Starring Jules (As Herself)

by Beth Ain

  “What sign are you?” I ask.

  “Oh, I’m a Virgo,” she says. “It’s an earth sign. I am very practical and orderly.”

  “Hmm,” I say. “I think I’m neither of those things.”

  “You’re not,” she says. “You’re a water sign.”

  “I am?” I picture the turquoise ocean. It all makes sense now.

  “Yep.”

  “So, we’re opposites?” I don’t like this at all. Opposites is what Charlotte and I are. One of us a digger of worms and the other a glosser of lips.

  “Yep. Isn’t that just perfect?” Elinor says. She’s smiling, so I take this to mean that she is happy we are opposites.

  “I guess,” I lie. I picture us having a giganto-huge fight during a pretend game of family. In my head, it is a friendship-ending fight with lots of “Well, I am a water sign and I want a family beach vacation,” and then “Well, I am an earth sign and I want to hike in the woods!”

  “Jules?” I hear Elinor’s singsong voice come crashing through my day-mare. (Day-mare is what I call a scary daydream.)

  “I think my dad is right,” I say. “Astrology is a bunch of hooey.” I run out of the pantry and into my room, where I belly flop my whole body onto the first bed I see. Big Henry’s bed. I don’t know why I do this or why I said that to Elinor, but I do know that I don’t want to play with her too much because I might like her even more than I already do and then it will be even worse when we have that big argument.

  “I’m Daddy,” Big Henry says, standing at his play kitchen.

  “What are you cooking, Hen?”

  “Spaghetti,” he says, “with peanut butter.”

  “Mmm,” I say. “Delish.”

  “Where’th Elinor?” he asks.

  “Elinor and I aren’t going to be friends anymore,” I say.

  “Uh, Jules.” My mom is standing in the doorway. “Come with me,” she says.

  “But I’m talking privately with Henry,” I say.

  “Now,” she says. I follow her to her bedroom, where she pats the bed for me to sit next to her.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Well, I met Elinor just now. She is just as lovely as you said.”

  “I know this,” I say.

  “So then why did you run out on her?” she asks. “She said you made fun of the book she brought and that she wants to go home.”

  “I only said that because Elinor and I won’t agree on where our pretend family will go on vacation,” I say.

  “You had an argument?”

  “No,” I say. “Not yet, but we will.”

  “Jules, what on earth?”

  “We’re opposites.

  She’s an earth sign and very organized, and I’m a water sign and not at all organized, and that means we’re opposites, just like Charlotte and I are opposites, and we all know how that turned out.”

  “You and Charlotte might be opposites, but the reason you aren’t close is because you don’t enjoy doing the same things anymore, which is okay. It is not because she went away on that beach vacation with the towels, you know. And for the record, not being close friends anymore doesn’t mean that you can’t still be nice to each other. As for you and Elinor, you both like astrology, right?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And maybe she likes digging for worms with you, right? And you both definitely like turquoise — that much we know.”

  “So?”

  “So, sometimes it’s best to have someone who isn’t exactly like you for a good friend. That way, when you are having wacky thoughts like you do, there will be someone around who isn’t having such wacky thoughts to help you through it.”

  “You think I’m wacky?” I ask.

  “Just a little,” she says, “but in a good way.”

  “In a tall-icy-drink kind of way?” I ask.

  “I don’t know what that means,” she says.

  “Never mind,” I say.

  “Hey, maybe Elinor can help you organize your room,” my mom says, smiling.

  “And I can mess hers up?” I say.

  “Funny,” she says. “Now go tell her you’re all right.”

  I walk out of my parents’ bedroom and into the living room, where Elinor is sitting with her coat and backpack on. I see that I have maybe ruined everything and I feel shaky. “You don’t need to go home yet,” I say. “I’m fine.”

  “Well, that’s good, but I think I want to go home anyway. I think maybe astrology isn’t your thing.”

