Mom frowned at him.
“Just this once,” he promised her. Then he turned back to me. “Besides, I could use a mental-health day.”
Even though there wasn’t any bubble gum around to whack me in the head like there was in the store when I hatched my plan to become the best best friend, I got another idea.
The next night, I put it into motion.
“So what would you like for dinner?” Dad asked when he picked me up. “It’s just the two of us. Mom and Sam have an away game.” He gave me the perfect opening.
“How ’bout the food court?”
“At the mall?”
I nodded.
Dad considered it. “Okay. Why not? But don’t tell Mom. She thinks we eat baked chicken and salads when she’s gone.”
I laughed.
When we pulled into the parking lot, I convinced Dad to park on the side farthest from the food court. “At least we can get some exercise walking in,” I said.
I had no idea when Annie, Paige, and whoever else was getting their ears pierced were planning to be there. But we had to walk past the jewelry store in order to get to the food court.
I had the whole story worked out. Dad and I just happened to be at the mall. (He needed a new dress shirt.) And I just happened to have brought enough money. The only tricky part was going to be convincing Dad to sign the permission form. At least he was usually easier to persuade than Mom.
My heart pounded as we got closer to the jewelry store. As casually as I could, I looked inside. They do the piercings right in front of the window.
But no one was there. Except a little boy trying to climb into the chair.
Bummer.
Dad and I made it to the food court. He grabbed a sub and I stood in line for chicken strips. He spent the first part of dinner telling me about a project he was doing at school. That was okay with me because I felt like sitting and listening and not thinking about how disappointed I was that I’d missed Annie. Getting our ears pierced together would have been the perfect best best friend activity. I guess it was a crazy plan to begin with.
Eventually Dad finished talking about his class, and he asked about the play. “It seems like you’re enjoying it,” he said.
“I am,” I told him. “I really like Mrs. Delany, the director, too.”
I told him about some of the games and improv exercises we played and how we were still working on blocking. Which Mrs. D called “controlled chaos.”
“What’s your favorite part of being in the play?”
I considered this. “Probably improv. No rules,” I explained.
“What’s your least favorite part?” Dad asked.
“When it’s over.”
Dad laughed. “I always thought you belonged onstage,” he said.
“You did?”
Dad seemed surprised. “Of course! You’ve just got this thing about you. A fearlessness.”
The compliment made me smile. I didn’t know about fearless. I had plenty of fears. Like I was losing my best friend, for one.
When Dad and I walked past the jewelry store on our way out, Annie was there!
Her eyes grew three sizes when I walked in. “Eliza! What are you doing here?” she said. I couldn’t tell if she was happy or just shocked to see me.
“Uh. My dad and I were having dinner,” I said.
“Hi, Mr. Bing,” Annie said.
Dad swept his gaze around the half circle of girls. “Good evening, young ladies,” Dad replied. Ugh. He sounded like such a dork.
Paige was there. So were Monica and a girl named Stephanie. They all waved politely to my dad before he wandered over to where the moms were. (He’d probably call them young ladies, too.)
“What are you doing?” I asked Annie, although I could clearly see they were picking out the earrings they wanted.
“I think we should go with this one,” Paige said, ignoring me and pointing to a fake diamond stud on the sample board.
Annie turned to me. “Since you’re here, I need your opinion.”
Yes! She wanted my opinion. “I like the blue one,” I told her.
“Hmmm. I’m not sure….”
“Maybe I’ll get it,” I said.
“You’re getting your ears pierced, too?” Annie asked.
“Sure. Why not?”
Annie smiled. “Sweet!”
My secret mission was working out perfectly! I could finally get my ears pierced and Annie and I would be able to do it together. I wondered if we’d hold each other’s hands. Best friends did that kind of thing when they were nervous.
Dad and the other parents followed the jewelry-store employee over to piercing area. She was going over the permission forms. She paused. “I’m sorry. Did I miss you?” she said to Dad. “Do you need a form, too?”
Dad laughed. “No. I definitely don’t need a form. Thanks.”
Paige snickered. I ignored her and stepped closer. “Can I, Dad?” I pleaded.
He shook his head. “Nope. Your mother would kill me.” Some of the moms chuckled.
“Please?” I asked. I stared him down, giving my best puppy-dog eyes. You could usually get Dad to break with logic, so I tried that, too. “I’m old enough to take care of them,” I said.
The seconds and silence stretched over the whole store. But Dad stood firm. “Not today.”
There was more snickering behind me.
Dad’s phone buzzed. “Excuse me, gotta take this,” he told everyone, and then said he’d meet me outside.
Annie stepped over. “Maybe you should just go, too,” she whispered.
I turned so fast I probably gave myself whiplash. “You want me to leave?”
“N-no,” Annie stammered. “It’s just that, well…”
“I’m embarrassing you.”
“I didn’t say that. I’m just with my other friends,” she said. “We’ll do something else together soon. I promise.”
