by Beth Ain
“That’s all right. Jules already has a new top secret project,” Elinor says, throwing her backpack into her cubby. “Don’t you, Jules?”
“Well, it’s just my own project,” I say. I wish I hadn’t made a big deal about this, since it’s kind of private and since it has to do with Elinor, and since I don’t think Elinor would be happy if anyone knew it was about her, even if she doesn’t know herself.
“So, you are taking a break from being a movie star to work on your own project when you have never even been in one movie yet?” Charlotte asks.
“That’s right,” I say. It seems like this is annoying to Charlotte, so I go with it.
“Correct,” Elinor says.
I try not to let it bother me that Charlotte went right back to being a little bit mean to me after she was so nice about my Swish audition. I try to remember that we are not best friends anymore and that I have a wonderful new best friend who is never, ever mean, not even by accident.
“Do you know what movie stars do when no one wants them to be seen in an actual movie anymore?” Charlotte asks.
“What?” I ask.
“Aha! Sixty seconds to get rid of it!” Abby says, and she and Charlotte and Brynn all laugh their heads off.
“I don’t play the what game,” I say to the ABC’s.
“It’s not a game, Jules. It’s life,” Charlotte says.
“Fine,” I say.
“Anyway,” Charlotte says, “my Hollywood uncle says that most actors want to direct movies after they’re finished acting in them. Then they get to tell everyone what to do, for once. So, what’s your top secret plan, Jules?”
“My top secret project is . . .” I change my voice to a very, very quiet whisper, “SOMETHING I WILL NOT EVER TELL YOU.”
“What?” Charlotte says, extra loud because she is so frustrated.
Elinor and I smile at each other. “Got rid of it pretty fast that time,” I say.
“Class!” Ms. Leon says. “Time for morning writing. But before we begin, I have an announcement.”
There is nothing better than the few seconds before an announcement. Ms. Leon will probably just say that we are supposed to bring in all box tops by Friday, but for this one second before she says that, I picture the word ANNOUNCEMENT all lit up behind Ms. Leon, and then I picture her saying, “Charlotte Pinkerton, you’ve learned all you can for this year, so pack up your backpack and we’ll see you next year!” I know very well she won’t say this, but at least for a few seconds I get to pretend the announcement has nothing at all to do with box tops.
“I have decided that for this year’s moving-up ceremony we will put on a little show. ¡Un espectáculo!”
Everyone starts moving in their chairs and I look around to see a lot of excited faces. “We start rehearsing tomorrow.”
An idea pops right into my head and comes flying out of my mouth as I shoot my hand in the air. “I want to be the director!” This is the first time in my whole life I have ever raised my hand without making extra sure I knew exactly what would come out of my mouth.
I feel everyone’s eyes on me, but especially Charlotte’s. “I am surprised to hear this, Jules!” Ms. Leon says. “I thought you were a budding actress.”
“I am,” I say, my face heating up the way it does. “But, I think I would like this, too.”
“Thank you for telling me, but we’ll figure it out tomorrow. For now, we write!”
We all pull out our notebooks and I have a list written as fast as ever, guarding my paper the way Charlotte showed me so she will not see one single word.
Reasons Why I Should Be the Director of the Moving-Up-Ceremony Show:
1. I would get to boss Charlotte and the aBC’s around.
2. I would get to make elinor hoot and holler for real so she will not be sad-serious anymore — top secret mission accomplished!
3. I would not have to act in front of my whole class and their whole families, since the entire idea of speaking in front of people I actually know makes me more nauseous than orange mouthwash.
There — morning list completed. El espectáculo is the greatest thing that’s happened since my morning parfait!
pilots without airplanes,
doggie dance-offs,
and zipped-up lips
Usually I wake up in the morning to the sound of Big Henry’s giant feet coming down the hallway, or to giant, Stinkytownsized stomachaches like I did yesterday. But today, I wake up when the phone rings. A very early morning phone call could mean any number of things. A list!
