Not Starring Zadie Louise

  For Amy Poisson, who has a way of dragging me into the spotlight

  1 No Gravity

  These are the most cosmically awesome places at my mom’s theater:

  The lighting grid, where I pretend I’m an alien, studying the bizarre behavior of the earthlings below. (And I tell you what: actors might as well be a whole other species.)

  The trapdoor, but really the hidden space underneath the trapdoor, where it sounds like a rocket ship heading into orbit when a bunch of kids clomp across the stage up above.

  The stage manager’s booth, with more screens and switches than the control panel at the International Space Station, where I’ve never been but will go someday.

  * * *

  And this is the absolute-no-doubt-about-it least cosmically awesome place in the Bainbridge Youth Theater:

  The stage.

  2 No Special Considerations

  “I’m asking you to consider it, Zadie,” Mom says as she serves me way too much lasagna. I don’t know how she expects me to eat that much, and it’s not because I ate a mega pack of Chocoballs right before dinner. “If you’re not in the cast, what will you do during all that rehearsal time?”

  This will not be a problem.

  I will leap from grid to grid, high above the stage, taking extra-special care not to bump the lights. I will hide away underneath the stage, eating way more Chocoballs than Mom would allow if I were in the cast, especially since there is No Food Allowed in the Theater. I will peer down on the stage from the dark booth, pretending I’m Valentina Tereshkova in her rocket while I (don’t) move all the knobs and switches.

  “You’re so imaginative,” she says with an alarming sparkle in her eye. “I honestly think you’d make a terrific actor!”

  Sometimes my mother makes zero sense. Believing in the possibility of what else is out there beyond our own atmosphere is not at all the same as pretending to be someone else.

  Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber weaves in and out of the legs of my chair, mrowling like he agrees with me. I reach down to pick him up but stop when Mom clears her throat in a way that sounds like maybe she has some phlegm, but really, because I’m her daughter, I know means that I am not supposed to pick the cat up when we are sitting at the dinner table.

  If I’d gotten to name him, he’d be something awesome, like Yuri Gagarin, first man in space. I didn’t get to name him.

  “I’m imaginative at Science Kidz,” I point out, dropping a little chunk of meat to Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, even if he has a dumb name. “I imagine what’s out there. Whole other life forms! Solar systems!”

  “Exactly!” Mom waves the serving spoon and sends a splatter of sauce flying across the room. Papa shakes his head as he goes to retrieve his super-famous secret-formula stain remover. (Okay, it’s maybe only famous in our house, and it’s not so much a secret as I don’t know how he makes it. But he totally makes it. And it works!) “And you could use that imagination at the theater. Other kids practice their auditions for months to get cast in one of my shows. I’m offering you a guaranteed spot.”

  “It’s so unfair,” my sister, Lulu, says, clearing her plate and starting on the dishes while the rest of us are still sitting there. “You’re always telling me there’s no guarantee I’ll be cast.” Then Lulu puts on her best Mom-face and says in a perfect Mom-voice, “No special considerations.”

  It’s true. Last week Mom gave Lulu a big pep talk about how she didn’t need to start wearing vampire eye makeup and ripped jeans just because some other kids her age do. Why does Lulu get to be original, while I’m supposed to do what all the other kids are doing at Bainbridge Youth Theater?

  Mom sighs. “You’ll definitely be cast in this show. You both will.”

  “For real?” Lulu stops doing the dishes, then narrows her eyes at Mom. “Why this show?”

  Papa comes back in the room with the stain remover. By now Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber is lapping up the sauce that has dribbled down the wall. Instead of going to work on the splattered curtains, Papa sits back down at the table. “Listen, girls,” he says. “Things are going to be a little different this summer.” He and Mom exchange a glance. One of those grown-up glances where you know they’ve talked about Whatever It Is when you weren’t around, and they’ve decided Things, and now they’re about to tell you How It Is.

  “Different how?” Lulu asks, her excitement deflating as she sinks back into her chair.

