“You go,” I told her.
Annie chewed her bottom lip. “Are you sure?” I nodded and then sat down with JJ and Vivian on the opposite side of the stage.
“Just a friendly reminder,” Mrs. Delany said. “I expect you all to be off-book in five days. That’s approximately one hundred and twenty hours from now. Please plan accordingly.” Next, she called for the actors in the second act.
This bugged me. I liked for things to go in order. In baking, you had to follow the steps of a recipe. Taekwondo was like that, too. We always started class by bowing in and then doing meditation. But Mrs. Delany did things out of order. Instead of doing the play from start to finish, she’d have us rehearse whatever scene she felt needed work. Or based on who was at rehearsal. I tried my best not to think about it too much, or how Annie didn’t hesitate when I told her to sit with Paige.
If you weren’t onstage, you were supposed to either watch your fellow performers or occupy yourself quietly. JJ, Vivian, and I played a three-way version of War in the wings with a deck of cards we’d found. (FYI: The “wings” were the parts of the stage off to the sides. That’s where you waited to go on or went after you left the stage. You couldn’t see them from the audience.)
Annie and Paige were in the wings on the other side of the stage, watching the scene and taking notes. “Wanna play?” I mouthed when I looked over and caught Annie’s eye.
Annie smiled, looked at Paige, and then shook her head. She motioned for me to join them.
I tossed my cards down in the draw pile. “I’m going to go watch the scene,” I told JJ and Vivian.
“It’s copacetic,” JJ said. Vivian rolled her eyes. She’d asked him what that word meant the first time he’d said it. Apparently it was some old slang word that was kind of like saying “cool.”
I tiptoed backstage and around to the other side, where Annie and Paige were, and sat down.
“Hey,” Annie said when I joined them. “You finish your game?”
“It’s still going,” I told her. “I just thought I’d see what you guys were doing.”
“We’re paying attention to the work onstage,” Paige said.
“It’s important to study your craft,” Annie explained. Craft? Boy. She was taking acting seriously. But that was fair. After all, I studied baking by watching shows and reading cookbooks. And I spent a lot of time thinking about stuff Master Kim taught us. Annie was serious about this and if Operation BBF was going to succeed, I had to take it seriously, too.
“So, what are we supposed to be watching for?” I asked.
Paige rolled her eyes. It was Annie who answered. “We’re seeing who’s listening and who’s waiting.”
“Huh?”
“A good actor listens to the dialogue and responds. They don’t just wait for their turn to talk.”
I nodded like I understood. “Ah. Got it.”
We continued watching. Annie and Paige scribbled down a few notes. “Hmm, interesting choice,” Paige murmured about someone. Annie agreed.
I had no idea what they were talking about. I tried asking a few more questions, but Paige kept sighing, and Annie smiled but put her finger to her lips. What was the deal? She was the one who invited me over.
I gave up and went back to the card game.
“You’ll have to wait till we finish this round,” Vivian said apologetically.
“Nah,” JJ said, scooting over to make room for me. “You can take half of my stack.”
“Oooo, half the stack,” Vivian teased. “Must be true love.”
I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, but I think JJ blushed.
A couple of days later, Mom called me into the kitchen when she got home.
“I got you something today,” she said. She reached into her purse and pulled out a small brown bag. “Pretend it’s wrapped with a bow.”
I smiled and then slipped my hand inside.
It was a key!
“I figured it would be easier if you had your own key, since you’re going to be staying by yourself some afternoons,” Mom explained. “I think there’s a carabiner in the junk drawer,” she went on. “You can attach it to a hook inside your backpack. Pockets aren’t always reliable.”
A key. To the house. That was mine.
I wrapped my arms around Mom and squeezed. “Thank you,” I told her.
I was ready for her to give me a lecture about what a big responsibility this was and how I’d better keep track of it and not make her regret trusting me. But all Mom did was hug me back and say, “You’re welcome.”
I met up with Annie at her locker on Monday and handed her my flash cards with the Korean words I needed to memorize. She wanted to help me get ready for my gold-belt test, which I thought was nice of her. Maybe she was trying to make it up to me for shhhing me when I tried to ask her and Paige questions at rehearsal. We only had about ten minutes before the first bell, but Annie said a minute here and a minute there could add up.
“How do you count to twenty?” she asked. I counted for her and she laughed. “Okay. I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”
She flipped to the next card. “What does”—she sounded the word out—“choonbi mean?”
“It’s choon-bee,” I said.
“That’s what I said.”
“You said choon-bye.”
Annie giggled. “Sorry. Okay what does choon-beee mean?”
“Ready position,” I told her. I knew I was right, but she checked the back of the card and nodded.
“Who’s getting ready?” a voice behind us said.
Annie and I turned around and found Monica (the girl who played the Dairy Godmother) and Paige there.
Annie’s face lit up. “Hi guys!”
“Hey Annie,” Paige said.
“Hi,” I said. Monica smiled, but Paige didn’t say anything.
“So. Who’s getting ready for what?” Monica repeated.
