by Beth Ain
I laugh because she called Charlotte Stinkytown, which is really not something grown-ups are supposed to do. “George,” I say, “come soon.”
“As fast as I can, Eddie,” she says. I hand the phone back to my mom, and when I turn around, my dad has put down a placemat in front of my stool at the island. Then he puts down a small plate with a garlicky pile of stir-fried chicken and brown rice! I eat it all up slowly, and I try not to think about anything that’s bothering me. Not the moving-up play, not the sitcom taping, not Charlotte moving. And definitely not the toothpaste taste in my mouth that is making the stir-fry taste more minty than I think it is supposed to be.
playing hooky, dancing on
countertops, and other ways
to shrug off real life
I wake up and am very happy that I have already met my TV family and that the read-through is over. Getting that over with made me more tired than any handstand contest I have ever done. I am also happy that I do not have to go to school and watch Charlotte hog up the whole entertainers skit, while Elinor doesn’t even come close to hooting and hollering.
I am very frustrated that my Elinor project hasn’t worked out, and that just because Charlotte might move to a house with a basement, she is being more terrible than ever.
My mom and I run off to rehearsal at the studio this time, where they made a whole set that looks exactly like that fancy townhouse!
The first thing I start to understand today is that my TV family isn’t just the other actors, it is all the people who help make the show. There are camera people, and lighting people, and the writers who make up what we say, and the writers who actually write our lines in very big handwriting on cards. They are kind of like a community, I think, like our classroom, or a city. Best of all, though, they are all funny and nice, which is especially good since today I need to actually act out all those words in parentheses, not just say them.
Besides that, my mom has taken an entire day off of work and I know she is in the middle of putting together a big gallery show and I feel afraid that I will not be good at being Sylvie and she will be very frustrated.
I see Jordana sitting in a corner with earbuds in and her eyes closed, and then I see John McCarthy laughing his belly laugh with all the camera guys, and his mom is on the phone, chatting. Everyone seems like they know their place, like they belong here.
“Hi,” my mom says, sitting down next to me.
“Hi,” I say quietly.
“Are you nervous?” she asks.
“I’m afraid of Jordana,” I say.
“She’s a moody teenager,” my mom says.
“You probably should be afraid of her.”
I laugh. “Let’s talk about something else,” I say.
“Like what?” she asks.
And then I remember! “Like, why does Elinor have to be sad? And why does she seem mad at me about it? All I did was try to get her into a hooting-and-hollering group for the moving-up skit, and she said, ‘Fine, I’ll just do what I’m told.’ Or something like that.”
“Hmmm,” my mom says. “Sounds like something is bothering her.”
“Well, yeah, but what? She’s so perfect, I can’t even imagine what could be wrong.”
“I bet you could imagine if you really gave it some thought, Julesie. She just moved here all the way from London and she had to start a brand-new school in the middle of the year and there is an ocean in between her and her father, right?”
“Right,” I say. “So she’s homesick?”
“Maybe.”
“But this is her home now,” I say.
“Well, maybe she’s having some trouble adjusting. Maybe she misses her dad. And maybe she feels like an outsider. Kind of the way you feel right now, maybe.” I think about leaving New York City with only my mom and moving to a whole new country, and I think I would be horribly, grossly sick. I feel sorry for not knowing this about Elinor, but I don’t even have a chance to think about how to fix it because there is a sitcom to put on.
“Okay, everybody — places!” The director says this and I realize now that I could not have been the moving-up-play director. You have to talk very loud to be a director. I would be one very red-hot-faced director. We spend a whole lot of time reading our lines over and over, and even though I get to like being Sylvie more and more, I don’t think anyone thinks I’m doing a very good job. Here is why I think this:
1. There are a lot of takes when I say my lines. a take is like a do-over, and I love them.I wish I could use them in real life.
2. There is a lot of whispering after I say my lines, and I know it’s the bad kind of whispering, like “she’s not anYThInG like Colby said she was” kind of whispering. and they are right.
3. I’m not anything like John McCarthy, who is just so good at acting and saying his funny lines that I even hear my mom laughing, and I’m definitely not like Jordana, who is very, very serious and scary, but who does a very good job of being Sydney. Such a good job that I forget she’s serious and scary when I’m doing a scene with her.
We take a five-minute break before the final scene, and I feel like this is the most important five-minute break of my life. Somehow, in these five minutes, I have to figure out how to be better at this than I’ve ever been at anything.
I look around for my mom, because she is the only one who can fix me at times like this, but I don’t see her anywhere and I feel all alone. I glance over at Jordana, who has put her earbuds back in, and before I can turn away, she catches me looking at her and I feel like I am going to faint. I stare at the ground now and pray my mom gets back pronto.
I feel a tap on my shoulder, and it isn’t a mom tap. Jordana sits down next to me.
“What’s your name, again?” she asks.
“Jules,” I say.
“I keep hearing that you’re something special, but I’m not gonna lie. I don’t get it.”
“I know,” I say. I want to cry because she has just told me I am not special, but I DO NOT cry.
“I mean, I’m sure you’re great, but you’re just so nervous all the time, and if they don’t find the right girl for this Sylvie thing, we’re all going to be out of work. So, how can I help?”
