George

by Alex Gino

  Kelly was so loud that George could feel the phone vibrate. She held it a few inches from her ear and waited until Kelly was done.

  “Are you there?” Kelly asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, what? Yeah, you’re there? Yeah, you threw up on Jeff? Or yeah, you picked a fight?”

  “All three.”

  “What the heck, George? What were you doing, picking a fight with the biggest bully in our class?”

  “I dunno. He made fun of Charlotte, I guess.” George’s reasoning sounded foolish, even to her.

  “Charlotte’s not even real.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “If you’re gonna be transgender and all, you’re going to have to be a lot more careful. You won’t be able to throw up on every bully you meet.”

  “I could try,” said George. “Bleh! Bleh! Bleh!”

  “You sound like a vomiting machine gun.”

  “I could be a superhero!”

  “You’d be Ralph the Ralpher. You could even have a motto: ‘If you throw down, I’ll throw up!’ ”

  George and Kelly chuckled, but then a quiet fell over the conversation, and the only sound that came through the phone was the airy hum of the line itself.

  “The play really means a lot to you, doesn’t it?” asked Kelly, breaking the silence.

  “It’s just …” George sighed. “I just thought that … you know … if I were Charlotte in the play, my mom might …”

  “See that you’re a girl?”

  “Yeah,” said George. It felt funny to hear Kelly call her a girl—but in a good way, like a tickling in her stomach that reminded her she was real.

  “Well, maybe it’s not too late,” said Kelly. “I mean, the play hasn’t happened yet, has it?”

  “But you got the part.”

  “There are two performances, silly. I could take one and you could have the other.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “Of course I would. I thought about it the whole bus ride home. I can make sure my dad comes to the afternoon show. You could totally do it! In fact, you make a better Charlotte than I do.”

  It was true. George had listened to Charlotte’s lines enough times that she knew every word, and she knew just how she would say them—mostly like Kelly did, but different in a few key places. Kelly emphasized some of the wrong words, and she still sometimes flubbed Charlotte’s first line by saying “SalutaTAtions” instead of “Salutations.”

  “But how?”

  “It’s easier than easy! You’ll already be dressed in black as a stagehand. All you have to do is put on the arm vest and you’ll look perfect.” As Charlotte, Kelly wore a black leotard and tights, along with a vest with three stuffed arms sewn on either side.

  “But Ms. Udell already said I couldn’t have the part.”

  “You know what? Ms. Udell is wrong. You should be Charlotte. And by the time she realizes it’s you, it’ll be too late. You’ll already be onstage and there won’t be a thing she can do about it.”

  George could practically hear the devious grin on Kelly’s face, and she could certainly feel the grin on hers. With Kelly’s help, maybe she really could be Charlotte.

  “But what about when the other kids notice?”

  “Forget the other kids. Jeff won’t be there, and no one else will care.”

  “What about my mom?”

  “I thought showing your mom was part of the idea!” Kelly’s shrieking voice hurtled through the phone.

  “Yeah, but …” George’s stomach flopped.

  “Look, do you want your mom to know you’re a girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then be Charlotte.” Kelly said it as if it was choosing strawberry ice cream instead of chocolate. “I gotta go. I still have one performance to rehearse for. And now, so do you! One-two-three—”

  “ZOOT!” George hung up and twirled around the house, like Charlotte spinning a glorious spiderweb. She, George, was going to be Charlotte onstage! In front of Mom and everyone!

  The butterflies in her stomach had butterflies in their stomachs.

  Scott leaped out of Randy’s house the moment Mom honked the horn, as though he had been waiting at the doorknob. He filled the car with a rant about his history teacher, followed by a tirade about his math teacher and a torrent about his biology teacher.

  “The man wants us to dissect a worm!”

  “I would think you would find that gruesomeness appealing,” said Mom.

  “Not if I have to diagram every last body part to scale. It’s going to be a pain in the butt. If I’m going to diagram something, why can’t it at least be a frog? That would be cool.”

