Starring Jules (As Herself)

by Beth Ain

  “So, what audition, Jules?” Charlotte demands. “You know, my uncle is a big Hollywood director and he’s going to make me a star one day. You could be, too, if you would just dress like a girl and smile more.”

  “I smile plenty,” I say, but what I can’t help thinking about is Hollywood. My grandma Gilda lives in Hollywood and when we go down to Florida to visit her, I mostly eat deli sandwiches and watch old ladies play cards on the beach. I don’t know how a person would get to be famous there. “And besides, I do dress like a girl. Look,” I say, pointing to my navy blue tights with turquoise polka dots all over them.

  “Tights aren’t girly when you wear them under overall shorts with high-top sneakers, Jules.” Then Charlotte smiles at me the way a person does when they don’t mean to smile at all. What they mean is that they don’t want to be talking to you at all anymore, so they smile in a way that ends the conversation. I am familiar with this because I am usually the one who smiles this way at Charlotte.

  “Fine,” I say.

  “Fine,” she says back.

  “Girls! Do I need to separate you?” Ms. Leon asks from her desk.

  Yes, I think. Please, please, please separate us. But she does not. I forgive Ms. Leon for this because she is the best teacher I have ever had. She is from Cuba and her English sounds like the music they play on the beach in Florida.

  “Okay, ev-er-ee-body,” Ms. Leon says, standing up from her desk, “penceels down. Any minute, Eleenor will be here with us and we are going to welcome her with open arms!” And just like that, the door swings open and there she is. Elinor of London. In my head, I say this with a British accent to make it sound more important. Elinoh of Lohndon.

  As Ms. Leon shows Elinor to her desk, I notice she is wearing a turquoise sweatshirt that says I Heart Roma on it, and even though I don’t know exactly what that means, I smile at her. It is turquoise, after all. Elinor smiles back. Best friends forever, I think.

  “Jules, will you show Elinor around the school for a few minutes during recess?” Ms. Leon asks.

  “Sure,” I say calmly. Inside, I do a backflip.

  “And Charlotte, you help, too,” Ms. Leon says.

  I fall on my head mid-backflip.

  “Yay!” Charlotte says, clapping.

  When recess comes, I walk right over to Elinor. I want to say, “Hi, Elinor, I am your new best friend forever, Jules.” Instead, I say, “Hi, Jules. I’m Elinor.” Yes, this is what I say.

  “Oh. My. Goodness,” Charlotte says. “Jules, you are a real doof!”

  My face heats up and I get a lump in my throat the size of a hard-boiled egg. But just when I think I’m going to throw up egg salad all over Elinor’s shoes, she says, “Hi, Elinor. I’m Jules.” Charlotte looks at her like she’s crazy and all I can do is laugh.

  “So nice to meet you, Jules,” I say. “What a great name you have.”

  “You think so?” she asks in the prettiest accent I have ever heard. Then she says, “I like yours so much better.” But when she speaks it sounds like this: “I like yaws so much bettah.” Amazing.

  “Great,” Charlotte says. “Another Jules.”

  “Let’s go,” I say. “I’ll show you where the least smelly girls’ bathroom is.”

  “Lovely,” Elinor says. I start a list in my head.

  Things I Love About My New Best Friend:

  1. She says lovely when everyone else would just say great.

  After we walk Elinor all around the school, we head outside to the playground. “Elinor, why don’t you come and do makeovers with the ABC’s?” Charlotte asks. “I have fruit-flavored lip gloss.” This is how Charlotte has changed. She went away on an airplane to some fancy-schmancy hotel and came back with sparkly pens and flavored makeup. And it isn’t that she didn’t always like fancy things a little more than I like fancy things. It’s just that she used to also like normal things, like swing sets and Cheerios.

  “Makeovers?” I say. “We’re going to dig for worms.”

  “We are?” Elinor asks.

