by Beth Ain
I can hardly believe how much Mr. Santorini is talking and how much he seems like an actor in a movie about a sea captain who has been punished by having to teach a bunch of third graders in New York City. A sea captain who thought a Hawaiian shirt would be a good way to win us over. He must be an actor. I’m just waiting for the jazz hands to prove it.
“… and where we will create our very own wax museum!” I snap out of the imaginary sea-captain movie when he says “wax museum.” Wax museum, I think, smiling. These are two words that separately sound boring, but together they sound magical. A magical museum of wax — I don’t know what it means. All I know is it sounds way better than fractions!
Before I can hear more, the door opens and there she is. Charlotte Stinkytown Pinkerton.
“Pinkerton, Charlotte,” Mr. Santorini says, looking at his class list again. I’m trying so hard not to laugh that my whole body is shaking. The thing is, I don’t know if Mr. Santorini thinks he’s being funny, and the worst thing you can do is laugh at someone when they are being serious. I know this firsthand because my parents sometimes laugh when they think I am kidding and it is not funny to me at all.
But all of a sudden I notice something and I forget all about the last-names-first thing: Stinkytown is making the biggest entrance of her life and I feel like I might explode. I knew if she was going to be late for the first day of third grade there was going to be a very big reason, and is there ever. Stinkytown, Charlotte, is wearing glasses.
Now that laughing feeling is gone and all I feel is something tightening up in the middle of my stomach right behind the apple on my shirt, right where that omelet probably was, which makes me wonder if all that gooey cheese can tie itself into a knot this long after you’ve chewed it.
Elinor hits me on the arm right then because:
Elinor is my very best friend in the whole world.
Some things only your very best friend in the whole world knows about you.
My best friend in the whole world knows that more than anything else in the world, more than being an actress even, the only thing I really want and probably won’t ever get, is glasses.
It takes me all morning to stop staring at Charlotte’s glasses. Sometimes you forget to really look at your friends, which means you forget that they are pretty or that they have freckles or crooked teeth because you’re busy just being with them. But now I know where every last freckle on Charlotte’s face is, and that is because they are mostly on her nose — the same nose where her pink-with-polka-dots glasses sit. The glasses are perfect. I might have even chosen them myself if they didn’t have turquoise ones. Do they have turquoise glasses? They must. They have pink-with-polka-dots glasses. I never even thought about all the glasses possibilities, but now I can’t think of anything else.
“So, eat a healthy lunch and do your jumping jacks at recess, sailors,” Mr. Santorini is saying. “Get all that physical energy out and come back ready to focus on fractions. We don’t want any yellows or reds on the first day!”
My new third-grade teacher — the one who calls us sailors and who swears by morning jogs in the hallway and jumping jacks at recess — also believes in behavior charts. This means that if you do one little thing wrong, you get your color changed from green to yellow, and if that thing you do gets worse, or if you do something else that’s bad, then you go to red — RED — and red means a call home. But what is the very bad thing that turns a person red? I don’t know. And I don’t want to ask because what if I raise my hand at the exact wrong time and THAT is the very bad thing that turns me red? Between staring at Charlotte’s face and the chart on the wall, my eyes feel almost crossed by the time lunch finally comes.
It is a salad bar day, which only adds to my problems. I usually love salad bar because I can pile up black olives on my plate and shredded cheese and crunchy lettuce and ranch dressing, but today having to take all my own food and balance it on my tray makes me extra tired. Why can’t I ever feel this tired at bedtime?
Finally I make it to our table, and Elinor and I sit together watching Charlotte eat the cucumber-and-avocado sushi roll her mother bought her as a first-day-of-school treat.
“Can you see me now?” Teddy asks Charlotte.
“I could always see you,” Charlotte says. “I can just see you better. I don’t have to squint.”
I feel myself squinting when she says the word squint, and I think maybe I should ask my mom for a doctor’s appointment when I get home. Maybe I do need glasses.
