Eliza Bing Is (Not) a Star

by Carmella Van Vleet

  Copyright © 2018 by Carmella Van Vleet

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  First Edition

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Van Vleet, Carmella, author.

  Title: Eliza Bing is (not) a star / by Carmella Van Vleet.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Holiday House, [2018] | Sequel to: Eliza Bing is (not) a big, fat quitter. | Summary: Eliza Bing does her best to conquer the sixth grade, new friendships, after-school taekwondo, and a role in the school play.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017043191 | ISBN 9780823440245 (hardcover)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Theater—Fiction. | Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Taekwondo—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | Middle schools—Fiction. |

  Schools—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.V378 Eo 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2017043191

  Ebook ISBN 9780823441266

  v5.3.2

  a

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  New Rule: Don’t Volunteer

  Holy Guacamole

  Squished, Squashed

  Drip Dry

  What We Did With Me

  Another Lesson About Water

  BBF

  The Next Day

  Step 1 of Operation BBF

  Duuuuh

  Be Awesome

  Tap, Tap, Tap

  The Quick Version of What Mrs. Delany told Everyone About Improv

  “I Love You, Baby.”

  “I Just Can’t Smile.”

  What I Didn’t Tell Annie About Keeping A Straight Face During The “I Love You, Baby” Game

  The Part Where I Tried to Convince My Parents I’m Not A Baby

  How Dad Saved The Day With One Sentence (Okay, Technically Two)

  Day Two of Auditions, or When I Learned to Channel My Inner Ninja Pig

  Twenty Minutes Ten Minutes

  First Impression (Spoiler Alert: Blah)

  Rules to Surviving Sixth Grade No. 22: Don’t Get So Distracted Waiting for A List to Go Up That You Forget to Focus On A Biology Quiz

  The Part When The Cast List Goes Up

  Do Monkeys Have Tails?

  Re-Breakable

  First Rehearsal

  Mrs. Delay’s Rules for Scripts

  Scheduling Conflicts

  Ow Wow Wow

  Tick Tock

  What I Read When it Was My Turn to Share

  What Paige Said

  One Big, Happy

  After Rehearsal on Friday, or When I’m Home Alone Minus The Sled

  “Back Fall!”

  One Big, Crashing Family

  Back Fall!

  The Part Where I Got My Own Copy of The Theater Book-Sort of

  The Glass Slippers

  Note to Self: Don’t Trust The “Popcorn” Button on The Microwave

  WWSCD?

  Stage Directions

  When I Got Home that Afternoon

  Walking Tacos Wednesday

  Things I Thought of When I Was Hiding out in My Room And Painting My Toenails:

  Opening Night = Opportunity

  The Next Day

  War

  A Little Surprise

  Commercial Girl

  Cue Lines

  Kicho Ee Bo Cha Cha Cha

  Next Rehearsal

  The Note Inside The Suitcase

  Goodwill

  What Mom Found

  FYI

  A Little Extra Oomph

  Rehearsal Break on Tuesday

  The Part Where I Learn The Importance of Tapping Out

  “My Boots are Killing Me.”

  Barnyard Muck

  The Part Where Mom Makes Popcorn

  Ball of Fire

  Scheduling Conflicts, Part 2

  Between A Rock and A Megan Place

  Banana-Mobile

  Note to Self: Mom Saying “Honey” Is A Bad Sign

  Cranky Pants

  Diabolical Director

  Best Friend…?

  Bull’s-Eye

  More Bad News

  Tricks and Treats

  A Good Martial Artist (Not)

  The Second To-Last Ride with Annie

  Fearlessness

  Not Today

  What Annie Texted Me Later That Night

  A Good Martial Artist Knows When to Change Direction

  Knock, Knock. Who’s There? More Trouble at Rehearsal

  The Part Where Paige Stopped Me After Rehearsal

  Annie

  Test Day

  A Good Martial Artist Adapts

  My Board Break

  Ta-Da!

  A Nice Bruise

  Bad Enough

  Pinkies

  The Part Where I Tried Again (Because Best Friends Try)

  Break A Leg

  “They’re Cupcakes.”

  Good Thing I Kept The Foil

  At Lunch on Wednesday

  Yin, No Yang

  Dress Rehearsal

  Opening Night

  Getting Ready

  The Part Where I Break The Rules A Little

  Bright Lights, Jelly Legs

  In Which It’s Time for My Big Line

  Intermission

  The Only Rule to Being A Best Friend

  After The Show

  Water

  Ice Cream, You Scream

  One Last Thing

  One More Last Thing, or What We Did at Our Sleepover

  Glossary

  How to Count to Twenty in Korean

  Acknowledgments

  For Abbey—the real-life Eliza

  Master Kim once said a good martial artist focuses his or her mind on the lesson at all times. But a million cupcakes says he’s never sat through Mr. Roddel’s lab-safety lecture. Sorting socks would be more exciting.

