Better You Than Me

by Jessica Brody

  Okay, well, no one is as cool as the Ellas, but at least I’ll show them I’m cool enough to be someone’s friend. Anyone’s friend. Honestly, right now I’d settle for being friends with the cafeteria ladies.

  I wish Leah were here. She’s my best friend back in Amherst, Massachusetts. That’s where my dad lives, too. I live with my mom, in Irvine, California. It’s temporary, though. At least, that’s what Mom and Dad keep telling me. Mom’s only here because she got a visiting professor job at UC–Irvine. One school year, tops, they promised me. But I’m not sure I believe them. I mean, I believed them when they promised me they would never get divorced, and look how that turned out.

  It’s Wednesday afternoon. School is out, and I’m standing in the wings of the auditorium, peering around the edge of the curtain, watching Daniella finish up her audition. She’ll definitely get a role in the movie. And not just because she’s the leader of the Ellas, but because she’s really good. Like Ruby Rivera good.

  Daniella finishes her monologue with a dramatic bow and everyone in the auditorium goes wild. Mr. Katz, the film club advisor, who also happens to be my Language Arts teacher, is clapping right along with everyone else.

  Yup, she’s definitely getting a part.

  I sigh, wondering if I made a mistake signing up to audition. It doesn’t really help that Mr. Katz kind of hates me. He’s always ragging on me in class for not reading the assigned books. What makes me think he’s going to cast me in this movie?

  I don’t need to be the lead or anything. I’d settle for being a random extra. I just want to be part of something. I just want to join something and be able to say—

  HUUUGHHUUP!

  And there’s my problem. Every time I get nervous I get the hiccups. And not just regular hiccups. The wildest, loudest, most violent hiccups ever. I mean, they’re pretty much equivalent to an earthquake in a small country.

  As I stand in the wings, I close my eyes and try to take deep breaths. And yes, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to tell me the best way to cure hiccups is to hold your breath/drink water/eat hot sauce/get someone to scare you/swallow a spoonful of sugar/guzzle vinegar/breathe into a paper bag.

  I’ve heard just about every supposed hiccup cure there is, but none of them actually works. I just have to wait it out and pray that by the time they call my name—

  “Skylar Welshman!” Mr. Katz’s voice booms from the stage.

  My whole body freezes. I can feel blood rushing from my head to my toes and I’m pretty sure blood isn’t supposed to rush that way. My toes don’t need that blood. My brain needs that blood! I sway slightly and grab on to a nearby chair for balance.

  You can do this, I tell myself. You’re ready. You’ve practiced this.

  As I fight the wave of dizziness that passes over me, I think about what Ruby Rivera would do. She’s my all-time favorite celebrity. Not only is she the star of the best show in the world—Ruby of the Lamp—she’s also the best singer in the world. She wouldn’t let a little bout of hiccups stop her.

  In fact, the monologue I prepared for today is from one of my favorite episodes of her show: season 1, episode 22. It’s called “Dream a Little Dream,” and it’s the one where Ruby discovers (through a magic dream) that her mother (who she thought died when she was a little girl) has actually been trapped inside a genie lamp for the past ten years. I’ve seen the episode at least twenty times and I still cry every time.

  Just pretend you’re her, I tell myself. Be Ruby. Channel Ruby.

  I stand up straight and push my shoulders back, ready to walk onto that stage with confidence, and poise, and—

  HUUUGHHUUP!

  I sigh again. I wonder if Ruby Rivera ever gets the hiccups. Probably not. Rich and famous people probably have a secret cure for the hiccups that we normal people don’t know about.

  I take one step toward the stage but am stopped when I hear the high-pitched voice of Daniella call out behind me. I turn to see her approaching. She must have left the stage through the other wing and come around the back of the curtain.

  “Nice outfit,” she says, giving me the once-over. I don’t have to be an award-winning English literature professor like my mother to figure out she’s not complimenting me.