  “I mean, if you want to,” I say. This is what Teddy and I do at recess these days. Yes, I have resorted to playing with Teddy Meant-to-Be Lichtenstein at recess. I have known Teddy since we were exactly two-and-a-half years old. According to my mom and Teddy’s mom (who have been best friends ever since Teddy and I were assigned cubbies right next to each other on the first day of nursery school) he would give me a big kiss on my cheek every single morning of that terribletwos program. Here is my list of things you need to know about Teddy:

  1. Teddy is much too smart for his own good.

  2. Teddy and I really don’t have anything in common at all except:

  a. brunch (which we have to have together about once a month because our parents like to talk to each other while waiting in long lines for multigrain pancakes when we could just be eating Multi Grain Cheerios in a Sunday-morning fort in the living room).

  b. our (brilliant!) worm-swimming-pool idea.

  3. Teddy is very good at dealing with worms and very bad at dealing with seven-year-old people.

  “It is primo worm-digging season and we want to build a worm swimming pool,” I explain to Elinor.

  “Primo?” Charlotte asks, narrowing her eyes at me. “Did you say primo because of the I Heart Roma sweatshirt?”

  I have no idea what Charlotte is talking about. Primo is a word my dad uses a lot and one I love. It is on my list of potential signature words. Elinor chuckles at this and I make a note to ask my parents what primo has to do with Roma.

  “You don’t want to play with Teddy,” Charlotte says to Elinor.

  “Why, what’s wrong with Teddy?” Elinor asks.

  “Everything,” Charlotte says.

  “Oh, don’t listen to her,” I say. “She’s just mad that Teddy doesn’t like her enough to give her an element name.”

  “As in, the Periodic Table of Elements?” Elinor asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “Whatever that is, Teddy is obsessed with it.”

  “Julesium!” Teddy is running toward us, and Charlotte braces herself.

  To me, Teddy is kind of like a bouncing Super Ball. The kind that bounces so high and crazy you have to cover your head once you’ve let it go just so it doesn’t hit you when you aren’t looking. Right now, the bouncing ball is coming right for Charlotte, and Teddy bumps right into her as he comes to a stop.

  “Ow!” she says.

  “Sorry, Charlotte,” he says, looking horribly worried.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “Charlotte will live. Just don’t throw up.” Elinor looks at me. Something I left off the list:

  4. even though I always think I’m going to throw up all over the place, Teddy actually does.

  Teddy swallows hard. I suspect he has swallowed throw up. “Who’s this?” he asks.

  “This is Elinor,” I say.

  “Pleased to meet you, Teddy,” she says, shaking his hand. Elinor reminds me of my mother and Colby Kingston when she does this.

  “Go and dig for worms, if you want,” Charlotte says, rubbing her arm dramatically. “When you get tired of being with the weirdos, come play makeover with us.”

  “We’ll save some mud for you,” I say. “It’s supposed to be good for your face.” Judging from her squinty eyes, Charlotte doesn’t think this is funny.

  “Thanks very much for everything, Charlotte,” Elinor says.

  I add another item to my list of things I like about my new best friend:

  2. Speaks in complete sentences, even when talking to Stinkytown.

  “The ABC’s?” Elinor asks, turning to Teddy and me.

  “Abby, Brynn, Charlotte,” I say.

  “It’s alphabetical,” Teddy says.

  “It’s ridiculous,” I say, and hope Elinor agrees.

  “Charlotte used to be Julesium’s best friend,” Teddy says. I am so mad that I give Teddy a push. Not too hard a push because it’s Teddy, but still. The boy needs to be pushed for what he has just told my new best fr
iend.

  “And so, if I play with you, I am one of the weirdos, as Charlotte calls you?” Elinor asks.

  “That’s right,” I say.

  “True,” Teddy agrees.

  We all look at each other for a minute, until at last Elinor says, “All right, then, worms with weirdos it is!”

