Oscar yanked on the leash, ready to go. I looked up the street in the direction of the center, feeling anxious. But Oscar was in charge. He seemed to know where we were headed; he led the way to Angeles Vista—past the Bakers’ and the Cruzes’, and up Presidio. I was sweating by the time I got there and anticipating the gust of cool air the moment I would walk into the air-conditioned community center. I tied Oscar’s leash to the bicycle rack and went in through the glass doors. Immediately, I spotted all three Baker sisters sitting at a round table with several other girls, working on lanyards under the direction of a community center worker. The arts and crafts person, I guessed.
I looked around. Two boys—older—were at the foosball table. Anthony Cruz was not playing Ping-Pong. In fact, he was nowhere to be seen. I suddenly didn’t know what to do. I noticed Deidre and Jilly assess me and suddenly go into a huddle.
I glanced at the stage. Looking back over my shoulder at the Baker girls, I headed in its direction. I’d just gotten my foot on the first step when I heard a whistle. It filled the room and seemed to bounce off the four walls. All the kids stopped what they were doing and fell silent. “Excuse me,” the counselor called to me. “No getting on the stage.” I stepped back down. “Can you come over here please?”
I complied. She stood up and met me in the middle of the room. “Follow me, please.”
I could see Deidre and Jilly tittering with excitement.
The counselor led me away from them, out of earshot. She looked down at me kindly. “I want to ask you something.” She smiled encouragingly. I waited. “Last week the wallet of one of my co-counselors went missing from her purse, which was kept in an unlocked desk drawer. Do you know anything about that?” She searched my face.
I looked back at Deidre and Jilly and realized they could hear us. They had knowing smirks on their faces. Had she asked them who might have taken the wallet and they had suggested me?
I couldn’t speak right away. I just shook my head slowly. “I don’t know anything about that,” I said, and wondered if I sounded like I was telling the truth. Because I was.
She put her hand on my shoulder and smiled. “I would like you not to sneak around the center. We have all kinds of fun activities, but the offices and the stage and the kitchen are off-limits. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I nodded, realizing suddenly that I just wanted to get out of there—away from a place where people would think I’d steal. When I’d never stolen anything in my life. Not even a pencil from school! If Jennifer had been there, she could have vouched for me—and that counselor would believe her, because Jennifer is white.
Something really unsettling crossed my mind, then. What if I had to go through this for the rest of my life? Always, people looking at me—with suspicion.
Oscar was really taking his own sweet time, stopping to sniff at every bush, every tossed fast-food wrapper. We’d just turned down Presidio when I heard someone calling my name. I looked back to see Deidre Baker, her two sisters, and another girl I didn’t recognize. I kept walking.
“Bet you’re not so brave now that you don’t have Jennifer to hide behind!” Jilly yelled.
“Or your sister!” Deirdre called out.
Something came over me then. It seemed to rise up from the center of my whole being and take over. I stopped. I turned around and stood there rooted in my spot. They were coming—all four of them—and I suddenly couldn’t wait. Come on, come on. The words were playing in my mind on a loop. I looked around. I just needed to find a stick on the ground.
Oscar, sensing something, began his low growl. I had an anger in me that felt as if a volcano were in the center of my chest and was about to explode. I took a step toward them. I looked from one to the other and waited. I was filled with the waiting. Come on, come on—get here!
They slowed to a stop, seeming to suddenly sense danger in the situation. Could they have picked up something in the way I stopped, turned to them, and now waited with the growling Oscar on the leash? Deidre called out, “You’d better be glad you have that dog, ’cause if you didn’t, you’d sure be sorry.”
I stood there and suddenly realized I was breathing hard, but they were turning away from me to take another route home. I wanted to kiss Oscar. “Good dog,” I said.
Nathan was packing up when I came around the side of the house to put Oscar in the backyard. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I answered in a very small voice.
He did a double take as he pulled his tarp off our hibiscus bush. “What’s up?” He stooped to pet Oscar.
“Nothing.”
“You sound down.”
My tears started then and they surprised me. I didn’t even know I was going to cry. He stood up and led me to the porch. I sat down and he sat next to me on the steps.
“It’s not fair,” I blurted out.
“What’s not fair?”
“I went to the center just to hang around, since my only friend is at sleep-away camp. Just to . . . I want to be in this play, and I wanted to get on the stage and see how it felt when I said my lines, and I wasn’t bothering anybody. And this woman, this counselor who teaches crafts . . . She asked me if I knew anything about a wallet getting stolen! And I don’t know anything about someone’s wallet getting stolen, but I think that was just her way of asking me if I stole it.” I paused for air.
Nathan looked off. “Yeah, it was,” he said. I thought he was going to say, No, you’re wrong. He continued. “Yeah, a wallet went missing a week ago and today you happen to walk by.”
“It’s not fair! I’ve never even stolen a pencil from school.”
“That doesn’t matter. Don’t you know that?”
I took in a deep, shuddery breath. “But why?”
“There’s not enough time in the day to tell you why.”
“I want to try out for this play and that woman might be one of the judges and she’s going to think I’m a thief and not let them pick me.”
