George

by Alex Gino

“Fine. I am Kelly the All-Wonderful and Mostly Knowing. I will try to sense your problem.” She opened her eyes again and dropped her hands. “I know! You’ve got stage fright. I know all about stage fright. My uncle Bill says my dad has terrible stage fright and that’s why he lets other people get rich performing his songs.”

  “It’s not stage fright.”

  “Okay, maybe not. I don’t think my dad has stage fright either. He’s just a different kind of artist.” Kelly shook George’s shoulder. “But then, what is it? You know I can’t handle suspense. Tell me or I’ll …”

  “Or you’ll what?”

  Kelly’s eyes gleamed with inspiration. “Or I’ll bring out my army of beasts to attack you in the night, and suck out your brains with a crazy straw, and make you one of my minions so you have to do everything I say. Including telling me what you’re thinking about! What is it? What is it? What is it?”

  George looked around to make sure no one else could hear.

  “Okay, okay, calm down! Here’s the thing. I don’t really want to be Wilbur in the play,” she told Kelly.

  “Oh. That’s not a problem. There are a lot of other parts in the play. They’re called supporting roles. My dad says the best star performers would be nothing without an excellent supporting cast. Let Ms. Udell hear you and decide what part you should have.”

  “I don’t want just any part,” said George.

  “Well, who do you want to be? Templeton the rat?”

  George shook her head.

  “Avery?” Kelly guessed. “Mr. Zuckerman? Mr. Arable?”

  George still shook her head.

  “Who else is there?” Kelly asked incredulously.

  “I want to be Charlotte,” George whispered.

  Kelly shrugged. “That’s cool. If you want to be Charlotte, you should try out for Charlotte. You make such a big deal out of everything. Who cares if you’re not really a girl?”

  George’s stomach dropped. She cared. Tons.

  On the street, one of the buses started its engine.

  “I gotta go!” Kelly broke into a run. “One-two-three!” she called behind her.

  “Zoot,” George replied. Back in first grade, Kelly and George had decided that saying one-two-three-zoot was a lot more fun than saying good-bye. They had heard it on a cartoon, and it had made them laugh all day. Neither of them could remember anymore what show it was from, and sometimes it seemed silly to still be saying one-two-three-zoot, but neither wanted to be the first one to stop.

  That night, George dreamed she was onstage as Charlotte. She wore all black, with extra limbs running down her sides, and she recited the most beautiful words for the entire auditorium to hear. Her first line was delivered perfectly, as was the second. But then there was a strange noise overhead. George looked up, but all she could see was the heavy stage curtain, which enveloped her in a stuffy darkness before knocking her off the ladder. Then she was falling and couldn’t breathe for what felt like a very long time.

  George woke up in a sweat. It took a moment to realize she was awake, in her bed, and not suffocating. Her bedsheet was twisted around her legs.

  Still, she couldn’t shake the image of being Charlotte. As she ate her cereal and milk, as she dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, as she brushed her teeth, she pictured herself greeting the audience with a fine “Salutations.” She should be the one to declare Wilbur terrific. And she should be the one to make people cry with her final farewell.

  George lived in the left side of a two-unit house with Mom and Scott. When George referred to her family, Mom and Scott were usually who she meant. Dad lived with his new wife, Fiona, in a house in the Pennsylvania Pocono Mountains, a few hours away. Scott and George visited every summer for two weeks, like sleepaway camp. Dad made a better part-time father than a full-time one.

  Mr. and Mrs. Williams lived in the other half of the house. They were a retired couple whose adventures outdoors generally consisted of a daily slipper-clad shuffle to pick up the mail and newspaper. George found them calm and likable, and hoped they never moved away. If a new family moved in next door, they might have a boy her age. Then Mom would expect George and the boy to be best friends.

  You two will have so much fun, Mom would say. Just introduce yourself and smile. Mom was smart, and George loved her a lot, but Mom didn’t know about boys. Boys didn’t like George, and George wasn’t so sure what she thought about them, either.