“I don’t think I’m anything like Sylvie,” I say.
“So what?” she says, and I really can’t believe how this pretty southern accent can sound so mean coming out of Jordana’s mouth. “That’s the whole point of being an actress,” she says. “You get to try on other people all the time. Do I seem like a bubbly, boy-crazy, empty-headed teenage girl to you?” she asks.
“I guess not,” I say. “You’re definitely not bubbly.” I can’t believe I say this, but it just comes out.
Jordana laughs, and I see that maybe she isn’t always serious. “Want to know what I do before I have to perform?” she asks me.
“What?” I say.
“I try to get in the mood of my character, and I think Sydney is always in an empty-headed-teenager kind of mood.” She takes one of her earbuds and sticks it in my ear. There is a very boy-crazy-teenager-type song on. I love this song. “What kind of mood do you think Sylvie is in?”
I shrug again, and wish I could stop shrugging and start knowing the right answers to things.
“I think Sylvie is in a get-up-and-dance-like-a-maniac-with-her-big-sister kind of mood. Don’t you think so?” Jordana asks.
I think for a minute about what she said about trying on other people, and then I think about George’s positive affirma-whatever-she-called-them, and I say, in a loud, clear Sylvie voice, “Okay, yeah!”
Jordana stands up, and I have to stand up with her or my earbud will fall out. “Come on, we’re connected now. If I dance, you dance!” she says, hopping up and down and throwing her hands in the air to the music. I have no choice. I start to jump up and down, too, which makes me laugh, and all of a sudden I am belly-laughing and dancing and everyone is watching and I don’t even care. I like it. I like this dancing-and-laughing-in-front-of
-everyone person named Sylvie.
“Places!” I hear out of my empty ear.
We stop dancing and straighten ourselves out.
“Thanks, Jordana,” I say.
“Sure,” she says. “Now don’t mess this up for me.”
Moody is the word, all right. I look at my mom, who is finally back from the bathroom, and I don’t feel nervous or alone anymore.
“Remember when you liked our old apartment?” Spencer asks Sydney and Sylvie.
“Oh, yeah, I just loved it,” Sydney says. “Loved having to blow-dry my hair in the kitchen because we only had one bathroom. Oh, and I especially loved the mice!”
“Oh, yeah,” Sylvie (me) says. “And you know what was the best part of all? Sharing a room with you and your powder-fresh feet. That was my favorite.” Sarcasm. I did it!
Everyone giggles a little at this. Then I have to finish the whole scene by jumping on the kitchen counter and singing the words, “That was then, look at us now!” at the top of my lungs. Only, the first time I try to hoist myself up, I slide right back down and land on my bottom. Really hard. And it hurts. And it’s in front of everyone. But I am not Jules right now, so I don’t get upset. I do not have shaky knees, or butterflies, or a red-hot face. I just laugh so hard I actually snort (snort!) in front of everyone, and they all laugh, too.
“Take two!” I say in my loud Sylvie voice. And this time, I hoist myself right on up, and it feels like I’m in someone else’s body. Sylvie’s body, I think. And when I sing out those words at the top of my lungs, I throw my hands up in the air like a star, and then I look right at the camera and say, “Cha-cha-cha!” Everyone cheers, and I am very happy because I wasn’t supposed to cha-cha-cha, the same way I wasn’t supposed to cha-cha-cha at the Swish audition, and we all know how that turned out.
“There it is!” the director says now.
I look around. “There what is?” I ask.
“The star we’ve been looking for. Colby was right, you’ve got a lot of star power for a quiet little girl.” Then he looks over at the person holding the big cards with our lines on them and says, “Add cha-cha-cha to the scene. That’s a wrap for today, everybody.”
This has been one of the best days of my whole life. My mom comes running over and gives me a big hug and she looks like she might cry, in a good way. “What happened? Where did that come from?” she asks me.
“From my moody big sister,” I say, looking around for Jordana. She is already halfway out the door when I spot her. I want to thank her but there isn’t time.
She just says, “See y’all Tuesday!” and she’s gone.
I turn to my mom. “Tuesday?”
“Don’t freak out,” she says. “They want to shoot the show for real Tuesday morning.”
“But the moving-up show . . .” I say.
“I’ve already told the director,” she says.
“We are going to do our best to make it but, Jules, this is the business. You might have to miss it. It depends on how the shoot goes. Okay?”
“It couldn’t have been Field Day, huh?”
My mom laughs at this. “That sounds like something Sylvie would say.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
acting your grade,
tugging it out, and the right
weather for boots
“How can I make Elinor less homesick?” I ask my parents early Monday morning. I haven’t spoken to Elinor since Thursday. We didn’t even run into her and her mom at hippo playground, since we spent the whole entire weekend doing restaurant-opening things and running errands, which doesn’t ever feel at all like running. It should be called moving-like-snails-because-you-have-a-four-year-old-with-you errands.
“Just by being her friend,” my mom says.
“And making new memories,” my dad says. “But it takes a lot of time, Jules. You aren’t going to be able to fix this one on your own.”
