Nancy Clancy, Star of Stage and Screen

by Jane O'Connor

  DEDICATION

  For JoJo—I mean Jilly (aka Jill Abramson)

  —J.O’C.

  For Yarden, our star

  —R.P.G.

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1: AUDITION

  CHAPTER 2: COWGIRL SAL

  CHAPTER 3: YOUTUBE SENSATION

  CHAPTER 4: THE CALLBACKS

  CHAPTER 5: NAUGHTY OR NICE?

  CHAPTER 6: PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

  CHAPTER 7: MASTER OF CEREMONIES

  CHAPTER 8: TAP-TAP-TAP DANCING

  CHAPTER 9: DRESS REHEARSAL

  CHAPTER 10: APOLOGY ACCEPTED

  CHAPTER 11: SHOWTIME

  CHAPTER 12: JOJO TO THE RESCUE

  CHAPTER 13: ALMOST FAMOUS

  CHAPTER 14: THAT’S A WRAP

  BACK AD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Nancy kept licking her lips. The inside of her mouth felt as dry as dust. Her tummy was doing flip-flops and she was perspiring like crazy. Perspiring sounded more grown-up—and less gross—than sweating.

  “What are you so worked up about?” Grace asked Nancy. “You won’t be one of the stars.”

  Bree scowled at Grace. “You’re not in charge. Just wait till you hear Nancy play guitar. She’s awesome.”

  Everyone in third grade had gathered in the auditorium. It was audition day. Auditioning meant trying out for The Nifty Fifty. That was the name of the play. Only it wasn’t really a play, since there was no story. It was more like a variety show with lots of nifty—Mr. D explained that meant cool—songs and dances all about the fifty states.

  Yesterday Mr. Dudeny had told the class, “Our third-grade performance is one of the highlights of the school year. So come prepared to show off your special talent.”

  Today Nancy had brought in her guitar. For months she’d been taking lessons from a teenager named Andy. She didn’t stink, but she wasn’t awesome, either. Bree only thought so because she was Nancy’s best friend.

  One by one, kids got up onstage to perform.

  Robert brought a lasso with him. He had been born in Texas. His dream was to be a rodeo star one day. “Yippee-ki-yi-yay!” Robert yelled, while the lasso twirled over his head in a circle.

  Grace had chosen a song about California.

  “California, here I come! Right back where I started from!” Grace sang.

  Nancy hated to admit it, but Grace’s performance was flawless—she didn’t make one mistake! At the end, Grace spread out her arms and smiled with all her teeth showing.

  Lionel wore a top hat and black cape. “Please hold the applause till the end,” he told everyone. First he did a card trick. Then he told a joke. “What is the smartest state?” Lionel paused before giving the answer. “Alabama. Because it has four As and only one B.”

  Lionel started to walk offstage. “Oh! I can also burp to the tune of ‘Jingle Bells.’ Want to hear?”

  “A superb talent, dude. But that won’t be necessary.” Mr. Dudeny was sitting in the audience with the other third-grade teacher.

  When it was Bree’s turn, she let out a little squeak. Nancy squeezed Bree’s hand for luck. Onstage, Bree did a tap dance to a song about New York City. She had on real black patent-leather tap shoes. The little metal pieces on the bottoms made every step ring out in the auditorium. Clickety-clack-clack.

  “East Side, West Side, all around the town,” the song began.

  Shuffle, shuffle, step. Spin. Shuffle, shuffle, step. Spin.

  Bree got off to a good start. Then all of a sudden it got harder for her to keep up with the music. At one point, she had to stop and wait to pick up the beat again.

  When Bree came back, she slumped down in her seat and pooched out her lips. “I really messed up,” she said, still out of breath.

  There was no time to console Bree, because Mr. Dudeny was calling out Nancy’s name. She stood and forced her feet to walk up the steps to the stage. She remembered her mom’s advice: Don’t look at the crowd. Pretend you are in your room playing just for fun.

  Nancy slung the guitar strap over her shoulder.

  “A one, and a two, and a three,” Nancy began, and then she broke into the opening chords of “Wild Thing.” It was an old rock song, the first one Andy had taught her. Nancy had played it a zillion times. Maybe more.

