“Oh no,” Evie says, squinting at me. “You’ve got it again—that Noah Reed look in your eyes.”
I focus on my lunch tray. “I have no such look in my eyes.”
“You’re absolutely, truly, completely full of shit,” Evelyn says. “I’m all about helping you achieve your goals, but I do wish they were cooler goals. Like, things that don’t just revolve around a dude or a book.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I grumble. “You’ve kissed half the guys in this school.”
She shrugs.
I may be exaggerating a bit. I’m not saying Evelyn’s kissed her way through Brentley’s male population, but she has kissed upwards of five guys. (Okay, six … she’s kissed six guys.) And that’s six more than I’ve kissed, playground kiss excluded.
“Noah Reed,” I say, lowering my voice, “is a worthy goal.”
Evelyn shrugs. “He’s not really my type. But at least he’s better than your last fantasy crush.”
I may have a tendency to choose boys I don’t know all that well and then imagine our perfect lives together. Like the time I was convinced that the guy who worked the counter at the QuikStop was my soul mate, but then he ended up getting arrested for stealing massive amounts of money and a year’s supply of Monster energy drinks. Or that time I was so sure that if Zayn Malik and I could only meet, he would realize I was the girl for him (I just think he needs someone to talk to!). And then there was my massive crush on Johnson Bennett, a guy in my study hall. We never spoke, but I could always see him doodling in his notebook and I knew, just knew, that he was secretly a brilliant artist.
My crush on Johnson ended when I finally saw his notebook and discovered that it was entirely full of cartoon animal heads that had nude human bodies. And then I realized he always carried around an empty Mountain Dew bottle so he could spit his chew into it.
“I know Noah’s not your type,” I tell Evelyn. “The point is, I want to do this. I want to kiss Noah Reed before I get surgery.”
Evelyn takes a bite of her yogurt. “Well, whatever. I certainly can’t stop you. At least he doesn’t carry around a spit jug.”
I fix her with my most withering scowl, which isn’t really all that withering. “Fine. I’ll try out for the musical. But I’m already nervous.”
“Don’t be. This is Brentley, not Broadway, remember? It’s not like you’re competing against Lin-Manuel Miranda.”
Maybe for Evie the stakes are low. But for me, they couldn’t be higher. Yes, I want to kiss Noah Reed until my knees buckle, but I have never, ever harbored dreams of stardom. More like dreams of hiding in the background and praying no one can see me as I lip-synch along. I don’t even sing in the shower because Abbi overheard me once, then spent the rest of the week making fun of my rendition of the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt theme song (whatever, it’s extremely catchy). The idea of actually really doing this, of willingly standing up on a stage and asking people to look at me, is terrifying.
Then again, so is dying before I get the chance to meet my goals.
“What do I have to do, Evie? Lay it on me.” I slam my hands on the table, and a freshman sitting down the table from us jumps. “Sorry,” I whisper.
“It’s no big deal,” Evelyn says in a sugary-sweet voice that lets me know it’s going to be at least sort of a big deal for me. “You just need to read the monologue they give you.”
I slump in my seat, already starting to feel sick. I guess I’d been hoping the audition would involve someone psychically intuiting that I should be in the choir.
“But there’s one more thing you need to do, and it’s the most important.”
“Oh God,” I groan. “I don’t have to dance, do I?”
Evelyn shakes her head. “There are a couple choreographed numbers, but it’s not like you have to be one of Beyoncé’s backup dancers or anything. You’ll be fine.”
I sigh with relief.
“What you need to do is take up space,” Evelyn says, and I stare at her as I try to make sense of her words.
“What?” I finally ask.
“I’m saying you need to own it, Jolie! Stop selling yourself short. Get up there on that stage and be seen. Stop whispering. Stop apologizing to some random freshman,” she says, gesturing at the kid down the table from us. When he looks at her indignantly, she says, “No offense. We don’t even know you.”
I roll my eyes. “You don’t get it.”
“No, actually, I do, and that’s why I’m telling you this. If you want to try for this, you need to give it your best shot. No one’s going to believe you can do it if you don’t believe you can do it.”