  “If you think it’s hard on you, just imagine how the worm feels.”

  George was glad that Scott was diverting Mom’s attention. She didn’t want to be asked why she was smiling after having been beaten up and sent home from school, but she was ecstatic about the idea of playing Charlotte onstage, and it was hard not to show it.

  Mom turned in to Arnie’s All-You-Can-Eat Buffet and rolled into a spot facing the building. Red awnings with thick green borders hung across the wide windows of the large, squat building. A long banner stretching across the front of the restaurant proclaimed OVER ONE HUNDRED ITEMS COOKED FRESH EVERY DAY.

  Inside, happy eaters sat at booths and tables, their plates filled with food foraged from a dozen different cuisines in heaps of each person’s favorites. No one waited on tables at Arnie’s, and no one waited for their meals. Instead, endless buffet trays lined one long wall of the restaurant. People dressed all in white carried out full trays of food to the buffet and brought empty trays back into the kitchen. Tables filled with soda and lemonade glasses.

  Mom paid at the door and unleashed her children on the buffet while she found a table. George filled her plate with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn fritters, pizza, a pile of nachos, and a cube of cherry Jell-O hidden under a taco, to eat while Mom was getting her own food. Even at Arnie’s, Mom said you should have dinner before dessert. George went back to the table while Mom took her turn at the buffet. Scott sat down soon after.

  “What’s up with Mom?” he asked from behind a plate piled high with ham, turkey, and chicken, topped with two slices of pizza. “She never takes us out to Arnie’s on a weekday unless she’s upset about something.”

  “Yeah, well.” George looked over at Mom, who was still picking out lettuce for her salad. “I kind of got into a fight at school.”

  Scott’s head shot up in surprise and his brow grew heavy. “When I got into a fight at school, I got grounded. How did you work Arnie’s out of it?”

  “I kind of also told her something.”

  “It must have been big. Mom’s staring at the beets like a zombie.”

  “It was.”

  “Did you tell her you were gay?” Scott twisted his fork into a pile of mashed potatoes. “You know I’m okay with that, right? Before Dad left, he made me promise to take care of you. He said you were like that.”

  “I’m not gay,” George said. Why did everyone think she was gay?

  “Whatever. I don’t care. My friend Matt is gay. It’s no big deal.”

  But it was a big deal. “I told her I think I’m a girl.”

  “Oh.” That was all Scott said at first. “Oh.”

  Scott chewed, swallowed, and took another bite of pizza. The background noise of the restaurant throbbed in George’s ears. She wished Scott would say something, even if it was mean.

  “Ohhh.” Scott took a bite of turkey. “Ohhhhhhhhh.” Scott began to nod slowly. He turned to George, whose stomach had jumped with each oh and was now nearly in her throat.

  “That’s more than just being gay. No wonder she’s freaking out.”

  “I know.”

  Scott put down his fork. “So do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Think you’re a girl?”

  “Yes.” George was surprised at how easy that question was to answ
er.

  “Oh.” Scott ripped a hunk off a roll with his teeth and chewed thoughtfully.

  Mom returned with a green salad, topped with raw vegetables and vinaigrette dressing. She finished it quickly and dropped her plate off in a dish bin. Mom always started her meal at Arnie’s with a salad. She said it was healthy, not to mention delicious, but she always ate it quickly and then returned with a plate just as decadent as George’s and Scott’s.

  Scott had gnawed silently on a chicken wing while Mom ate her salad, but once she got up and approached the appetizer bar, he dropped the bone onto his plate.

  “I know about your magazines,” he said.

  “Mom told you?”

  “Naw, I found them this weekend. I knew Mom was upset about something, and then I saw the bag sitting on her bed. Dude, I thought you had porn or something in there, so I took a peek. You know, just to find out what kind of stuff my little bro was into. So I figured you were gay. But I didn’t think you were like that.” Scott popped a corn fritter into his mouth. “So, like, do you want to”—he made a gesture with two fingers like a pair of scissors—“go all the way?”