  The non-compliment compliment is followed by a chorus of giggles, and I turn around to see the other two Ellas walking toward me. Actually, “walk” is the wrong word. The Ellas don’t walk. They swagger. They strut. They sashay. All hips and highlighted blond hair and attitude. Okay, well, Gabriella’s actually a brunette, but she still has the attitude. And she always has this bitter, just-swallowed-a-bug look on her face.

  “No offense, but where did you get that?” Daniella asks, scowling at my clothes. “The Salvation Army?”

  “Probably like a Halloween costume discount store,” Isabella guesses.

  “Yeah,” Gabriella chimes in. “A discount store for Halloween costumes.”

  Gabriella is the least original of the three Ellas. She usually just finds a way to reword what one of the other Ellas says, and it’s never very creative.

  I bite my lip, fighting the urge to tell them my outfit—fuchsia leggings, a black chiffon leopard-print skirt, and a sequined top—is actually inspired by something Ruby wore in her music video for “Living Out Loud” (my favorite Ruby Rivera song), but I know that won’t help. The Ellas think Ruby Rivera is lame. Something they made a point of telling me on my first day at Fairview Middle, when I showed up to math class with a Ruby Rivera binder.

  “So, what are you going to do for your audition?” Daniella asks, like she genuinely wants to know, even though I know she doesn’t.

  “She’s going to get up there and just stare awkwardly at people like she always does,” Isabella says. “That’s her real talent.”

  “Yeah, she’s really talented at staring,” Gabriella agrees, before getting a weird look from her friends and quickly adding, “Awkwardly.”

  “I—” I start, wanting to tell them that I’m not just going to get up there and stare at people, that I’m going to do the monologue I rehearsed relentlessly for the past week. But I feel another hiccup coming on, so I quickly close my mouth.

  “You?” Daniella prompts, looking eager to hear what I have to say. When I don’t continue, she turns to the other Ellas and laughs. “Wow. That’s the most I’ve ever heard her say.”

  “Skylar Welshman?” Mr. Katz’s voice repeats from the stage. “Are you here? You’re up!”

  I have to go. I have to get out there and prove to these people that I’m not who they think I am. Everything will change after this moment. I’m sure of it. Everything will get better.

  Daniella crosses her arms and stares at me, as if to say Go ahead. Show us what you got.

  I put on my best Ruby Rivera smile, turn on my heels, and glide out of the wings. I position myself in the center of the stage and wait for Mr. Katz to signal me to begin.

  “Action!” comes the cue.

  I take a deep breath and open my mouth to say the first lines of my monologue.

  “Mom! I know it was you. I saw you. I thought you were dead!”

  I know the words. I’ve known the words since I was eight years old, when the episode first aired. But when I open my mouth now, it’s not those words that come out.

  It’s the loudest, most obnoxious hiccup I’ve ever heard in my life.

  HUUUGHHUUP!

  Except, in the middle of the dead-quiet auditorium, it doesn’t sound like a hiccup. It sounds like a giant burp.

  I can’t do this.

  Not today. Not any more days. I have to tell her. I have to walk right up to her and tell her that this is my last season. I’m not renewing my contract. I’m not returning to Ruby of the Lamp for a fifth season. They’ll just have to do the show without me. They can call it…just…Of the Lamp. Or even M
iles of the Lamp. I know Ryder would jump at the chance to have the show named after his character.

  Yes. This is it. This is the day I tell my mom that I’m done.

  I’ll wait until she’s had her second latte. And her cookies. She’s on the Cookie Diet this week. Or was that last week? Anyway, I’ll wait until she’s properly caffeinated and fed and then I’ll tell her.

  I glance at the clock on the wall of the “classroom.” It’s seven a.m. on Thursday and Ryder and I are in “school.” Of course, it’s not a real school. It’s a closet that’s been turned into a tiny windowless classroom on the Xoom! Studios lot. I haven’t set foot in a real classroom since I was eight years old.

  I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had never walked into the audition for Ruby of the Lamp. If Mom had never decided to move to Hollywood to try to break her daughter into show business. If we had never left Texas.