I blink. “I think I read that on a magnet once.”
“It’s hanging on a sign in the guidance counselor’s office,” says the freshman.
We turn to stare at him.
“Kindly stop listening to our conversation, young man,” Evelyn says.
He picks up his tray and walks away.
She waves a hand in the air dismissively. “Wherever it comes from, it’s good advice. I’ll help you prepare your audition, but there’s absolutely no reason you can’t do this. You’re Jolie Peterson. You’ve got it.”
“Sure, Ev.” None of this seems hard to her. Evelyn, who loves creating outfits based on the record covers she picks up at Goodwill. Who loves dyeing her hair to fit her mood. Who doesn’t mind knowing that every pair of eyes in the room is fixed on her. Who, in fact, loves knowing that they are. Who knows that everyone isn’t wondering what’s wrong with her face or thinking about why she looks so weird. Of course she wouldn’t understand why it makes me bone-deep nervous to even think about being on a stage.
Just then, Noah walks by our table, all long-limbed, big-haired ease. He walks like he has somewhere to be, like he knows where he’s going, like he’s already a star. Evelyn and I stop talking and watch him walk by. I swallow, hard.
“Okay,” I say. “Teach me your ways, master.”
Chapter Four
“Wait, you’re doing what?” Abbi asks, pausing with her fork in the air.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Abs,” I say, and she shoots me a snotty look.
“I think it’s great that you’re trying something new,” Mom says in a calm tone. She’s very good at reacting to things in a measured, nonjudgmental manner. This is annoying when it comes to Abbi’s pregnancy because I just want someone to pepper her with questions until she spills everything, but I appreciate it right now.
Although you wouldn’t know it if you looked at her, my mom used to play music. She actually dropped out of college to tour with her all-female punk band, Sister Wives. She met my dad in some no-name bar in Ohio and even though, as she put it, “nothing about him was remotely cool,” she fell in love with him and they got married. Eventually she went back to college to become a school counselor so she could work with kids who are, in her words, as screwed up as she was. When I see pictures of her wearing a nose ring and a T-shirt with no bra, I wonder how she ended up here, married with two kids and a house and a Subaru in the driveway. The only way you’d even know about her past is because she has framed concert posters instead of framed paintings, and she listens to Sonic Youth in the car instead of the country station, like Evelyn’s mom does. It’s not that she seems unhappy, but I guess part of me wonders if she regrets it. If she wishes she were still crammed into a dirty van, headed to some town she’s never been to in Pennsylvania, playing the drums night after night. I wonder if she looks at her kids—one of them pregnant, the other not even able to get kissed—and wonders where she went wrong.
“Thanks for the encouragement, Mom,” I say sweetly, keeping my eyes on Abbi.
“But you hate being in front of people,” Abbi continues. “Remember when Mom said you had to be in the fourth-grade musical and you cried for days?”
Ugh. I wish she hadn’t reminded me. I was so nervous about it that the only thing that calmed me down was when Derek came over and performed stand-up comedy routines
he’d memorized by secretly staying up late watching Comedy Central. Let me tell you, Patton Oswalt routines lose a lot of their punch when they’re recited by a fourth-grade boy, but they were still funny enough that I was able to stop freaking out.
“We had to sing Disney songs. It was beneath me.”
“I just wanted you to have a new experience,” Mom says, spooning more roasted carrots onto her plate. “But you’ve always been a little hesitant to try new things.”
I’d be offended, but she’s right. For my fifth-birthday party, they bought me a tricycle, but instead of trying to ride it, I hid in the garage and cried until everyone went home.
“So you actually want to be on a stage? Like, with people looking at you?” Abbi asks.
The thing is, she’s not trying to be mean. She’s way too obvious for that. She’s genuinely confused about what I’m doing, and I wish she’d just shut her mouth (both figuratively and literally, because I don’t need to see the half-chewed pork tenderloin that’s in there).
“I hope you teach your child better manners,” I say, and Abbi closes her mouth and chews deliberately while staring at me.
