Eliza Bing Is (Not) a Star

by Carmella Van Vleet

  I appreciated that she was trying to keep me from getting discouraged.

  “Let’s look for something for you instead,” I suggested.

  We found a perfect ratty, oversized bathrobe right away. It was even green, Annie’s favorite color. Afterward, we pulled out the WIGS container. The tile floor was a bit dirty, so we used a couple of suitcases we found in a corner as chairs.

  Annie and I took turns trying on wigs and making up funny names of the people who’d wear them.

  “Hey. I’m Stanley,” Annie said in a deep voice as she adjusted a short, brown wig on her head.

  I grabbed a long, blond wig. “I’m Sparkles O’Hara and I’m ready for my star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame!”

  This went on for a while. Once we started adding funny accents, the two of us laughed so hard we could hardly breathe.

  Cole came back in to give everyone a ten-minute warning, so Annie and I grabbed the bathrobe and went to return the suitcases. (None of the wigs were exactly what she was looking for to play the old-lady neighbor.)

  “Hey,” Annie said. “Careful. Your suitcase is unlatched.”

  The suitcase was one of those old-time ones made out of leather. I went to set it down so I could close it all the way. But as soon as I did, the lid fell open and a folded piece of paper fluttered out.

  Hello!!

  My name is Cecilia. I played the New York “Starlet” when we did the show Annie. This is the suitcase I got to carry when I sang “NYC.” I thought it would be fun to hide this note where another actor might find it.

  Here’s my favorite theater joke: Why do people say “break a leg” before you go onstage? Because every play has a cast! haha

  Anyway, I hope you liked my note! When you get to high school, come say “hi” if I’m still there.

  Cecilia Simon

  “I know her!” Annie said. “I saw her when I was little and my moms took me to see The Sound of Music at the high school. She was Maria.”

  That meant the note would have been written at least five years ago. Hadn’t anyone opened this suitcase before now?

  “Are you sure it was her?” I asked.

  “Positive! She was a really good singer.”

  I knew Annie couldn’t possibly know for sure if the actor she saw was Cecilia, but both of us really wanted it to be true. So we decided it was.

  On Saturday, Mom drove me and Annie to the Goodwill store. I was embarrassed we couldn’t afford to buy something from the costume shop Mrs. Delany suggested. And that I had to buy a dress at a place where people donated things they didn’t want anymore. But Annie tried to make me feel better.

  “Goodwill is sooo much cooler,” she said. “They’ll have awesome vintage stuff. Plus, lots of people go bargain hunting and then post about their great finds online. They even write blogs about it.”

  I wanted to hug her.

  There was a rack of Halloween costumes right inside the front door, so Annie and I stopped and checked it out while Mom wandered around the housewares shelves. (“There might be something we could add to the costume closet,” Annie insisted.) There were even itty-bitty costumes for babies! Pumpkins, peas in a pod, a dragon. And a bumblebee. I swatted it away when Annie held it toward me, and we laughed. I had been scared of bees ever since I was four and one flew into my mouth and stung my tongue. Annie was the only person outside my family who knew that story. She was allowed to tease me about it.

  When we didn’t find anything in the costume section, Annie and I headed for the rack of old prom and party dresses against one of the walls.

  “There has to be something that’ll work,” Annie said.

  The two of us started on opposite ends and worked our way toward each other. Mrs. Delany had told us not to worry too much about sizes because she had a parent volunteer who could help hem and take things in.

  Annie and I each found a few options for me to try on. My top choice was a dark blue dress. It was plain, no lace or buttons to mess with. It was also made of a slick material that felt soft. My favorite part of it, though, was that along the bottom hem it had a thin ribbon of gold. It seemed like a good omen since I was about to take my gold-belt test.

  I took the six dresses Annie and I found to the changing room. Annie stayed outside and waited for me to model them. Each time I came out, she made a comment and then gave the dress a score.