  Based on our old address, I already know that I’d be a seventh grader at Woodlands Middle School, just outside Dallas. I found it on Google Maps once. It’s right up the street from our old house. I’d probably walk to school every day. I’d have a green backpack because green is my favorite color, and it would be filled with books and textbooks and my notes on every subject under the sun. I’d have tons of friends. We’d hang out after school every day and study together in the library and spend the weekends having slumber parties and sleeping late.

  I never get to sleep late.

  Maybe there would be a cute boy in my Language Arts class. Someone who looks nothing like Ryder Vance. Someone sweet and innocent and kind of nerdy. Maybe we would be assigned a special project together where we’d have to hang out after school. Maybe we would laugh about our conflicting interpretations of To Kill a Mockingbird and then we’d accidentally brush hands and…

  “Hey!” Ryder interrupts my thoughts. I turn to find he’s shoving his phone in my face so I can see the screen. “Check it out.”

  Ryder has pulled up the Star Beat magazine website and is pointing to his own picture on the top of the page. It’s another one of his signature “smolder” looks, as he calls it, where his head is cocked and he’s looking at the camera with one eyebrow raised, like he’s about to tell you a juicy secret. Ryder thinks the pose makes him look hot. I think it makes him look constipated.

  Underneath the picture there’s a caption that says “Hottest Tween Actor.”

  He nods arrogantly. “Four months in a row, baby.”

  I groan and turn back to the online course I’m taking on my phone. This is pretty much how we spend most days at “school.” Greg, the on-set tutor, sits at the front of the closet-classroom, flipping through a magazine, while Ryder and I supposedly read from some textbook. We never really do. Both of us are always on our phones. Ryder is usually looking at pictures of himself on celebrity news websites, and I’m usually watching a lecture from the Learning Space, my favorite online course site. I discovered a long time ago that if you want to get a good education around here, you have to give it to yourself.

  “Oh, and look who’s at the top of the actress list,” Ryder says, trying to get my attention again. But I don’t turn. I can see who he’s pointing to out of the corner of my eye. It’s Carey Divine, the twelve-year-old star of Xoom! Channel’s other hit show, Story of My Lives. And my so-called BFF.

  I know exactly which picture it is, too. It’s the one of her in that sleeveless top and cutoff shorts, with her knees pulled up to her chest and her elbows resting atop them. Her long, silky blond hair is spread out over her arms like a blanket. She’s not smiling; she never smiles in photos. She thinks it makes her look more sophisticated. Mom says it makes her look too mature for her age.

  “It’s stars like Carey who fizzle out before they’re even fifteen,” Mom likes to say. “They try to grow up too fast. They try to look older than they are. And then before you know it, their reputations are ruined and the only jobs they can get are acne cream commercials.”

  When the clock finally strikes nine, I leap from my seat and race out of the classroom. I have an hour before I have to be on set. I give myself a mental pep talk the whole way back to my trailer.

  You can do this. Just march in there and tell her you’re done. It’s over. No more Ruby of the Lamp. You’re old enough to make your own decisions about your life.

  But just before I reach the trailer, my phone rings and I see it’s Lesley, my agent, calling.

  Oh, thank goodness.

  Lesley will give me the courage I need to go through with this. Lesley always knows the right thing to say.

  “Hello?”

  “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” Lesley thunders into my ear.

  I cringe and quickly duck behind the makeup trailer for some privacy. “I know. I know.”

  “I have Barry Barky McBarkerson and his Barky network of lawyers barking down my neck every single day, wanting to know what’s taking so long with these contracts. Ruby, I can’t stall them for much longer.”

  Lesley is the only person who knows about my secret nickname for Barry. I once told her, during a lunch, that I called him Barkowitz. She laughed so hard, and she and I have been calling him variations of it ever since. Of course, only to each other.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m going to tell her. Today.”

  There’s a long pause on the other end of the phone, during which I check the screen twice to make sure the call is still connected. “Today?” she screeches after her long pause. “You mean you haven’t even talked to her yet? I thought you were going to do it yesterday!”

  “I know! I’m sorry! I got scared! You know how she gets!”

  Lesley chuckles darkly. “Oh, I know.”

