Not Starring Zadie Louise Read online

  Little did I know she was saving it all for the car.

  I’m going to spare you some of it. You don’t need to hear about how dangerous it was and how I’m lucky I didn’t break my neck, because you’ve probably heard that speech before. I’ll also skip the part about how, as her daughter, I need to set an example, because none of that makes any logical sense. I’m not even a part of the theater!

  “You have put me in an extraordinarily difficult position, Zadie!” She was still going when we passed Frog Rock, and I figured today I probably shouldn’t stick my tongue out at the two giant boulders stacked on top of each other and painted like a frog. “You know I need you to be a part of this production. But obviously I’m not going to force you to do something that upsets you so much you go off and put yourself in terrible danger! But where does that leave me? And how was that your solution? The lighting grid? Why not the booth? That’s high up!”

  I do like the booth. But not as much as the grid. The booth feels like I’m in a rocket ship. The grid feels like I’m on a space walk.

  “I mean, Zadie Louise Gonzalez, did you really believe it was all right? Did you really think I would be okay with that? I don’t care how upset you were; you understand basic safety and right from wrong!”

  Lulu snorts. She’s just mad she never got to finish her audition.

  * * *

  I’m the first one through the door when we get home, which means I’m also the first one to be slammed with the smell of Grandma soaking fish in lye—this horrible chemical process to make lutefisk, a Scandinavian delicacy from her youth.

  She’s dancing around to the rousing sound of Papa’s piano student in the living room, like the smell isn’t burning her face off. Grandma’s making the best of the racket, probably inventing new moves for her Zumba classes, and she adds an extra shoulder shimmy when we walk in.

  “My best girls are home!”

  Lulu heads toward Grandma for a hug, but Grandma holds up her chemical-covered gloved hands. “Sorry, sugar,” she says. “I probably shouldn’t touch you just now.”

  Mom stalks through the kitchen, muttering, “Of course you’re making lutefisk today.”

  I’m the only one acting halfway normal, and I’m the one who almost died!

  By the time Papa’s student has left and we sit down to eat (and I’ve opened all the windows to air out the smell of fish and chemicals), Grandma and Papa have both heard Mom’s and Lulu’s versions of today. I haven’t bothered with my version, because frankly I’m a little annoyed no one seems at all worried about me. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have bruises under my armpits, where I was dangling over the metal bar. And also maybe a traumatic fear of heights (unless that means I can never climb up anything fun again, in which case I’ll get over it).

  “It sounds like she made a memorable entrance,” Grandma says with a twinkle in her eye.

  “During my audition! You don’t enter during someone else’s audition!”

  “All right, amor,” Papa says, reaching across Mom for the mashed potatoes, instead of asking, which is his first mistake. His second mistake is saying this: “But she got up there on the stage, at least.” He turns to me. “You tried something scary, Z. I’m proud of you.”

  “Scary?” Mom explodes. “Scary was seeing my daughter dangling from the lighting grid! Scary is even now thinking I could get a call from the board tonight, firing me for incompetence! And where would we be then? Without my paycheck? My health insurance?”

  I freeze, my spoonful of potatoes stopped halfway to my mouth by a look in my mom’s eyes I’ve never seen before.

  “Space explorers aren’t the only people who take risks, Zadie Louise. They’re not the only ones who make choices and calculations, who are responsible for other people. You’re so focused on what else is out there, but do you ever think about the people who are right here with you on this planet?”

  5 No Complaining About the Size of Your Role

  The next morning, Mom sits me down at the kitchen table, clutching a mug of coffee like it’s her last oxygen tank.

  “First of all,” she says. “I apologize for losing my temper at dinner last night. I wasn’t fair to you. I was very, very frightened when you fell yesterday, and I’m heartbroken that the idea of doing theater is so horrifying that you had to flee up there in the first place. I lost control of myself. I’m sorry.”

  I don’t want to meet her eyes, because then I’ll have to think about what she said last night. Could she really have lost her job because of me? I kind of wish I had a mug of coffee to stare into, but coffee is disgusting.