  “Eh. It’s okay,” she said about the first one. “But I don’t like the color. I give it a four out of ten.”

  I saved the blue dress for last. None of the others had gotten higher than a seven on Annie’s scale. Holding my breath, I tried it. It was perfect! And the best part was that it didn’t itch or have any pinchy elastic.

  Annie clapped her hands the second I stepped out. “Ten! Ten!”

  I took a bow and Annie clapped harder and called, “Bravo!” People nearby glanced our way, but Annie didn’t care. I loved how she was willing to make a spectacle of herself so I’d feel special.

  I carefully put the blue dress back on its hanger and draped it over my arm.

  “Now you,” I told Annie.

  We headed over to the shoe section. Finding the rest of her costume was super easy. In about thirty seconds flat, we found a pair of fuzzy slippers that looked like kittens, complete with whiskers. “They’re perfect!” Annie said.

  “Now all you need is an old-lady wig. I saw some by the front door,” I told her.

  Annie blinked. “Oh. I forgot to tell you. I think I already found one.”

  “You did?”

  “Well, sort of. Paige said she probably had something I could use. I’m supposed to go over sometime this week and check it out.”

  “Oh.”

  Annie smiled. “Are you ready? Let’s go find your mom.”

  Mom had an armful of stuff when we tracked her down.

  “Look what I found, Eliza!” she said, setting a couple of items on a nearby shelf so she could show me.

  It was a large plastic bag with smaller frosting bags and a bunch of metal decorating tips inside!

  “Holy cheese and crackers!” I said.

  Mom beamed. “Great find, right? And look at the price.” It was cheap enough that I could afford it.

  Annie, Mom, and I headed to the counter to pay for our things. While Mom got out her wallet, I tallied up the events of the morning: I’d found out that Annie was still buddy-buddy with Paige. But I’d also found the perfect dress for my costume in the Barnyard Bash scene and I got some new cake-decorating tips. Maybe I’d try them out when I got home. Like Sweet Caroline said on one episode, “When life gives you lemons, make lemon cake!”

  You actually need lemons to make a lemon cake. You can’t just use yellow food coloring. And orange juice isn’t a good substitute.

  But don’t ask me how I know this.

  The lemon cake didn’t go so well, but I could still make lemonade. Metaphorically speaking.

  On Sunday morning, I went to the basement and climbed into the crawl space. The box I was looking for was way in the back, and I kept having to pull away spiderwebs.

  It took a bit of digging, but I finally found it: the wig Sam wore when the drum line dressed up for a talent show. It would be perfect for Annie!

  I knew she said Paige might have one, but best friends surprise each other, right?

  I took the wig upstairs and carefully brushed it out. It was blond, shoulder length, and it had just the right amount of curl at the ends. It was going to look great with rollers!

  Now. To color it.

  I knew painting wasn’t going to work. I’d tried painting my Barbie doll’s head once when I was little. All that happened was that it turned crunchy. And the paint chipped off after a while.

  Would permanent marker work?

  I searched the junk drawer: A deck of cards. A single shoelace. Old keys. Pipe
cleaners. A toothbrush. Gray shoe polish. A rain poncho, a rubber-band ball, and a bunch of other random stuff. But no marker.

  Hold the salt! The shoe polish!

  After I laid a few layers of newspaper on the floor (I’d learned my lesson after the nail polish incident at the end of summer), I grabbed a pair of disposable vinyl gloves. Then I draped the wig over an old vase and got to work.

  The shoe polish, which even came with its own built-in brush, went on smoothly. After a few coats, the wig looked pretty good if I did say so myself. It even had a nice silvery sheen to it that would stand out under the lights onstage.

  But it was missing something…a little extra oomph.

  Glitter!

  I rummaged around in the drawer where Mom kept her art stuff. (She used to do a lot of scrapbooking, back when she had more free time.) No one was allowed to use her good scissors, but I figured she wouldn’t mind if I took some blue glitter. Annie’s character was definitely the kind of old lady to have blue streaks in her hair.