  “Wild thing. You make my heart sing. You make everything groovy!” Nancy sang. By the second chorus, she felt a little more relaxed. Her lips no longer felt stuck to her gums. When she got to the word “groovy” again, Nancy stretched it out and made her voice go low and raspy, the way Andy did. “Groooooovy!”

  “See! What did I tell you? She was awesome,” Bree was saying to Grace as Nancy got back to her seat.

  Grace crossed her arms. “The song had nothing to do with any of the states.”

  “It didn’t have to,” Bree said. “Nancy just had to show her special talent.”

  Grace frowned but didn’t say anything.

  Wow! From Grace, saying nothing was practically like getting a compliment!

  “Daddy, please take off that hat!” Nancy said. “You look absurd!” That was a polite way of saying her father looked silly.

  He glanced up from his newspaper. “Well, howdy, partner. Didn’t hear you come in.” A cowboy hat of JoJo’s was perched on his head. “You hungry? I can rustle up a snack.”

  “Sure.” Nancy set down her guitar and backpack. “I tried out for The Nifty Fifty today.”

  “Shh! I can’t hear!” JoJo was sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching TV. She was wearing a cowboy hat too. Her favorite show, Cowgirl Sal, was on.

  “I’m Cowgirl Sal. I’m your best pal,” JoJo sang along with the theme song. “And I’m comin’ to the rescue.”

  Cowgirl Sal was played by a grown-up actress who had braids and big, fake freckles on her cheeks. Today she was helping a kitten that was stuck in a tree. Nancy’s parents thought Cowgirl Sal was a good role model. That meant they wanted JoJo to act just like her.

  “I like being a good helper!” Cowgirl Sal said. Then she pointed to the badge on her shirt. It looked like a sheriff’s badge, only it said Good Helper. JoJo was wearing one just like it.

  Nancy followed her father into the kitchen. “I find out tonight if I get a callback. A callback means—” Nancy stopped talking. “Daddy, I can’t have a serious discussion with you in that hat. Pleeeeease take it off.”

  “I reckon I can.”

  While her dad made a PB&J sandwich, Nancy explained, “A callback means you’re getting a part.”

  “Of course you’ll get a part. You always do.”

  “No, Daddy. I mean a real one.” In every play, Nancy always got stuck in the chorus. For the second-grade production of Peter Pan, she was Pirate Number Seven. In first grade, for Jack and the Beanstalk, she had been a villager. This year, she wanted to stand out. Not that she expected to be one of the stars. But getting to be in the spotlight for a moment or two—well, that would be thrilling.

  Nancy checked that the receiver on the house phone wasn’t off the hook. She had her dad make sure that his cell phone was turned on. Then she took the sandwich up to her room to do her homework.

  Mr. Dudeny had assigned every kid in 3D a different state to study. Nancy’s was Wisconsin. For tomorrow she had to find a fun fact about Wisconsin. She also had to draw a map of the state. Using her atlas, Nancy made an outline of Wisconsin in purple Magic Marker and put a gold sticker of a star where Madison—the capital—went.

  Suddenly a bell rang. It was the bell on the Top-Secret Spec
ial Delivery mail basket.

  Nancy jumped up from her desk and reeled in the basket. It hung from a rope between her bedroom window and Bree’s.

  Bree’s note was short. It was written in their new secret code. It took a minute to decipher.

  Bree, looking surprised and happy, was right at the window. So Nancy didn’t need to write back. When she shook her head no, Bree held up both hands to show that her fingers were crossed.

  After that, it was impossible to do more homework. Nancy lay on her bed, staring at a crack in the ceiling. Frenchy came in and snuggled beside her. Twice Nancy went out into the hall and called down to her dad, “Make sure to listen for the phone!”

  Finally, right before dinner, there was a call. But it was from Grace. She’d gotten a callback too.

  “So did you hear?” Grace asked.

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Aw, too bad,” Grace said. “But there have to be some kids in the chorus, right?” Grace was trying to sound sad for Nancy. Still, Nancy couldn’t help but wonder if deep down Grace wasn’t secretly kind of glad.

