Duke was at the studio, in a waiting room with a number of other actors. The last couple of days had been so exciting.
It started on Thursday, when he came home from school. Rowena had giving him the thrilling news: she had been speaking to Royal Pictures as his parent regarding a contract:
"You mean I got the part?"
"Yes."
Her positive response had sent Duke bounding around the house in so much excitement, Rowena was loathe to scold him for waking Billy from his nap.
Duke would soon be spending his time learning scripts, being fitted for costumes, filming, doing photo shoots, press releases and other interviews with the media, and generally participating in all the hype leading up to the pilot episode, which would air in September. Like the other school-aged actors, he only had to finish this last term of school, and after that he would have a tutor.
A tutor. Whoohoo!
He spend all of Friday at school in thrall. Not even the bullies could get to him today. His answer to the question of "what's with you today?" being that he had gotten a role in a new TV show, was met with a mixture of skeptisim and congratulations. His drama teacher, when he heard the rumour, was one of the former, and even accused him of lying in front of his class. Duke just smiled:
"You'll see me in September," was his response, "but I won't have to see your ugly mug ever again after this term."
That comment got him on detention, but he just didn't care.
And now he was at the studio. The paperwork was signed - most of the terms and conditions Duke didn't understand, but he got the important things, and Rowena promised to explain what he didn't understand when they had some time. Duke figured everything was in order as Rowena was particular about reading things before signing them, and there's no way she would have signed, nor let Duke sign anything if it wasn't proper.
So far they had been introduced to a number of the crew, although certainly not all of them. Then the assistant director opened the door.
"Follow me, please," he said.
The group stood and followed him through the door, and onto the stage. Duke looked around in awe - some of the sets had already been made, by the looks of things. And there were lots of other people as well. Some were obviously mutants. Some were plainly crew. The assistant director picked up a megaphone.
"May I introduce the other half of our cast," he said.
There was a mild applause. The assistant director moved his mouth away from the megaphone for a moment.
"When I call your name and role, please move to that group over there," he pointed, and then put his mouth back to the megaphone to start calling out names and roles.
"Duke Braddock, playing Martin 'Marty' Jameson."
Duke smiled. They must be calling them out in alphabetical order for him to be first. Duke made his way over to the group as directed. A woman there handed him a budle of scripts. His eyebrows raised. She just smiled and gestured for him to move along, and he did so.
Eleven more names later, and the twenty-four person cast was assembled.
"Okay, in your hands you have a weeks worth of scripts. Don't worry, we won't make you memorise them all at once," smiled the assistant director. "Once we get settled into a routine, we'll be filming episodes two weeks in advance. And for all of you who are new at this, it's unlikely that any of the scenes will be done in order. But that's the advantage of television. Now, our mutant cast have had a head start - we've already shot most of the mutant only scenes. However, now that we have our full cast, I don't want to hear anyone saying 'mutant cast' or 'human cast' unless the context warrents it. This project is supposed to be supporting integration, after all."
A few more instructions and introductions were given, and then everyone was left to mix with the new cast members and get to know each other.
This was the best day of Duke's life.