“Oh. Annie’s just helping me with my memorization,” I told her.
“Good idea,” Paige said. “We’re off-book this week.”
I knew that. Everyone knew that. Mrs. Delany had reminded us a billion times.
“It’s for her belt test,” Annie explained to Paige.
“I do taekwondo,” I added.
Paige scoffed. “My older brother does that. He’s a brown belt.”
“Um. That’s cool. There are lots of girls in my class, too,” I blurted out. I didn’t want her to think martial arts was only for boys.
Paige looked at me like I was wearing roller skates. “Good for you and your class,” she said. Then she turned to Annie.
“I took a stage weapons class over the summer. You should look into it.”
“Really? That sounds awesome,” Annie said.
“Yeah, it was fun. We learned how to do fake sword and knife fights. Plus, the more special skills you have on your acting résumé, the better.”
Special skills. Résumé. Hummph. Paige was acting like she was a major movie star instead of an eighth grader who did one lousy commercial. And Annie was buying it!
“We should keep practicing,” I said to Annie. She gave me a look that I couldn’t quite figure out.
“Don’t let me keep you,” Paige said. “If you have better things…”
Annie’s smile looked like it was hurting her. “No, no. It’s not that. I just promised Eliza I’d study with her.”
“Later,” Paige said. She and Monica faded into the sea of kids hurrying to their homerooms.
Since the bell was about to ring, Annie handed back the flash cards. The two of us headed down the hall. “That was a little rude,” she said.
“It was?”
Annie sighed. “Paige is helping me. Will you please be nice to her?”
“I was nice!”
Annie look
ed at me.
A best friend is honest. “She started it,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“When we did our character developments and she said my character’s embarrassing moment should be getting caught in the shower.”
Annie was confused. “Are you still mad about that? I think she was just trying to help.”
“Why are you defending her?”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are,” I said.
Annie sighed.
“I thought you said you’d always be on my side,” I added.
“I am on your side,” Annie said. “Don’t you believe me?”
“I guess,” I told her. But I didn’t.
Toward the end of Tuesday’s rehearsal, Monica and Paige were doing the scene where the Dairy Godmother (Monica) visits Cinder Ellen (Paige) and whips up a dress for her to wear to the Barnyard Bash.
Monica was supposed to wave a pencil (the wand would come later) and say her magic spell. Only she just stood there.
“Oh, no,” Annie whispered next to me. “She forgot her line!”
I knew what it felt like to have everyone waiting on you. Like at my yellow-belt test when I couldn’t remember charyut meant “attention.” And that was only in front of a few judges.
Paige stared at Monica. The seconds dragged on. Finally, Mrs. Delany gave Monica the line. Monica’s shoulders relaxed and she repeated the spell. She said a few more lines. But then she stopped again. Paige and Monica just stood there.
Something was wrong. What were they waiting for?
Fifteen seconds or so later, Anthony, the boy who played the goat who got turned into the tractor driver (who drove Cinder Ellen to the party), stepped onstage. He looked confused.
Mrs. Delany stopped the scene and called for everyone’s attention. “Eyes and ears on me, fellow thespians,” she said. “This is very important, so write it down in your scripts.”
Everyone grabbed their scripts and pencils. Normally we just wrote down notes that Mrs. Delany gave us about how to do a scene. But sometimes she gave us general feedback or advice.
Mrs. Delany waited until our pencils were poised. “First of all, we are off-book. You must know and live and breathe your lines. And second, there’s a reason you must memorize your lines exactly as they were written. And it’s not because the playwright is awesome. Even if the playwright is me this time around.” Mrs. Delany smiled and batted her eyes to let us know she didn’t take herself too seriously.
She went on. “One of my veterans, please explain to the new folks what a ‘cue line’ is.”
Paige didn’t even raise her hand; she just started talking. “A cue line is a line that prompts an action. For example, another actor making an entrance or dropping a book onstage or something like that. It can also direct the crew to make a sound effect or turn on a spotlight.”
I bet Paige knew a lot about spotlights.
“Thank you, Paige,” Mrs. Delany said.
“So, Monica was supposed to say a line that signaled Anthony to come onstage?” I asked Annie.
“Yeah. She didn’t give him his cue. That’s why he got confused.”
Mrs. Delany cleared her throat. “Everyone repeat after me: Cue lines are crucial.”
Everyone repeated the line.
“Again!” Mrs. Delany sang.
“Cue lines are crucial.”
She gave us the “okay” sign and then looked at the clock. “All right, friends. Time to scoot your boots!”
It was chilly at the community center on Wednesday night. I was glad I wore a long-sleeved shirt under my dobok. The stage at school was usually hot. I felt like Goldilocks because it was hard to find clothes that were “just right” for both places.
I liked being busy, but doing taekwondo and the play was tough. Homework piled up and I ended up doing it in the car or on the bus. And I had a bunch of episodes of Sweet Caroline Cakes to catch up on. On top of that, I was tired, which made it extra hard to concentrate.