“Anyway, Evelyn’s coming over tonight to help me prepare,” I say, polishing off the last bite of my carrots. I stand up and give my dad a quick kiss on the head. “Thanks for dinner, Dad.”
“Thank Giada De Laurentiis,” he says. “The woman knows her way around a pork roast.”
Abbi screws up her face. “Gross, Dad.”
He shrugs. “What? I like watching Food Network.”
Mom raises her eyebrows. “Really? Then why aren’t you waxing rhapsodic about Bobby Flay?”
I’m walking into the kitchen to escape their conversation when I hear the doorbell ring. “I’ll get it!” I yell.
It’s Evelyn, as expected, and she has Derek in tow.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“Oh, I’m fine, thanks for asking, how are you?” he asks as he brushes past me into the house.
Evelyn smiles wide as she steps inside. “I figured you could use a practice audience. And what better audience than your best friends?”
Derek rubs his hands together. “I hope you’re ready for some serious heckling.”
I sigh as we walk back to my room (but not before Derek stops by the dining room to say hello to my family; annoyingly, they seem to like him more than they like me). Evelyn’s right—having an audience will be nice, and the great thing about her and Derek is that they’re well aware of all my weaknesses, so they can zero in on them and beat them out of me. You know, musical theater–style.
Evelyn sits down on my bed and brandishes a sheet of paper. “Guess what I have?”
We stare at her blankly.
“A … piece of paper?” I ask.
“Yes,” Evelyn says. “But what’s on the piece of paper?”
I open my mouth, but before I can speak she says, “Please don’t say words and sentences.”
I shut my mouth.
“This is a list I wrote for you. ‘Jolie Peterson’s No-Fail Guide to Taking Up Space and Projecting Onstage.’”
Derek and I keep staring at her.
“Okay, so it’s a long name, but it’s accurate,” she says. “Since you’re trying out for a background part, you don’t have to do much—just read the part Mrs. Mulaney gives you.”
I nod.
“But,” she continues, pointing at me, “you do have to prepare. Because if you go up there looking like you do right now, you’re not going to get even the smallest part.”
“What’s wrong with how I look right now?” I self-consciously touch my face. “Do I have pork tenderloin in my teeth?”
“Nothing’s wrong with how you look,” Evelyn says. “This is about presence.”
“Presence?” I repeat.
“You can’t just stand there with your shoulders hunched and a frown on your face. You’ve gotta earn that spotlight.”
“Right,” I say, unconvinced.
Evelyn claps her hands. “Okay, stand up!”
Reluctantly, I stand up.
“Shoulders back,” Evelyn says, standing in front of me and physically pushing my shoulders down. “No, Jolie, not up by your ears. Back.”
“Got it.”
“Chin up,” she says, pushing my chin up from its permanently tucked-in position. “Arms uncrossed. And eye contact!” She points at her own eyes.
I widen mine at her dramatically. “Are you happy now?”
“Almost,” she says, sitting back down on the bed beside Derek. “Now, tell us who you are.”
I look back and forth between them. “Um … Jolie?”
“No!” she shouts with such ferocity that Derek jumps.
“Good Lord, Evie!” he says. “Do you really think going full-on Whiplash is the best tactic here?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Evelyn says sweetly. “I wasn’t aware that holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ would get Jolie the lead in the musical.”
Derek shrugs at me like he’s saying, Sorry, I tried.
I shrug back, like I’m saying, Yeah, well, Evelyn’s an unstoppable force of nature.
“Stop using your secret eye language!” Evelyn says, pointing to both of us. “Just remember: No ‘ums.’ That’s public speaking 101. If you don’t know what to say, don’t use a filler. Just pause. A powerful pause.”
“A powerful pause,” I repeat slowly.
“Okay,” Evelyn says. “Now tell us who you are again. And make eye contact.”
I clear my throat. “I’m Jolie Peterson,” I say, looking back and forth between Derek and Evie. Derek crosses his eyes and I try not to laugh. “And I’m auditioning for a background part.”