“How did you know you needed them?” Elinor asks.
“I don’t know. I kept rubbing my eyes at camp. I thought it was allergies. I thought I couldn’t see the stage because there was pollen in my eyes or something. Then we went to the movies a couple of days ago and when the title was up on the screen I realized it looked blurry, too. I had to squint to see clearly. Then my mom rushed to make an appointment and we found out I needed glasses. Today was the soonest we could pick them up, so that’s why I was late. My mom didn’t want me to start third grade with blurry vision.”
And so you could make an entrance, I think to myself. You and your perfect pink polka-dot glasses. But I don’t say this out loud. I just listen to everyone giving Charlotte all kinds of attention and I stare at my black olives, suddenly wishing they were sushi rolls instead. I do not like wishing for glasses and sushi rolls on the first day of school. I like thinking about Ms. Leon’s accent and freewriting. I feel my head start to pound and I definitely think I might need that doctor’s appointment.
Somehow I make it through a very sweaty recess and a very sweaty rest of the school day and never once do I run into Big Henry and never once do I run into Avery — I mean, Ms. Kaplan — and it feels like the whole first day of school is going on around me and that I am missing it. I pray that Mr. Santorini will tell us about the wax museum but he never does, and I don’t want to ask about it since I’m afraid of getting a yellow card for being impatient or something. I decide to be patient. I’m patient all the way to dismissal, when I find my mom in a hurry.
“How was it, Julesie?” I feel so many feelings I can’t answer her, so I do something I know she doesn’t like. I bump my body into hers a little too hard and hope she doesn’t ask me any more questions. She ignores me and I listen as she chitchats with everyone she hasn’t seen all summer long. My mom is very good at talking to other people nicely even when I know she’s not happy with me. I can tell because her voice gets a little bit louder and she laughs too hard at nothing. Things get worse when Big Henry comes running out holding Ms. Kim’s hand. He looks so happy and so cute with his backpack and his smile. I feel like bumping into him a little too hard, too.
“Hank!” my mom yells, and he comes flying into her arms and wraps his legs around her and they hug each other super tight. Ms. Kim gives my mom a thumbs-up and says “Great day!” before delivering all the other kindergartners to their parents.
“Big Henry is lucky,” I say as we walk. It’s hard for me to even get a word in since Big Henry is talking and talking and talking and talking.
“Why?” he asks.
“Why?” I say, mocking his little voice.
“Jules,” my mom says calmly. Too calmly. I look at the ground. “Jules,” she says again. “I told you the day would not be perfect.”
“You did not say it would be horrible,” I say.
“I didn’t know it would be,” she says. “And I am sorry it was horrible, but it is not okay to push me and it is not okay to mock Big Henry. Clear?”
“Clear,” I say.
“Let’s take some deep breaths in the car,” she says.
“Are we going to sitcom practice now?” Big Henry asks. He talks about the sitcom like it’s soccer practice. He also says the word sitcom about three hundred times a day, which was funny when it started but now it hurts my ears.
We are waiting on the corner for a car service, which is like a taxi except you can reserve it and it isn’t yellow and it doesn’t have a TV tha
t shows you the weather forecast. This is how we will be getting to the studio every day while we rehearse and tape the sitcom Look at Us Now!, where I play a girl named Sylvie who does all kinds of things I would never do, including singing on countertops.
I spent a lot of my summer rehearsing and taping the show and now, in two weeks, on a Sunday night, the first episode is going to air on television and my parents are going to have a party at my dad’s restaurant, BLOOM. We only have a few more episodes to go, but now that school has started, it means I’ll be missing some days when we tape, which means A LOT of extra work, but I don’t care. I love this TV show. I love it way more than filming a spy movie in another country where everyone speaks another language and where I had to turn eight without my dad or Elinor there to blow out candles with me. Besides, after filming a movie with teenage megastar Emma Saxony, who was the main star of The Spy in the Attic and who is not nearly as pretty inside as she is outside, even, I think, homework — loads and loads of homework — will be fun.