After warm-ups, Master Kim divided us into groups to work on poomsae, or “forms.” Forms were a way to practice kicking and punching with an imaginary opponent. They needed a lot of concentration. When I was a white belt, my form was called kicho il bo. The name meant “basic form No. 1,” which was boring. So I added cha cha cha in my head because then it sounded like a dance.
My new form was called kicho ee bo (cha cha cha) and it meant “basic form No. 2.” Which was a boring name, too. The later forms had more interesting meanings, like “great principle of heaven,” or “great principle of happiness.”
Kicho ee bo wasn’t too hard to learn. That’s because it followed the same I-shaped pattern that my first form had. I didn’t get the whole pattern thing at first. But one day Master Kim pulled out these plastic disks and laid them out on the ground in the shape of capital I. When he did the form, I could see how it traced the lines.
Master Kim called the yellow belts to the center of the room so we could practice. “Shijak!” (That meant “Begin.”)
I went over the steps in my head:
Turn to the left, face block in front stance.
Step, still front stance, face punch…
When we were done, Master Kim said, “Bah ro, return to starting position. Shool, rest.”
Everyone turned around to face the front, bowed, and stood at attention.
“Nice job. I saw several strong front stances.” I wondered if he was talking about mine. “We are going to go through the form again. This time, I want you to show me your best effort. Imagine you are at your test.”
This time, the white, gold, and orange belts and the black-belt helpers sat along the wall to watch. My heart picked up a little, but I focused on my stance. (Just in case he hadn’t been talking about mine earlier.)
I got through the beginning and the middle just fine. But when I got to the second-to-last turn, I saw Master Kim out of the corner of my eye and my brain stopped working. I waited for my arms and legs to remember what to do, but they weren’t much help, either. It took watching everyone else and stumbling around a bit to figure out what to do next.
Applesauce.
When we were done, Master Kim had us return to the starting position and wait at attention. My face felt warm. And not just from doing the form two times in a row.
“Remember,” Master Kim said. “Always show confidence in a test, even if you may not feel it. If you make a mistake, keep going. Do not stop. Do not change your expression. Do not sigh or groan. It is possible your error won’t be noticed as long as you do not draw attention to it.”
Then Master Kim told us a story about how one of his older students went to a competition and completely messed up her form halfway through. But she didn’t let her confidence break for a second and even made the same mistake on both sides so it looked like the form was supposed to be that way. Master Kim said she got first place—all because she was confident and had strong technique, even if it was the wrong technique.
“And guess who that student was,” Master Kim said at the end. He used his hand to motion toward Miss Abigail.
“It’s true,” Miss Abigail said, blushing.
Even though the story had a surprise ending, and even though Master Kim wasn’t looking at me, I was all kinds of confident he was talking to me because I had messed up. Here’s another thing I was confident about: I was going to keep practicing my form. And my poker face.
The backstage area was floor-to-ceiling crammed with boxes and oversized props from old plays. (There was even a fully decorated Christmas tree.) But we couldn’t stop to explore. Our group was headed to the costume closet.
There were six of us, including me and Annie. Mrs. Delany had been sending small groups to the closet each rehearsal. We were supposed to rummage around for things that might work for our costumes.
/>
The backstage area was cool, but the costume closet was a thousand times better! Every nook and cranny was filled with clear plastic crates. Each crate was labeled:
HATS
SHOES (SIZES 5 TO 10)
SCARVES AND PURSES
JEWELRY
UNIFORM MEDALS
BOOTS
And the clothes! Racks and racks and racks of every type of clothing you could possibly think of. Coats, jackets, military uniforms, furry animal costumes, vintage dresses, marching-band uniforms, aprons, suits and tuxedos, and shirts that looked like they were from the future with silver metallic edging and pockets. (What kind of awesome show needed that outfit?) There was even a wedding dress! It was like the Room of Requirement. Only for outfits.
We started grabbing things and modeling them.
“Check these out! I think they’re called go-go boots!”
“Ooo. Look what I found!”
“Lemme try it on.”
After a while, Cole (the high-schooler who was our stage manager) popped his head in to check on us, and we started focusing on our costumes. Annie and I went to look at the party dresses. The Little Pigs were going to wear headbands with pink felt pig ears glued on—well, JJ was going to wear a baseball cap with felt pig ears—but I needed fancier clothes for the Barnyard Bash scene.
“Find anything?” Annie asked.
The two of us hadn’t talked about our conversation on Monday. I was still hurt that Annie had said I was rude to Paige. But I wanted to stay friends with Annie more than I wanted to stay mad.
“What about this one?” she asked. She held up a blue dress with puffy sleeves. I rubbed the fabric between my fingers and then shook my head. Annie understood my deal with itchy clothes.
Even though there were half a dozen dresses that would have looked good for the party scene, I couldn’t find one that would be comfortable enough to wear.
“We can keep looking,” Annie said cheerfully. “Mrs. Delany said not to panic if we can’t find something.”
Eliza Bing Is (Not) a Star Page 9
