Last winter, a rumor spread around Don R. Roberts Elementary that Kennedy Jordan had been kicked out of school. No one had seen the 9-year-old since she vanished from Little Rock one week into the academic year.
Her friends heard stories that Kennedy was in Los Angeles, living on the beach and auditioning nearly every day.
Calling from the West Coast, she delivered news of Hollywood's unfilmed secrets: the plots to TV episodes no one had seen and movies so big even she, the girl auditioning for the role, could not read the real scripts.
People had seen Kennedy in short feature films and community plays -- Cinderella in Cabot, Beauty and the Beast in Little Rock -- but this was different. Now that Kennedy had gone to California, her classmates wondered if she would show up one day as a character on TV.
When she reappeared in January, standing at the classroom door, everyone got out of their chairs. They screamed and asked questions:
Had she become a star?
When would she be on TV?
Was it all true, or had she only been pretending?
Kennedy, now 10, would be on no screen, but for seven months, she lived with her parents in an apartment on a beach in California. There, she saw palm trees and talked to people who knew people.
Some days, she got a call at 11 a.m. for an audition at 2 p.m., and her mother would spray her hair while her father drove into Hollywood.
The role might be big or small -- they never could tell from the casting calls -- but each had the possibility to change things, perhaps everything.
A part as a child in the back chair of a classroom on a Disney Channel show could turn into a speaking role if played right. And from there, a young actor could leap to guest star, recurring character, best friend. At the top of the pyramid: Hannah Montana.
'LIKE A STRIKE OF LIGHTNING'
"She needs to be on TV."
That's what Lisa London said about Kennedy at a student showcase in Hollywood the year before, when she found the girl's parents after the show and told them she loved their daughter.
And London would know. She had been the casting director for Hannah Montana, the one who looked into a pile of head shots and chose Miley Cyrus.
After that, the family decided Kennedy would not return to theater camp. She would go to Los Angeles.
A few days after school got out, they packed the car and drove to California.
In the back seat, Kennedy played songs by Sabrina Carpenter, a girl whose story she knew well. The teen star was discovered after her own trip to LA when she was 10. Before that, she was just a child from Bucks County, Pa.
Now, she plays Maya Hart, the girl everyone wants to be on Girl Meets World. Her character is the one with the striking brown eyebrows, the blond beach waves tossed casually over her face.
She'll sneak out, protest homework or tackle her history teacher to the ground, depending on the day and her inclination.
Though Kennedy makes straight A's and avoids music with bad words, Carpenter is the teenager she hopes to be one day -- when she is 17, maybe, and filming movies in LA.
In California, Kennedy auditioned eight to 10 times a week.
Some mornings, she read scripts. Others, she woke at 10 a.m. and rode her scooter to the marina. There she hopped over waves in the ocean, then returned to the sand, where she buried her body so deep it felt like wrapping herself in a warm blanket.
A month passed.
"Maybe we should stay a little bit longer," someone said. So they did.
Kennedy no longer thought of Disney Channel as another world. She knew characters were played by people, and she knew who many of those people were.
She had seen the celebrities on their sets, the directors waiting in the wings. Once, she went to a taping of Girl Meets World and saw Carpenter.
Between shots, someone pulled Kennedy out of the crowd and onto the stage. They told her to sing something, and soon, Carpenter was singing with her.
The strangest part: When Kennedy returned another day, it happened again.
"Like a strike of lightning," her father said.
SUMMER THAT DID NOT END
In LA, the rules were different. If Kennedy wanted to stay out until 10 p.m., she could do that. If she wanted to go to Disneyland on a Wednesday, she could do that, too.
No school, no family obligations. Her days were as exciting as TV episodes, her friends as funny and daring as the side characters she longed to play on TV.
There was the boy cousin who occasionally visited from Arizona and the girl across the hall Kennedy could find at any hour.
Together, they played pingpong in the clubhouse and drank soda by the pool.
One day, she wandered onto the beach and discovered the home she hopes to live in for the rest of her life: a mansion with light pink walls and deep blue pools -- just like the Barbie Dreamhouse. Kennedy imagines it contains a Barbie vending machine, the kind that allows you to select your shoe on a screen and watch it twirl into your hand.
In California, the months slipped by. It was July, August -- the week before school. The family returned to Little Rock for the first day of classes.
Then, an email from Kennedy's manager.
Mavrick, a talent agency, wanted a meeting -- Monday, at the office in Beverly Hills.
There was a flight, then the lobby. Kennedy's father recalls watching as a receptionist led "Ms. Jordan" away.
Thirty minutes later, they got the call.
Kennedy had an audition for the next day and the next: Disney, DreamWorks, feature films too big to name in print.
Her father called the school. Her mother flew out with the rest of the family's things.
It was September then, but the weather did not change. It was like a summer that did not end, a vacation with no expiration date.
There was still the house in Little Rock, but Kennedy's memory of it became more vague with each passing month. She made plans to call her friends after school, but forgetting the time difference, she missed them. Then it would be dinnertime, bedtime. She would make plans for the next day, then the next.
Some friends made new friends, which Kennedy understood.
"You can't just wait for seven months," she explained.
The girl across the hall was in school now, and Kennedy could knock on her door only at the end of the day. The Pacific Ocean grew colder, but she continued to swim. At night, she covered her arms and legs.
'SHE NEEDS TO BE A KID'
In November, when the family returned to Little Rock for the holidays, things felt different for Kennedy. Before, she had known the exact place of the objects in her home. Now, she had forgotten where they were meant to be.
At Thanksgiving, she saw her friends from school, her cousins.
One day, she called her mother to the side at their home in Little Rock. She wasn't ready to return to LA. Not yet.
"She got home, and it was obvious," her father said. "She needs to be a kid."
The family called the manager, then the agency.
In January, Kennedy took her seat at her old desk, which the teacher had saved for her since the first week of school. "She was literally in the exact same place," her father said.
Over the next few months, the episodes Kennedy had seen at tapings began to play on TV. Then the episodes she had auditioned for started airing. Finally, one show in which she had played a role aired, but her scene had been cut.
Kennedy told her friends she would not be on TV. She would not be in a big movie either. After LA, not much had changed.
The summer of 2017 was the first in three years that she did not go to California. For once, her father said, she could be with her friends.
So Kennedy played basketball and blew bubbles and drew chalk portraits on the sidewalk. In July, she wrote a movie and cast all her friends.
The end of elementary school looms large for the fifth-grader. She wonders whether her friends will change. She hopes they will not and things will stay the same. Sometimes, she thinks about making up for lost time.
Every few weeks, she auditions for a role with a camera she also uses to make videos she posts online.
Her father reminds her that if she gets a role, she'll have to go back to California.
For a moment, this seems like news to the 10-year-old.
"I know," she finally says. "If I get a big role."
Metro on 12/28/2017