  “All right!” I say, beaming. Somehow, Elinor has turned Charlotte’s fruit-flavored insult into a compliment, which gets me to thinking about what else this girl can do with her excellent manners and her especially excellent turquoise I Heart Roma sweatshirt.

  boys in helmets,

  minty-fresh mysteries,

  and the writing on the wall

  “I have some important questions,” I say to my mom while she makes dinner. For my mom, making dinner means shaking some cheese over pasta while she dashes in and out of what used to be the pantry, but is now her painting studio. She uses canned goods in her art and in her cooking. My mom, Rachel Bloom, is a much better artist than a cook, and I know this because her art hangs in a gallery where there is a sign in the window that says, FEATURING THE WORKS OF MIXED - MEDIA ARTIST RACHEL BLOOM. No one would ever put a sign like that over her pasta and broccoli.

  “Shoot,” she says.

  I raise my hand.

  “Yes, Jules?” my mom asks in a teacher voice.

  “Mrs. Bloom,” I say. I like pretending that my mom is the teacher. “What is Roma and what does it have to do with the word primo?”

  “Roma is the Italian word for Rome, which is a city in Italy, and primo means ‘prime’ in Italian. Prime, as in ‘excellent, the best, first class’! Very good questions, Jules.”

  “Ohhhh,” I say. I hate it when Charlotte knows something I don’t.

  “Why?” she asks.

  “Elinor of London was wearing an I Heart Roma sweatshirt.”

  “Elinor!” my mom says. “I completely forgot to ask about her. Is she great? New-best-friend material?”

  “She really is. She’s perfect. She says lovely and shakes people’s hands and speaks in complete sentences.”

  “Did you start a list?” my mom asks.

  “Yes,” I say, “and her sweatshirt is turquoise, not gray like my I Heart NY t-shirt.”

  “Wow,” she says. “She is perfect.”

  “Big Henry!” my little brother says, gliding into the living room on his bright orange scooter. He announces himself whenever he enters a room, even if he has only been gone for a second. He is wearing his dinosaur pajamas and a helmet with ears on it.

  “Big Henry!” my dad says, walking through the front door at that very instant and scooping up my little brother. “Look what I have,” he says, waving a piece of paper in his hand.

  “What is it?” I ask. My dad is a chef at a restaurant, which means he is not usually home for dinner. But right now, he is in the middle of opening his own restaurant, a restaurant that has all organic food, which means it will be a healthy and delicious restaurant. But — and this is a big but — it is for now a restaurant that no one can think of a name for, and a restaurant that does not yet have any tables or chairs inside, so for now, he is home every single night for dinner, just like in a regular family.

  He hands me the mystery piece of paper.

  I look at the paper.

  Swish Mouthwash for Kids, script

  “Whoa,” I say. “Minty.” I picture myself wrapped in a winter scarf and wearing mittens and I am going to sled all the way down the hill into Riverside Park on a massive snow slope. This is what mint reminds me of — sledding. And also chocolate mint candies, which are the best candies ever invented. So good, I don’t know why anyone would eat M&M’S when they could be eating chocolate mint candies instead.

  “Whoa, minty,” Big Henry says, jumping up and down next to me. Having Big Henry for a little brother is like having an echo. A not-so-good-at-standing-still echo.

  I quickly turn the page over. “I’ll look at it later,” I say.

  “Jules,” my dad says, “you’re going to need to practice before Friday.”

  “I will,” I say.

  “Voilà!” my mom says, plopping down a big bowl of whole-wheat bow-tie pasta mixed with broccoli and shaky cheese. I look at my dad. “What?” my mom asks. “It has all the things a person needs for dinner. Whole grains, cheese, and green vegetables.”

  “Sure,” he says, “but the kids need to develop their palates.” Both my parents talk about palates a lot, but when my dad says it, he means taste buds, and when my mom says it, she means colors. Sometimes, I wonder if they know they are not talking about the same thing.

  I take a big bite of pasta and hand Ugly Otis a piece of broccoli under the table. He gobbles it up. He should be called Ugly Otis: The Broccoli-Loving Dog of the Universe, for all the broccoli he eats out of my hand. “That’s what you can call the restaurant,” my mom says. “Palate.” She puts her fork down then and stands up. We all look at her like she is going to make a big announcement, but she doesn’t.

  She just goes into her studio and returns with a paintbrush and a can of bright red paint. I watch her every move. When my mom gets an idea, it can be even better than watching a movie. She plops the little can down next to the white wall in the living room and my dad and I look at each other.