  Since the shoe polish wasn’t quite dry, the glitter stuck to it like I was hoping it would. I carefully added a few electric-blue highlights here and there and tapped the excess glitter off onto the paper. It was a good thing I wore the gloves; the polish and glitter were all over.

  When the wig seemed dry, I wrapped it in tissue paper and put it in a gift bag.

  Annie was going to love it.

  I love it!”

  “Yay!” I told Annie. “I’m so glad. Are you surprised?”

  “I can’t believe you made this,” she said. “You could totally be on the costume crew.”

  My heart felt like bursting. I was glad I’d decided to wait until the break to give Annie the wig. This way it was just the two of us. “You should try it on,” I said.

  “Come with!” Annie said, pulling me out the door.

  Annie and I headed to the nearest bathroom. Standing in front of the mirror, Annie pulled her hair into a ponytail and tucked it inside the wig. It took a bit of wiggling but she got it on.

  She smiled.

  “Thank you!” she said. “I really love the blue highlights.” She reached up to play with the hair.

  “Aaaaah, oh no!” she said suddenly.

  She pulled her hands off the wig and showed them to me. They were all silver. And blue.

  “The paint is coming off,” Annie said. She grabbed a paper towel and tried wiping her hands. It didn’t work.

  “What kind of paint is this?” she said, panicking.

  “Uh. It’s not paint,” I told her. “It’s shoe polish.”

  “Oh no, no, no. That stuff never comes out.”

  She blasted the faucet and tried scrubbing her hands with soap. It helped, but there was still gray polish and blue glitter stuck to her hands.

  Annie began to cry a little. I felt terrible. I should’ve known better after so much stuff came off on the disposable gloves. I just figured once the polish dried, it’d be fine. “Don’t touch your face,” I told Annie, grabbing her hands away.

  I got some toilet paper from a stall and wiped her tears. Then I used a paper towel to grab the wig and pull it off. “At least there isn’t any on your head,” I said. Annie sniffed.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her.

  “I know you didn’t mean it,” Annie said. “But I can’t go around with gray hands. I’m in my aunt’s wedding this weekend. What am I gonna do?”

  “Maybe it’ll wear off by then,” I suggested.

  “Why didn’t you think this through?”

  Annie stared at me but I had no answer for her. We stood like that for a few seconds before the restroom door swung open.

  In strolled Paige. “What’s going on?”

  Annie began sniffling again and showed Paige her hands. “No worries,” Paige said. “An actor is always prepared.”

  Paige set her purse down and began rummaging through it. “This should do the trick,” she said, pulling out a tub of something labeled COLD CREAM. “It’s for removing stage makeup,” Paige explained. I wanted to ask how often she went around wearing stage makeup, but this was an emergency.

  Paige produced a baggie of cotton balls from her purse, too. Then she dabbed some cold cream on a cotton ball and began rubbing it in circles on Annie’s hands. The gray and blue began coming off. It took a bunch of cotton balls and cold cream and rinsing, but Annie’s hands were clean in the end.

  Annie hugged Paige. “You’re a lifesaver! Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  “I’ll go let Mrs. Delany know why you’re late getting back from break,” Paige said. On her way out, she shook her head in my direction.

  Great. Annie was upset with me. Paige got to save the day. And now Mrs. Delany would know I’d done something stupid.

  I tossed the wig back into the gift bag and then chucked them both in the trash can on the way out.

  At Wednesday’s taekwondo class we practiced arm bars. Those are when you trap someone’s arm and press on the back of it just above the elbow. It’s not an attack. It’s a way to control your opponent. When your arm started to hurt, you were supposed to tap out. Which meant lightly hit your own body, your attacker’s body, or the ground a few times to let your partner know to stop.

  “Go slowly,” Master Kim called out.

  Sophia wasn’t there, so I partnered with an orange belt who was a foot taller than me. The first time he grabbed my arm and pressed, I fell to my knees. Obviously, he didn’t pay attention to the directions.

