Read Online Claudia Silver to the Rescue (9780547985602) by Kathy Ebel - Free Book Online

unlikely melodrama shot on video, brought to you by Ex-Lax”
at the bottom of each script? She figured she would fake it, as women had been doing for years.
    â€œAnd you know the show, right?” Cheryl continued. Claudia, who still suffered from the mortifying sixth-grade memory of Edith discovering her horde of Harlequin Romances in a Buster Brown shoe box, did not. But she glanced over at Bronwyn’s television, pledging silently that the free time she currently had on her hands now served a purpose. She could become more than fluent in
Hope Valley
. She could become the freakin’
mayor.
“I think I spent my entire sophomore year in high school in a lather over the Denise/Diane evil-twin story line,” Cheryl was saying. “It was Anne Heche’s first TV role, you know.”
    â€œCool!” Claudia exclaimed, having never heard the name. She flipped through her wardrobe of thrift-store blouses, selecting a drapey, merlot-red polyester number with a long, pointed collar.
    â€œThis could be your big break,” Cheryl encouraged. “Who do you think hires writers on TV shows?
The executive producer.
Shelly Gerson hires you, you do a great job for her, and when it’s time for a promotion, she puts you on the writing staff. If you look at the credits, a lot of the writers, actors, and directors on the show do other things, too.”
    â€œLike sell Amway?” Claudia quipped. The job sounded almost too good, like a well-lit path straight out of Dodge, with groomed terrain designed for one foot in front of the other, and as such it threatened Claudia’s entrenched anxiety and despair, forcing her to retaliate.
    â€œLike get nominated for Tonys.”
    â€œReally?” Claudia breathed, impressed and humbled, instantly picturing herself in a well-cut Calvin Klein tuxedo over a push-up bra, thrusting a cast-bronze statuette aloft. She was glad she’d stolen a ream of resumé paper from Georgica Films as one of her last hurrahs. She sternly reminded herself that under the circumstances, Edith’s assured scorn was beside the point. She would update her resumé on Bronwyn’s word processor when Bronwyn was at her job at the morning show, and draft a Pulitzer-worthy cover letter. She would fax it from the corner store instead of asking Bronwyn to fax it from work, which would require telling Bronwyn she was unemployed. Then: “I’m on it, Cheryl.”
    â€œGood girl,” Cheryl praised.
    Â 
    Claudia and Phoebe hurried to the subway arm in arm. The possibility of
Hope Valley
felt good to Claudia as it began to sink in. She liked the idea that cool people worked on soap operas, and that they started there and went places. Going places, in fact, being more real to Claudia than starting. But the illuminated Citibank lobby on the corner of President Street, as it now appeared, threw a bright, threatening light across her path.
    â€œI need cash,” Claudia admitted to Phoebe, pulling her sister from the sidewalk’s steady bustle. She’d earned one hundred dollars a day at Georgica Films, but had never had an idea what this sum added up to over the course of a month, or how to make her earnings last for that long, let alone how to engineer things so that there’d be leftovers when the new month began.
    â€œI’ve got some,” Phoebe offered, digging her rainbow Velcro wallet from her barrel-shaped knapsack fashioned from Tibetan saddle fabric.
    Claudia was startled by the notion of Phoebe’s solvency.
    â€œAnd how’s that exactly?”
    â€œBabysitting.” Phoebe shrugged. Claudia could see that Phoebe’s wallet was neatly organized, the bills smooth and facing the same direction.
    â€œWhose babies?”
    â€œThey’re
kids,
” Phoebe explained, reading Claudia’s suspicion. “Friends of Edith’s from temple. You don’t know them. I can pay for stuff, you know. You’ve been paying