“So who’s first?” the girl with the piercing gun asked.
“Me,” Paige said.
The girls went back to filling out forms and talking about which earrings they were going to get. “Are you going to stay and watch?” the saleslady asked me.
I shook my head. No. All I wanted to do was leave before I started blubbering like a baby.
Right before I stepped out, I heard Paige mutter, “Aaaawkward.”
And then I heard everyone laugh. I wasn’t a hundred percent, but I was pretty sure Annie laughed, too.
I’m sorry you couldn’t stay
If I had the Rules to Surviving Sixth Grade notebook, I would have added No. 37: Never get pizza on a rainy day. The soggy square on my tray went perfectly with my Monday morning.
Annie wasn’t in homeroom, so I didn’t get a chance to talk to her about what happened at the jewelry store. Not that I knew what I was going to say anyway.
I sat down at our usual table and waited. I’d seen her come into the lunchroom while I was in line, but there’d been no sign of her since.
Maybe I’d practice my taekwondo memorization. I’d just started going through my backpack for my flash cards when Annie arrived and put her tray down across from me. “Why didn’t you text me back?” she asked.
I was hurt. I was mad. I was embarrassed.
“I figured you were busy,” I said.
“I was, but not too busy for you.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Annie raised an eyebrow. “You’re being kinda rude again,” she said.
“Am I?”
“Yes. You are. Look, I’m really sorry I couldn’t invite you. I wasn’t the one who planned it.”
“But you went along,” I said. “And then you laughed when Paige said ‘Aaawkward.’ ”
Annie’s eyes widened. “No I didn’t!”
; “You didn’t?”
“No,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I would never do something like that!”
The two of us stared at each other for a minute.
I hate this. Best friends aren’t supposed to fight.
“I’m sorry,” I told her.
Annie dropped her arms. “Me too,” she said. “Can we start over?”
I said, “Sure.” So she got up, took her tray, and walked around a nearby table. Then she sat back down across from me. “Hey!” she said, all cheerful.
“Hey,” I said, playing along.
Annie asked me if anything was new and I told her about taekwondo class. I left out the part about messing Sophia up, though.
“What’s new with you?” I asked her.
Annie paused. “Well,” she said, “I got some new earrings.”
“Cool,” I said, so she’d know it was okay to talk about them.
Annie grinned. “What do you think?” she asked, pulling back her hair so I could see.
They were the earrings Paige picked out.
There are ten days till opening night, friends!” Mrs. Delany called. “We’re in the home stretch!”
Mrs. Delany didn’t need to remind us. Everyone was stressed out. Big-time. People were still tripping over lines. Or over pieces of sets that were in the wrong place—or over crew members touching up paint. And the light and sound people hadn’t gotten all the cues down. To top it off, everyone was super tired from the long rehearsals. It was like the closer we got, the harder it seemed to find the energy. Even Mrs. Delany had circles under her eyes and sounded hoarse.
“All righty,” our director said. “Today’s goal is to get a full run-through.”
A “run-through” meant what it sounded like: going through the whole play without stopping. Or with as little stopping as possible. It was tricky because the tech crew was still working on making the scene changes smoothly. Sometimes they forgot to bring out part of the set.
Or dropped a prop.
Clank!
“Sorry!” a stage ninja named Mary said. She picked up the fire poker. (Stage “ninjas” got their nicknames because, during the play, they wore all black.)
Paige sighed dramatically. She’d been doing that a lot. “There are too many distractions. How am I supposed to concentrate?” she asked.
Mary apologized a second time and hurried off. I wondered quietly out loud how Paige would react if someone’s phone rang or they started snoring in the middle of the actual play.
“She’d probably stop the play and scold them,” Vivian said.
“And then make everyone start over,” JJ added.
The three of us giggled.
JJ, Vivian, and I played a bunch of rounds of War in the wings and stayed out of the way until it was our turn to be onstage. The three of us were part of a group of fairy-tale and nursery-rhyme characters that included Jack and Jill Hill, Jack Beanstalk (who got to carry kidney beans spray-painted gold), the Pooped Piper (who got to act sleepy the whole time!), and Humpty Grumpty (an extra-cranky version of the famous egg). For the actual performance, we’d have to hang out backstage or in the hallway and wait for Cole to come tell us when to go on. Annie had to hang out with the people from her act.
I was down to a stack of twelve cards when it was finally time to go onstage.
In our scene, the fairy-tale characters were milling around, just doing their daily business. Fetching water, fluffing a pillow for a nap, stuff like that. Vivian, JJ, and I were pretending to chat with a street vendor selling sticks. The script called for Cinder Ellen (Paige) to come bursting through the door of a shop and start talking about the Barnyard Bash and how she hoped she’d get an invitation.
Rob, the boy playing the farmer’s son, strolled across the stage. “Hot diggity! The e-vites go out today!” he called.