  “This grub looks mighty tasty!” Nancy’s dad said as he set down a big bowl of spaghetti and meatballs on the kitchen table.

  “Doug, please. No more cowboy talk.” Nancy’s mom was scrubbing JoJo’s face at the sink. JoJo had put big black Magic Marker freckles on both her cheeks.

  “Stop!” JoJo cried. “I look like Cowgirl Sal!”

  “JoJo, you use Magic Markers on paper. Nothing else.” Nancy’s mom sounded tired.

  “Nancy puts black dots on her ears,” JoJo said, squirming.

  That was true. Nancy sometimes did it so her ears looked pierced.

  “That’s—that’s different,” Nancy’s mom sputtered.

  Nancy finished setting the table. A cloth napkin was at each place. They were folded to look like flowers.

  “Very elegant!” Nancy’s mom sat down and put her napkin in her lap. “How did you learn to do this, honey?”

  “On YouTube,” Nancy told her. “I can make napkins that look like boats too.”

  “YouTube! There was something in the paper today,” her dad said as he served spaghetti to everyone. “A video of a nine-year-old girl singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ went viral.” Her father explained that going viral meant that a video was seen by millions of people. “The girl’s mother put it up on YouTube right before Martin Luther King Day. The kid has been on two morning talk shows! National TV!”

  Nancy twirled spaghetti—or pasta, as she preferred to call it—on her fork. “Were either of you ever stars?” she asked her parents. “Not famous stars, like in Hollywood. But stars in a class play?”

  “Don’t look at me,” her mom said. “I was always in the chorus.” Her mom shrugged. “Your father is the performer in the family.”

  “Really, Daddy? What did you star in?”

  “I was in a mime troupe in college. You know that.”

  Mimes acted stuff out silently. When she was little, Nancy liked to watch her dad pretend to climb a rope or act like he was stuck inside a box.

  “But were you ever in a play where you sang or danced or had lots of lines?” Nancy wanted to know.

  “Nope. I was only good when I kept my mouth shut.”

  Nancy’s mom laughed. Then she leaned over and kissed Nancy’s dad.

  At that moment the phone rang. There was a rule in the Clancy family: no phone calls during dinner.

  Nancy jumped out of her chair before either of her parents had a chance to stop her.

  It was Mr. Dudeny. He asked Nancy to bring in her guitar again tomorrow.

  Ooh la la!

  Double ooh la la!

  Triple ooh la la!

  She had gotten a callback!

  “I got assigned New York,” Olivia told the class in social studies. Social studies was the last class of the day. Right after were the callbacks. Olivia read aloud from her homework sheet. “There are more roadside diners in New York than any other state.”

  Mr. Dudeny thanked Olivia, then said, “Okay, dudes! We just heard about a state on the East Coast. Let’s hear from somebody with a state in the Midwest.”

  Nancy’s arm shot up. Last night after JoJo was in bed, Nancy’s mother had helped her find out stuff on the computer.

  “My state is Wisconsin,” Nancy started reading. “It produces a lot of paper.”

  “Whoopee,” Grace said, just loud enough so Mr. Dudeny wouldn’t hear and Nancy would.

  Nancy ignored Grace and continued, “The city of Green Bay is known as the Toilet Paper Capital of the World. It produces more than a hundred million rolls of toilet paper every year. In the 1930s the first splinter-free toilet paper was invented there.”

  “You mean people used to get splinters from toilet paper?” Bree wanted to know.

  “Ouch!” said Lionel. “That had to hurt!”

  Mr. Dudeny was looking around the room. “So who has a state that shares a border with Wisconsin? That means the two states touch. Look on the wall map to see.”

  Clara raised her hand, then yanked it down. But Mr. Dudeny had spotted her.

  “Yes, Clara.”

  “Iowa?” Clara didn’t sound sure.

  “Right you are!”

  Clara smiled. “It turns out Iowa is the only state that starts with two vowels.”

  “Superb fact. I never realized that.” Then Mr. Dudeny glanced at his wristwatch. “I am afraid we have to wrap it up for today,” he said as the bell rang.

