The Extra by Kathryn Lasky

Author:Kathryn Lasky [Lasky, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6712-2
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2013-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

“Quiet on the set! Bring up the wind. Action!” Lilo dug her heels into the flanks of Chico, the horse she had ridden through the archway of the make-believe village of Roccabruna. Everything, though not everyone, had been transported to the Babelsberg studios — horses, the tavern, the scenery flats of the buildings of Roccabruna. If the village of Roccabruna was a fiction, Babelsberg Studios were a fiction upon a fiction. The studio buildings stretched over hundreds of acres. There was not just one counterfeit village but entire cities and mountain ranges that had been created, facades designed and built by the scenery department. Bring up the wind! Bring up the sun! Bring up New York! Paris! Bring up anything, Lilo thought, except the real world.

“Cut!” screamed Leni. Now those small eyes blazed as she walked toward Peter Jacob and Lilo on their horses.

God, Lilo prayed, what have I done wrong? The scene that Lilo had witnessed by the side of the road when Leni had screeched at the guard had convinced Lilo that this woman was completely crazed, perhaps not even human. Somehow the murder had paled next to Leni’s reaction to the guard who had apparently wanted at least the semblance of a decent burial for the woman. But reaction seemed like a slight word. It suggested some sort of human response when there was absolutely nothing human about her behavior. Lilo wondered what might have triggered it, for there seemed to be a continuing deterioration of her behavior with frequent outbursts on the set.

“Peter!” Leni hissed. “You can’t ride a horse when you’re hungover! And it’s not just liquor I smell on you”— her voice dropped —“but whores!” The color had drained from her face. The makeup lay eerily on her skin like fresh paint. “You keep to stage left so your shadow falls on the Gypsy girl, understand!”

“Yes, Leni!” She shot him a poisonous look. “I mean, yes, Fräulein Riefenstahl.”

“You don’t know what you mean!” she muttered, and stomped away.

On the fifth take, they got it right.

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