Starring Jules (Super-Secret Spy Girl)

by Beth Ain

  We are getting closer and closer to the border, which makes me feel farther and farther from home, and this makes me panic about a whole bunch of things at once. Another list, a list of Things That Are Making Me More Nervous as We Sit Here Doing Nothing (a list I am only writing in the first place because it is the only thing to do while sitting at the border):

  1.Elinor hasn’t written all day, which maybe means she is having a perfect time being home and has forgotten all about me. And maybe her parents are going to work things out and then she will never come back.

  2.I can’t stop thinking about Charlotte’s fancy acting camp. I never went to acting camp, and even at my own day camp I never wanted to perform with my group in our end-of-summer show. I still mostly like performing for my brother and our stuffed animals, with a flashlight for a microphone.

  3.Tomorrow is day one of being a real live movie actress, and I think it maybe would have been a good idea to go to acting camp before agreeing to this.

  We finally get to Montreal very late in the night, and I am still mad that my dad’s not here and that I haven’t heard back from Elinor, which means she’s probably having a grand old time in London and maybe Abby is even there by now and they’re off having a grand old time together and forgetting all about me and forgetting my birthday.

  Teddy and Big Henry are asleep when we arrive at the hotel, so my mom tells me to come inside with her to check in while Andie starts to get the boys awake enough to get to our rooms.

  There are beautiful city lights all around and a red carpet going into the hotel entrance and a café on the street with people clinking glasses and music playing loudly. It feels a little bit like New York City except for one thing. NO ONE is speaking English! It’s crazy. I mean, we DROVE here from New York. It isn’t like we got on an airplane and flew all the way to Paris or something. I am staring at everyone when my mom yanks my arm toward the lobby.

  “Bonjour!” the woman behind the counter says.

  “Bonjour,” my mom says. Her accent doesn’t sound like that woman’s accent and I feel embarrassed for her.

  I just say “hi” to the woman and not “bonjour,” since I don’t want to sound like a tourist. I hear people speaking French all around me and it makes me nervous not to know what they are saying. The woman produces our room keys, which look like credit cards, and says, “Voilà!” I smile because I know what that means. Suddenly I forget all about border traffic and Elinor forgetting my actual birthday and I forget about being nervous and I feel very excited instead — about being in Canada and about being in a real live movie!

  It is much too early to be awake, but my mom and I are on our way to the set of the movie, which is just outside a house in Old Montreal. I have brought all my New York butterflies with me and they are flitting around in my stomach like crazy.

  I try not to think about how nervous I am to be with movie stars and to slide down mudslides, because I am really trying not to be nervous-Jules. I want to be confident-Jules.

  There are big trailers lined up on the street when we arrive, and a big tent with tons of food that all looks very delicious. I would really want to eat it if my belly wasn’t making sounds so loud I could hardly hear.

  “Yoo-hoo!” Colby Kingston’s voice somehow manages to be louder than my rumbling stomach.

  “Colby!” my mom says, and they hug and kiss, and then Colby hugs and kisses me, too.

  “I didn’t know you would be here,” I say.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” she says. Colby’s smile twinkles when she says this, and she just reminds me of magic. I am very happy she’s here with us.

  “Ready to meet your co-stars?” Colby asks. She takes my hand in hers and I stare at her perfectly polished nails until we arrive at Rick Hinkley’s trailer.

  Even though I got to meet Rick Hinkley a few months ago, back when we were supposed to do the movie the first time, I am more nervous than ever, and I wish I were anywhere but here, on the stoop outside this very famous man’s pretend house.

  “Hi there, ladies!” A booming voice comes out of Rick Hinkley’s body. He has opened the door himself, which I think is funny. I was picturing some assistant-type person with a clipboard answering the door and making us wait a long time to see him. But it’s just Rick, in jeans and a T-shirt. “You must be Jules,” he says. “I mean, you must be Lucy Lamb.”