“Do it anyway,” he said simply, but not with the kind of encouragement in his voice that I needed. “Always just do things like that anyway.”
I got up and took Oscar around the back. I unbuckled his leash and knelt down beside him to give him extra pets and hugs. He had defended me. My sweet little Oscar.
Days passed. Nathan was now a person Lily was expert at ignoring. When she left for her job, she walked past him, holding her head high and her eyes steady on the street ahead of her. If he spoke, she would respond in the most curt, icily polite way. Eventually the window sills were completely done—two coats—and my mother had Nathan start on the wood railing of our front porch.
Sometimes I watched him out the window and wondered what he had written in that letter.
Then, finally, Jennifer was back. I stood at my den window and watched as her stuff was unloaded from her family’s station wagon. I waited a bit, then went across the street to her house. I wanted her to hear me say my parts without my even glancing at the script.
“Hey, what happened to Minerva?” Jennifer said as she dumped the contents of her duffle bag onto her bed. The scent of pine and what I imagined the bottom of a lake would smell like filled the room.
“I don’t have time for that right now. I’m trying to be perfect with this part. Tryouts are tomorrow. Can we go over our lines?”
“I don’t need to. I memorized everything while I was away at camp.”
“But don’t you want to go over everything?”
She shrugged and looked shifty somehow. I flopped down on one of her twin beds. Jennifer’s parents, anticipating her every possible need (slumber parties, future popularity, and things like that), had given her two beds. I wondered what it was like to be an only child and the center of your parents’ world.
We sat facing each other. Finally, she said, “Anyway, Linda Cruz’s mother is taking us to the movies. We kind of got to be friends, ’cause, you know, we were at sleep-away camp together.”
> “A movie?”
“Yeah. She’s really kind of nice, actually.”
I suddenly felt a little dizzy. It was fear. The kind of fear you have to hide behind a fake smile.
“So now you’re friends?”
“Not best friends like us, but—friends.”
“Oh.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Jennifer said. “And I told her that what she said was prejudiced, and I think she understands that now.”
I didn’t say anything. I just sat there fiddling with some piping on the bedspread. There was a strangeness in the silence that followed, as if it was full of unspoken words. And the words were you want to go? Followed by you can’t go with us because it’s just Linda Cruz and me going.
I thought about what Linda had said about her father—that if I came up their walkway, he would just turn me around and send me back home. It made me feel as if someone had slapped me. I told Jennifer I had to go because Lily and her friend Nathan were taking me to a movie. Which wasn’t true. But it was the only way I could save face on such short notice.
Jennifer quietly walked me to her front porch. “We can practice our lines tomorrow morning,” she said. “Right before tryouts.” She gave me a little apologetic smile before she closed the door.
“What’s Sophia up to today?” Nathan asked.
I was sitting on the top step of the stairs that led down to the backyard’s lower level, thinking about the situation with Jennifer. The script was balanced on my knees, but I didn’t feel like doing anything with it. I just wanted to sit there and think. “Nothing.”
“How’s Lily?” he asked next, and that was probably his real question. He had already packed up to go. Now he was squatting by the outdoor faucet, cleaning his brushes.
“She’s fine.”
“Is she working today?”
“I think so.”
“What do you have there?”
“My script for the play.”
“Oh yeah, that.” He looked off into the distance, considering this. “Just don’t let them make you the maid.”
That caught me off-guard because the play did have a cafeteria lady, and that was close to being a maid. I smiled, but he’d given me a new worry. Don’t let them make you the maid.
I went inside to study the script in the den. Halfway through reading everybody’s parts as well as my own, I suddenly knew where Lily had stashed the letter. In her jewelry box under the false bottom! Why hadn’t I thought of that before?
Lily was gone, my mother was gone, Mrs. Baylor was in the kitchen cooking. I almost had the house to myself. I marched directly to our room and to the jewelry box on Lily’s dresser, opened it, poured the jewelry onto the dresser, and pulled up the false bottom. And there it was. She hadn’t thrown it away.
Suddenly nervous, I looked around. I put the jewelry back in and positioned the box just the way I’d found it. I hurried to the bathroom, closed the door, found a comfortable position on the edge of the bathtub, and placed the envelope on my knees. I looked at it for a moment, then pulled the folded page out and spread it on my lap, my heart beating wildly. He had nice handwriting.
Lily,
First, I have to apologize. There’s no excuse for the behavior I exhibited and I don’t expect you to forgive me. That was not the first time I’ve been stopped. The last time was in the driveway of a friend from school who happens to live in Westwood near UCLA. So I don’t know why this stop got to me. Let me move on. You are a very special person and I’ve loved being with you, but I fear we come from two different worlds, and that’s going to get in the way. We have two worldviews. Different goals. And besides, you’ll be leaving soon. I might as well go through the difficulty of that now. Maybe in a different time and a different place.
Nathan
Not Love, Nathan, I thought. Not Sincerely, Nathan. Just Nathan.
Why, I’d be cool too in response to such a letter. There was not very much love on that page. And that was another thing—such a short letter. What was that about? I didn’t blame Lily at all. At all!
