Then once we got down to work, it seemed as if everyone had suddenly forgotten their lines or their blocking. And finally, right in the middle of things, the light board died and it took the tech crew twenty minutes to figure out how to bring the stage lights back up.
“All right, friends,” Mrs. Delany said. “It seems as if we’ve worn our cranky pants today, so let’s just try to end on a productive note.”
We gathered in an arc on the stage. I followed Annie even though she sat down near Paige and her posse. Maybe Mom had been right about cutting Annie some slack.
“All right,” Mrs. Delany said. “I have some notes before we go for the day.” Everyone pulled out their scripts and pencils.
Melted peppermint ice cream! “I forgot my script,” I whispered to Annie. “I left it in my locker.”
Paige glared at me. “Shhhh.”
“Can I share yours?” I asked Annie. She looked nervous but nudged her script a few inches my direction.
Paige raised her hand. “Mrs. Delany. Eliza doesn’t have her script.”
Mrs. Delany gave a tired smile, which made me feel even worse about forgetting. “Friends, what are rules number 3 through 5 for scripts?” she asked.
The group recited it together: “Always bring it to rehearsal.”
Mrs. Delany turned to me. “Looks like we get to experience another round of Diabolical Director!”
The rest of the group let out a small cheer. But all I could think was Oh no.
We’d played Diabolical Director when two other people had forgotten to bring their scripts. The rules went like this: the person who forgot their script stood in the middle of the circle, while each person took turns giving them a direction. The hard part was that you didn’t just do one thing; each direction got added to the previous ones. So by the time you made it around the whole circle, you had to memorize a couple dozen directions!
“You know the drill,” Mrs. Delany said to me. “Eliza Bing, do you accept the challenge that’s been placed before you?”
Even though she was asking, I knew there was no getting out of it. No one ever backed out of Diabolical Director, because it would show you weren’t a team player. And being a team player was, like, Rule 1 in theater.
Plus, I had to admit, it looked like a little fun to be in the middle. I agreed.
“All right! Everybody on your feet. Make a circle and make it snappy,” called Mrs. Delany.
In no time flat, I was surrounded. Mrs. Delany picked JJ to start things off.
“You are out for a stroll in the park,” he said. I began walking around the middle of the circle.
Vivian and Kate were next. “It’s a sunny day,” Kate said. I put my hand up to shield my eyes.
“It’s hot.”
I fanned myself with my other hand and kept walking.
The rest of the people in the circle weren’t quite as easy. Pretty soon, there was a marching band to dodge and someone handed me a kite to fly and then I noticed I was late, so I had to keep checking my fake watch every once in a while.
I did my best to keep up but it was like being a bouncy ball loose on the playground. When I forgot something, though, there was always someone to remind me.
“Don’t forget to hum the ‘Alphabet Song’!”
“Where’s your umbrella?” (Yep. It started “raining.”)
People laughed. But it was okay—I was laughing at myself, too. I was right; being in the middle was fun.
Well, it was until it was Annie’s turn to give me a direction. “Oh no! Watch out. You just stepped on a giant beehive!”
I couldn’t believe she said that! Annie knew I was afraid of bees. And now I had to hop around, pretending to get stung.
Monica took it from there. Her direction was “The bees are everywhere!” So I started swatting and hopping and dodging marching-band people and checking my watch and humming.
Paige was last. “And now you’re having an allergic reaction.”
Some people were laughing so hard they were rolled over, holding their sides.
How was I supposed to follow that direction? I started scratching like crazy.
“Aaannnd, that’s a wrap!” Mrs. Delany called. She shook my hand. “Thanks for being a good sport, Eliza. And please don’t forget your script again.”
Are you mad about the bees?” Annie asked after rehearsal.
I didn’t say anything.
“They weren’t real, you know,” she teased.
“Why did you pick something I’m afraid of?” I demanded.
“Paige says acting is about being vulnerable,” Annie said. “Plus, I thought it would be easy.”
“It wasn’t. It was hard,” I said.
“It wasn’t that hard,” she argued. “Besides, you did a great job. You always do.” She said this last part like she was annoyed.
We stared at each other. I had so many things I wanted to say. But this is what I blurted out: “Why are you still hanging out with her?”
“Who? Paige?”
“Yes. Paige. You said you were hanging out with her so you could get some tips,” I said, my voice shaking. “Don’t you have enough already?”
Annie shrugged. “She’s nice.” I made a face. “She is! You don’t know her like I do.”
I bit my bottom lip to keep it from trembling.
Annie stood up straighter. “Eliza. Don’t be jealous. You’re my best friend.”
It was the first time Annie had called me her best friend.
Too bad it didn’t feel like it.
To celebrate me getting my yellow belt over the summer, Mom had given me fifty dollars. She thought I’d buy a cake-decorating kit, but instead I bought a used kicking bag that Dad found for sale on a bulletin board on campus. There was tons of duct tape all over it, but it worked great when I wanted to practice kicks or punches. It definitely didn’t work for practicing hammer fists. I learned this the hard way the first time I hit the top and discovered there was a piece of hard plastic there. That’s why I was practicing for my board break on a throw pillow when Sam walked by my room Saturday afternoon.
