Carmen nodded.
“There’s lots of hard work involved.”
She nodded again.
“Right. Okay. Cool. One of the guests this week is 101. Heard of them?”
Another nod. Zac shook his head in disgust with himself.
“What am I asking? Of course you’ve heard of them. You’ve heard of everyone.”
Carmen cracked a small smile.
“Okay, so then this should be easy for you. For the most part I like to do this myself, as opposed to have researchers do it for me, but anyway, I need you to write up some questions for them, okay? Now umm,” Zac fished around in a pile of papers. “Ah ha! See, okay, I usually use researchers to find background info and stuff, but I write the questions. Now this is a list of questions that I like to use as a guideline for when I make up questions, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good. And now, having said all that, when it comes to the actual night, we’ll probably ask questions that aren’t on the sheet just because that’s where conversation has headed, okay? We don’t know what they’re gonna say until they say it, you see.”
Carmen went back to nodding.
“And this is their new single. They’ll be playing it on the night, but you might want to hear it now,” he said, handing her a CD and gesturing to the CD player. “Okay. Well. I think that covers it for now. Let me know when you’re finished. I’ll be downstairs trying to con people into thinking that my ideas for this weeks major prank is not a doozy.”
Carmen giggled as her uncle left the room. Her school was doing a work experience program, where all the eleventh graders had to pick a business of some sort and do volunteer work there for a week. She and Esme had been talking to their parents about it, and Carmen had made a comment about wishing she could actually interview musicians. She had been thinking of asking Sandy, but when Babsie joked about sending her to LA and interviewing people with Zac, Carmen suddenly found that much more appealing, although she wasn’t sure about how well she’d do on live national television.
And so now she was in LA for a week. It was the second day on the job and Carmen was learning, very quickly, that there was much more to Zac’s job than just acting really silly on Saturday nights. He spent a lot of time on the phone too, although sometimes Carmen wasn’t certain if what he was doing had more bearing on IMHBITD or Morgan’s movie.
Carmen picked a pen and started writing. She had written two questions and as she contemplated the next she thought of Esme. In all her life the two had never been apart for more than a few hours at a time, a day at most. It was strange being on practically the other side of the country, and she found that she missed her twin a lot. Carmen hoped that she could last the week without Esme.
**********
Carmen was a nervous wreck shortly before the show. She really wished Esme could be here now – she could sure do with the support.
“Don’t worry,” Zac assured her. “I’m sure we’ll be able to handle anything that comes up.”
“What if I throw up onstage? Oh man, what if I throw up on one of the guests?”
“Look, we don’t have any guests on straight away, and if it makes you feel any better, we’ll hide a bucket behind the bench.”
Carmen chewed her lip and nodded. Zac shook his head with a smile. He was convinced there wouldn’t be a problem. Not in this family!
Zac was right – there were no problems with Carmen getting stage fright. In fact, she was a lot louder and considerably less nervous in front of the camera than she was backstage. It was as if she became a different person all together.
“It’s an amazing song,” Carmen said to 101 after they finished playing their new single.
“Thank you,” said the lead, Tristan.
“What was the inspiration for that?”
“I woke up one morning with this tune in my head,” said Hank with a smile. “Told the guys about it, we start playing it and whatever, then it completely changes and somehow turned into this.”
“Is ‘Maggie’ someone you know? Or did you just pick a random girls’ name?”
Zac found himself smiling, remembering a comment he had told someone one: you get Carmen talking about music and she can go on for hours. He decided he would have to break in soon and go on with a different line of questions. But he never did. Carmen somehow managed to cover every single topic her proposed questions covered without making one noticeable change of topic. Zac joined into the conversation every now and then, but it was like Carmen took the whole thing over. If he didn’t know better he would say that Carmen and 101 had been friends with each other for years, even though they had only met that day.
Isaac rang Zac after the show.
“What did you do to her?” he asked.
Zac laughed.
“I don’t know! Beforehand, after hand and during the ad breaks she was shy and quiet, heck nervous, fidgeting… and the second the camera’s on her, she like… alive! I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“That’s awesome. But still… wow… is she there? I’d like to talk to her.”
“Sure,” then Zac turned his head. “Carmen! Your dad’s on the phone.”