  Ooh la la! It was time for the callbacks!

  The callback kids met onstage in the auditorium. Bree whispered to Nancy, “I’m nervous. I think it’s a mistake to do a tap dance.”

  “Why? That’s your special talent,” Nancy said.

  “Not really. I’m just a beginner,” Bree said. “I’m not that good.”

  “Hey, why are you here?” Grace was pointing at Nancy. “You didn’t get a callback!”

  “Oh yes, I did. Mr. D called right after dinner.” Nancy was happy to set Grace straight.

  A few minutes later, Nancy learned that she was going to be in a duet with Robert. The two of them were going to perform together. Their song was called “Deep in the Heart of Texas.”

  “I printed out the lyrics,” Mr. Dudeny said. Robert, however, didn’t need them. He said, “Every kid from Texas knows the words.” The way Robert pronounced “Texas,” it rhymed with “sixes.”

  “The song has a simple strum pattern,” Mr. Dudeny told Nancy. Then he borrowed her guitar and showed her.

  “The stars at night are big and bright—deep in the heart of Texas,” he began singing.

  Mr. Dudeny was playing only two different chords. They were the first ones Andy had taught Nancy. This was going to be easy-peasy.

  “Nancy, you’ll start off onstage alone and sing the first line.” Mr. Dudeny turned to Robert. “That’s when you enter, Robert. You’ll be twirling your lasso and join in for the chorus line, ‘Deep in the heart of Texas.’”

  Ooh la la! It suddenly hit Nancy. For a few seconds she’d be onstage all by herself in the spotlight! Not that there was actually a spotlight. But still. The entire audience would be watching her. It was thrilling to imagine—and scary.

  Mr. Dudeny handed back Nancy’s guitar and left them to start practicing.

  First Robert sang the whole song through so the tune stuck in Nancy’s head. Then they sang it together. Robert was a quiet boy. However, every time he came to the “Deep in the heart of Texas” line, he yelled it out. He sounded like a genuine cowboy!

  “Mr. Dudeny wants me to stick with tap dancing,” Bree told Nancy as they walked down the front steps of Ada M. Draezel Elementary School. “He says all I need is practice.” She didn’t sound convinced.

  “You’ll be great. There’s almost two weeks till the show.”

  “Two weeks! That’s no time!” Bree swallowed hard. “There are basic steps I don’t know yet.”

  Grace was right behind Nancy and Bree and overheard
them. “I sing a song about Oklahoma. What part did you get, Nancy?”

  “Robert and I are singing ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas.’”

  “Oh, so you sing together. Not alone.” Grace followed them to the bike rack. “There’ll be kids square-dancing in back of me. At the end they spell out Oklahoma. O-K-L-A—”

  Nancy and Bree stood there while Grace finished spelling “Oklahoma.”

  Grace is such a show-off! Nancy didn’t say the words out loud. She just thought them. And she could tell Bree heard her. That was one of the many great things about being best friends. A lot of times they didn’t even need to speak. They could simply read each other’s minds.

  At exactly four thirty, the doorbell started ringing. It was time for Nancy’s guitar lesson.

  Nancy flung open the door.

  “Andy! Guess what! I’m playing guitar in the third-grade variety show!”

  “Aw-right!” Andy high-fived Nancy. When she told him the song, he said, “Oh, you’ll nail that.”

  Andy unlatched his guitar case. There were stickers of old rock groups—the Beatles, Queen, the Doors—all over it. Then they both started tuning their guitars.

  Nancy’s guitar was her most prized possession. It was turquoise and had imitation ivory knobs on the neck. After giving them a few twists, Nancy began strumming with her pick. It was imitation ivory too.

  “Sounding sweet!” Andy told her. Then he played “Deep in the Heart of Texas” a few times, demonstrating when to switch from D major to A major and back again. “Now, your turn,” he said.

  “The stars at night,” Nancy sang, “are big and bright—deep in the heart of Texas.” It was harder singing and strumming simultaneously. That meant doing both at the same time. Nevertheless, by the time JoJo came galloping into the living room on a mop, Nancy was getting the hang of it.