  George walked her bike from the shed in the backyard, along the cracked cement path, and up to the street. It was Sunday afternoon, and Kelly had invited her over to practice for Monday’s auditions. Kelly said they could take turns playing Charlotte, and George’s stomach danced at the idea of reading the spider’s words aloud. George biked to Kelly’s house, her short afternoon shadow leading the way down the main road.

  Kelly and her father lived in a two-room basement apartment, and their front door was really a back door. The backyard was more pavement than grass, though tufts of green sprouted eagerly through cracks in the concrete.

  George propped her bike against the back wall of the house, hung her helmet from the handlebar, and guided herself down the three treacherously steep concrete steps, holding on to the thin metal railing for support. She knocked hard on the wooden door to compete with the rock music blasting inside.

  Kelly greeted her with a giant smile. The apartment opened directly into a large, messy room. Kitchen appliances and a sink full of dishes lined one wall. In another corner sat an unmade daybed. Cardboard boxes were stashed everywhere. Piles of books and papers were stacked up wherever they would fit: on the desk, on the bookcases, in shoe boxes above the bookcases, on top of the TV, pouring out of the open closet. George had even seen sheet music peeking out of the freezer a few times. (Kelly had said that was for when her dad needed to let a piece of music cool down before he could work on it some more.) A single standing lamp attempted to light the room, but the corners of the apartment were encased in shadows.

  Kelly’s father was a musician, but he didn’t play onstage very often. Instead, he wrote music for other people to perform. Kelly swore the people her dad had written for were famous, but George never recognized their names. When Kelly came over to George’s for dinner, she loved to rattle off the singers and bands to George’s mom, who recognized a few.

  Today, Kelly’s father sat in the middle of the floor, his eyes intent on the paper in his hands. He was surrounded by dozens of stacks of sheet music stretching across the room, both loose and bound into books. Some of the stacks were over two feet tall. He added the page he was holding to a pile behind him that looked ready to topple.

  “My dad’s cleaning!” Kelly announced. “What do you think?”

  “Wow,” said George. That seemed to cover the extent of the damage.

  “Got to mess it up before you can fix it up,” Kelly’s dad yelled over the music. He picked his way over to the stereo to turn down the volume. “Hey, George.”

  “Hey.” George never knew what to call Kelly’s father. Mr. Arden was too formal for a person like him, but George felt funny calling an adult by his first name, even though he had said “Call me Paul” more than once. To George, he was just Kelly’s dad, but she didn’t think he really wanted to be called that.

  “So, you here to be a big-time actor?” he asked as he lifted a box off a pile and added it to the mess on the ground.

  “I guess so,” said George.

  “C’mon, let’s get started.” Kelly took George by the hand and walked her across the stained beige carpet to the door of her room. “Have fun with your project, Dad. Knock if you need us. And try to keep it down. We’ve got lines to rehearse, and you know how important those are.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Kelly’s dad gave a firm nod and returned his attention to the next piece of sheet music on the pile in front of him.

  Walking inside Kelly’s room was like entering another world. The desk and bureau were spotless, her bed was neatly made, and dozens of framed photo
graphs hung stylishly on the walls. Fresh vacuum lines streaked across the rose-pink carpeting, and the air smelled like lemons.

  “Wow, Kelly. Your room’s even neater than usual.”

  “I went on a cleaning binge. It’s what inspired my dad.”

  “Maybe you should give him lessons.”

  “Ha! He thinks finding lost stuff is half the fun. He says it’s like digging for gold. Anyway, I think you’ve got a great idea.”

  “What idea?”

  “Trying out for Charlotte. Ms. Udell will love that you care so much about the character that you want to play her onstage, even though she’s a girl and you’re a boy. Plays are all about pretending, right?”

  “Um …” was all George could say. Playing a girl part wouldn’t really be pretending, but George didn’t know how to tell Kelly that. Besides, it was hard to stop Kelly once she got started. Mom said that Kelly should be a lawyer. Kelly said her dad would sue her if she tried.

  “You know,” Kelly continued, “she’ll probably give you the part just to make the point. She’s always going on about how we’re not supposed to let people’s expectations limit our choices.”