Things That Could Happen When the Phone Rings:
1. You could become a movie star.
2. You could find out you are not going to be a movie star for at least another three months.
3. You could find out your food delivery has arrived.
I hear my mom say, “Oh, hi, Colby!” in a very cheerful way. It sounds like she is not mad at Colby for calling to postpone the movie. I wish I were not mad at Colby, either, since it isn’t her fault that Rick Hinkley broke his leg. But I am.
I hop out of bed and get right to the kitchen, where my mom is flinging around a knife with cream cheese on it.
“You are kidding,” my mom says.
“What?” I say.
She holds up that finger again. The same one from Monday. “Oh, wow, Colby,” my mom says, and she is smiling so big I think I might burst. I start jumping up and down and waving my hands in the air.
“WHAT IS ‘OH, WOW’!?” I say at the top of my lungs.
“Hold on a sec, Colby,” my mom says, covering up the phone with her hand.
“There is a pilot being shot here in New York, and believe it or not, they need a little girl to replace the other little girl who was supposed to be in the pilot.”
I blink my eyes at my mom. I have no words to describe what I am feeling. My mom is still smiling, which confuses me, so I have to ask, “A little girl and a pilot got shot?”
My mom puts the phone down on the counter. “I am so sorry, Jules,” she says, sitting me down at the table. “Pilot is another word for the first show in a series, like the shows you watch on TV sometimes.”
This news is getting better. “Go on,” I say.
“So, there is a show like that being shot — er, filmed — right here in New York City, which is unusual because most shows like that are filmed in California.”
“Hollywood?” I ask, proud that I know there is a Hollywood in California that is famous for moviemaking, and not for card games on the beach like the Hollywood in Florida, where Grandma Gilda lives.
“Right,” she says. “And this is only a pilot episode of a sitcom —”
“What’s a sitcom?” I ask.
“It stands for situation comedy. It just means that any problems that come up usually get resolved in thirty minutes, and in a funny way,” she says.
“That’s sounds wonderful,” I say.
“Great,” my mom says. “Now, the network — the people who decide what will be on TV — may or may not even like the show. We won’t know for a little while. But for the moment, Colby has convinced them to cast you as the little sister, and you don’t even have to audition because they don’t have the time, and they trust Colby, and they saw your Swish audition tape and the tape of your rehearsal with Rick Hinkley, and they said yes!” My mom seems more excited about this than she was about The Spy in the Attic.
“I am going to be on TV?” I ask.
“Maybe,” she says.
I jump up now and pull my mom out of her chair and we dance “Ring Around the Rosy” style until Big Henry and Ugly Otis come running in, and then I say, “I am going to be in a sitcom, on TV!” and Big Henry goes crazy and my mom takes his hands and I take Ugly Otis’s big paws and we dance like this for another minute before my mom remembers something and runs back to the phone.
“Colby?” she says, laughing. “I am so sorry!”
Colby says something.
“Yes,” my mom says. “She
’s in.”
She hangs up the phone and looks at me.
“What?” I ask.
“Is that what you’re wearing to school?” she asks.
I look down at my flannel nightgown and I picture myself riding the M104 in it. And then I picture the bus-driver lady shaking her head at me. “I don’t think so,” I say.
My mom laughs and I go to my room to get changed. I hear Big Henry ask my mom, “Is Jules wearing that nightgown to school?”
“No, Hank,” my mom says. “Are you wearing your dinosaur rain boots to school?”
“Yeth,” he says.
“I thought so,” she says.
It hasn’t rained in weeks.
At school, I see Teddy and Elinor before I see anyone else. Perfecto!
“Guess what?” I say.
They look at each other. I can see that neither one of them wants to say “What?” because of Charlotte and the ABCs’ ridiculous sixty-seconds-to-get-rid-of-the-word-what rule.
“Say ‘What?’ ” I say. “I dare you!”
“What?” they both say at the same exact time, laughing.