  “Well…,” they say together, and then they both blurt out this fake-nervous laugh and say nothing.

  “You guys are weirding me out,” Lulu says.

  I do not like admitting this, but I agree with Lulu.

  They try again. This time Mom says, “It’s just that—” while at the same time Papa says, “The thing is—” And then they bark-laugh again.

  Lulu grabs a roll from the bread basket and shoves it at Papa. “You have the conch,” she says.

  I have no idea what that means, but Mom sits back with her lips zipped, and Papa nods. Note to self: learn the secret of the dinner roll.

  “All right, girls,” Papa says, cradling the dinner roll in both hands. “This is a matter that affects the whole family, and you know your mother and I always try to be honest with you.”

  They’re getting divorced! Grandma’s dying! An asteroid is hurtling toward the earth as we sit here communing with carbohydrates! I whip my head to look at Mom, but she’s far too calm for any of these things to be true.

  “Zadie,” Papa says. “Don’t worry. Just listen. You know that since the academy cut the arts budget, I’ve been getting by giving private music lessons.”

  How could I forget? Sometimes he travels to his students’ houses, but for piano they come here. Someone is pounding on those keys pretty much all the time, and not all of them are qualified to command the ship, if you get what I’m saying.

  “But it’s been a little tight lately. A few of my regular students have gone off to college—”

  “Aubrey Benson got into Juilliard!” I cheer.

  Papa smiles, but Mom says, “Don’t interrupt,” and points at the magical bread.

  “I’m very proud of Aubrey,” Papa says. “But we’re just finding we need a bit more income. So I’m going to start driving for Ryde.”

  “The gig economy,” Lulu mutters, shaking her head wearily. Nobody tells her not to interrupt.

  “Wait, like a taxi?”

  “Basically,” he says. “Except I can use my own car, and it’s flexible. So I can prioritize music lessons, but drive shifts when it works for my schedule.”

  “Do that many people use Ryde on the island?” Lulu asks. I wouldn’t have thought of that, but everyone I know on the island has their own car.

  “Yeah, actually, more than you’d think. Because tourists come over on the ferry for day trips and they don’t bring a car.”

  “What does that have to do with me spending the summer at Bainbridge Youth Theater?” I ask.

  “What your father’s trying to say”—for some reason Mom reaches over and takes the dinner roll from Papa—“is that because money is tight, we can’t afford all the activities you usually do in the summer. All your dance classes,” she says to Lulu, “and tae kwon do and Science Kidz,” she says to me.

  Wait, no Science Kidz? But the summer is when we take the ferry from Bainbridge into Seattle and have a sleepover in the Pacific Science Center! And I was about to test for my orange belt in tae kwon do!

  “We’re really sorry.” Papa looks as heartbroken as I feel. “It’s not just the activities. It’s that I’ll always need access to the car, for driving shifts.”

  “There’s just no way we can get you both all over the island and to our jobs,” Mom says. “But you can
do as many shows and classes at the theater as you want! Always! And because of our current situation, I guarantee you’ll be cast!”

  Lulu shrugs. “Okay.”

  Sure, it’s okay for her! She only takes dance classes to improve her chances of getting cast in musicals. All she really wants is to perform in a spotlight, just like everyone else in this house.

  Except me.

  3 No Climbing on the Lighting Grid

  I am perched on the catwalks above the stage, and my heart is pounding like Valentina Tereshkova when she realized her spacecraft was programmed to go up but not come back down. My heart’s intergalactic drumbeat isn’t because I’m hanging out a bunch of feet off the ground, even though if I fell I would splat onto the stage and break probably all of my bones. I’ve been up here lots of times. It’s actually the best place to calm me down after what I just endured.

  What I just endured was pretty much the worst thing I have ever done in my entire life. And I’ve been on the roller coaster at the Washington State Fair right after a hot dog eating contest with my best friend, Zach.

  I auditioned.