  “But it’s more than just the play,” George tried to explain.

  “Of course it is. There’s a whole history of boys playing girls in thee-ay-trah. Did you know that all the characters in Shakespeare’s plays were played by men? Even the girl parts. Even when they had to kiss! Can you believe it?”

  George thought for a moment about kissing a boy, and the idea made her tingle. Living in Shakespeare’s time didn’t sound so bad, even if you had to poop outdoors.

  Kelly went on. “Romeo and Juliet were both played by boys. Boys! Just think. William Shakespeare himself might have played Juliet. If you want to be Charlotte, you should get to try out, like anyone else. It’s only fair. And if you get nervous, my dad says you just have to picture the audience naked.”

  George didn’t see how that would help. “Kelly?” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Your dad is weird.”

  “I know that.”

  Kelly stood in the center of the room and took a few bows, as if she were onstage. She looked around nervously and then pointed at her imaginary audience, yelling, “How can I act in front of you people? You’re all naked! This is extremely rude!”

  Kelly started to giggle, and George joined her until the two of them curled into howling balls of laughter, occasionally shouting things like “I can’t perform under these conditions!”, “Where’s my limo?”, and “Get me my agent!” until finally, winded and with sore cheeks, their chuckles grew further apart. Suddenly, Kelly jumped up, determination in her face.

  “Okay, let’s get to work.” She opened the bottom drawer of her desk. Inside, a rainbow of hanging file folders kept numerous papers in place. Kelly took a pair of pages from a file in the front, then rolled the drawer shut.

  “I made a copy on my dad’s printer last night.” Kelly thrust a page at George. The word CHARLOTTE stood in capital letters at the top, originally written with a thick marker. Below it was the first conversation between Charlotte and Wilbur. All of the girls, no matter what part they wanted, would be auditioning with Charlotte’s lines, and the boys would be auditioning with Wilbur’s.

  “Why don’t you play Charlotte first?” Kelly dropped to her hands and knees, laying her script on the carpet in front of her.

  She oinked up at George, who perched herself as high as she could on the pillows at the head of the bed. As they acted out the scene, George surprised herself. She thought she would be nervous, but it seemed natural to say Charlotte’s words aloud. They were finished too quickly.

  “Switch places!” Kelly called, flopping onto the bed and lying on her back with her head hanging off the side. She held the paper out at arm’s length in front of her, upside down so she could read it. “Ready,” she called.

  George climbed off the bed and sat cross-legged on the floor. She read Wilbur’s lines and heard Kelly echo back the words she had read aloud moments ago. George was delighted when it was time to switch back. She climbed majestically up to the peak of the bed, stretching her limbs out like a spider’s, while Kelly jumped onto the floor and snorted.

  “Salutations!” George cried, and the scene began again. The words felt good on her lips.

  The two friends ran the dialogue back and forth until they could say most of the lines without looking at the page. Eventually, Kelly refused to give up her spot as Wilbur, and George happily repeated the role of Charlotte.

  “You don’t mind?” asked George. She could have read Charlotte’s words all day long.

  “I’m having fun!” Kelly said. “Besides, you make a better Charlotte than I do. I keep goofing up the first line!”

  Kelly was right. She kept saying “Sa-lu-ta-TA-tions” instead of “Sal-u-TA-tions.” Salutations was the fancy way Charlotte first greeted Wilbur and showed off her magnificent vocabulary. It was an important first line.

  “There are other parts. I could be Fern. I’ll be all ‘Pa! Where are you going with that ax?’ ” She held up her hands in imaginary protest.

  “Ax? What ax?” Kelly’s father had opened the door and popped his head in. “I ain’t got no ax. I’m strictly a bass man. Da-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum.” He slapped his fingers against his waist, playing an imaginary instrument. “Get it? Ax? Bass?”

  “Really, Dad?” Kelly gave her father a look. George smiled blankly.

  Kelly turned to George. “Hotshot lead guitarists like to call their guitars axes. It makes them think they’re cool.” She refocused her attention on her father. “Didn’t I tell you to knock first? We’re trying to rehearse.”