“Jinx!” they both say again, laughing even harder.
“Excellent,” I say, trying on that gameshow-host voice my mom used. “You jinxed at the exact same time. Neither one of you has to stop talking.” I think about this for a second. “Actually, both of you have to stop talking.”
They both close their mouths tight, zipping them up with their fingers. “I might get to be on TV,” I say. I watch my friends’ faces. They don’t move their mouths, but their eyes get big. “I am going to be in a pilot, which my mom told me is just another name for the first show in a series, and aren’t you guys glad she told me that?”
They both nod again, their eyes popping out even more. “Otherwise, Charlotte would have gotten all crazy know-it-all, making fun of me for thinking that my mom had told me a pilot was getting shot when she just meant they were filming a show.” I look at their faces. I can’t take the quiet for one more second.
“Elinor and Teddy, Elinor and Teddy, Elinor and Teddy!” I say as fast as I can, releasing them from the jinx. They both burst out with laughter.
“How did this happen so fast?” Elinor asks.
“Another girl was supposed to play the little sister but now she can’t for some reason and they needed someone fast and Colby Kingston told them about me,” I explain. I picture Colby shaking hands and throwing her head back and doing all those tall-icy-drink things she does and I am not even a little bit mad at her anymore.
“Oh my goodness, the stars are aligning!” Elinor says. “Don’t you see?” she says. “Rick Hinkley’s leg got broken, which made Jules upset, but free! And then something happened to another girl at the very same time, but luckily . . . LUCKILY, Jules was free to take her spot, and now Jules Bloom is going to be on the television!”
“TV is not better than movies,” Teddy says. But then he looks at me. “But it is cool.” I think he says this because he doesn’t want me to push him, which I sometimes do when he spends too much time being smart and not enough time being fun. “But aren’t you nervous? This is the kind of thing that usually makes you imagine crazy things happening, like you trying to be the sassy little sister, but instead of being sassy, you are spazzy and you just say and do a lot of spazzy things.”
I push him, after all.
“See?” he says. “Spazzy.”
Charlotte walks in then and throws her backpack into her cubby and flops down into her chair. We all look at each other. “What’s the matter, Charlotte?” Elinor asks in her polite, Elinor way.
“There is nothing the mattah, Elinoh,” Charlotte says, trying to mimic Elinor’s accent and doing it kind of well, actually. Elinor’s cocoa skin gets red in a way I have never seen and I am furious at Charlotte for this.
“Charlotte,” I say, my heart pounding so loud my voice echoes in my ears, “just because you are in one of your moods does not mean you can spread it all around. Elinor was being nice.”
Charlotte doesn’t look at me. She just looks straight ahead like she is imagining we are not there.
Ms. Leon claps us all into our seats and I forget about Charlotte’s temper tantrum while I wait to hear more about el espectáculo! “The show needs to be very simple since we only have a couple of days to work on it. And it should show your families something important about what we’ve learned this year. This is your writing assignment for this morning: What have you learned this year? From this, we will decide about our show.”
I get writing right away. This is going to be my longest list yet.
It is almost dinnertime and I am in the middle of doing my reading comprehension homework when Big Henry barges in. “The sitcom is here!”
Sitcom is Big Henry’s new favorite word ever since this morning. My mom hands me a piece of paper.
“It’s a treatment,” she says. “That means a summary of the show. You won’t see the script until the read-through tomorrow. I’ll pick you up from school a little early.”
“Oh,” I say. I look at the page quickly. At the top it says, Treatment for LOOK AT USNOW! I read it, and this is what I comprehend from it:
1. The Summers family is very wealthy. I decide wealthy is a good vocabulary word. I think it means rich.
2. There are three Summers children — a boy-crazy teenage girl, a bossy boy, and a meddling but cute little sister. They go to a fancy private school, and they drive around the city in a car, which no one in real life does, unless you are a taxi driver.