I carefully refolded it, slipped the stupid letter back into its envelope, and quickly returned it to its place in the jewelry box. Again, I positioned the jewelry box just so. I picked up my script and settled on my bed. Auditions were a day away. A day away.
CHAPTER 20
Auditions
* * *
I WOKE UP WITH butterflies in my stomach. This was the day. I’d be Olivia or I wouldn’t. I would impress everyone, or they’d just feel sorry for me. I knew my lines backwards and forward. And I didn’t sound wooden the way some people who weren’t born actresses do, which I suspected I was—along with being born to write. I said my lines with feeling and heart and confidence.
I rolled onto my back and put my hands behind my head. Then I began to go through my opening lines again—and Jennifer’s, when Julie sweetly asks Miss Ornsby, her English teacher, if she can write a recommendation for Julie’s college application. And I get to say from my place in the attic, “Julie Simmons calls our English teacher Old Slime Mouth. At some point during class, strings of spit are likely to form in the corners of her mouth.” (Ew! I could relate to that.) “Though Julie laughs at everyone, she especially likes to laugh at Miss Ornsby and say, ‘No wonder Miss Ornsby isn’t married. Can you imagine living with that on a daily basis?’”
Lily stirred in her bed. I looked over at her and lowered my voice to a whisper. She was probably dreaming of Nathan.
Auditions were at two. I wondered if Jennifer was going to remember we were supposed to spend the morning running our lines. I planned to wait and see. It would be easy to fill the time until two o’clock if there were no auditions, but waiting for them made every hour leading up to two feel empty and irritating—a means of turning anticipation into torture.
Eventually, Lily came up on her elbow. “What are you doing?”
“Rehearsing for tryouts.”
“That’s today?”
“Yeah.”
She looked at me and then quickly turned away. She said, “Okay, now you know this might have nothing to do with who’s the best person for the role. You know that, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t know who your competition is. You’re probably the youngest girl trying out for that role.”
“I know Deidre Baker and her friend Carla are trying out.”
Lily closed her eyes and moaned. Then she went on to remind me that I was black, for one thing. So did I really think they’d make Olivia black? Did I, really?
I’d been noticing Lily using the word black these days at every opportunity, as if she liked the feel of it in her mouth, the shock of it and the defiance. I remembered the time this boy in fourth grade got punched in the mouth because he called Stanley Harvey black in front of our white classmates. But when Lily said it, the word had something strong behind it. Something exciting. And I knew she got that from Nathan.
“I think I’ll get the part anyway,” I said, feeling brave and confident.
“Mmm.”
That sure was a downer. I ran that thoughtful “Mmm” through my head over and over. I wished she hadn’t said that. It told me there was something behind it that maybe I should pay attention to. Well, that certainly had me quiet as Jennifer and I walked down Angeles Vista toward the community center. She hadn’t come over until it was time to head to the center. Just as I’d thought.
Jennifer noticed something. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
As soon as we entered the auditorium, we saw that the entire first row was filled with kids sitting according to the role they were trying out for. There were eight girls in the “Julie Section” and six in the “Olivia Section.” I signed my name under “Olivia” on the roster that had been placed on a table by the door and sat down behind Carla. She turned around and regarded me with a smile that looked more like a sneer. I wanted to give her the finger, but I didn’
t. I just stared down at my script and pretended to read. I didn’t have to. I’d memorized the whole play—word for word.
I looked around for Anthony Cruz but didn’t see him. I wondered if he’d be trying out for a part—but I didn’t tell Jennifer what I was wondering.
Marcy Baker craned her neck and peered around the girl next to her to get a good look at me. I didn’t know why she was there, since she was too young to try out for anything. Her older sisters were wearing their hair alike. Big teased bubbles. Marcy rolled her eyes and giggled. Jilly and Deidre joined her.
Deidre got up and came over to me. She looked down and said, “There aren’t any colored parts in this play. Don’t you know that?”
“So?” I said.
“So why are you here?”
“You’re here,” I said. “And there aren’t any parts for bimbos.” She had no comeback. She returned to her seat in a huff. I couldn’t help smiling at my fast response.
Finally, a middle-aged woman in a blue plaid shirtwaist dress stepped forward. She tapped the mic a few times until she heard an echo. “Good morning, future thespians!” she said with enthusiasm. “My name is Mrs. Milay and I am the director of cultural activities at this center. I am so excited to be involved in our first teen play. I know you’re all anxious to get started, so let me introduce you to my assistant, Miss Marburn.”
My heart sank as I watched Miss Marburn approach. She was the same person who had nearly accused me of stealing someone’s wallet a few days before. Miss Marburn stepped forward and put her mouth too close to the mic. “Hi, everyone!” She scanned the room. She spotted me and her smile seemed to stiffen, but maybe that was just my imagination. She turned back to the mic and said, “So, future thespians, this is how it’s going to work: we are going to put you in scenes from the play that include as many roles as possible.” There was a ripple of excitement in the air. “That way, the audition should move along quickly and smoothly. At this point you don’t know what scene you’ll be in, so you just have to be ready for anything.”
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