  “Well, what am I going to do?” I whine into the phone. “I can’t do another season of the show. I can’t. I can’t rub one more lamp or fly on one more magic carpet or recite one more cheesy genie spell!”

  “Okay, okay,” Lesley says quickly, switching to her supportive voice. “Calm down. It’ll be fine. You’ll talk to Eva today and I’ll put the studio off until…Oh gosh. I can’t put them off all weekend. I need to give them an answer before the Tween Choice Awards on Saturday night. If you don’t talk to your mother by end of day tomorrow, I’m afraid you’re going to be stuck rubbing lamps and flying on magic carpets for another year.”

  “But what should I say?” I ask, desperate for any guidance I can get.

  “Just say…” And then there’s about two seconds of static, followed by what sounds like Lesley’s every fifth word. “Your decision…Genie…right…sad…but…more to life…blue skin…do it.”

  “You’re breaking up!” I tell her. Then the line goes dead.

  Great.

  I guess I’m on my own.

  When I reach my trailer, I stop and attempt to give myself another pep talk. You can do this, I tell myself again. Just say it and get it over with. I want to quit the show. See? It’s easy.

  I stare at the door to my trailer. Then I take a deep breath, open it, and step inside, finally ready to take control of my own future.

  I can’t do this.

  I can’t go back to that place. I can’t face the Ellas or anyone else at Fairview. Not after what happened yesterday. I burped! I burped onstage. It echoed everywhere. It shook walls. I didn’t even get a chance to say one line of my monologue. Once I heard the Ellas laughing from the wings, I just bolted. I ran offstage, out of the auditorium, and all the way to the bus stop. I’m never going to live this down. Never.

  “Morning, my bird!” Mom says, coming into my room on Thursday morning and opening my Ruby Rivera–themed curtains. She calls me her bird because I was named after her favorite Percy Bysshe Shelley poem, “To a Skylark.”

  Mom turns around from the window, her eyes immediately falling on the stack of library books on my desk. No doubt she’s
detecting that they look untouched, and in the exact same order and alignment as yesterday. And the day before that.

  She clears her throat. “I noticed you fell asleep in front of the TV again,” she says. I can tell she’s trying to keep her voice light and non-accusatory, but I hear the disappointment there. She doesn’t like that I watch TV. If it were up to her, we wouldn’t even have one in the house. In fact, my parents told me they didn’t even own one until I was old enough to ask for one.

  “Yeah,” I mutter. “Sorry, I must have dozed off.”

  Mom nods like she understands. Like she’s ever sat through an entire television show in her life. She walks over to the stack of books and picks up the hardcover on top, giving it a thorough inspection, as though she’s fascinated by the contents. “This one looks funny,” she says, pointing to the surprised-looking girl on the cover. “It’s about a twelve-year-old girl who makes a wish to be sixteen and wakes up to find her life has been fast-forwarded four years.”

  I shrug and yawn.

  She picks up the next book in the stack. “And this one is about a young girl who’s a genie. Just like in your show.”

  Every week, she comes home with another stack of books, convinced that in this pile there’ll be one I like. One that will finally turn her only child into the little reader she’s always wanted. But stories in books just don’t interest me. They’re not as exciting as the stories on TV. Besides, it would take me weeks to get through one book, when I can watch an entire episode of Ruby of the Lamp—with a beginning, middle, and end—in twenty-two minutes (if I fast-forward through the commercials).

  Mom sighs and puts the books down. “Fine. I’ll take them back to the library today. But did you at least read your assigned book for English? Mr. Katz called me….”

  I wince as I flash back to yesterday. Not only did I burp onstage, I also totally bombed my oral presentation in Language Arts. I hadn’t exactly read the book. I tried to read it, but it was so incredibly boring, with absolutely no plot. Who wants to read a book about mice and men? I don’t have any interest in either of those topics. So I just skimmed through an online summary before the presentation. Then, when I got up in front of the class to talk about the story, I completely choked. I started mumbling something about farmers and rabbits and…well, let’s just say it ended pretty much the same as the auditions. With peals of laughter echoing around me.