Starring Jules (Super-Secret Spy Girl)

by Beth Ain

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  take one: last lists, old-timey songs, and the last-day-of-school blues

  take two: French-speaking Canada, boys’ names for girls, and other things that are fishy

  take three: bad news, worse news, and even worse news

  take four: pre-birthday parties, fruity mail, and more things that stink

  take five: pileups, racing stripes, and in-car entertainment

  take six: human birthday presents, undercover waffle-making, and the flight pattern of ducks

  take seven: voila! concierge! (and other words I didn’t know were French)

  take eight: mouth exercises, teen-idol insults, and the lost art of shrugging

  take nine: dads on airplanes, high-flying kids, and other northbound things

  take ten: small-time movie directors, muddy waters, and the fate of a certain rubber-duck hero

  Sneak Peek

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  “Earth to Julesium!” Teddy says, knocking into me hard.

  “Teddy!” I say. “It’s the last day. You couldn’t even not knock into me on the last day of school?” I always say that Teddy feels like a Super Ball bouncing all around the room, but lately it feels like he’s got special superglue on him that only seems to stick to me.

  “Well, you were just standing there, staring at your cubby,” he says.

  “Well, maybe I like just standing there, staring at my cubby. Ever think of that?” I say. I find my seat and look around the classroom. The blankety-blank blankness of what used to be the perfect second-grade classroom. FAMOUS WOMEN OF MATHEMATICS poster? Gone. Perfectly perfect cursive handwriting charts? Gone. Dirty, not - even - a - little - bit - white walls? Here to stay. Second grade is over.

  “Hiya, Jules,” Elinor says.

  “Don’t bother,” I hear Teddy say to her. “She just wants to stare at things. She hates the last day of school.”

  “Really?” Elinor asks. “Who hates the last day of school?”

  I see Charlotte listening to everyone talking about me like I’m not there and I can just tell she’s going to have something to say about it.

  “Jules Bloom, that’s who,” she says.

  Elinor clears her throat and squats down next to my desk. “But it’s summer, Jules. ‘No more teachers, no more books . . .’ ” She looks around. “Do you sing that song in this country?”

  Charlotte shakes her head no and gives a terrible Charlotte snort at the thought.

  “Yes,” I say, coming to Elinor’s rescue, “my parents do, but they’re kind of old.”

  “It’s summer, Jules!” Elinor says now, standing up. “And you’re going to film a real, live movie with megastar Rick Hinkley and teen star Emma Saxony, and I’m going to London to see my dad, and we’re going to be pen pals, and Teddy will be at science camp, and Charlotte’s going to sleepaway.”

  “Well, that part’s pretty good, I guess.” I look at Charlotte and smile a fake smile.

  “Not just any sleepaway, you know,” Charlotte says. “Camp Lackahanna.” She puts up big jazz hands when she says this. “It’s a camp for performing arts. Celebrity kids go there.”

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Emma Saxony went there.” Charlotte is obsessed with Emma Saxony. “And they have golf carts we get to ride around in, and campfires, and zip lines, and trampolines, and white-water rafting trips, and —”

  “And probably people who lay out your towels for you? In case you’re too tired to do it yourself ?” I ask, squinting.

  “Probably,” Charlotte says, shrugging.

  I groan out loud.

  “Forget about that, Jules.” Elinor says. “It’s going to be the best summer ever, and you know it.”

  I know Elinor is trying to cheer me up, but all her cheerfulness makes me wonder what I’ll do without her all summer.

  “¡Mi clase!” Ms. Leon says now. “¡A escribir! To write!”

  We get out our pencils. It’s our last freewrite.

  “What are your hopes and dreams for the summer? Tell me,” Ms. Leon says, smiling at us. A lump of breakfast pops into my throat, which means there might be tears. I blink them away and start writing.

  Things That Will Make This the Best Summer Ever:

  1.I will not have to wear an orange-throw-up-colored T-shirt every single day of day camp because I will not be at camp at all. Not even one day.

