Super Lilly

The alarm clock on my phone blared its annoying ring. I groaned and halfheartedly rolled on my side, my hand grasping around for the phone. I finally grabbed hold of it and turned it off. My eyes slowly opened, and I could vaguely make out the blurry numbers and letters on the screen that stated what day it was. When I made the connection that this was the day I'd been waiting for and worrying myself sick over, I swear I felt my heart stop for a split second. This was the day of my audition.

I didn't know much about the movie. It was a pretty secretive process. All I had been told was that the rest of the cast had been found already, and they just needed to fill one more role. They didn't tell me what the role was, what kind of person they were looking for, or even the plot of the movie, for that matter. I had no idea what I was walking into, but something inside me was telling me to do it.

I pulled myself over to my mirror and stared at my reflection as a slowly brushed through my hair. I examined my straight strawberry blonde hair, and for the first time ever, I doubted it. I had always loved my hair. It was my favorite thing about myself. But what if it was going to turn around and bite me now? What if it wasn't what the casting directors were looking for? I mean, they had seen my headshots. They knew I had red hair. Certainly they wouldn't have called me in if they cared about hair color? Or maybe they wanted someone with red hair. I suddenly shook my head and told myself to stop. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen, and I couldn't make myself crazy over it.

Laughing at my silliness, I picked up my favorite mascara and slowly applied some. This was really the only makeup I wore. Anything else just felt kind of weird and overdone.

I glanced at the headshot that rested on my mirror. "Lilly Harmony Bye", it declared. I compared how I looked in the mirror to how I looked in the headshot, and decided that it was a good match with just a few more strokes of mascara.

Lastly, I picked up my locket that sat on my desk. I never, ever left the house without it. It held a little picture of my best friend and I. I still teared up looking at it. Everyone told me that it had been too long for me to be getting so emotional all the time, but I couldn't help it. She had meant everything to me, and one day, she was just gone.

I never really met Emma. That was what we had always liked to say, anyway. Our mothers knew each other before we were even born, so we really had been raised together. My parents passed in a car crash when I was two. I don't remember my parents at all, except what I know from pictures and from what I've been told by Emma's parents, who adopted me after the crash. After I was adopted, we were a family. Emma became my sister, and her parents became my parents. It was that simple. But then, one day, our perfect family came crashing down.

Three years ago, when we were both eleven, Emma was killed in a car crash, just like my parents had been. It was horrible, and it was the darkest time of my life. But things turned around, as they often do, and I was able to find happiness pursuing a career in acting. It still haunted my family every day, and nobody ever wanted to talk about it. Plenty of time had gone by, but I wasn't ready to let go of that locket. And I was absolutely convinced that I never would be.