  George squeezed her legs together. “Maybe someday,” she said.

  “Weird. But it kinda makes sense. No offense, but you don’t make a very good boy.”

  “I know.”

  Mom returned to the table, and the conversation was dropped. All three of them stuffed their faces until they dragged their very full stomachs to the car, groaning all the way, much like Templeton the rat after his night of indulgence at the fair.

  All three of them crashed in front of the television when they got home, and watched a sitcom about a family with twelve kids. The jokes mostly focused on the empty fridge and full bathroom. George wondered what it would be like to live with so many people. Maybe each kid got noticed less. With Mom eyeing her from her chair, George wondered whether maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  Scott snuck glances her way too, but where Mom’s eyes were filled with concern and confusion, Scott looked at George as if his sibling made sense to him for the first time. George had never been gladder to have an older brother.

  George wasn’t sure when Jeff would be back at school, and every morning, she kept nervous eyes out for the first sign of his spiky hair. When she finally spotted it, Jeff was already headed in her direction with a sneer across his face. He walked at a steady pace, his eyes steeled in the distance beyond George. He didn’t break his stride for an instant but spit at her feet as he passed. Every time he passed her that week, he spit. Real spit that landed on the pavement if they were outside, pretend spit on the linoleum floors if they were inside the school.

  The morning of the play, the students of Room 205 chatted and laughed, leaving their bags on their desks and ignoring the assignment on the board. Only Ms. Udell’s threat to cancel the play quieted the class, and even then, she struggled to wrangle her students through a morning of reading, journals, math, and vocabulary. Kelly and George exchanged knowing glances throughout.

  After recess, Ms. Udell and Mr. Jackson brought their classes to the auditorium. Kindergarten through third-grade students filed noisily into the old wooden seats for the afternoon performance. Parents and relatives sat in the first few rows. Isaiah, the boy from Mr. Jackson’s class who was playing Wilbur, frolicked heartily, getting into character.

  The cast and stagehands gathered with Ms. Udell backstage. The rest of the class went to sit in the audience with Mr. Jackson. It was dark behind the thick red cloth that draped the stage, and the air smelled musty, but once the curtains were pulled, the light from the auditorium windows would fill the stage.

  After the audience was seated, the overhead light flickered twice, signaling quiet. The curtain squeaked open and Jocelyn walked onstage. The girl from Mr. Jackson’s class was playing Fern, and she carried a blanket in her arms, meant to represent the runt pig, Wilbur. For this scene, Wilbur didn’t have anything to do or say but to be saved from Pa’s ax, and Isaiah was too big for Jocelyn to hold him in her arms. The first narrator began to speak, and the play had begun.

  When it was nearly time for Kelly’s first lines, she stepped up the ladder, carefully holding her extra limbs in her hands. She gave her opening speech, which went perfectly. She even said salutations the right way. The audience was focused on her every move. She spotted her dad and winked at him. Then she climbed down to wait for her next scene.

  “You were great!” George whispered when Kelly was back on the ground.

  “You’re gonna be even better!” Kelly whispered back.

  George said nothing, but she pictured herself onstage, at the top of the ladder, sharing Charlotte’s words with the audience.

  The play was short, over before most of the younger students began to squirm in their seats. At the end, the actors took their bows and Ms. Udell thanked the members of the audience for their time.

  Once the younger students had filed out, Ms. Udell spoke to the fourth graders and the family members in the audience. “Students who are performing this evening, please be back at five thirty. The play will begin at six sharp. Parents and family, I hope you’ll stay for the PTA meeting that will follow.” A few parents coughed in response. George knew that coughing was the adult equivalent of groaning.

  Families congratulated the performers at the front of the stage. Kelly’s dad had even brought a bouquet for her. He and other parents left with their children. Ms. Udell escorted the remainder of the class back to Room 205 for the final twenty minutes of the day, to write in their journals about The Excitement of the Theatrical Experience, which was what Ms. Udell wrote on the board in large letters.