  Can you believe that? First my mother forces me to be in her dumb show, and then she makes me audition. Even though she guarantees I’ll be cast, which I don’t want to be anyways! Parents.

  “You only have to try, Zadie,” Mom said. “Get up there, get through sixteen bars of a song, and you’re done.”

  Like it’s that easy?!

  I think someone should take a clue from the fact that songs are measured in bars. Like prison bars?

  I threatened to sing the song from Les Misérables where the prisoners are complaining about how miserable their lives are, but it backfired because Mom said fine, sing that. But I don’t know the words, and I definitely wasn’t going to learn them.

  Lulu said to sing “Happy Birthday,” and I hate taking her suggestions, but I couldn’t come up with anything else. So Papa played for me while I practiced, and I made everyone else leave the room because it was bad enough with only him right there. It’s not that I cared if I was good. But I didn’t want to be awful.

  Singing “Happy Birthday” should have been easy, right? I’ve probably sung it at least nine million times. But I got up on that stage when it was my turn and I looked out into the auditorium, and Zach gave me a thumbs-up, and even Lulu gave me a big smile and made a hand motion that could have been a beautiful song coming out of her mouth—or else projectile vomit—and Miss Vanda started playing the piano. A lot faster than Papa when we were practicing, I would like to point out.

  And I stood there.

  “Zadie, hon?” Mom said from her seat halfway back in the auditorium.

  Someone in the audience snickered.

  “Let’s be respectful,” Mom said in her teacher-tone, and can we talk for a minute about how weird it is when it’s your mom or dad who’s the teacher figure? It’s weird.

  I guess that’s all I have to say about that.

  “Let’s give it another go,” Miss Vanda said. She played the intro again, a little slower this time at least, and then she softly sang the first few words to help get me going.

  But I couldn’t make a single note come out. All I could think about was how strange the theater looked from this angle. So boring, to look out and see nothing but rows and rows of seats.

  “Zadie?” Mom had come down the aisle and was leaning onto the edge of the stage. “Honey? Are you okay?”

  I finally got words out then. Here’s what I said: “I can’t!”

  Then I ran off the stage and climbed up onto the catwalk, and now I can finally breathe. No fear, no limits.

  This is the view I like, where I can see everything as part of a bigger whole. Astronauts call it the Overview Effect—seeing Earth as not just that blue-and-green marble you live on, but part of the wider universe.

  Theater’s not everything, despite what everyone else in my family thinks. It’s not that I hate the theater. I like watching it just fine. But it’s so much more interesting when I can see what’s happening onstage, but also what’s happening in the audience, and backstage, and most of all up here, where, if I use that imagination Mom’s so fond of, I can pretend I’m not in a theater at all, but I’ve broken free of Earth’s atmosphere and I’m hanging out among the stars.

  “Hello,” I hear a familiar voice proclaim. “My name is Lourdes Gonzalez”—like absolutely everyone watching doesn’t know my sister’s name and that her mother is the artistic director, but that’s Lulu for you—“and I’m going to be singing ‘Sixteen Going on Seventeen.’ ”

  Calmer now, I peer down to see my sister turn to Miss Vanda and nod triumphantly. Normally I’d roll my eyes, but right about now I have more respect for Lulu and her auditioning skills than I ever did before. Still, Lulu is twelve going on seventeen. She wants to play the villain of this show—a fairy-tale mash-up called Spinderella—which is an adult character, so she’s out to show how mature she is. I don’t know why she thinks that’s going to happen with a song that includes the words “I need someone older and wiser telling me what to do,” but nobody asked me.

  Just like nobody asked me if I wanted to spend my entire summer cooped up inside the theater.

  She’s good, even if the song’s totally ridiculous. She’s so good that I want to see not only Lulu but also the faces of the people in the audience, so I creep off the catwalk and onto the lighting grid. My mother would freak if she saw me, since the catwalk is a solid three feet wide, but the grid is, well, a grid of metal bars that the lights get fastened onto. It’s like a jungle gym, except it’s way high off the ground.