  Oww! “Okay! Stop!” I said.

  “Sorry,” my partner said, pulling me up. “I didn’t feel you tap.”

  That’s because my brain couldn’t think anything else but oww, dude.

  Master Kim slid over. “You have to protect your training partner,” he told the orange belt. “There is no learning without trust.”

  “Yes, sir,” my partner said, and bowed.

  Master Kim turned to me. “And you. You must clearly communicate with your partner.”

  Grimacing doesn’t count? I thought but didn’t say out loud.

  “Tap out the moment you need to,” Master Kim told me. “Better yet, before you need to. Protect yourself.”

  My partner practiced his arm bar on me again. This time, as soon as he started pressing on my arm, I hit the bottom of his leg a few times and he let me up.

  Next, it was my turn to try doing the technique against my partner. He punched, and I stepped to my left at the same time I blocked his punch with my right hand. Then I quickly grabbed his wrist and turned it so his arm was locked straight. I followed that by stepping forward and using my left forearm to press on the back of his arm, just above his elbow. This caused him to lean over and fall to his knees.

  My partner tapped the ground.

  I reached out my hand to help pull him up. He rubbed his arm.

  “You okay?” I said. “Did I do it wrong?”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “And no. You got it.”

  The two of us practiced a few more times. We both got better at tapping out, but we still sometimes hurt each other without meaning to. It was surprising how fast it could go from okay to not okay.

  A good martial artist communicates with their training partner. A best friend should communicate, too. So on Thursday at lunch, I apologized to Annie about the wig. Again.

  “It all worked out,” she said with a shrug. “I’m just grateful Paige was there to fix it.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Me too.” (Not.)

  Annie set her milk down and looked at me. “But there is something I don’t get,” she said. “I told you Paige already had a wig for me.”

  “I wanted to surprise you,” I said.

  “Well, you did! And I guess it’s the thought that counts.”

  I was relieved when Annie changed the subject. It wasn’t an arm bar,
but I wanted to tap out of the conversation.

  “So, should we put in something about doing theater?” Annie asked, opening up our Rules to Surviving Sixth Grade notebook.

  “Like what?”

  “I dunno. How ’bout ‘See a school play’?”

  I didn’t really see how that was a good survival tip, but best friends agree. “Maybe,” I said.

  Annie smiled. “Maybe, milady?”

  I groaned but played along. “Dear sir, I regret I cannot dance. My boots are killing me.”

  These were lines from the play. The whole cast had been listening to each other say our lines for weeks now. And the new thing was to go around quoting each other. Even when we weren’t in rehearsal.

  “Maybe one of our tips should be ‘Don’t wear cowboy boots,’ ” I joked.

  Annie cracked up.

  This felt good. Hanging out and working on our Rules to Surviving list.

  Annie crunched on a fat baby carrot. (Rules to Surviving Sixth Grade No. 19: The only acceptable lunch vegetables are ones you can eat with your hands.) It reminded me of the time Mom’s work was throwing a party, and Mom spent days washing and peeling and cutting vegetables. She used them to make a “veggie skeleton.” She said one of the other nurses brought “amputated toes,” which were really just hot-dog pieces rolled in pizza dough. She’d even added ketchup for fake blood.

  I wondered if I’d get a chance to go to a party this year. I’d been to classroom parties, of course. And a few birthday parties when I was younger and parents made the person give invites to everyone. That was before we knew I had ADHD. Tony knew about the ADHD, though, and I didn’t get invited to his birthday party over the summer. He said it was because he thought I was mad at him. But I wasn’t. I apologized and he apologized. It was the last time I talked to him. Sometimes I saw him in the halls. He’d give me a quick nod, and I’d nod back.

  I heard there’d be a cast party after the play was over, after strike. “Strike,” FYI, was when everyone got together to tear down the sets. Strike for Cinder Ellen was right after the closing show.