  George wrote a single sentence on her page: It was exciting to help out with the play. But what she really wanted to write was I’m going to be Charlotte!!!!

  Mom arrived home right when it was time to head to school for the play. She didn’t even bother to remove her shoes.

  “Ready to go?” she asked.

  Scott was at Randy’s house for the evening, supposedly working on a school project. George suspected that they were more likely watching gore flicks, but either way, she was glad Scott wasn’t coming to the play. He had shown surprising tact until now, but if he said the wrong thing to Mom, he could really freak her out. George got up from the spot where she had been flopped on the couch for the last hour, barely noticing the talking dogs and superhero kids who flashed by on the television screen. She had bigger things on her mind. She put on her dress shoes, the only pair of black shoes she owned. When she was handing the spiderweb signs up to Kelly, her white sneakers hadn’t mattered much, but if she was going to be Charlotte, she wanted to do it right.

  As Mom pulled out of the driveway, George’s stomach turned nervously. She counted telephone poles to relax.

  “So how was the afternoon performance?” Mom asked.

  “It was okay.” George was used to counting while Mom talked. She held the tens on her fingers to keep track.

  “That really sells it for me.”

  “Sorry, Mom. I was just thinking.”

  The ride to school wasn’t long, so if George missed a pole, she might not have another chance to get up to one hundred. She supposed she didn’t really need an imaginary electric fairy to go through with her and Kelly’s plan, but it seemed safer that way.

  “I’m excited to see you take a bow this evening, even as a stagehand. And Kelly will be great as Charlotte, I’m sure.”

  George didn’t correct her. Mom would find out about the plan soon enough, and by then, it would be too late to stop it. George reached a hundred telephone poles with blocks to spare.

  The tiny school parking lot was full, so Mom found a spot on the street a block away.

  “Looks like it’s going to be a big audience,” Mom said.

  “Guess so.” George shrugged, trying to ignore the fear that coursed through her.

  At the door of the auditorium, Mom kissed George on the cheek and searched for a seat.
George could hear the students gathered backstage. The red curtain was heavy, and she fought her way through. The backstage lighting was dim, and George’s eyes blinked to adjust. Most of the cast and crew were already assembled.

  “There you are!” Kelly skipped over to George.

  George grinned. They both wore all black. The only difference between their costumes was the vest of stuffed spider arms that Kelly wore. They shared secret smiles and giggles until it was nearly time for the show to begin. George shook with excitement.

  “This is it, ladies and gents,” said Mr. Jackson, gathering the cast and stagehands together. “Let’s make Mr. E. B. White proud one more time. Best performance and best behavior.”

  “Break a leg!” Ms. Udell said with a wink.

  “Take your places and we’ll get this show on the road!” Mr. Jackson twirled his index finger in the air.

  Ms. Udell took the side steps off the stage and sat down in the first row of the audience. Mr. Jackson stayed backstage to oversee the performance.

  The play began just as it had in the afternoon. The curtain rose on Fern Arable holding a blanket in her arms, cooing to a pretend piglet, and the audience applauded. The first narrator described the Arables’ farm and told the audience about the baby pig who was moments from execution.

  Backstage, Kelly took off the vest of spider arms and handed it to George, who checked to make sure that Mr. Jackson wasn’t watching. Then she donned the vest. The fake arms were filled with cotton and didn’t weigh much, but they were bulky. George had to bunch them up in her real arms, as she had seen Kelly do, to make sure she didn’t trip over them. She combed her hair forward with her fingers, as she had done countless times in the mirror, and waited. The opening scenes of the play had never been so slow.

  George was bouncing on the balls of her feet with nervous excitement by the time the barnyard animals began to greet Wilbur. Charlotte’s first lines were only moments away. George climbed up the ladder to appear above the backdrop, in full view of the audience.