“Louder!” Evelyn shouts with glee.
We spend the better part of an hour this way, with Evie adjusting my posture and my voice to mold me into someone who appears to have confidence. Or talent. Or presence.
They finally leave when Derek says he has to have his nightly phone chat with Melody (“Right, your girlfriend,” Evie says, doing air quotes behind his back).
“You’ll be fine tomorrow,” Derek says on his way toward the door.
I roll my eyes, and I don’t know if I’m just really obvious or if we have some sort of psychic best-friend bond from having known each other for so long, but he stops, comes back, and looks me straight in the eye. “I mean it, Peterson,” he says, putting his hands on my shoulders. “Go kick some musical-theater ass.”
“Make out with Noah Reed until he can’t see straight!” Evelyn shouts.
“I’m not attempting to blind anyone with my make-out prowess, but okay, thanks,” I say, giving her a hug.
Then I’m left alone in my room. I flop back onto my bed, my nest of fluffy pillows catching me as my stomach churns with dread and anticipation. For maybe one tiny moment when Evelyn was shouting at me, I felt like this was achievable, that I could actually get a part, however small, in the musical.
But can I? I stand up and cross the room to stare at myself in the mirror. I lift my chin and put my shoulders back like Evelyn taught me. I’m so used to keeping my chin down, my eyes down, my shoulders up. Anything to hide what I don’t want people to see—me. After all, this face isn’t the final product. And in the power pose Evelyn taught me, my imperfections are on full display. It’s like I’m daring people to notice me, and it feels all wrong.
I’m tilting my face back and forth, inspecting my jaw in profile, when Abbi knocks and then walks in without waiting for my response. “Hey, weirdo. Your friends leave?”
“Yep,” I say, meeting her eyes in the mirror.
She stands beside me, and I’m forced to take in our reflections, side by side. We’re like one of those games I used to play in Highlights magazine where you had to inspect two similar pictures and point out the differences. This sister has a jaw defect; this one doesn’t. This sister has never even made out with anyone; this one’s pregnant.
“So you’re seriously trying out for
the musical, huh?” Abbi asks, grabbing one of my bottles of lotion and squeezing some on her hands.
“Yep,” I say again. I’m waiting for her to say something else—to express more confusion, to point out that I threw up in the kitchen sink the last time I had to give a speech in history class, to tell me I should save myself the embarrassment.
But instead she focuses on rubbing the lotion into her hands and says, “Good for you, Jolie. I’m glad you’re doing something new. You’ve got to take life by the balls while you still can. Or by”—she squints—“the ovaries. Or something less gendered, I don’t know. The point is, you always think you have all the time in the world, but you don’t, you know?”
She meets my eyes in the mirror and all of a sudden I get the feeling that we’re not really talking about me at all.
“Yeah, I know,” I say, even though I don’t. I give her a smile and watch my jaw in the mirror.
* * *
I can’t sleep. I just keep imagining myself onstage, people looking at me, people judging me. People saying, Why did that girl think she could do this? Why did she think people wanted to look at her? Why did she just run offstage crying, muttering something about how this was just like the tricycle at her fifth-birthday party?
Plus, spending so much time talking (sorry, “projecting”) today has given me a jaw ache that’s morphed into a headache. The thing about having a jaw that’s out of alignment is that it’s basically normal for it to hurt, and Dr. Kelley says that if I don’t get the surgery, it will only get worse. After I run to the medicine cabinet to pop a Tylenol, I grab my laptop and get back into bed.
Reddit has a pretty bad reputation as a place where gross trolls congregate and share hacked photos of female celebrities, but there’s a whole other side of it, too. No matter what sort of niche you’re interested in reading about (horror stories, skin care, or pictures of old people doing ridiculous things on Facebook), there’s an entire community of people asking questions and sharing their personal experiences. So it comes as no surprise that there are tons of people writing frantic posts about their upcoming jaw surgeries and lots of threads with titles like “I Had Surgery to Correct My Severe Underbite: Ask Me Anything.”
Things Jolie Needs to Do Before She Bites It Page 4