  “Yes, it is! I just have some wacky thoughts sometimes, that’s all. I love astrology already and I don’t think it’s hooey at all,” I say. Please, please, please don’t go, I think.

  “Okay, well, good then. I really do hope the book helps you with the audition, but can your mom or dad take me home now?”

  “I’ll go get my dad,” I say, and when I do they are gone very quickly out the door and all my perfect-new-best-friend dreams right along with them.

  surprise guest stars,

  boys in bow ties,

  and butterflies over Broadway

  This day has gone by so quickly, I haven’t gotten to either of the things on the list I made during freewriting this morning — a list called My Pre-Audition Fix-It List:

  1. Thank Charlotte for trying to help with the acting lesson.

  2. apologize over and over to elinor for being a terrible new best friend.

  “Okay, ev-er-ee-body,” Ms. Leon says, standing up from her desk. “Let’s gather our things and get ready for dee-smeesal.” The classroom phone rings and all Ms. Leon says is “Mmm-hmm,” and hangs it back up.

  “Jules, honey,” Ms. Leon says, looking my way over the rims of her rhinestone glasses, “please gather your things and go to the office.”

  Two things pop into my head at this moment: Either the principal found out that the mounds of dirt out by the playground were caused by me and my worm-excavation team and not by the mysterious giant groundhog he suspects, OR someone has died. The fact that Ms. Leon said honey leads me to believe that it is not the hole-digging option, but the death option.

  On my way up to the front of the room, I picture myself at my mother’s bedside in the hospital, sobbing, and then I think that I will probably not be able to go to my audition today, which is probably better, anyway.

  “Did someone die?” I ask Ms. Leon as I turn my chair upside down and hoist it onto my desk.

  “Ay, Jules, the drama!” she says. “No, someone did not die. You just have a special visitor here to pick you up.”

  My heart races. I absolutely know who it is and I run so fast out of the classroom that I forget my backpack and have to turn right back. Ay!

  When I go back in the room for my backpack, it isn’t Elinor or even Teddy who hands it to me. It is Charlotte. “Here you go, Jules,” she says. “Break a leg!” I look at her kind of funny and say thanks, since I think this is a nice thing to say and not a terrible thing to say, but I don’t get it.

  “I sneaked a peek at your list this morning,” she says. Aha! I think. “I told you how to guard your paper and you still don’t do it. Anyway, you’re welcome,” she says, and I am very, very happy that old-Charlotte showed up at this knee-quaking moment.

  Grandma Gilda is waiting for me in the office and I practically knock her down when I hug her. “I didn’t know you were picking me up, George!” I yell.

  “Well, of course not,” she says. “That would have ruined the surprise. Why are you calling me George?”

  “I don’t know. The idea just popped into my head on the way here,” I say.

  “Okay, I like it, Eddie,” she says.

  I smile. “I like it,” I say.

  We hustle across Broadway to catch the downtown bus. We are headed to Times Square — Times Square! When the bus comes, we line up behind all the people who were waiting before us. I am face-to-face with a picture of a very snazzy-looking lady who I recognize from the news. I wonder if she always wanted to have her picture on t
he side of the M104 bus. In my head, I add snazzy to my signature-words list.

  On the bus, I have butterflies in my stomach, which reminds me of the tropical butterflies at the Museum of Natural History. I picture myself letting all those flitting-around butterflies escape that hot, soggy room and I think how beautiful they would look flying in between city buildings, dodging American flags and neon signs flashing the words HOT COFFEE.

  The bus screeches to a halt.

  We hop down to the ground and I feel like I am going to throw up loads of butterflies all over Times Square. But I stop myself when I look at George. She thinks I could be a world-famous actress, and world-famous actresses definitely do not throw up butterflies in garbage cans.

  “Listen, Eddie,” George says when we are about to walk into a big building with a revolving door that looks like it’s gobbling up one group of people and spitting out another right before my eyes. I can hardly blink.