I get nervous that Elinor made all kinds of new memories without me on Friday, and that she and Stinkytown have become best friends, and that Charlotte Stinkytown Pinkerton will be the reason Elinor is happy inside and out, all because I couldn’t figure out that what she needs is new memories. Duh.
Right before I walk into the classroom, I stop and close my eyes. I picture Elinor and Charlotte all made up in shiny, fruity lip gloss and whispering secrets to each other about all of the funny things that happened in rehearsal on Friday. I open my eyes, hold my breath, and walk inside.
“Hi, Jules!” Elinor says when she sees me.
Phew! I think.
“How was it?” she asks.
“Yeah, tell us about your fake family,” Teddy says.
“Well, they live in a mansion and they don’t really have parents. Well, they do, but they aren’t really on the show because they are celebrities and they drive all around the city in a car — like, to the movies in a car.”
Teddy and Elinor laugh at this, and I am glad that they live in the same New York City I do.
“And I even have to get up on a kitchen counter and sing,” I say.
“You are going to do that?” Teddy asks.“You, Jules Bloom? In front of everyone?”
“I already did it.”
“Do it for us,” Elinor says.
“Sure,” I say. But I can’t do it in front of them. It feels funny. I’m Jules in this classroom, not Sylvie. So, in a whisper-singing voice, I say, “That was then, look at us now!”
My friends are smiling at me.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Teddy says. I give him a small push.
“Hola, Jules,” Ms. Leon says. “Welcome back.”
“Hola,” I say.
“We got a lot done on Friday, but I think if we just run through the show once, you’ll do fine. But we have to hurry, because Field Day starts very soon!”
It is about 300 degrees outside, but they have not changed their minds about this Field Day idea.
“Okay, vamos!” Ms. Leon says. “Places!”
We all get up, and Ms. Leon shows me my spot and gives me the lines we worked on. I feel very bad that I might not be here for the real espectáculo, since I like the skits so much. But then I realize when I read my first line that my voice is still kind of shaky. I thought that all that acting I did last week would have fixed this problem.
“Weren’t you acting in a TV show on Friday?” Charlotte asks. “I think we need a new narrator.”
I feel like I might throw up.
“Charlotte,” Ms. Leon says, “there is no excuse for that.”
“Why not? Jules said I shouldn’t be the music teacher when she knows I should be.
Even her own best friend knew Jules was wrong.”
I am very mad at Charlotte, and very embarrassed, and very mad at Elinor all over again because she still doesn’t know that the only reason I even cared about her part in the show was because I wanted her to hoot and holler and to just feel happy.
“I didn’t say Jules was wrong,” Elinor says. I forgive her right away.
“Okay, girls,” Ms. Leon says. “Tomorrow is your moving-up play. How about we act like we are good and ready for third grade? How about Jules does the best job she can as narrator, and Charlotte does her best, and so on. That’s all we can ask of each other.”
“Fine,” Charlotte says. “But —” Ms. Leon just looks at her and she decides to stop talking.
I just nod my head and feel very left out for the whole rest of the rehearsal. I can’t believe it, but I am glad when they blow the Field Day whistle over the loudspeaker and we go outside. Even Hippity Hopping in 300-degree heat feels better than being locked in a classroom with Stinkytown.
We are split into groups, and even though we are told that there are no winners or losers, and that we are just supposed to have fun, I am happy that Teddy and I are up against the ABC’s in tug-of-war. Luckily, we have Lucas on our team, who is bigger than the usual second grader, and luckily, we have Teddy’s brain on our team, who tells us Lucas shoul
d be in the way back. I look at Charlotte and stick my tongue out, and then I pray no one else saw me do this. Then she sticks her tongue out, and I don’t know why but I think the whole thing is kind of funny.
All of this leads to me pulling the absolute hardest I have ever pulled on anything ever. Everyone is shouting and cheering, and my sneakers are slipping in the dirt, and I see the rope inching toward the ABC’s, and I feel Teddy pulling ahead of me and Lucas pulling behind me, and then all of a sudden, we pull so hard, the ABC’s come flying toward us and we all end up in a heap. We won!
I start to cheer until I see that Charlotte is crying. She goes and sits under a tree and pulls her knees up to her chest. I start to walk over to her.
“She’s probably going to say something mean,” Teddy shouts as I walk.
“Maybe she will,” I say.
“What do you want, Jules?” Charlotte asks with her head buried in her knees.
“How did you know it was me? You can’t even see,” I say.
“I can see your ridiculous high-tops through my legs. You are the only person who could be attached to those. Just like you are the only one who could be the narrator and you are the only one who gets to be an actress and you just get whatever you want.”
“You get to be the music teacher and sing ‘Do-Re-Mi.’ I didn’t know you wanted to be anything else,” I say.
“It’s not that,” she says.
“Are you sad because you’re moving to Long Island?” I ask.
She finally looks up at me. “We MIGHT be moving,” she says. “And they didn’t even ask me. They just drove us out there and started showing us houses with creepy basements, and Ella crawled all around every one of them, loving every second of it, and it’s because she doesn’t know that we belong here because she’s only one year old, and you can’t know that New York City is the best place when you’re only one year old.”