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.”
Some of the kids laughed nervously and looked at each other.
I swallowed.
Carla looked back at me and rolled her eyes.
Miss Marburn continued, “I just want you to have fun! Remember, this is meant to be fun!” That’s the way she wanted us to think about this audition—each and every one of us, according to her. She stopped and gave us all a special stare. When her eyes alighted on me for the second time, they lingered just a tiny bit, but I caught them. Then she gave me a big, fake, bright-eyed smile. And I thought, That’s what they can do. They can think bad things about you and plaster over it with a big false smile.
The first scene was in the cafeteria where Julie is asking Chet, her boyfriend, to get her another piece of cake and he’s telling her that the last time he did that for her, Miss Brown, the cafeteria lady, caught him and threatened to write him up. Olivia, from her place in the attic, does her soliloquy about how Julie uses the doting Chet and what Julie really thinks of him. Tish, Best Friend Number Two, is also in the scene and, doing Julie’s bidding, urges Chet to get the cake. Miss Brown, the cafeteria lady, is standing at the register.
A girl I didn’t recognize was called up as Julie, some boy I’d never seen before was Chet, and Carla was Olivia. Carla suddenly didn’t look quite so glib. And I didn’t feel so glib, either. My mouth felt dry. And was Anthony Cruz going to show up to try out for anything or not?
They all had their scripts in their hands. Even with scripts, the kids playing Julie and Chet had to be prompted several times. What was with them? Had they just heard about auditions this morning and decided to mosey on by? How could people be so casual?
A girl whom I’d seen at the center the first time Jennifer and I had gone there was trying out as Julie’s friend Tish. She’d been called up for the scene where Tish asks Julie if she could please take a babysitting job for her so she can go to her grandmother’s eightieth birthday celebration, and Julie says she already has to babysit her niece. It’s a lie, of course.
Then Deidre was called up for the role of Olivia. I stopped breathing for a few seconds. When Jennifer was called as Julie, I sat up straight and willed her to do great. Two more kids trying out for the roles of Miss Ornsby, the English teacher, and Chet, the boyfriend were called up as well.
I was on the edge of my seat. Deidre gave an absolutely wooden performance. She didn’t know her lines. Even when prompted, she couldn’t find her place. Miss Marburn had to point it out to her. It was a beautiful thing to watch.
And it was wonderful to see Jennifer give a perfect audition as Julie. She got the scene where she approaches her teacher for the recommendation while Chet waits in the hall. When Miss Marburn attempted to hand Jennifer the script, Jennifer said sweetly, “Oh, I don’t need that. I know all of Julie’s lines.” Miss Marburn stepped back, turned to the assembly, and said, “I’m impressed.”
A shiver passed through me. If she was impressed with Jennifer, she was going to be doubly impressed with me because I knew my lines and everyone else’s too. I could prompt them each time they stumbled. I sighed and felt a warm sense of satisfaction. I just had to wait.
And wait, because I wasn’t being called up. I was watching everyone else get summoned to the stage to audition for the roles they’d signed up for, but I wasn’t hearing my name. Then Mrs. Milay was thanking everyone for coming and trying out and that the results would be posted in about a week’s time and everybody should be patient and . . . Jennifer looked back at me and frowned. She jumped up and motioned to me to join her. Then she led the way to where Miss Marburn was writing something on a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard.
“Miss Marburn, Sophie didn’t get called,” Jennifer blurted out.
Miss Marburn looked up. “What, dear?”
Jennifer, her face flushed, and seemingly almost overcome with emotion, said, “You didn’t call Sophie. She’s trying out for Olivia.”
“Oh?”
I couldn’t speak. I could only stand there swallowing again and again and breathing fast. I was trying not to cry. Because whatever mean thing she was going to do, she would cover it up with smiles and “dears,” and “I’m so sorrys.”
Instead, she slapped her forehead and said, “Oh, my mistake!”
I was filled with relief. I watched Miss Marburn look around a bit helplessly. Kids were filing out of every exit door of the auditorium. She turned back to me, shrugged, and widened her eyes as if helpless.
“No, no,” Jennifer said hurriedly. “We can do the scene where Julie is trying to decide which outfit to wear to her sister’s graduation dinner and Olivia reveals that Julie’s always been jealous of her older sister and how she managed to steal her journalism award—an engraved ink pen. We can do that!” Jennifer said with such a look of pleading in her eyes, Miss Marburn shrugged and said, “Okay. I guess we can do that.”
She looked over at Mrs. Milay. “We have one more.”
It was flawless. I did my own stage direction. I said my lines without a script. My timing was perfect. And all the while only Mrs. Milay was paying attention. Miss Marburn was packing up and noting something on her clipboard that I suspected had nothing to do with me.
Mrs. Milay clapped when I finished. A polite clap. “Well,” she said. “You did a good job.” Then her voice seemed to wander off as if she was speaking to herself and maybe to us at the same time. “Such a shame you couldn’t do a scene with more participants.” She sighed. “Well, you do know the results will be posted in a week’s time.” She smiled. “Check back then and . . .” She held up crossed fingers on both hands. “Fingers crossed!”
I would not cry in front of Jennifer, who kept chattering on and on about how we were going to get the parts and how this was just the beginning because now she knew she wanted to be an actress and wasn’t it great that we lived so close to Hollywood and . . . She must have sensed my morose silence because she stopped and looked over at me. “Don’t worry, Sophie. We were the best. They have to be fair!”
That was the problem. They didn’t have to be fair at all. They could do whatever they wanted.