  “Eddie!” George says again, and I look at her. “This is just for fun, you know. Pretend you’re in front of the mirror in your room, doing your fizzy ice-cream cone jingle for Big Henry. And if you throw up, you throw up! It’ll be a funny story.”

  “Real funny,” I say.

  She gives me a Grandma Gilda-sized squeeze, which is so tight it almost squeezes all the butterflies out of me. Almost.

  “Are you good?” she asks.

  “Snazzy,” I say.

  “Snazzy?” George says.

  “I’m trying it on,” I say, and then I swallow hard and let the revolving door swallow me up.

  In the elevator, Grandma Gilda pulls out a little velvet box and hands it to me.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “The solution to your problem,” she says.

  I open the box.

  “Earrings?” I say.

  “Not just earrings,” she says. “Magic earrings.” I narrow my eyes at her.

  “Fine, don’t believe me,” she says. “All I know is that every time they have ever been worn, they have brought magic with them.”

  “What kind of magic?” I ask, eyeing the little gold stars. I got my ears pierced for my sixth birthday and have never once taken out the earrings I got pierced with — they are little rubies, my birthstone.

  “Magic like your mom being born, your uncle Michael being born, magic things like that,” she says. I smile.

  “Maybe if you wear them today, a star will be born.” She says this in a tall-icy-drink kind of a voice and makes jazz hands at me. I am glad there is no one else in the elevator.

  “Ha-ha, George,” I say.

  “Ha-ha, Eddie,” she says.

  I put the earrings on and hand Grandma my old ones.

  When we walk inside the audition office, we find a roomful of kids. I am surprised that there are girls and boys. This makes things much worse for me. Here’s why:

  1. Boys can always talk loud and say whatever they want.

  2. Boys are always funny, even when they are trying to be serious.

  3. Boys don’t get nervous, unless they are Teddy, but Teddy would never try out for a commercial in the first place.

  For all of these reasons, I decide right away that a boy will end up in this commercial, pretending to love the horrible orange-tasting mouthwash for all the world to see.

  George sits down and holds my hand tight while we wait. And wait and wait and wait. I watch as the door opens and closes a million times and kid after kid gets called in before me by a woman with a clipboard. In my head, I picture each one of them on the Swish commercial and they all do it perfectly. They look like the kinds of kids who know what they are doing. They are wearing outfits that match from their headbands to their tights. One boy — and this is the boy I would hire for this particular job — is dressed in blue jeans, a pin-striped shirt, and a bow tie. He looks sharp. What was my mom thinking putting me in charge of dressing myself for this, anyway? I look down at my rainbow shoelaces and think I’m not at all perfect for this.

  “Jules Bloom!” someone yells.

  “Off you go,” Grandma Gilda says.

  I take one of Charlotte’s for-real-acting-lesson deep breaths and follow the woman with the clipboard.

  “Hi, Jules,” Colby Kingston says to me from behind a camera. “It’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to be here,” I say. I had decided earlier that I was going to try to talk in complete sentences at this audition, since it sounds so nice on Elinor.

  “Have a seat,” she says.

  I sit down at a little white sink with a big bottle of Swish and a stack of little paper cups on it. As if someone might want to taste Swish over and over again. I feel my knees get shaky.

  “Are you ready, honey?” Colby Kingston asks me.

  “Mmm-hmm,” I say. “I mean, yes, I’m ready.”

  “So, when the director says action, you say your lines. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I say.

  “And . . . action,” I hear. Here goes nothing.

  “Swishing is my favorite part of the day,” I say into the camera in my best jingle voice.

  “It’s a little bit sweet, a little bit minty, and a whole lot of fun,” I say. I am thinking that this isn’t going to be so bad. I even like how I sound.

  “And who wouldn’t love that orange-fresh taste?” I ask the camera, picking up that tiny cup full of gross. “Have you Swished today?” I say.

  I stare at the orange liquid for what is probably a little too long, then I close my eyes, and into my mouth it goes. I swish it around just like I am supposed to, and I am okay for exactly one second, until I feel the sticky orange lump in my throat. I try everything I can to keep the swish going for just one more second. I even think of Charlotte telling me to focus, and I do — I really do.

