile. "…I think that when we're presented with this question, the idea of 'where' feels so prominent. Where will I be at that time? Whereabouts in my career, my relationship, even whereabouts in the world will I have laid my roots? But once I've thrown off the distractions of my goals in life, which are so often beyond our control, I like to think about 'who'. Who will I have retained in my life, who will I admire and see as inspiration, but most importantly who will I be as a person. And I find this, specifically the notion of who can I be, so important. Ultimately, I want to be a good person in ten years, who has used his life experiences to become a better man, someone who can make their little corner of the world a little brighter. In ten years time, I would like to be successful in every area of my life, but that's not a given. What is a given, however, is that I'll have an additional ten years of life education, of awareness, of conscious adult thought and judgement, and of time to dedicate myself to good things. I like to think that I can arrive at my 27-year-old person as someone who has used the past ten years to plant more goodness in the world. And if I succeed at that, I can be wherever in the world, in my career, in my relationships, because I will be at the right place in my soul."
There was a long drag of pause, so long that the unshakeable Beck began to look almost nervous. Then, as if waiting for his heartbeat to return to normal speed, the head producer stood up.
"Wow." Was all he said, smacking his hands together in a slow, admiring clap.
Behind him, the production team also rose from their seats, awestruck. They joined the clap in a robotic, jutting manner, that eventually morphed into a uniform round of applause. Before long, even Beck's classmates were clapping, and not simply because they felt they must; on their faces, Tori only observed authentic admiration. She herself only weakly patted her hands together, transfixed on Beck's wide smile.
Tori was in trouble. She was unfathomably, irrevocably, in love with Beck Oliver. And she was due to audition in the next ten minutes. Oh no.
Unofficially known (primarily by Sinjin) as 'the main people', it was of little surprise to the Hollywood Arts student body, that despite the few kids they took on board, the documentary production team had decided that Beck, Tori, Andre and even Robbie were worth focusing on. Most assumed that Jade had been blacklisted from the show as it was not in the prestigious Hollywood Arts' interest to advertise their school as an institution which reared sixteen-year-old mothers. If anyone had actually bothered to ask her, she would've explained than she hadn't even auditioned, because, really, when would she have the time? Furthermore, the last thing she wanted or needed was the annoying American public and a slimy production team poking into her business. She kept her cards close to her chest for a reason.
Cat, on the other hand, was a surprising omission. She was a phenomenal singer, that was for sure, but she was also a triple-threat with a quirky personality and a potential for entertaining an audience. It made no sense for the production team to have overlooked her, until one realised that she had never actually auditioned. Instead, she had spent the entirety of Friday in a state of anxious nauseousness, hoping that the production team would do their job and got out before they discovered her circus freak-esque life and chose to display it to the masses.
Jade was quite glad for that fact. Of course, she wasn't overjoyed that Cat was anxiously dissecting her own life, but she didn't hate that the innocent girl was avoiding getting caught up in the plague of fame-hunting that had seemingly infected the rest of the group.
Already, she'd seen Beck and Andreas stage a fake fight, Tori enact some kind of weird, overly dramatic monologue in the hallways, and Robbie take a presumably phoney but outwardly impactful phone call and fall to his knees in despair.
Currently, she was trying her hardest to ignore the lengthy conversation occurring between Beck and Tori at her locker. It was surely staged - typical of the producers, really, to throw together such an obvious pairing - and besides, Beck was her ex, and for a reason. She didn't care what he did, even when his hands were getting ever so close to Tori's skin…
Beck had meant to ask Tori whether she'd been instructed by the producers to hang around him. It seemed as though, in the past few days, she had jumped at every opportunity to catch him in the hallways or sit beside him at lunch.
He didn't mind, really. He found Tori's company pretty amiable - she was easy-going and their conversations were low-energy and not particularly intellectually stimulating. She was almost like a pet, not that he'd ever admit that to her, of course.
"Trina was watching Keeping Up With The Kardashians yesterday and it gave me the best idea. I spent all evening watching reality TV to find the best storylines that we could recreate. Clever, eh?"
Beck grinned. It seemed as though innocent little Tori had also been corrupted by the fame bug.
"What ideas did you come up with?"
"Well…" Tori began, her face plastered with a million dollar smile. "A better question is what didn't I come up with. Fights, business deals, arrests, fake relationships - there's so much we could do!"
Beck laughed. "I'm down. You got the rest of the gang in on your little plan?"
"Not yet." Tori shook her head. "But the more people, the more drama, right?"
"Of course." Beck laughed.
"We could think of something really dramatic and tip the producers off that something good is gonna happen." Tori suggested, getting lost in her own ideas.
"Look at you, so creative!" Beck grinned, playfully punching her on the arm. Tori beamed.
"We could do something at mine tonight?" Beck suggested. "My parents' house, I mean."
Tori's heart leapt - was Beck asking her over?
"Get everyone over and get some drama going." Beck shrugged and Tori's mood dipped slightly. With the others, of course - no problem.
"Sounds great."
"Hey, you've never been to my parent's house." Beck said and Tori shook her head. "It's cool. You'll like it. And it won't be the last time you'll be there."
Tori's breath caught in her throat and she could barely reply to Beck's time suggestions. He couldn't be, could he? But the glint in Beck's eye was almost unmistakably a sign of flirtation. Maybe, just maybe, things were falling into place.