3. They used to be a regular family, who lived in a regular-sized apartment, but then Mr.and Mrs.Summers won a TV singing contest and now they are world famous and never home. I decide this is why the show is called Look at Us now!
I am so excited, I can hardly get through the rest of my reading comprehension, but I do, because I know that my parents’ rule about acting is that school comes first — no matter how exciting it is to think about meeting my TV family tomorrow. No matter how much I want to rush through the whole rest of tonight, and the whole day of school tomorrow, just so I can start to be the sitcom version of me.
So I do my homework perfectly, checking my work more than once because I don’t like to be wrong on reading comprehension, since the answers are basically right in front of you. Then I race through dinner, and I do not take one extra second brushing my teeth. I even read Big Henry a superhero book without him begging me to, so that he will go to bed faster, which means I can go to bed faster, since he needs to be asleep before I can turn on my book on tape, which is Pippi Longstocking.
When I finish reading to Big Henry, he says, “Can I be on your sitcom?” Before I can answer, he spots his 3-D glasses next to his bed, puts them on, and turns off his bedside light.
“You can’t be on the show, Hank,” I say, looking at my silly brother lying there in the dark with 3-D glasses on, listening to Paddington Bear. “But you probably should be.”
And it’s true. Every sitcom should probably have a Big Henry in it.
fake soccer,
laundry lists, and how to
connect the dots
It is already tomorrow, which I thought would never come all night long when I couldn’t sleep, because being excited about the sitcom turned into being nervous right after I put Big Henry to bed. I started thinking about how Big Henry would be perfect on a sitcom and how he wouldn’t be nervous or shy because he just says and does funny things on purpose. I only say or do funny things by accident, and usually because I am nervous. And then I started to think about Teddy calling me spazzy instead of sassy and, well, I’m pretty sure I didn’t fall asleep until exactly one second before I heard my mom telling me it was time to get up.
Now I have to spend the whole morning at school finding a way to get back to being excited — only excited. Then I remember that instead of having to watch a bunch of four-year-olds play fake soccer in the nursery-school gym after school, I get to take a taxi with my mom. A taxi!
I am feeling mighty excited by the time I get to school, and before I know it, it’s lunchtime.
“I am very pleased to see that most of you understand that we have spent a lot of time this school year learning about our community,” Ms. Leon says after lunch. I am surprised she has already read our lists since I think mine was at least twenty numbers long.
“I can see that you know the boroughs of New York City, you know where the Statue of Liberty is, and you know where City Hall is. It seems like you also know some math facts, some science facts, and that you even liked writing about small moments.” I am waiting for her to mention something I wrote on my list. “I also learned from your lists that our classroom is like a little city and that I am your mayor,” she says now. I smile. That one is mine. “So I think it would be interesting if we told the story of our little classroom community through small moments. What are some of the small groups within our classroom community?” she asks the class.
“Helpers!” Brynn shouts out, which makes perfect sense, since Brynn spends a lot of time wiping the sink and picking up pencils off the floor.
Ms. Leon writes helpers on the board.
“Artists!” Abby says. I think of Abby lining up the markers and colored pencils in rainbow order. Pinks to purples to blues to greens — she always makes the supply drawer look like an art project.
“Scientists!” Teddy says. No explanation required.
“Entertainers!” Charlotte says, and she is smiling, which she never did once all day yesterday. But even so, it isn’t the big smile she would usually have at a time like this.
No one yells anything for a minute.
“How about mathematicians?” Ms.Leon asks.
“Yes,” Charlotte says. Charlotte loves math almost as much as she loves being the center of attention.
“Jules,” Ms. Leon says, “please come forward.” I am so nervous about my after-school activity that I forget to be nervous about walking to the front of the room. “What a show like this really needs is a narrator, and since you are an actress, I think you will do a fine job at it,” Ms. Leon says. A narrator is very different from a director, I think, since a narrator has to actually speak out loud in front of real live people. “Jules will help connect the dots of the show, but her role is just as important as everyone else’s role.”
