One Less Problem Without You by Beth Harbison Page A

titlessness could come in handy for something.
    â€œChelsea Cole?”
    Chelsea’s gaze shot up. She’d been staring at the girl across from her and thinking that there was about a hundred percent possibility that she spoke in baby talk most of the time.
    â€œYes, that’s me. Sorry.” She grabbed her clutch and the script, its pages curled backward from her countless rereadings.
    Feeling like she was being led into a doctor’s office, Chelsea followed the girl who’d called her down a hallway and into a big room with fluorescent lights. Unlike in a doctor’s office, however, there was a panel of people waiting to judge her, even on her most subtle inflections.
    A camera was set up, pointing at a spot in the middle of the room where she was presumably about to stand and then sink or swim.
    An audition begins the second you enter the room, Chelsea knew, and so she always became whoever she needed to be before crossing the threshold. This time, though, it wasn’t easy. Back in college, the most she’d have to fight through to give a good audition was a mild hangover that lasted till early afternoon. Sometimes, she had performed even better then. Something had been working, because she had gotten a lead in everything she auditioned for. She’d been Liza Doolittle in a dinner theater production of My Fair Lady; Anna in a production of The King and I; Lady Macbeth; Hedda Gabler; even Mary Shelley in an indie play called Chillon about the writing of Frankenstein . It was almost impossible for Chelsea Cole not to get a good role. She had been a shoe-in every time. Everyone had secretly hated her for it, and she didn’t mind that one bit—because back then, she knew she would be the one who really made it. She knew it the way everyone says you’ll know .
    You’ll know when you find the right college.
    You’ll know when you find the right guy.
    You’ll know … you’ll know.
    You’ll know.
    But she had been wrong. And now she never believed she knew anything.
    Today she was hangover-free, and yet her mind and body were in a complete state of unfocus. She was tired. So tired from being up half the night with Andrew.
    When she’d started studying for the initial audition, she’d done everything right. She’d watched the show so she knew exactly what the other characters were like. She had read and reread the character description in the audition blurb. She had decided that her version of Hadley Anderson would be a combination of coy Audrey Hepburn and the side-piece bimbo in Gone Girl, infused with a bit of the sly cleverness that lay deep in the eyes of every character ever played by Kate Hudson.
    She looked at her reflection in the mirror and practiced the dumb-girl pout, the clever narrowing of her doe eyes, and added the posture of someone trying to act tougher than she was. It was the perfectly mixed cocktail, and she hadn’t been surprised at all when she got a callback.
    But right now, her lips weren’t pouting, her posture was timid, and her eyes probably looked more Bambi-watching-the-gunman than anything else. To make things worse, by the last time she read through the lines out in the waiting room, she had started to feel like she didn’t even have half of them memorized.
    â€œI’m Chelsea Cole, and I’m here to audition for the role of Hadley Anderson.” She straightened her back and gave a small smile.
    She was nervous. Where had these nerves come from that suddenly plagued her before she ever put herself on display?
    â€œHello, Chelsea. If you want to place your things right over there on that chair and return to your mark, we can begin.”
    â€œPerfect,” she said quietly and then took the direction.
    When she returned to the spot, a woman with dark hair and glasses cleared her throat. “All right, now, there’s been a bit of a change in the script. And, well, really in the character.