  I am surprised he knows my real name and my pretend name, since I only have a couple of lines and I’m a nobody compared to him and Emma Saxony. I feel my face get hot and I don’t dare say anything since those butterflies might just fly out like orange-flavored Swish, all over the place, which is, after all, what got me into this mess in the first place. I decide to nod.

  “So you’re the kid who gets me into a pile of mud, huh?” he says. For some reason, he sounds nervous to me.

  I shrug, and as soon as I do, I feel mad at myself for shrugging. I thought I had gotten over all of that during the sitcom. I take a deep breath. “I guess I am,” I say.

  “It’s okay, I forgive ya,” he says. Then everyone kind of fake laughs and I feel a little better. Rick Hinkley doesn’t seem like a movie star, really. He just seems like a regular goofy dad-type guy.

  Next stop, Emma Saxony. “So, Jules,” Colby says, knocking on the trailer door of Emma Saxony, “ready to meet your babysitter?”

  I take a deep breath, and this time it isn’t the star who opens the door. It is the star’s assistant, holding the star’s little dog. “Hi, hi, hi,” she says. “We’re a little busy right now. Jules? Nice to meet you. I’m sure you and Emma will get along great. I’ll let her know you came.”

  The whole time the assistant is talking I can only look at the back of Emma Saxony’s head. She is getting her makeup done and talking on her phone, and I can just about see her eyes in the mirror. Her sparkly, blue-green, teen-idol, megastar eyes. And she is laughing a big, grown-up-sounding laugh into her phone and I can’t hear anything else but her laugh. She is like a magnet, pulling me off of the trailer stoop, under the armpit of the chatty assistant, around the tail of the yapping dog, and into the bright makeup lights of the coolest room I’ve ever seen. I have ducked around everyone who was trying to keep me from the star and while they try to figure out how to deal with the situation, I admire the turquoise-and-cream wallpaper, the sparkly chandelier hanging overhead, the music filling the air around me. It is Emma Saxony’s voice I hear singing. She is listening to her own song.

  “Who is that?” I hear her say, and I realize she is talking about me. “Is that a fan who got in here somehow? Someone help me!” she says, and she stands up with her hair still clipped up and toilet-paper-type tissue sticking out from her robe.

  “Oh —” I start to say. “I’m not a fan — Well, I mean, I’m a fan, but I’m also —”

  “Help me! Help me!” she screams, and then the assistant comes running toward us, and the little yapping dog goes crazy and jumps out of the assistant’s arms, then runs through my legs, making me lose my balance and I go flying. Flying! Right into Emma Saxony, and we both fall down.

  So there I am, lying on top of megastar teen idol Emma Saxony and her big, poofy megastar bathrobe! And I don’t even think about being embarrassed. Well, I do think about that, and I am that, but what I also think is that Charlotte would just plain fall over if she saw this.

  “Jules!” my mom says, trying to pick me up. There is a barking little dog on my back that needs to be picked up first, though.

  “Get her off of me,” Emma Saxony yells. “Now!”

  “Emma,” I hear Colby say now, in her nice, calm Colby way. “This is Jules Bloom. She will be playing Lucy Lamb. She is your co-star and I brought her over to meet you. Remember?”

  Emma looks up at the ceiling like her memory might be hanging out up there instead of inside her head where it belongs. “Um, yes, sure. I remember. Hi, Jules. Nice to meet y
ou. Next time, knock.” She says all of this in a very fake voice and looks at her assistant while she speaks and not at me. Not once.

  I can’t believe how much I don’t like her. My heart is doing all the pounding it usually does in situations like this one, but I don’t think it is because I am nervous. I think it is because I am mad. I drove all the way to Canada, on my birthday, without my dad. For this! I run past everyone and burst outside and find an Old Montreal curb to sit on. It stinks because of all the Old Montreal horse and buggies everywhere and I am right at nose level of the stink. I make a list, sitting there.

  Reasons I Wish I Never Came to Canada:

  1.Emma Saxony now thinks I am a complete doofus, which I don’t even really care about since she isn’t even a little bit nice.

  2.I don’t speak French and everyone around me does, which makes me feel shy and twists my stomach into knots.