We hop into the car and I feel better already, thinking about going back to the set. I even feel like making a list!
Reasons Why I Will Be Happy for the Rest of the Day:
There will be a babysitter on set for Big Henry, so he can go be all happy about kindergarten somewhere else.
There will be air conditioning from here on out.
The first day of third grade is over.
When we arrive, no matter how happy I am, I get butterflies. Butterflies and acting go together for me. Like chocolate and mint. My mom delivers Big Henry to the babysitter and I can still hear his voice talking as she leads him down a hallway and far, far away. I can STILL hear his voice in my head after he is long gone. “Ms. Kim” this, and “choice time” that, and “recess” this … I can’t imagine having that much to say about third grade already.
“Sylvie, darlin’!” I hear my sitcom name and smile. My big sister has arrived.
I smile big at Jordana, whose sitcom name is Sydney. She has the thickest Southern accent I’ve ever heard, except when she’s being Sydney, then she sounds just like everyone I know in real life and I think this is what makes her a very good actress. “Very talented,” Colby Kingston always says about the kids on Look at Us Now!
“How was the first day, y’all?” she asks while looking at her phone. She is also talented at doing a lot of things at once, which according to my mom is something all teenagers are good at. Jordana used to make me nervous with all of her teenager-y ways, but then she started teaching me things and making me laugh when I was anxious, and now I love her, like a real-life sister.
“Maybe Jules will tell you, Jordana,” my mom says. “Might be a case only a sitcom big sister can solve.”
“Or a sitcom big brother,” John McCarthy, formerly the Swish Mouthwash boy, now my sitcom older brother, says. “This is why you gotta give up on school and get a tutor.”
“Ahem!” my mom says, fake-clearing her throat. “Not happening, McCarthy.”
My mom thinks John McCarthy is very hilarious. They always talk to each other like grown-ups, which makes me picture them at a café sipping tall icy drinks and talking about the news. If someone told me last year when I was in the waiting room of the Swish Mouthwash auditions, staring at the boy in the short-sleeve buttoned-up shirt and bow tie, KNOWING that he would be the Swish kid and that I would definitely not be — well, if someone told me the Swish boy and I would one day soon be sitcom siblings and that my mom and the Swish boy would be sharing imaginary tall icy drinks, I would have squinted so hard at that person, they definitely would have thought I needed glasses. But here we are. Look at us now.
“Make a list for me, Jules. Tell me all about the pain and suffering of third grade in list form. Go!” Jordana says.
It’s already been one whole week since meeting my brand-new third-grade sea captain — I mean, teacher — and a week since staring Charlotte and her glasses in the freckly face. A week since we were told there would be something called a wax museum, and a week since we were introduced to the behavior chart that keeps my mouth zipped up tighter than ever.
“I can’t,” I say.
“Can’t or won’t?” Jordana asks.
“Can’t,” I say. “I cannot make a list. We don’t even have freewriting time in third grade. I haven’t made a list in days! I bet Avery’s class has freewriting.”
“You think everything is better over there in Avery’s room, huh?”
“It is better,” I say. “I know it is. Brynn and Abby told us at recess that they are going to have a tapas party if everyone stays green all week. Tapas!”
“That sounds very weird.”
“It is weird,” I say. “That’s why I love it.”
“Does Mr. Santorini have parties?” she asks. “He wears Hawaiian shirts.”
“No way, José. He thinks kids get too many rewards. We should be good because we are supposed to be good. And that’s that.” I say this and don’t realize that I am imitating him. Now I picture myself wearing a Hawaiian shirt and doing jumping jacks.
“Hmmm,” Jordana says. “He’s a tough cookie. I’ll have to think about that one. And what’s happening on the glasses front?”
“Well, I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow because Mom realized she never made me an eight-year-old checkup, so fingers crossed!” I say.
