Eliza Bing Is (Not) a Star

by Carmella Van Vleet

  The girl studied us. I pretended I was playing the “I love you, baby” game and kept my face neutral. After a few seconds, she shrugged. “All right, whatever,” she said, and walked away.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  “No problem,” Annie said. “Now shake it off. We’ve got a list to look at!”

  Annie and I made our way to the music room. The closer we got, the more nervous I became. What if Annie got a part and I didn’t? I guessed I could sign up for the tech crew, but it wouldn’t be the same. Annie said the tech crew didn’t even start coming to rehearsals until the last few weeks. How could I be the best best friend ever if I didn’t get to be with Annie?

  There was a smallish crowd around the list, so we waited our turn. Annie grabbed my hand and we inched forward. At the very top of the page was:

  Cinder Ellen……Paige Abraham.

  No big surprise there. Paige was a professional, after all. She’d been on TV. I could’ve been on TV once. Over the summer, they filmed a Sweet Caroline Cakes episode at the community center’s cake-decorating class. The class my parents wouldn’t let me take.

  Annie found her name in the middle of the list. “I’m the Nosy Neighbor!” She let go of my hand and hugged me.

  “Yay!” I said.

  Annie stopped hugging me, grabbed my hand again, and we checked the list.

  “Look! Under ‘Ensemble,’ ” she said. “You’re Little Pig No. 3.”

  Wait. What?

  “I got a part?” I asked. “For real?”

  Annie pointed at the list again. “It’s right there in black and white. See? I knew we’d both get parts. I knew it! Oh man, this is awesome. It’s fate!”

  I thought “fate” was a bit dramatic. But who cared? I got a part, and now Operation BBF was still on!

  Annie and I moved out of the way so other people could check the list. At the very bottom, Mrs. Delany had written the date of the first rehearsal. There was also a note from her thanking everyone for auditioning and letting people know that if they didn’t get a part, she hoped they’d please consider signing up for crew.

  Annie and I practically ran to the parking lot and said goodbye. Thankfully my bus wasn’t done loading, so I jumped in the line.

  A pack of eighth graders walked by. (Rules to Surviving Sixth Grade No. 17: Don’t talk to eighth graders unless they talk to you first.)

  “Hey, Paige!” I called. She stopped and looked around. “Congratulations on getting the lead,” I told her. I was breaking the rule, but I didn’t care. I was excited about the cast list.

  Her friends pretended not to hear me. But Paige looked right at me.

  “Thanks, Eliza,” she said. Then she swung her ponytail and led the pack away.

  Paige knew my name. That was a good thing, right?

  Mom came home from work with a store-bought cake.

  “Well,” she asked, “is this a congratulatory cake or a consolatory cake?”

  I wasn’t sure what the second kind of cake was, but since I’d made the cast list I knew it was the first.

  My family cheered when I told them. Well, okay, Sam just gave me a fist bump and said, “Cool.”

  Mom had frosting in a tube, too. I wanted to decorate the cake (I was the expert, after all), but she insisted on piping out “Congrats!” herself.

  “It’s not every day that your daughter lands a role in the school play,” she said.

  “It’s a small role,” I told her. “I probably don’t even have any lines.”

  “There are no small roles,” Mom declared. “Only small actors!” I rolled my eyes at her.

  Mom asked when the play was and I told her I didn’t know yet. “Well, just let me know as soon as possible so I can ask for the night off.”

  Mom hardly ever took time off. In fact, the last time I remember her doing that was when I fell down the stairs and went to her ER. That was fun. Not the ER or the getting-X-rays-of-my-butt part. But Mom, Dad, and I had a pizza party while we waited in the exam room. And when we got home, Mom sat on the couch next to me until I went to bed.

  “Will you come to the play?” I asked Sam.

  He shrugged. “Sure thing, E. I bet Megan would go, too.” A tiny sigh escaped before I could catch it.

  “So what about me?” Dad teased. “Don’t you care if your favorite dad shows up? I’m hurt.”

