I’m normal now. Ruby Parker, girl – that’s me. Not an audition in sight, not a line to learn or an interview to do, not a single mention in Hiya! Bye-a! for weeks. I haven’t even had any fan mail for over a month. I used to be Ruby Parker, soap star and then for a while I was Ruby Parker, film star. For the briefest moment I was Ruby Parker, Hollywood star – but now I’m none of those things. ’m just Ruby Parker, who goes to an ordinary school and hangs out with ordinary kids.
It did take a bit of getting used to.
When I got back from Hollywood I think I was in shock. I don’t really know what being in shock is, but if it means feeling numb from the inside out, exhausted and frightened all at once, then I was in it. My life had changed completely in the few weeks I was in America and I wasn’t really prepared for how it was going to make me feel. But I decided to leave Sylvia Lighthouse’s Academy for the Performing Arts and give up acting for good, and I meant it. It took a while to persuade mum and dad to support me, and Nydia and Anne-Marie still can’t believe that I decided to come to a new school and leave them behind, but I did it. I gave up my dream because being in Hollywood taught me two things.
First of all it taught me that having a dream isn’t enough to make it come true. Wanting fame and fortune so badly that you feel twisted up inside doesn’t mean you deserve to get it, because you only deserve your dream if you’ve got the talent to make it happen. And secondly it told me about as clearly as possible that I do not have any talent. At least, not nearly enough to deserve my dream.
And that’s why I started at Highgate Comprehensive School three weeks ago, a school that doesn’t even have a drama society, let alone drama lessons. The nearest thing they have to anything theatrical is a choir and I hear even that is terrible. It’s a school where I can feel safe, which is funny really because on my very first day I discovered that someone here is really quite keen to beat me up.
It happened in the first minute of the first hour of my first day. I made mum drop me off round the corner, took a breath and marched the last few metres through the school gate on my own. I thought I was prepared.
I was prepared for the other kids to be a bit curious, to ask me questions about being on the telly and in a movie with famous actors like Imogene Grant or Sean Rivers. I was prepared for the fact that some kids would think I was posh and stuck up because I used to go to Sylvia Lighthouse’s Academy. But I wasn’t prepared for the threats of violence. Yes, that did throw me a bit.