“Jules, your vision is perfect,” she says. “You wouldn’t be able to read the teleprompter if it weren’t.”
“We’ll see about that,” I say, squinting.
We get back to rehearsal and right away I forget all about school and glasses and behavior charts. I realize how happy I am to fit in here after feeling very out of place all day long.
When I play Sylvie, I get to do things I would never do in real life. I get to sing at the top of my lungs, I get to talk to older kids like John McCarthy and Jordana in a way that I would never, ever talk to older kids if I ever met them in real life. In real life, I get nervous when one of the older kids in my building asks me something in the elevator. They say things like “Cute backpack.” And it would be really easy for me to say “Thanks,” but I just get all hot in the face and my mom always says “What do you say?” to me like I’m three years old.
If Sylvie were in the same exact situation, she would say, “I was deciding between rainbow and peace signs and went with rainbow, since peace signs seemed a little last year to me.” Then everyone would laugh and the director would say “Cut,” and we’d all get out of the fake elevator and get a drink of water. But as Jules, I always get out of the elevator feeling bad that I don’t know how to talk to people when I don’t have a script.
This week’s episode of Look at Us Now! is about Spencer having a crush on a girl who wants to try out for the same reality show that made Mr. and Mrs. Summers so famous. The whole idea of our show is that the Summers family used to live a regular life in a regular apartment until the parents struck it rich on a big-time reality TV show.
So the thing is, even though I always have to say a lot of funny things and make a lot of funny faces when I play Sylvie, in this episode I have to do some very crazy things with my body. The director tells me this is called “physical comedy,” which I already know because usually people tell me I’m good at it! My mom always says this is the kind of comedy that makes kids laugh the hardest. But this is different. This isn’t acting like a funny person. This is acting like a funny doll! In this scene, John’s character, Spencer, makes Sylvie come with him to his crush’s audition, and they audition together as a ventriloquist and his puppet, called … a dummy! Sylvie is the dummy and I’m having a LOT of trouble understanding how to not act like a person. The script says, “Sylvie opens and closes her mouth like a wooden dummy, with big wide eyes, and she turns her head side to side and she says her jokes.” I concentrate really hard on what everyone tells me at the table read, but I just end up feeling silly acting like a dummy.
I think back to sliding down that giant mudslide in
Canada when we filmed The Spy in the Attic, and how nervous I was and how glad I was when I did it without a stunt double, and I don’t know why this feels harder than that.
We work on this for a while and no matter how many times we do it, something is keeping me from playing the scene the way I know I should. I’m afraid of really going for it because what if it isn’t funny? What if I am horribly embarrassed in front of everyone? It’s the same feeling that behavior chart gives me — the what-if feeling.
The director says it will be easier when the makeup is on and I look like an actual dummy. That’s what he says to me and I have gone from feeling very in place to very out of place. I spend the last half hour of rehearsal wanting to go home, which is the OPPOSITE of how I usually feel when I’m here. Anyway, when I hear “That’s a wrap!” I am very relieved. No one is happy with my read-through. Even my mom seems frustrated, and she’s not one of the moms who even cares if I act or not, but now she seems mad the way John McCarthy’s mom does if he looks like he’s having too much fun. My mom shakes her head at me and apologizes to the director, and suddenly I am very happy that there is no behavior chart for acting because I think I would have gotten a yellow for sure.
We pick up Big Henry from the babysitter and we have to practically drag him home by his arm, he’s so tired. Finally my mom just picks him up, slinging his backpack over her shoulder.
“Can you hold me instead?” I ask.
“Hold you?” she asks.
“Please?” I ask.
“Jules, I think you need to walk off your frustration, and anyway, I can hardly hold this guy,” she says. I know I should grab his backpack from her and be helpful but I think if she’s going to choose one of us to carry and the one she chooses is not me, then I am going to punish her by not carrying his backpack. It’s probably not even heavy anyway since he eats everything in his lunch and has exactly one worksheet — Crazy About C! — in his homework folder.