  3.The horse and buggies make me think of Central Park, and that feels very, very far away.

  4.I miss Elinor, who would definitely know the exact right thing to make me feel better about the Emma Saxony situation right now, if she would even remember to write to me at all!

  5.Being in Canada is making me wish I were at camp instead. I’d even wear an orange T-shirt right now.

  Then the doors to the trailer burst open, and out walks Emma Saxony, and she is dressed and has sunglasses on, and camera flashes go off everywhere around me. I can’t even see, there are so many of them. Where did all those cameras come from?

  Emma walks over to me and holds out both of her hands to help me up. I have no choice but to take them and smile.

  “Sorry about that, Jules,” she says. “All morning in makeup makes me cranky. How about we get a chai latte?”

  I have no idea what a chai latte is or why there are so many people taking my picture. All I know is that Emma Saxony is smiling and GLOWING and laughing and I am not. And of course, this makes me nervous. Really nervous. Because how am I supposed to have any pizzazz at all if she’s got ALL of it?

  Luckily, our chai-latte time is short since I had to meet with my acting coach, who makes me open my mouth very wide, and we work on my expressions and on something called enunciating. It’s a big word people use when they could just say “speak clearly.” While I’m busy doing this, Emma and Rick and a bunch of other people start filming. Right away, just like that. Then the director comes in to tell us he’s “liking the light and the vibe” and wants me to start filming my scenes today!

  The good news is, I only have a few lines in the Montreal part — whiny lines like, “But Mommy always lets me stay up late on Saturday nights” and “If you take that call, I’m just going to watch more TV. . . .” I’m just a little girl Emma babysits the night of the big heist she’s trying to stop from happening. I am the spoiler — I get the real movie stars into trouble they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten into.

  Lucy Lamb is very smart and very observant. Quickly, she understands that Emma Saxony is no run-of-the-mill babysitter. (No kidding, I think!) Lucy figures this out by listening to Emma’s phone conversations. This is when I have to say in a whisper voice (which I practice over and over with my acting coach), “She’s no babysitter; she’s a spy.”

  After a very long time getting my makeup done (you need a LOT of makeup just to look like a regular eight-year-old girl in a movie), it is my turn to be a movie actress!

  “Jules,” the director says, “here we go! Action!”

  So we film all these house scenes in this cool house that is nothing like the Look at Us Now! townhouse on the Upper East Side. It is old and creaky and a little messy downstairs, but upstairs in the attic, it is something else completely! There is a spy living in the attic. Lucy’s eyes practically pop out of her head when she sees super-crazy modern computers and lights that make her attic look like a Star Wars movie. And, plus, right there in front of her is Rick Hinkley, and he’s talking to HER babysitter on the phone. Lucy was right!

  This is where I get to make this super-funny expression. I am supposed to open my mouth real big like I am going to scream, but then I have to put one of my hands and then the other hand over my OWN mouth to shush myself, and then stumble backward and fall, which makes Rick realize I’ve found them out. They say this is called “physical comedy,” and I think it is the thing I am the BEST at. EVERYONE laughs when I do it. Everyone except Emma Saxony.

  And then, since I am Lucy Lamb and not Jules Bloom, and since Lucy is a bored little girl who wants more adventure in her life (this is what the script says), Lucy gets involved in the spy mission! Lucy’s parents are running late so fake-sitter Emma makes a snap decision and she tells Lucy they have to make a run for it, and from there, Lucy gets to go with her and Rick Hinkley on the next leg of their adventure.

  After all these scenes, I am feeling more and more like Lucy Lamb, and as we climb out of the back window and onto the street, I see that it is almost evening, and I can’t believe what I am about to do next. I am Lucy Lamb, I think, and I am about to hop on my babysitter’s motorcycle!

  I learn a whole bunch of VERY important things next, which fit into a good news/bad news list:

  1.Good news: I am very good at making Rick Hinkley laugh. He calls me quirky, which I think is a compliment.

  2.Good news: I have a stunt double. A stunt double is a person who rides around Montreal on a motorcycle, pretending to be me, Lucy Lamb, while I sit safely inside a trailer.