  2.I will spend time in Canada (that’s another country!) filming all fifty-eight of my lines in The Spy in the Attic with former hockey star, now movie star Rick Hinkley and teen star Emma Saxony.

  3.I will not mess up my lines and act like a doofus in front of big-time movie people Rick Hinkley and Emma Saxony. Instead, I will become Lucy Lamb, spy-girl.

  4.I will be far, far away from Charlotte Stinkytown Pinkerton. For seven. Whole. Weeks.

  5.And last, even though Elinor will be very far away, she will also be my first-ever pen pal!

  My last list of second grade.

  “Penceels down!” Ms. Leon says. Oh, how I will miss her beachy voice!

  When the bell finally rings, I feel only one thing — relief! I made it through a whole entire year of second grade with Charlotte and the other fancy-pants ABC’s (Abby and Brynn) and Teddy wish-he-was-a-teensy-bit-less-weird Lichtenstein. I had a big fat failure of a Swish commercial audition, filmed a whole episode of a brand-new sitcom, didn’t miss out on our class moving-up play, and I even got a new best friend out of it. This was the best almost-worst year ever. And now, it is officially summer!

  I meet my mom and Big Henry outside the school and we go to the park, where everyone is meeting for a last-day-of-second-grade picnic.

  “They say your movie is going to be a blockbuster,” Charlotte says the minute she sees me.

  “Who says?” I say.

  “Variety,” Charlotte says.

  “What’s Variety?” I ask.

  “It’s a magazine all about important things that happen in show business,” Charlotte says. “I can’t believe you don’t read it.”

  “Well, maybe Jules doesn’t NEED a magazine to tell her things she already knows,” Elinor says, “because she’s an actual actress in an actual movie, so she already knows these things in the first place.”

  What am I ever going to do without Elinor this summer?

  “Well, anyway, between Rick Hinkley and Emma Saxony, who is practically perfect, I don’t think anyone will notice you so much, Jules, so that’s good,” Charlotte says. “You won’t have to be so crazy nervous all the time.”

  I glare at her because I’m pretty sure she isn’t complimenting me.

  “Anyway, have fun in England, Elinoh! Sorry you’re missing my luncheon,” Charlotte says before stomping away. She is throwing herself a going-to-sleepaway-camp luncheon at the diner. What makes it a luncheon and not just a lunch is the fact that it is a lunch party. I know this because I made the mistake of asking Charlotte when she invited me. “Oh, don’t leave without giving me your address,” she shouts from the swing set. “I’ll be writing to you all on scented stationery with scented markers.”

  “She better not send me anything orange-scented,” I say.

  Maybe I don’t read Variety, but I do know that this movie might end up being popular, and I am trying to forget about that since it makes me nervous. I have been trying to spend less time thinking about all these people going to sit in their stic
ky, squeaky movie-theater seats watching the spy version of me, and more time thinking about Canada and all the things I’m going to get to do there.

  “She’s wrong anyway, Julesium.” Teddy Lichtenstein has arrived at the picnic. “According to research, any movie with a former sports star who tries to be a movie star doesn’t end up doing very well at all.”

  “Thanks, Teddy,” I say.

  We run around and swing high on the swings and eat sushi rolls and grapes all afternoon until people start packing up. My mom and Teddy’s mom, Andie, barely ever look up from the conversation they are having on our blanket, and I wonder why they never run out of things to talk about.

  “Elinor,” Mrs. Breedlove says, coming over to us, “we have to get on with it.”

  At this, my mom stands up and takes my hand and I know this means it’s time to say good-bye.

  “Well,” Elinor says.

  “Well,” I say.

  Mrs. Breedlove looks at the two of us just staring at each other. “Well,” she says in her very grown-up British way, “Mrs. Bloom and I have arranged for the two of you to e-mail each other whenever you want.” She smiles a big grown-up smile when she says this.

  Elinor and I jump up and down and scream-laugh at this news. “No stinky stationery for us!” Elinor says.

  “Nope!” I say, and we give a quick hug while we’re still laughing.

