Emma hearts LA by Keris Stainton Page A

horrified them.’
    ‘They should’ve stayed a bit longer,’ I say, ‘and breathed a bit deeper.’
    We drive along the Pacific Coast Highway back to Santa Monica and then up towards the Hollywood Hills to see some celebrity homes. The guide talks all the time and slows down outside huge, impressive houses, but most of the time all we can see is the gate and a bit of the roof. It’s interesting, though, just seeing how the other half lives. The houses are much closer together than I would have expected. I don’t suppose Leonardo DiCaprio waves to JLo as he picks up his paper at the gate, but he probably could if he wanted to.
    Opposite one house there’s a crowd of paparazzi, some of them leaning against a wall and some sitting on the ground, looking bored.
    ‘Whose house is that?’ the Australian woman asks the driver.
    ‘Oh, that’s a new star,’ he says. ‘Young and very famous.’
    We all wait for him to tell us the star’s name, but I’m not sure he really knows. ‘Like Robert Pattinson from the Twilight films?’ he says.
    ‘Robert Pattinson?!’ Bex shrieks. She had a poster of him on her wall in the old house.
    ‘No,’ the driver says. ‘Like him, but not him. He’s in a TV show and he rides a motorbike in space—’
    ‘ Alex Hall? ’ the Australian girl yells, almost leaping out of her seat. ‘I love him!’
    ‘Yes! That’s him!’ the driver says, looking back over his shoulder and grinning.
    I swivel round in my seat to try to get a good look at Alex Hall’s house, but I can only see the roof and a bit of an arched window. Not bad, though, considering he’s not that much older than me. I wonder what he’s really like. He seemed nice enough in Emily’s office, but we should get a better idea when we go to the studio. I just hope he’s nice to Bex.
    A couple of minutes later, the driver announces that we’re passing UCLA.
    ‘Is that where Mum is?’ Bex asks us.
    Oscar nods.
    Bex and I both crane our heads to look out over the campus. All I can see is trees and some terracotta-coloured buildings. The driver is talking about how many students attend and the size of the campus. It’s big, basically.
    ‘Have you been there?’ Bex asks Oscar.
    He nods. ‘It’s pretty cool. We should definitely get them to take us up there one day, have a look around. They have some events on sometimes too. You know, presentations and stuff.’
    Bex is still looking over at the university when the driver starts yelling that there’s a celebrity in the car next to us. We try to peer through the darkened windows, but can’t tell who it is.
    ‘Is it Taylor Lautner?’ Bex says.
    ‘Yes!’ the driver yells. ‘From Twilight !’
    ‘I don’t think it is,’ Oscar says, and I’m not sure it is either, but the driver and Bex seem pretty convinced so we don’t argue.
    The next stop is Grauman’s Theatre and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Bex is beside herself, getting us to take photos of her posing with her hands in the imprints of various stars. She gets a bit tearful at the Marilyn Monroe plaque and then just stares in awe at the Meryl Streep one. Bex adores Meryl Streep, mainly since Mamma Mia , but she’s watched a lot of her older movies on DVD and once said she’d love a career like hers. She’s ambitious, my sister, I’ll say that for her.
    Oscar makes us laugh by putting his hand inside Arnold Schwarzenegger’s gigantic prints – Oscar’s hands are about half the size, as are his feet. My hands are the same size as Emma Watson’s. Oscar takes a photo of me posing next to Cary Grant’s plaque and I text it to Jessie. She and her mum love an old film of his called An Affair to Remember , which is about Cary Grant’s character arranging to meet a woman at the top of the Empire State Building, but she doesn’t turn up because she gets hit by a taxi. It’s supposed to be romantic, apparently.
    Bex tells me she’s sending her Meryl Streep photo to Dad and I scroll through my phone and