CHARLIE JOE AND I READ the whole scene about ten times before we both decided we were completely sick of it.
“Wow, you make a great princess,” Jake told Charlie Joe.
“I can’t wait for this movie to come out!” said my sister Sylvia. “Whether you’re in it or not!”
Timmy picked up the script pages and started looking through them. “I want to meet Clarissa. I bet she’s totally beautiful.”
Jake laughed. “You know Clarissa’s not a real person, right?”
“Of course I know that,” Timmy said, not entirely convincingly.
“Anyone knows that,” I added. “I bet Malvania doesn’t even have a king.”
“There is no Malvania,” said Jake. “It’s a made-up country. The whole thing is made up. That’s why they call it a movie.”
“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. I said dumb things like that all the time. I was kind of famous for it. But it wasn’t because I was dumb, I swear. Sometimes I just say things without thinking. That’s different than being dumb, right?
“Let’s go play Xbox,” Charlie Joe suggested. Nothing can change the subject better than Xbox.
But after we’d been playing for about five minutes, Jake said, “The girl who’s playing Clarissa will have to be gorgeous.”
The rest of us nodded in agreement.
“Maybe they’ll ask Eliza to try out,” suggested Timmy.
I suddenly had this weird uptight feeling. I was supposed to be the only kid from middle school who was asked to audition for the movie.
“You really think they might?” I asked, trying not to sound too against the idea.
Charlie Joe shook his head. “I doubt it. They don’t just go around to schools looking for people to be in their movies.” He smacked me on the back. “You’re the only one, dude. You’re it.”
I quietly breathed a sigh of relief.
“Well, all I know is, she’s gotta be superpretty,” Timmy said. “Which is why she’ll take one look at you and be like, ‘Is this a joke’?”
Charlie Joe and Jake cackled and high-fived each other.
“Very funny,” I said, but a part of me was thinking the same thing. I wasn’t exactly considered movie-star handsome. Maybe she would think it was a joke!
I picked up the controller, started to play, and tried not to think about it.
But it was pretty much all I thought about for the next week.