  “Okay, off we go,” Elinor’s mom says, pulling her away.

  “See you in August, Jules!” Elinor says.

  “Write the second you get there,” I say, and I turn away and start walking toward home, and fast. I have to shake off this feeling pronto, since there’s nothing worse than saying good-bye to your-still-brand-new best friend forever.

  Things I’ve Learned Since School Ended Two Days Ago:

  1.On the way to my wardrobe fitting, I pictured myself as a paper doll being dressed in special Lucy Lamb spy-girl clothes, complete with mini-binoculars, but when I got there I found out that Lucy Lamb might be an interesting character but she is NOT a very interesting dresser. For a spy-girl, Lucy Lamb wears a whole lot of not-so-spy-looking outfits.

  2.Memorizing fifty-eight movie lines is harder than memorizing twelve spelling words for a Friday test. Much harder.

  3.Mont-Tremblant is a very fancy-sounding French Canadian village where we will be filming the action scenes in the movie. To me, it sounds like a place from one of the fairy tales Grandma Gilda used to read me.

  4.Coming up with an e-mail address is also hard. It took me three lists and one whole entire day of trying on someone else’s clothes, but I suddenly thought of it in the cab on the way home and shouted it out loud to my mom and the cab driver. “Supersecretspygirl!” I said, and my mom just looked at me and smiled.

  5.Sometimes, things just hit you and that’s that, like the smell of salmon.

  We arrive home to my dad, who has been babysitting Big Henry while we were out all day and they have cooked us a dinner that makes the whole apartment stink.

  I wrinkle my nose. “What?” he asks, smiling. “You don’t like salmon anymore?”

  “Too . . . hot . . . for . . . salmon,” I say, fake choking.

  “Save it for the movies, sister,” my dad says. “Now go get all the city stuff off your hands and meet us at the island for supper.” Most people in the world probably sit at a table to eat dinner, but we don’t really have room for a table since we barely even have room for Big Henry. I guess it’s an island because it kind of floats in the middle of our kitchen the way a tropical island floats in the middle of the ocean. So here we are, with the fish but without the palm trees.

  I tell my dad about all the movie stuff of the day and recite some of my favorite lines, like, “Hold on a minute, am I a spy now?” I am supposed to say this with a furrowed brow, because that is what the script says to do. And that means I scrunch up my eyes like I’m trying to hold a pencil in between them. Big Henry laughs his head off when I do this.

  By the end of dinner, my dad starts to talk in a British James Bond accent, which means it is time for me to go to my room to escape the smell and to practice my French. Ugly Otis follows me into my room, and I look at him and his ugly-cute, drooly face. “We are going to Canada, Ugly Otis, and not regular old English-speaking Canada. We are going to FRENCH-speaking Canada!” Otis is not excited by this news, but I am.

  Before we go to the fancy-sounding village of Mont-Tremblant, we are all flying to a big city called Montreal on the day after my eighth birthday, which happens to be the day after America’s birthday — my absolute two favorite days of the year. I had to get a passport and everything. So did Big Henry, and now I get butterflies in my stomach every time I think about all of the French kids playing on the playgrounds in French Canada saying French things as they swing from the monkey bars.

  So far I only know how to say “Je m’appelle Jules!” and “Bonjour!” but I plan to spend the next week learning to say playground things like “Let’s see if we can touch the sky with our feet!” and “Oh, don’t mind my brother — he wears dinosaur rain boots no matter what!”

  The phone rings, and I take off my “Learn to Speak French in a Week!” headphones to run to the kitchen to get it. I guess maybe I am hoping it’s Elinor since I haven’t heard from her yet and my dad’s bad British accent made me really miss her perfect accent even more.

  I pick up the phone. It isn’t Elinor at all. It is Teddy’s mom, Andie, whose name sounds like a boy’s, but looks like a girl’s. Again. I hand the phone to my mom.

  “You already spoke to Andie three times today. What else could you possibly have to talk about?” I ask.