  3.Good news: This also means that I DO NOT have to slide down the mud mountain if I don’t want to! The stunt double can do this.

  4.Bad news: Emma laughed at me when I admitted that I thought I was going to have to slide down the mud mountain myself. She says movie stars never do their own stunts. Never.

  5.Bad news: Emma Saxony is not a very good actress, so I am worried that Charlotte is at the wrong camp.

  The reason I know this about Emma is that it takes her about fifty takes to do every scene. She doesn’t seem to know her lines, which is funny to me since now, after fifty takes, even I know her lines. Also, she takes a lot of time to look at herself in the camera after each take. My mom and I have started rolling our eyes at each other, and then eventually crossing our eyes at each other, while Emma fusses with her lipstick and squints at herself over and over again.

  Then, just when I am feeling especially glad to be here, making a movie in Canada, just when the time comes for the stunt doubles (phew!) to hop on that motorcycle, something not so good happens as Emma and I stand clear and head back to our trailers. My fake babysitter says to me, “You know, you might be the reason I’m a little off right now. I think it’s because this is your first movie. I can FEEL how NEW you are.” She is enunciating perfectly. “Are you sure you want to be an actress and not, like, a comedian, or just a goofy kid who makes people laugh by falling all over herself ? I mean, do you even know what KIND of actress you want to be? Think about it.” She says this into the air and it just hangs over us like that horse-and-buggy smell.

  I shrug. All because of mean Emma Saxony, I am back to being my old shrugging self. No Swish girl cha-cha-cha, no sassy sister Sylvie, no waffle-making super-secret-spy-girl Lucy Lamb. Just good old, scrambled-eggs-and-chocolate-milk, shrugging Jules Bloom.

  “What’s wrong, Jules?” my mom asks when I get inside the trailer.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Nothing is wrong. Everything is perfect. Can we go back to the hotel now?”

  She and Colby look at each other, we gather our things, and I find myself walking very fast toward Teddy and Big Henry at the hotel, hoping they haven’t had all the fun without me.

  Before we go up to our room, I ask my mom for her phone. I want to send an e-mail.

  Dear Elinor,

  I forgive you for not writing me back yet. Maybe you are with Abby and showing her how not to be a tourist in London. I wish I were with you instead of here,
since Emma Saxony is NOT the nicest person I have ever met and she thinks maybe I shouldn’t be an actress. The only good news I can tell you is that I don’t have to go down that big mudslide at the end. I only have to swim in the mud pool. Much better, I guess. I hope you are having the summer of your dreams.

  Love,

  Jules

  “Better?” my mom asks.

  “Yep,” I say. I am not better at all.

  The good news for me is that Teddy and Big Henry and Grandma Gilda are playing Uno on the bed when I get to my room.

  “Whoa,” Teddy says. “Nice clown face.”

  “It’s movie makeup, Lichtenstein,” George says.

  “What was it like?” Big Henry asks. “Are you a real spy now? Was Rick Hinkley a good guy or a bad guy?”

  “What does Emma Saxony smell like?” Teddy asks.

  I squint at him. Sometimes even I can’t believe how weird he is.

  “Later,” I say. “I will tell you more later. Right now, I just want to play Uno.”

  I am so glad that everything is normal inside the hotel room. I don’t even bother taking off my Lucy Lamb makeup. I just plop right down and they deal me in.

  Later, we go out for dinner and sit outside at a place the concierge recommended, and we have French fries, which are called frites, and maple-syrup ice cream. And I wish my dad were here so he could figure out the recipes for these things since I wish I could eat them every day of my life. And I wish that they made everything all better, but they don’t.

  After two more days of filming in Montreal, we are on the road again. Mont-Tremblant, here we come! I can’t wait because there was a brochure about this resort in the hotel lobby and there is going to be a luge slide and bungee-trampoline jumping in the village there, and even though I’ve been feeling pretty crummy ever since Emma Saxony made me feel like a clown, I’m thinking maybe a little bungee jumping would cheer me right up!