  Mr. R taught biology, but now that we’d been in school for a couple of weeks, both sixth-grade classes were going to do a chemistry unit and take turns using the lab. Annie was in the other biology class. We’d doubled up to get the safety talk because their class had a substitute who knew more about binomials than Bunsen burners.

  Annie nudged my elbow. “Eliza,” she whispered. I looked over and she pretended to fall asleep.

  Annie wanted to be an actor someday, so she was always playing around like that. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Taekwondo and making cakes were more my thing. But I faked a yawn, which made Annie yawn for real. And that made me giggle.

  Zoe turned around. “Do you mind?” she snapped.

  “No, I don’t mind,” Annie said sweetly, as if Zoe had a
sked if she could cut in line or something.

  Annie and I started a Rules to Surviving Sixth Grade list on the second day of school. And she was breaking Rule No. 4: Don’t get on Zoe Goldberg’s bad side. (No. 1: Buy, don’t pack. No. 2: Write your locker combo on the bottom of your shoe. And No. 3: Don’t sit in the first row of Ms. Miller’s class because she spits when she talks.) I appreciated Annie sticking up for me. Tony, my ex-best-friend, never laughed at me. But he never stood up for me, either.

  Zoe stared at us, confused. When she finally turned back around, Annie held up four fingers just for me and grinned. I grinned back. Then Annie nodded toward Mr. Roddel to let me know we needed to pay attention. Annie liked horsing around, but she also liked getting good grades.

  “Now. Since the weather will be turning chilly soon, you may want to wear scarves,” Mr. Roddel said. “You’ll need to leave them in your lockers. Loose clothing is dangerous when we’re working with the Bunsen burners. And if you have long hair”—here Mr. R paused and eyed a kid named Matt—“you’ll need to tie it back while in class as well.”

  Matt had long, curly hair. He never pulled it back, so his head looked like a mop. That would never fly at taekwondo class. Master Kim had long hair, too, but he wore it in a ponytail. Mine was just long enough for a stubby ponytail. It used to be longer, but I got it cut short. Mom kept asking, “Are you sure you want to do that? You can’t undo it,” like I was five and didn’t understand how hair worked.

  I did regret doing it, though. But when Annie first saw me, she said it was “Oh-my-gosh chic!” Well, actually, it came out as “Ohmygoshchic” because Annie talks really fast. She was just being nice, though. (She reminded me of Sweet Caroline of Sweet Caroline Cakes, my favorite show. Caroline always says, “Be sweet to those you meet!”)

  Annie had called me out of the blue when I didn’t show up for Orientation Day. She was excited the two of us were in the same homeroom. Last year we’d been in different classes, but we went to the same orthodontist, Dr. Ohno. I’d missed orientation because I was at the ER after I’d jumped down the stairs and bruised my coccyx. If you don’t know what that is, look it up. It’s embarrassing, and I’m not going to talk about it or the inflatable donut I had to sit on for a week. That was all right before my yellow-belt test. Which, FYI, I passed.

  Mr. Roddel moved everyone to the back of the room, near the safety shower. He held up the eyewash bottle and showed us how to use it. We weren’t supposed to rub. Just rinse for fifteen minutes and roll your eyeballs around inside your head to make sure nothing got missed. I tried to imagine how you went about rolling your eyeballs inside your head for that long. Should you make circles? Would shaking your head shake your eyeballs, too?

  Mr. Roddel caught my attention and tapped his left ear. It was his way of telling me to focus. He came up with it in our “strategies for success” meeting. My parents and I have those every year with my teachers because of my ADHD. I was pretty sure having biology second-to-last period wasn’t a very good strategy for success. My medicine started to wear off by then.

  “So, in the exceedingly rare event that your clothes catch on fire or you spill chemicals on yourself, make your way quickly to the shower,” Mr. Roddel told us. “It’s important that you don’t panic.”

  I leaned over and whispered, “Don’t panic,” to Annie. She gave me her best Who me? face, which made me want to giggle again. But I didn’t. I slapped my hand over my mouth to stifle a snicker so I didn’t get Mr. Roddel’s attention. Middle school was going to be different. I was going to stop blurting things out and doing things without thinking in class. I was going to have a best friend who didn’t ditch me (like Tony did) and I’d have my first sleepover.