  She shushes me and says, “Things.”

  “What kind of things?” I ask.

  “None of your beeswax,” she says.

  “Something smells fishy,” I say in my Lucy-Lamb-spy-girl voice. I also furrow my brow.

  “Dinner,” she says. “Dinner smells fishy. Now shoo.”

  I go ahead and shoo, but I hang out a bit in the hallway to see if I can overhear anything from their conversation. This is what Lucy Lamb does in the movie a few times, according to the script. She lurks, which basically means she hangs out a little past when she is supposed to in order to spy. So this is what I do now. I lurk.

  All I can hear are snippets of a boring conversation about what to pack for cool Canadian nights. I might as well plan my outfit for Stinkytown’s going-away luncheon instead.

  I start to lay out some clothes for our trip, too. In Montreal, we will film in a house where Lucy Lamb supposedly lives and where she has been left by her parents with a babysitter who is played by teenage star Emma Saxony. I think about Emma Saxony and think that her name is a name-up-in-lights type name. I was looking at her in a magazine one day when my mom told me she was the one playing Lucy Lamb’s babysitter, and I almost fell off my chair. I’ve never met her, but her pizzazz practically jumped off the magazine page and onto the (not tropical) island where I was sitting.

  The movie people hired me after seeing my messed-up audition for the Swish commercial. They told the casting director Colby Kingston that they needed a funny, New York–style kid for the role of Lucy Lamb. During all the movie meetings we’ve had over the last few days, everyone keeps reminding me that even though my role isn’t that big, it is very important. I am the spoiler. To me that sounds like I am a Spider-Man villain who maybe sneaks into people’s fridges and spoils their sliced turkey, but that’s not what it means at all.

  It means Lucy Lamb gets in everybody’s way all the time and kind of ruins their plans. But by accident. Because Lucy’s just this innocent little girl who only discovers things — like a spy in my attic! — by accident. So I guess when I, Jules Bloom, spit out all of that awful orangey Swish mouthwash and then cha-cha-chaed, they thought they had hit the jackpot.

  A few months ago, this wo
uld have made me very nervous and I would have pictured myself doing a terrible job of getting in the way of former hockey star, now movie star, Rick Hinkley. But after working on a sitcom, I am feeling a little bit more like the actress everyone thinks I am. Or at least I WAS before I found out one VERY important twist, which should have made the list of Things I’ve Learned Since School Ended Two Days Ago, but it deserves its OWN list.

  Very Important Twists:

  1.While I’m in Canada filming a movie with all these crazy-famous people, I will have to slide down a mudslide. And it’s the very last scene of the movie, which means I can’t even get it over with right away - the way I always want to get my shot first at the doctor’s office. That’s it. That’s the twist, and it’s a big one.

  I put down my pen and hide my list. I am not going to think about this now. Right now, I have packing to do, and we are heading north — layers are in order!

  “Everybody hustle!” Big Henry says.

  We are standing on Broadway and all we have to do is cross the street and walk down one block and we will be at the diner. My favorite diner. It is the place where Colby Kingston overheard me singing my fizzy-milk jingle to Big Henry, which is how all this acting stuff got started in the first place. But it was my favorite place before that because it smells like turkey bacon and it has special salads with names like “Santa Fe” and “Field of Dreams.” And even though I always, always, always get the same poached eggs on whole-wheat toast with home fries, I sometimes picture myself ordering a fancy salad instead. This Field-of-Dreams-salad-ordering person looks kind of the same in my head as a tall-icy-drink person.

  “Nope,” my mom says. “No need to hustle today, Hank.”

  “Why not?” Hank asks.

  “Because we are on summer break,” she says. My mom is taking time off this summer to be a real stay-at-home mom instead of working while we’re at school and very late at night and is always huffing and puffing all around the apartment as a result. “This is what artists do,” she says under her breath when she’s sorting through our backpacks instead of finishing something she’s working on in her studio. This makes me hope I never have to unpack a backpack in the middle of doing something else I want to be doing.