“Yo, E. What’d your bed ever do to you?” he asked.
I ignored him and hit the pillow again. “Huuup!”
When he didn’t go away, I said, “My gold-belt test is in two weeks.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You wanna come watch?” I asked him. He hadn’t come to my first test, but I thought it was worth a shot.
“Can’t,” he said. “The marching band is in a Veterans Day parade that day.”
I hit the pillow a few more times. This time with more force. “Huuup! Huuup! Huuup!”
Sam kept standing there, watching. Which made me angrier.
“Why are you so mad?” he asked. “It’s not like I scheduled the band thing, you know.”
I stopped throwing hammer fists. “No. But your stupid band thing means Mom will miss it, too.”
“Hey! Band isn’t stupid.”
I started breathing hard. It was bad enough Sam wasn’t coming to the show and now Mom wasn’t going to come to my gold-belt test, either. And why hadn’t anyone bothered to tell me this before now? It was like I was an afterthought in my own family.
“Why does Mom always have to do your thing?” I said.
“She’s the band nurse, idiot.”
When Sam saw my face, he said, “Come on. You know I didn’t mean it.”
I did. But I went back to punching and concentrated on putting all my power into my fist anyway. It was better than crying in front of my brother.
“You’re being impossible,” Sam said.
“Go away. I’m busy.”
“Fine,” he said. But he didn’t leave. “Is there something I can do to help you get ready, at least?”
“You could let me hit you,”
I said. He knew I really wouldn’t hit him. Not only was he a foot taller, but taekwondo was about avoiding fights, not starting them.
Sam abruptly left. But he came back a few minutes later, carrying a roll of the red tape he used to tape up his drumsticks. “Move,” he said, bumping his hip into mine.
As I watched, he used the tape to make a bull’s-eye on the pillow. “Here,” he said, stepping back. “Now you have a better target.”
I was still mad.
On Sunday night, Mom sat at the kitchen table and studied the revised schedule Mrs. Delany sent home.
“Rehearsals are an hour longer,” I told her. Mrs. D had stressed how important it was to point that out to our parents.
“Ooo. That’ll work out great!” Mom said.
“It will?”
“Yeah. Starting next week, Dad should be able to pick you up.”
“But I ride with Annie.” (I was still mad at her about the bee thing, but how were we going to make up if we didn’t get to hang out by ourselves?)
“Well, now we don’t have to be a burden,” Mom said.
I wasn’t a burden. At least I didn’t think I was.
Tuesday was Halloween, so Mrs. Delany wore a yellow cowboy hat during rehearsal. Well, at least for part of rehearsal. She kept changing hats throughout the afternoon. At some point she had on: a top hat, a jester’s hat, a beanie with a propeller, and a knitted hat with a long yarn braid that was supposed to look like Rapunzel’s hair.
“Halloween is my favorite holiday!” she told us as she passed out fake vampire teeth at the end of the day. She made everyone line up and say “Trick or treat,” and then demanded a trick.
“Come on, friends! You have to think on your feet onstage,” she said.
Vivian told a joke. JJ did a handstand. Annie recited the alphabet backwards. For my trick, I whistled. I should have counted to ten in Korean instead, but I didn’t think of it until afterwards.
I showed Mom the teeth when I got home. She loved them. “You should wear them while we hand out candy,” she said. “Dad’s on Bear duty this year.” Bear went nuts when she saw costumes so someone had to hang out with her upstairs.
Mom brought out a blanket for us to sit on since our cement porch was chilly. (I skipped the vampire teeth; they made talking hard.) It felt strange handing out candy instead of collecting it. But I didn’t have anyone to go out with. Sam was off with his friends. I thought Annie might invite me over to her neighborhood—where it was a really big deal, practically a block party—but she didn’t. Which didn’t make any sense to me since she’d said I was her best friend just last week. Maybe she’d decided not to go this year.
Mom and I had been camped outside for about twenty minutes when Mrs. Kelly showed up carrying her two-year-old while her four-year-old ran ahead. The Kellys lived a few houses up the street from us.
“Trick or treat!” Chris, the four-year-old, said as he arrived at our step. His brother was dressed like a pumpkin. But instead of saying “Trick or treat,” he wailed and tightened his grip around Mrs. Kelly’s neck and hip.
Mom commented on Chris’s firefighter costume, thanked him for protecting the neighborhood, and put a couple of mini candy bars into his pail.
“Eliza,” Mrs. Kelly said. “I’m glad you’re home! I need a favor. The baby is having a meltdown. Would you want to take Chris around for a bit so he can get his candy? It would be such a huge help for me.”
“Of course,” I told her. “I’d love to.”
“Oh, thank you!” Mrs. Kelly knelt down and asked Chris if it’d be okay if I took him trick-or-treating.
Chris nodded and then looked at me. “But where’s your costume?” I ran inside and grabbed my apron, a wooden spoon, and a plastic mixing bowl. It wasn’t fancy, but I thought it was a pretty decent Sweet Caroline for a few minutes’ notice.