That was Paige’s cue line. Only the set door was stuck. She rattled the handle a few times. But nothing.
“Oh for Pete’s sake,” Paige cried, knocking on the door. “Someone let me out!”
My mouth worked faster than my brain again. “Not by the hair of my snouty snout snout!” I answered.
The entire stage erupted in laughter. I soaked it in and bobbed on my toes like the stage was a bouncy house.
“Hold!” Mrs. Delany called. One of the stage ninjas rushed onstage to open the door for Paige from the outside.
“Eliza, that was brilliant!” Mrs. Delany said. “I think we should add it to the scene.”
From the doorway of the now-open door, Paige crossed her arms and set her jaw.
“Paige, make the change in your script,” Mrs. Delany said. “You too, Eliza.”
“But Mrs. D,” Paige said, “don’t you think it messes up the flow of the scene?”
Mrs. Delany shook her head. “The audience will eat it up. I wish I had thought of it,” she said, and gave me a wink. “It’s my all-time favorite ad-lib.”
Paige tried a different approach. “But isn’t it too late to make changes? The show is next week.”
“It’s never too late for great,” Mrs. Delany said.
On my way to the parking lot, Paige grabbed my elbow and pulled me aside.
“Tell Mrs. Delany you don’t want to do the new line,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because it messes things up!”
“Mrs. Delany doesn’t think so.”
I could tell she wanted to say something bad about Mrs. Delany but decided against it.
“Look,” she said, poking my shoulder. “This may be your first school play, but this is super important to me. The high school drama director is coming to watch. And I want to make a good impression so next year I can be the first freshman to land a lead.”
“That’s a good goal,” I told her. Because it actually was.
She looked surprised. “Thanks. So you’ll talk to Mrs. Delany about the line, then?” I shrugged.
“Please? I’ll owe you one. What do you want?”
Stop trying to steal my best friend.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Then she called me a bad name and walked away.
Dad was running late. Mo-mo didn’t want me waiting by myself, so Annie and I sat on the curb.
“Isn’t it cool about the new line?” I asked.
Annie hugged her knees and didn’t say anything.
“Don’t you like it?” I said.
“It’s funny.”
“You don’t seem very excited.”
“I said it was funny.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, right?” I said.
Annie turned her head my direction. “My book says a production is more important than any one person.”
I was confused. Was she trying to tell me that I wasn’t important?
A car turned into the parking lot. Annie and I looked, but it wasn’t Dad.
“Paige said she thinks I should get Mrs. Delany to change her mind,” I said.
Annie made a noise that sounded like hmmmm.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I dunno,” she answered. “I guess you should do what you want.”
I thought about this. “I like the line. Mrs. Delany says it’ll get a big laugh. I wanna do it.”
“Of course you do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
Only it was the kind of nothing that was something. I was trying to figure out a way to ask her why she was so cranky when Dad pulled in. I stood up.
“Thanks for waiting with me,” I told her. She took my outstretched hand and let me her haul up.
I headed toward my car at the same time Annie headed back to hers. The two of us bumped into each other and then did that weird thing people sometimes
do when they’re trying to work out how to get around each other.
After a few seconds of back and forth, I said, “Dear sir, I regret I cannot dance. My boots are killing me.”
Annie was supposed to say the next line from the play (“I’ll forgive you this once, ma’am”), but instead she waited for me to pick a direction.
“See ya,” she said as she got in her car.
I’d been right that time we practiced arm bars in taekwondo: it was definitely surprising how fast things could go from okay to not okay.
At my yellow-belt test, I didn’t know what to expect. At least this time I didn’t freak out when I saw the long table at the front of the room with the fancy covering and the three judges’ chairs.
Sophia, the white belt I’d been helping, stood at the edge of the room. “Don’t be nervous,” I told her. “Be awesome!”
That’s what Madison had told me at our last test. And right before the play auditions. I saw her yesterday in the hall and she wished me luck. She was finally off crutches for her bum knee, but still didn’t know when she’d get to go back to her taekwondo class.
I showed Sophia where to sign in and then said, “We should warm up.” We joined the rest of the students who were stretching and running through their forms one last time.
At precisely one o’clock, Master Kim and two other black belts walked into the room and stood behind the table. I knew from testing before that one of the judges was Master Kim’s brother. I didn’t recognize the other one, but she didn’t look like she was related to Master Kim.
We turned and bowed in their direction like we were supposed to.
“Class, charyut!” Master Kim called, and we stood at attention right where we were standing.
The first thing Master Kim did was line everyone up by rank. In class, we did this automatically. But at tests, Master Kim had to be sure everyone could be seen by their judge, so the lines were off-centered.
I was surprised to be second-highest rank. Which meant I was second in line. An orange belt named Marco was high rank and bowed everyone in. “Class, charyut! [Attention.] Kyoonyae! [Bow.]”
Eliza Bing Is (Not) a Star Page 13