  I laughed. “Okay. What about you?” I asked him. “Are you going to come, too?”

  “Do monkeys have tails?” Dad asked. It was an old family joke. (FYI, the answer is yes.)

  During taekwondo on Monday, I noticed that my nail polish was chipped on my left big toe. I tried to push it out of my brain. Master Kim was watching. Plus, I needed to be concentrating on counting jumping jacks. Everyone was taking turns and I was next.

  “Hana, dool, set, net, dasut,” the yellow belt to the right of me counted. He kept going until he got to ten. “Yasut, ilgop, yuldol, ahop, yul!”

  Counting to twenty was part of my gold-belt test requirements. It wasn’t too hard since all you had to remember was to add yul, or “ten,” in front of all the numbers.

  “Yul hana, yul dool, yul set,” I called out, remembering to count slowly and loudly, “yul net, yul dasut, yul yasut, yul ilgop, yul yuldol, yul ahop…seumul!”

  I had trouble remembering what twenty was at first. But then Dad pointed out that “seumul” sounded kinda like “Samuel.” “So,” he said, “just think to yourself, ‘I don’t need twenty brothers, I already have one. Samuel!’ ” Dad was really good at coming up with mnemonic devices. (Those are tricks to help you remember something.) Maybe I’d have him help me memorize my lines for the play. That is, 1) if I had any and 2) if he wasn’t too busy.

  “Class, make two lines,” Master Kim called. I got in Miss Abigail’s line. Miss Abigail was a teenage black belt. I saw her do a flying side kick over two people at a demonstration during the summer. It was so cool that it made me want to come back to class after I’d thought I was going to quit.

  “We will be practicing our board breaks,” Master Kim announced. Everyone got excited when he picked out two re-breakable boards. Those were plastic boards that had interlocking tabs down the middle so you could break them and put them back together. Master Kim handed Miss Abigail one.

  I watched as everyone in front of me practiced. (As Master Kim says, “a good martial artist focuses their mind and body.”) Each belt level had their own board break. When it was my turn, Miss Abigail asked what my break was so she could position the board. It was our responsibility to know our test requirements.

  “I have hammer fist, ma’am,” I said.

  We normally practiced on kicking paddles or small, padded shields. I’d never practiced on a re-breakable board before. It was about the same size and thickness as a real board. I wondered what it would feel like to hit it.

  I stepped back into a fighting stance and balled my right hand into a fist. All I had to do was to raise it up and then bring it down on the board like my hand was the head of a hammer. I kihaped. “Huuup!”

  Owwww!

  The edge of my hand stung like crazy. I pulled it back immediately and inspected my pinky.

  “You okay?” Miss Abigail asked. I shook my hand to show her it hurt, but she just held the board up again.

  “Give it another try,” she said.

  I made a fist, pulled it back, and tried again. But my hand just smacked the board and bounced off. I rubbed the side of my hand.

  “You’re not following through,” Miss Abigail said. “Aim past the board.”

  But that wasn’t the problem. That was something I learned over the summer. You had to imagine aiming your kick or punch past something, not at it. The problem was that I had to take my first test in the summer with an injury. I didn’t want to break myself again.

  “It’ll hurt,” I tol
d Miss Abigail.

  She gave me a sympathetic smile. “Remember, what you feed, grows.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s an expression,” she said. “It means you’re paying attention to your fear. Pay attention to your technique instead.”

  I tried one more time.

  Smack! Owww!

  “Don’t worry,” Miss Abigail said brightly. “We’ll keep working on it.”

  That was easy for her to say. She had a black belt tied around her waist.

  Everyone crowded around Mrs. Delany on the stage.

  “First off, let me thank you all for being here and give you a big congratulations,” she said. “I can’t tell you how excited I am you’re going to be a part of this fall’s production. We only have nine weeks to prepare, but I’m confident because this is the most talented group I’ve ever had!”

  Annie leaned in and whispered, “I bet she says that every year.” I giggled. And so did a few other people who overheard her. But no one seemed to mind.