  “You’ve been at it a while. I thought you might be thirsty. There’s white grape juice in the fridge.”

  “Well, in that case, my dear father,” Kelly proclaimed, “I don’t mind you bothering us at all. Why, with all this rehearsing, I’m downright parched.”

  “I’ll bet your co-star is too, Ms. Arden. What do you say, Mr. Mitchell? Care for a beverage?”

  George nodded. She hated being called Mr. Mitchell. She wanted to shout, Mr. Mitchell lives in the Poconos with a woman named Fiona! Mr. Mitchell was her dad’s name. It would be her brother Scott’s name someday too, but it would never be hers.

  Instead, George followed Kelly into the main room of the apartment and over to the fridge, where Kelly poured juice into two plastic cups that had come from a local barbecue shack. Most of the dishes in the cabinets were made of plastic. There were a few real glasses at the back of the shelf, the remnants of several different sets, but no one ever seemed to use them. Given how often cups were knocked over in the Arden home, this was probably a good idea.

  Kelly gulped her juice down in three swallows. “Ahhhhhhhhhhh! White grape juice. My favorite!” She wiped her hand across her mouth, added the cup to the pile of dishes filling the sink, and set herself in the empty space on the floor where her father had been sitting among a chaos of paper. She oinked several times and pushed the nearest piles carefully out of her way before rolling onto her back and rocking back and forth, a pig gleefully wallowing in mud.

  Kelly’s father snatched her cup from the top of the dish pile and poured a glass of grape juice for himself. He chuckled at his daughter’s antics.

  “Are you trying to say that my room is a pigsty?”

  Kelly oinked and nodded vigorously.

  Kelly’s dad turned to George. “Care to stay for dinner? I’m making Super Special Surprise!”

  “Um, thanks, but I think my mom wants me home.”

  “As you wish.”

  Kelly took her best friend by the hand and escorted her back to her room. They ran through their lines once more. George would have liked to play the role of Charlotte all day long, but Kelly declared boredom and pulled out her camera.

  The camera was small and silver, with a lens in the front that zoomed in and out. She had gotten it for her birthday last summer, and ther
e hadn’t been a day since that she hadn’t taken a picture of something. She loved framing the shot—deciding just where the picture should start and what should stay unseen.

  Some of the photographs on her walls were portraits. One of Kelly’s dad onstage playing his bass. Another of her uncle Bill painting in a field of dandelions like a hippie. And a grainy photo of a tall, dark-skinned woman in heels and a shiny blue dress, holding a microphone. It was the only picture on the wall that Kelly hadn’t taken herself, and while she almost never talked about it, George knew it was a photo of Kelly’s mom.

  Not all of the pictures were of people Kelly knew, though. There was a kid smiling on the monkey bars, a man in a suit drinking coffee while deep in thought, and an old couple holding hands on a park bench. Other photographs were images of everyday objects so close up that you could barely tell what they were anymore. There was a worn-down pencil eraser, a pile of Q-tips, the strings of a guitar, and a shadowy shape with a shimmering silver triangle in the middle. Even Kelly didn’t remember what that object had originally been, but it was George’s favorite.

  Kelly directed George to stand against the back of her door and began to shoot.

  “Put your left foot in front of your right,” she told George. George did, but Kelly frowned. “Nah, put it back.” She took a few more shots. “Look up in the sky. No, not like you’re looking at a plane. Like you’re looking at a leaf on a tree.”

  George didn’t mind so much when Kelly took a few pictures of her, but she hated it when Kelly tried to pose her. Kelly was persistent, though, and it was faster to let her take her pictures than to argue with her, lose, and have Kelly take even more shots to prove her point.

  Kelly modeled George with a book, and shot close-ups of the spaces between her fingers. She gave George a baseball cap and sunglasses to wear and took pictures until George couldn’t take it anymore and begged her to stop.

  “What if we take some outside?” Kelly asked.

  “Nah,” George replied. “I gotta get home.”

  “Fine. Anyway, you better go before my dad announces that Super Special Surprise is ready and insists that you stay.”