  “What are you going to paint?” I ask.

  “Restaurant name ideas,” she answers, and then we all watch as she paints the word Palate on the wall in beautiful, swooping letters.

  “Starlight Café!” I shout. I love this idea. I love every red inch of it.

  “Just Good Food,” my dad says.

  “Robot!” Big Henry yells, bouncing. His eyes are all lit up.

  My mom paints them all up there, one by one, and I feel my own eyes light up, too. This is going to make my list of my favorite things my mom has ever done.

  Number one on that list is when she took me into a fountain in the middle of stinking hot Philadelphia when we were visiting my uncle last summer. Watching her paint words on the wall like this feels a lot like swimming in that city fountain with all of our clothes on.

  After homework and reading, I hop quietly into my bed. Big Henry is already asleep on the other side of the curtain that divides our room. My side of the curtain has ocean waves painted on it and Henry’s looks like a nighttime sky. My mom flicks on the little reading light that clips on to my book and whispers, “Good night, Julesie. Don’t stay up too long.” I give her a kiss and a thumbs-up and she is gone. I can hear Big Henry’s book on tape playing Paddington softly. I picture Elinor shaking Big Henry’s hand and Big Henry falling over when he hears her Paddington Bear accent. He is just going to love her, I think. Then I pull out that piece of paper I am supposed to study.

  There are a few lines I have to read before I swish some Swish Mouthwash in my mouth and say, “And who wouldn’t love that orange-fresh taste?” After that, it says smile, which gets all blurry on the page when I read it because I am about to have a panic attack.

  I sit straight up in bed. “Mom!” I scream at the top of my lungs, and then all I can hear is Big Henry waking up and crying and crying and crying.

  “Jules!” my mom says.

  “What on earth?” my dad says.

  “It says orange,” I say.

  “What says orange?” my mom asks.

  “This!” I wave the page around. My dad is holding Big Henry now and they are all on my side of the curtain.

  “Well, do you have to taste it or do you just have to say it?” my mom asks.

  “Take a big mouthful, blow out cheeks, swish it around, it says.” I look back up at my parents and feel tears in my eyes.

  “Okay, now, Jules. Just because you threw up one time a long, long time ago, that doesn’t mean it will happen again,” my dad says. “Besides, that was orange sherbert. This is orange mouthwash. The whole point of mouthwash is that you spit it out.”

  My dad has a point. Orange anything reminds me of throw up, partly because I threw up in a taxicab after
eating that orange sherbert, and partly because I think everything orange is just plain terrible. Orange Tic Tacs, the orange t-shirts they made us wear every single day at camp, and now orange mouthwash. I can’t believe anyone on this planet would ever think this was a good idea.

  “Jules, it’s late. We’ll deal with this in the morning,” my mom says.

  “Remember, every problem has a solution,” my dad says.

  “Is Jules going to throw up?” Big Henry asks.

  “Not tonight, Hen,” my dad says, and Henry closes his eyes.

  I plop my head on my pillow and close my eyes and start a list in my head.

  Solutions to the Anything-Orange-Makes- Me-Throw-Up Problem:

  1. Blank.

  2. Blank.

  3. Blank.

  I have no solutions. Not one. And then I think of Charlotte and her fruity lip gloss. There is probably an orange-flavored one and Charlotte must know how not to throw up from it. So now I just have to figure out how to ask Stinkytown for help.

  the art of breathing,

  the other hollywood,

  and things that make me itch

  “Hi, Charlotte,” I say, walking right up to the side of her desk with a big old fake smile on my face.

  “Hi, Jules,” she says, looking inside her desk for something and not seeing my fake smile.

  “Hi, Julesium,” Teddy says, too. I have to pass by his desk to get to Charlotte.

  “Wait,” Charlotte says, slamming down the lid of her desk, “what do you want?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I say. I am trying out my acting skills. “I just wanted to say good morning to my long lost best friend, Charlotte Stinky — er — Pinkerton.” Shoot, I think. If I am going to be an actress, I have to get a whole lot better at acting.