The Road to Her Read Online Free PDF Page A

said.
    The cheek of it! So she thought I was stilted, did she? Didn’t she realise if I was— which I wasn’t —then it had to be because of her. I’d never been stilted with Bella or anyone else I’d ever acted with, so then it had to be Elise’s fault, didn’t it? I clenched and unclenched my jaw, replaying our conversation, saying her words over and over. Yes, that was it. It was Elise. Her superior attitude, unfriendliness, and detachment from me, right from day one, were making any opportunity I had to connect with her virtually impossible.
    I turned to return to her room to tell her just that, but something held me back.
    And hesitant ? How could she call me hesitant? What did that mean, anyway? Was she suggesting I was unsure of how to deliver my lines or that I didn’t know how to act? Of course I knew how to act!
    I stared at her closed door a while longer, imagining her sitting so smugly behind it and, still bristling, quickly walked away from her dressing room and back down the corridor before I changed my mind and barged back in there to give her a piece of my mind. While I walked away from the studios, away from Elise, I vowed to myself that I would have tomorrow’s scenes so damn perfected she wouldn’t have another chance to tell me she thought I was stilted. Or hesitant. Or a bad actor.
    Just who the hell did Elise bloody Manford think she was, anyway?

Chapter Four
     
    I went straight to my dressing room when I arrived back at the studios the next day, pleased that Bella hadn’t arrived yet, and sat down at my table, looking in the mirror. I stared hard at myself—at Jasmine—suddenly dreading having to see Elise again and getting angry all over again, despite calming down overnight after giving myself another talking-to. How dare she suggest I wasn’t a good actress? She’d only been working with me for a day, and she thought she knew me well enough to be so disparaging? How fucking dare she.
    I glared at my reflection, detesting Elise and everything about her. So she’d been in America for fifteen months? Big deal. So she was confident and beautiful? Big deal. I was the established one here, not her. I was the one who lived and breathed PR , not her.
    How was it that someone I didn’t even know two weeks ago could have the ability to make me feel so insecure about everything, all of a sudden? Would she analyse every little detail of my acting now, trying to find fault with the way I said certain lines or the way I stood when I delivered those lines? If that wouldn’t make me hesitant, then what would?
    I breathed in slowly, staring at my face looking back at me in the mirror.
    Just listen to me!
    What was it about her that wound me up so much?
    Okay, so she was not terribly communicative, and had—I thought—so far been damned rude to me, but there was something else niggling away at me that suggested there was more to it than just that. I wished I could put my finger on it, but I couldn’t. Was I jealous of her? Did I secretly want to be just like her? Perhaps it was because she was everything I thought I wasn’t—oozing with confidence and sassiness—and didn’t appear to give a damn about anything or anyone as long as she was okay.
    But, I figured, as long as Kevin and Susie and anyone else who had a say in my acting was happy, then Elise and her stupid comments could just go and bugger off. I also figured her attitude and rudeness were her lookout, not mine. We’d both had our new scripts for the coming weeks delivered to our rooms that morning, and now I was more determined than ever not to let her get to me anymore. Jasmine and Casey had to work, and so Holly and Elise had to work, too, despite all the negative feelings I had towards her.
    If only it was that easy…
     
    *
     
    “Okay, scene four, take one.” Our director Stuart Grant pulled his pen out from behind his ear and pointed it at Elise. “And action.”
    “So, Jasmine.” Elise picked up her empty prop cup