  “Once here”—Mr. Roddel fanned his hand over the shower base—“you’ll need to…Hold up. Let’s do and understand.”

  Everyone groaned because Mr. Roddel always said that. He was in love with the Confucius quote: I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. He even had two posters of it on the wall.

  “Who would like to volunteer?” he asked. I wanted to make up for not paying attention before, so when no one else raised their hand, I did.

  “Thank you, Eliza!” Mr. Roddel said. I started to take my shoes off, but he stopped me and told us that, in an emergency, we should just get inside the shower as quickly as possible.

  I stepped under the showerhead and suddenly felt silly standing there. In front of everyone. In a shower.

  “Next,” Mr. Roddel announced, “you will pull down on the chain.” I grabbed the air next to the chain and gave it a fake tug.

  “And that’s it! Gravity will do the rest. Any questions?”

  No one had any, so Mr. R told me I could step out. I was in a hurry to go back to the group and forgot I was standing inside a four-inch-tall shower base.

  Oomph!

  My right foot banged against the edge and I stumbled forward. I reached out, both arms waving wildly as I tried to grab on to something—anything!—to keep from falling.

  My left hand landed on the chain. Without thinking, I pulled myself up.

  It was raining. And not just on me.

  When I’d put my weight on the shower chain, it pulled the ceiling pipe down and cracked it open. Water sprayed out in all directions. People squealed. Others shrieked. Everyone scrambled.

  “Calm down and move this way!” Mr. Roddel called. But no one was really listening.

  “Yeeess!” a boy said.

  “Aw, man. I wish I had my phone,” another boy, named Collin, said. “This would go viral!”

  A girl used her folder as an umbrella. “This is a brand-new shirt!” she complained.

  I backed against the wall, out of the way. It was too late, though. I was soaked. Annie was off to one side, looking damp and crossing her arms over her chest.

  The commotion brought Miss Moorehouse, the history teacher from next door, running to the room. “Should I pull the fire alarm?” she yelled.

  “No,” Mr. Roddel called over the noise.

  Criminy! The last thing I needed was the whole school having to evacuate because of something dumb I did.

  Miss Moorehouse managed to get everyone to the front of the chem lab while Mr. Roddel called the office.

  The two classes crammed together as best they could to avoid the spray. When the water began streaming across the floor, some of the girls stood on their tiptoes or on chairs. A few boys splashed each other.

  “Settle down, folks,” Miss Moorehouse scolded. “It’s water; it won’t hurt you.”

  “Well, technically, it can,” a boy named Michael said. “About ten people drown each day.” He was one of those people who always had random facts handy.

  Miss Moorehouse frowned at him.

  A few minutes later, the maintenance guy came waltzing in with a big wrench. He went straight to the closet in the corner of the room and turned the emergency shutoff valve.

  “Awwww,” some people complained. Everyone else cheered.

  The place was a disaster with a capital D. Water continued to drip from the pipe and make tiny splashes in the puddles in the back of the room. The rest of the floor was covered in a shallow layer of water. There was a drain in the middle of the floor, but it was clogged by something that looked like someone’s math notes. In the back, near the shower, a poster that said SAFETY RULES was a soggy mess and peeling off the wall. Some books on a nearby lab table were ruined, too.

  People began shaking out their wet clothes or running their hands through damp hair. “I need a comb,” someone called out. The kids with glasses grabbed tissues to dry them off.

  “You better hope my shoes aren’t ruined!” a girl whose name I didn’t know said. “They were expensive.”

  “That. Was. Epic!” a boy said, and fist-bumped his friend.

  “If my watch is toast, you’re buying me a
new one,” another boy warned.

  A girl complained as she wiped off the mascara running down her face.

  “Great. Just great,” Zoe muttered.

  From all around the room, glaring, amused, and shocked eyes found me in the back.

  And then Michael started slow clapping. “Nice job, Nimbus!” he said.

  Nimbus.

  I got the joke right away. And since we’d talked about weather in class last week, apparently so did lots of other people.

  Nimbus clouds were rain clouds.

  My face and chest were hot with shame, but the rest of me shivered from the cold water. I hunched my shoulders and wished I could shrink enough to disappear down the drain. I’d been called Spaz and a weirdo before. And last year, people called me Every Day Eliza because sometimes I wore the same outfit for a few days in a row when I found a comfortable one. But nimbus clouds were gray and depressing and ruined people’s day.