  But Mom’s not going to notice me. All eyes are on Lulu right now. I can see that from the intersection of bars where I’ve perched. She’s really, really good. Even better now that I know how terrifying auditioning is. I need to lean out an inch farther to see my mom’s face, and when I do, my hands slip a little on the bar they’re gripping.

  More than a little. Oh space junk.

  As they slip, I realize in slow motion there’s a reason Mom would freak if she saw me on the grid: as much as I’d rather be up in zero-G, gravity is very real on this here planet. I could absolutely fall splat to the stage and break all the bones in my body. That might be an effective way to avoid being cast in the show, but there are some obvious downsides.

  I lose my grip completely and scramble as I fall, my heart pounding as I try desperately to grab onto something—anything. My body is on a path toward the stage, whether I want to go there or not. (I do not.)

  One hand wraps around a nearby metal bar, and then the other hand does too, but in all the flailing, my legs have lost their perch. I madly thrash my legs in an attempt to hoist myself onto the grid, and I’ve gotten my arms over the bar and one leg hooked over another bar when I realize Lulu is no longer singing. The piano player is no longer playing. There is no sound whatsoever in the whole theater.

  Until suddenly there is an explosion of sound.

  Lulu is first. “Mom! It’s Zadie!”

  Miss Vanda leaps up and screams. Then there is the sound of every person in the theater hauling themselves out of their creaky seats and rushing into positions to see me.

  This is the next sound I hear: “Zadie Louise Gonzalez, what are you doing?!”

  And here’s what I say: “Um.”

  Then I hear a bunch of commotion on the ground. I’m not doing a lot of looking down, because (1) while I would fight anyone who said otherwise, it turns out I’m not that strong, and it’s taking everything I have to hang on, and (b) while I am not usually afraid of heights, the very real possibility of breaking probably all my bones has me keenly aware of the height at which I dangle.

  “Hang on, Zadie,” I hear Mr. Cho, the maintenance guy, say.

  Hanging on is pretty much my whole life plan right now.

  There is a lot of movement down below me, but not enough to drown out Lulu complaining that her audition was interrupted. As though I did this on purpose! r />
  “Okay, Zadie,” Mr. Cho says, and his voice is closer now. “I’m right behind you. On a ladder. I could boost you up onto the grid, or steady you down to the ladder. What’ll it be?”

  “Down! She needs to come down now!” Mom calls. “She shouldn’t have been up there in the first place!”

  Now does not seem like the time to point out that I have spent hours on the lighting grid and never fallen through before.

  “You heard your mother,” Mr. Cho says, and then I feel his hands on my waist. “The top of the ladder is a couple of inches beneath your toes. You’re going to have to trust me and let go of the grid.”

  Do I trust Mr. Cho and the rickety old ladder that’s probably been around as long as the theater building, which is an actual Bainbridge Island Historic Site, which means it’s a jillion years old? No, I do not.

  But this is what I say: “Okay, Mr. Cho.” Because sometimes you have to choose your battles.

  4 No Quitting an Audition Partway Through

  The ride from the theater to our house is less than ten minutes. Eight when Mom is really extra peeved about something, like, say, an actor who still doesn’t know their lines at dress rehearsal, or a red crayon that went through the wash cycle with the angel costumes. Or a daughter who crashed through the lighting grid mid-auditions.

  Eight minutes doesn’t seem like very much time. But you might be surprised how many things my mom can rant about in the time it takes to get from Bainbridge Youth Theater to our street.

  To be fair, she saved her ranting for the car. At the theater, she was all concerned mother and just-glad-I-was-okay and even shared some of the M&M’s from the (not) secret stash in her bag’s hidden pocket while I sat next to her for the rest of auditions.

  She only asked me once why I was up on the grid. I told her it calms me down to be up high, and I was freaking out after my failed audition. She looked like she was about to cry and didn’t say anything else.