I took Chris’s hand and the two of us made our way down the block and back on the other side. Even though I didn’t say “Trick or treat,” a lot of the houses put candy in my bowl, too. When he was ready, I walked Chris back to his own house. He giggled when he rang his own doorbell.
“Thank you again, Eliza,” Mrs. Kelly said after Chris ran inside. “You’re a real lifesaver!”
I’d been called lots of things before. Spaz. Every Day Eliza. Quitter. Nimbus. Lifesaver felt so much better.
The week before my first belt test, Madison had warned me classes got more crowded closer to Test Day. She was right.
Master Kim and Miss Abigail were busy with two groups, so the rest of us were supposed to be working on our poomsae, or forms, on our own.
I ran through kicho ee bo a couple of times. Since I had messed it up in class and prompted Master Kim to give his “A good martial artist shows confidence at all times” talk, I’d been practicing. I did not want to mess up at the test. I’d gotten so confident that I could do the form facing any direction. I could even do it facing a corner. Miss Abigail once told a group of us that she’d seen Master Kim make black-belt students do their forms wearing blindfolds. But she might have been teasing.
I took a break. “Eliza?” Sophia asked. “Can you please help me with my form?”
“Sure,” I told her. The two of us walked to an open spot on the carpet.
“I can do the first part,” Sophia said. “But I can’t remember what comes in the middle.”
“Let’s do it together,” I said. “It’s always easier for me when I watch someone else. I’ll go slow.”
I stood a few feet in front of Sophia so she could watch me, and we went through her form. We were doing the last part when Master Kim came over. I kihaped extra loud. It always felt good to get his attention. Master Kim almost never gave out compliments.
“Those last punches should be to the torso, not the face,” Master Kim said.
Sophia lowered her punch in the air. I did, too. My cheeks burned.
“Sorry,” I muttered to Sophia after we’d returned to ready position.
Master Kim looked at me. “It was a mistake, Eliza. A good martial artist knows that a misstep is not something to be ashamed of but a chance to change direction.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and bowed.
“White belts, please make a line,” Master Kim called. Sophia and the rest of the white belts joined him to go over their form together.
I hightailed it to the side of the room to join the yellow and gold belts to wait for our turn.
“What’d’ya get that for?” a boy next to me asked, pointing at my Spirit Award patch. He was new and looked around seven. “It’s neat.”
I tried to ignore him. We weren’t supposed to be talking while we waited. The boy poked me. “How do you get one?”
I turned and raised my finger to my lips. His mouth made an Oh and then he nodded.
My cheeks were still warm about steering Sophia in the wrong direction. I hoped I didn’t confuse her too much. I also hoped Master Kim didn’t ask people to give their special patches back.
Annie and I were in the backseat of her mom’s car, going over my taekwondo flash cards. I was still trying to forget about the whole bee thing. Best friends forgive each other, right? Besides, Annie had chosen to hang out with me at the last two rehearsals.
“How do you say ‘hammer fist’?” Annie asked.
“Mejoomuk.”
“Right!”
“Well, it’s my board break,” I told her, and laughed. “I better know it.”
“You know what? I should come watch a class sometime,” Annie said. “Or try it out. If I’m going to be an actor, it might come in handy someday to know how to fight.”
The thought of Annie coming to a taekwondo class was exciting. But I was glad she didn’t suggest coming to watch my test. Tests were already nerve-wracking.
“Yeah,” I told her. “You could be an action hero.”
�
�I’d need a stage name, though,” she said. “Annie Young-Mays doesn’t sound very tough.”
I agreed with her, but her mom fake-complained from the front seat. “You’re awfully cheeky for a girl who needs my permission to get her ears double-pierced,” Mo-mo said.
“You’re getting your ears pierced again?” I asked. “When?”
Annie chewed the edge of her thumb. “Um. Tomorrow. After rehearsal.”
“That’s cool,” I told her. “I’ve wanted to get my ears pierced since forever. I beg my mom every birthday and Christmas, but she worries about them getting infected.”
“I’d invite you, but Paige’s mom is driving,” Annie said. “And I don’t think there’s enough room since a few other people from the cast are going, too. The moms are meeting us there to sign the forms and then going out for coffee.”
I suddenly felt bad for me and Mom. We were both getting left out.
“It’s okay,” I told Annie, turning away from her a bit. “My mom has to work anyway. Things are always super crazy at the ER on Fridays.”
Annie looked relieved. “Thanks for understanding.”
Mo-mo glanced in the rearview mirror. “Annie was supposed to tell you that we won’t be able to give you a ride home,” she said to me. “Did she let you know?”
I shook my head. Apparently there were a couple of things Annie didn’t tell me.
Why so glum, chum?” Dad asked me after dinner. He and Mom were doing the dishes. They did that sometimes, even though we had a dishwasher. They called it a married couple’s date. (Mom washed, Dad dried.)
I told him about Annie not being able to give me a ride the next day, though I didn’t tell him why. “I guess I’ll just have to miss rehearsal and ride the bus.”
“Tell you what,” Dad said. “How about I play hooky from my last class? That way you can go to rehearsal, and I’ll pick you up.”
Eliza Bing Is (Not) a Star Page 12