  “Now, I’ve been a director long enough to know that none of you are going to listen to anything else I have to say until I pass out the scripts,” Mrs. Delany continued. “So queue up, and let’s do my favorite thing—the traditional Passing of the Scripts!”

  Annie and I were in the middle of the line. It wasn’t like at taekwondo, though. At taekwondo, everyone was quiet and waited patiently. Onstage, everyone talked and bounced and swayed like helium balloons on strings.

  “Here you go, Eliza,” Mrs. Delany said when she handed me my copy.

  Holy honeybees! I loved how the script felt in my hand. It was a little bigger than a paperback book (only not nearly as thick) and had a pale blue cover. There was a drawing of a ball gown and a barn on it. Across the middle was Cinder Ellen: A Fractured Fairy Tale of Barnyard Proportions. And at the bottom: Written by Tabitha Delany. The best part? The spine creaked when I opened it. Getting to be the first person to open a book is like getting to be the first person to walk outside after it snows.

  Mrs. Delany said she’d give everyone time to read the script and explore their parts. Annie and I parked ourselves in a corner, sitting back to back.

  “This reminds me of sleepaway camp,” Annie joked. “We used to sit this way when we ran out of camp chairs.” I’d never been to sleepaway camp. Shoot. I’d never even had a sleepover. I wanted to invite Annie but I worried she wouldn’t want to come.

  The two of us took turns reading our character descriptions out loud. Annie was Nosy Neighbor. The description was “cranky, gray-haired lady, calls the police about party noise.”

  Annie sighed and turned around so we were facing each other.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s just that it sounds a little boring.”

  “Are you kidding?” I said. “You get to be a villain. That sounds like fun.”

  Annie smiled. “You’re right.”

  “Plus,” I added, “someone has to call. It’s an important role.”

  I didn’t know if this was actually true since we hadn’t read the whole script yet. But it sounded believable and I wanted Annie to be as excited as I was. Best friends want each other to be happy.

  “What does your description say?” Annie asked.

  “Mine says funny and talkative,” I read, “the baby of the group.”

  “That’s you!” Annie said.

  “Do we have any lines?” I wondered.

  “Let’s see!”

  Annie and I raced through the pages. “Found one!” Annie exclaimed a few minutes later. We high-fived. “And here’s three more!”

  “I’ve got three,” I told her.

  “How many words altogether?” Annie asked.

  I counted. “Twelve.”

  “Twelve? For three lines?”

  “Well, one of the lines is just me saying ‘Gesundheit’ after someone sneezes.”

  “I’ve got twenty-nine words.”

  I wasn’t sure why Annie cared about how many lines or words we got to say. Maybe there was something in her theater book I should know about. I decided to ask Mom and Dad if I could get my own copy.

  1) Write your name in it.

  2) Treat it with care: no eating around it or tossing it around. (“Water is okay as long as it’s in a water bottle.”)

  3) Always bring it to rehearsal.

  4) Always bring it to rehearsal.

  5) Always bring it to rehearsal.

  After dinner, I pulled out the form we got at the end of rehearsal.

  “We’re supposed to write down scheduling conflicts we have so Mrs. Delany can plan accordingly,” I told Mom.

  Mom grabbed the family calendar off the wall. The first thing she did was mark opening night and draw a big star around it. “Football season will be over by then, so we don’t have to worry about a game. But we won’t be able to go to the Saturday matinee. Sam and I have the Battle of the Marching Bands competition that day.” Mom went to all the marching-band events to tape up twisted ankles or help if someone passed out.

  “So. Looks like you have rehearsals on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays,” Mom continued. “That works out great since taekwondo is on Mondays and Wednesdays. For once, the stars are aligned in our favor.” Mom made a note in each box and then highlighted them. Everyone had their own color highlighter. Mine was pink. Sam’s was blue. Mom’s was yellow. And Dad’s was green. It made our calendar look like a weird rainbow puzzle.