  I puff out my cheeks, thinking maybe that will keep the orange grossness away from my taste buds. Then I think of Teddy and I realize that I don’t even mind the smell of the orange today. His spray worked. But the taste — oh! I can’t take it. I touch my earrings. If they are so magical, why do I feel like I am going to . . . to . . .

  I spit the orange stuff all over — my mouth is like a fountain. There is no throw up, but there is orange mouthwash everywhere. I feel bubbles of it on my tongue and my lips.

  Everyone is watching me. I am about to cry or run away, but then I think of Elinor. I decide to go with it. I smile, wipe off my mouth with my sleeve, and I sing.

  “That’s how you make a fizzy ice-cream cone / That’s how you do it / That’s how you do it.” I belt this out at the top of my lungs and I even get up and do a little twirl like I would do if I were in my living room. “Cha-cha-cha!” I add at the end, just for a little more pizzazz.

  The room is silent and my face gets hot. At least it is over, I think.

  But then I hear clapping. It is Colby Kingston. She comes over to me and pats my shoulder. “Wow, Jules. That was really something. You are really something.”

  “Sorry about that,” I say. “I’m not much of an orange person.”

  “Maybe not, but the camera sure loves you,” she says, bending down and putting her hands on my shoulders. My stomach flips when she says this. Good butterflies. “I’m going to call your mom in a little bit, after these last auditions. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”

  I walk out into the waiting room and find Grandma Gilda reading a magazine.

  “Hey, George,” I say. “You aren’t even pacing.”

  “Hey, Eddie,” she says. “I have other things to do besides worry about you throwing up on camera.”

  I laugh.

  “So?” she asks.

  “So,” I say, “I didn’t throw up, but I did spit the mouthwash all over the place and then I started singing my fizzy-milk jingle and I even danced and said cha-cha-cha at the end.”

  “Cha-cha-cha is always a good idea,” she says.

  “I thought so,” I say.

  crying cats and dogs,

  blackout barbec
ues,

  and secrets of the not-Swish girl

  We take the elevator down to the lobby and let the revolving door spit us back out onto the street.

  “Well, you did it!” Grandma Gilda says now, scooping me up and swinging me around in the almost-night.

  “Did what?” I say, laughing.

  “You made it through your first audition, and you didn’t give up when it didn’t go just right, either. You improvised. Wow.”

  “What’s improvise?” I ask.

  “It’s when you just go with something, even if it wasn’t what you had planned to do,” she says. I smile and think of Elinor. Thank goodness we are opposites. I never would have thought of that idea on my own.

  We take a taxi home and I let my hand hang out the window so I can feel the air. It starts to drizzle a little and I feel some tears come up through my throat and into my eyes. “Go ahead and cry, Julesie,” Grandma says. “You must be relieved.”

  I cry and cry for a couple minutes, maybe because I know I am not going to be the Swish girl and maybe because it’s all over and I don’t have to be nervous anymore. By the time we get to 91st Street, it is raining cats and dogs, but my tears are all dried up. We hustle out of the cab and hold hands as we run to the building, covering our heads.

  I stop right before we open the door to my apartment because I am going to have to tell my parents and Big Henry that I am no Swish girl.

  “Go on, Eddie,” George says. “This isn’t going to be as hard as you think.”

  I open the door and all the lights are out, and I think for a second that there is a blackout, and then I get excited and picture my whole family around a pretend campfire made out of a pile of flashlights, eating s’mores and telling ghost stories that are more funny than scary by the flashlight fire.

  But no, it is not a blackout at all.

  “Surprise!” The lights come on and I see my mom and my dad and Big Henry and Ugly Otis and Teddy and Charlotte and Elinor, and they are all wearing party hats and my dad is holding a big, beautiful cake that has a line down the middle. On one side it says Way to Go! and on the other it says Best Try Ever!