  “It’ll be a challenge, but that should work out,” she said, more to herself than to me. “I might have to ask Annie’s mom if you can carpool with them, though. And we’ll have to pay Mrs. Parker.” (At least she didn’t add “to babysit.” I wasn’t a baby.)

  Mom turned to Dad. “Honey, do you think you’ll be able to leave right after class on Tuesdays so you can beat the traffic?”

  Dad frowned. “I can’t. My new seminar starts next week and it’s on Tuesdays.”

  Mom stopped highlighting and looked up. “What do you mean?”

  “My new seminar at school,” Dad said. But Mom only stared.

  “You know? The one I told you about,” Dad said.

  “You most certainly did not,” Mom said.

  I squirmed in my seat. Being in the play seemed to complicate things.

  “Yes. I did,” Dad said evenly. “I won’t be able to get home on Tuesdays until five-thirty. At the earliest.”

  “But who’s going to be here for Eliza?” Mom asked. “My shift doesn’t end until five and Sam has band practice. We can’t keep imposing on poor Mrs. Parker.”

  No one said anything for a good thirty seconds. They didn’t expect me to quit the play, did they?

  “Um. I could stay home alone,” I offered. “It went okay last time.”

  Mom chewed her lower lip.

  “I didn’t burn down the house or get kidnapped or anything,” I said.

  Dad laughed. “It’s true. There wasn’t any bloodshed.”

  Mom was still stone-faced.

  “It’s only for a couple of hours,” I said. “I can do it.” And I really meant it.

  Finally, she gave in. “I guess we don’t have much choice.”

  I wished she sounded more confident. But it was a start. And I’d just have to prove she could trust me.

  Heads up, you have to warm up in theater just like you do at taekwondo class.

  “Okay, friends,” Mrs. Delany called. “Our bodies are our instruments, so let’s wake up those muscles and tune those voice boxes!”

  Annie and I found spots near each other and gave ourselves room like Mrs. Delany instructed.

  “Let’s shake!” Mrs. Delany called. “Noggins first!” Then she demonstrated by moving her head side to side and all around.

  I looked around. The kids who’d been in plays before start
ed moving right away. They didn’t seem to care how silly they looked. Annie caught my eye and then shrugged. The two of us began nodding our heads, too. A little at first, then more.

  It wasn’t like when I got caught in the safety shower. No one was paying attention to me. Everyone was busy doing their own thing.

  “Now shake those arms!” Mrs. Delany called. “Get those hands moving, too!” We all stopped shaking our heads and began flailing our arms instead.

  For the next minute or so, Mrs. Delany called out body parts and we shook them.

  “Arms!”

  “Legs!”

  “Try your torso!”

  “Now just your elbows!”

  Then suddenly Mrs. Delany yelled, “Earthquake!”

  The veteran theater kids were all shaking everything at once and staggering around like the ground was moving. A kid nearby bumped into Annie, who then bumped into me. The two of us joined the “earthquake” and laughed along with everyone else.

  After Mrs. Delany got us settled, she had us stand up straight and put our hands on our belly buttons. When we breathed in, we were supposed to use our lungs to push on our hands to make sure we were using our full lung capacity.

  “Everybody say ‘Ow,’ ” Mrs. Delany called.

  “Ow.”

  “Everybody say ‘Wow,’ ” she said.

  “Wow.”

  “One more!”

  “Wow.”

  “Put it all together now.”

  “Ow wow wow!”

  We did a few more sound chants. (Pah-teak-ca! Bah-teak-ca!) As long as Annie and I didn’t look at each other, I could do it without cracking up.

  Mrs. Delany declared we were sufficiently warm, and we all sat down in a semicircle on the stage. There were twenty-six people in the cast. (Annie said it was lucky to have an even number, and since my favorite number [four] was even, I thought so, too.)

  “Today, we’ll be doing one of my favorite things,” Mrs. Delany said. “A read-through!”

  I quickly figured out this meant we’d be reading the play out loud together.