  “I’m sorry too.” Except the thing is, I’m not sure what I’m sorry for. For making my mom so upset, I guess. Because I’m not sorry I went onto the grid. I’ve been up there a million times, and this time there was a mishap, but I turned out to be fine. And I can’t be sorry I don’t want to perform, either. I mean, I wish I did. It would be so much simpler! But it’s just not me.

  “I’m not going to force you to be in the cast,” she says. “And you know how I feel about kids doing tech.”

  I do. I’ve heard Mom’s diatribe against kids doing tech infinity times. Or maybe more like four, but once was honestly enough.

  This is the short version: the technical elements of theater—costumes, sets, lights, sound, and props—are extremely essential parts of the theatrical experience and require very specific training to be done properly and in a way that will not endanger the actors on the stage, and it is far more work and effort to supervise kids doing tech than to hire the few adults who know what they’re doing.

  That maybe didn’t seem like the short version, but trust me, it was.

  “But the fact is, you have to spend the summer at the theater. That’s just our reality. We don’t have any other choices. I’m sorry.”

  I nod. As much as I hate the idea, it’s scary when parents are stressed about money, and I don’t want to make it worse than it already is. I’ll just bring books and talk to Zach on break and try to stay out of everyone’s way, I guess.

  “But I can’t just leave you unsupervised,” she says. “Especially not after the lighting grid.”

  Or maybe not.

  “So you’ll be kept busy. Not doing tech, per se. But helping around the theater with whatever needs doing. No lighting grid. No questionable choices. Nothing you haven’t been asked directly to do. Got it?”

  Because at least I don’t have to act, and because I don’t want to see Mom’s face look like it did last night ever again, I nod. “Got it.

  When Mom posts the cast list, she makes Lulu go online to find out her part like everyone else. No Special Treatment still applies to some parts of this show process, I guess. Lulu screams so loud I know she got the part she’d been practicing forever: Grizelda, Spinderella’s evil cousin. It’s a bigger, better part than Spinderella, really, considering Spinderella lies there asleep for half the play. And Lulu definitely has the evil cackle down.

  Considering the number of times she and Papa have gone through Grizelda’s big number in our tiny house, I know this all too well.

  When we get to the theater for the first rehearsal, kids are already huddled around the entrance, chattering in excited voices about who got what part. Lulu gets lots of congratulations, and some of them even mean it.

  I go to the bathroom because Mom and Lulu rushed me out the door so fast I didn’t have time before we left the house. The bathroom backstage is super dinky and kinda cruddy, but the lobby one is usually decent. Which is why I’m surprised to see a cockroach scuttling across the linoleum as I’m sitting there doing my thing.

  I don’t scream like Lulu would, though. Not because she’s some kind of wimp, but because she has a thing about bugs so serious that she refused to even audition when BYT did James and the Giant Peach. My mom would probably stomp on it. But I watch him go. Cockroaches are survivors. They can survive, like, outer space. (There actually was a cockroach named Nadezhda who went into outer space in 2007 and laid eggs, which hatched thirty-three baby cockroaches back on Earth. Which must have been a big bummer for them, to start out all weightless and then get born on this planet where gravity holds you down no matter how much you want to float.)

  But there’s only one cockroach in the bathroom, not thirty-three, and if it can survive where there’s no food or sunshine or entertainment, I guess I can survive one summer without my favorite activities. It’s not like I have a choice.

  When I head back out to the theater, I look for Zach to congratulate him on getting cast as King Horace. But he’s always late to everything, and today isn’t any different. So I pick a spot in the back of the theater and slump into a seat, looking longingly up at the lighting grid. Even after I almost broke all my bones, I’d rather be up there than down here.

  Maddie and Blair are sitting across the aisle from me. They’re summer squatters—living in Seattle during the school year but spending the summer on Bainbridge at their island homes.

  Blair’s sniffling, and Maddie’s got an arm around her. “You are so much better than Lulu,” Maddie says. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It’s not fair!” Blair says, and then shoots daggers at me when she catches me looking, like I had anything to do with anything.

  “It’s only because her mom’s the director,” Maddie says, her volume knob swiveling up because she totally knows I can hear her.

  I’m not saying anything, because actor drama has nothing to do with me, even if I’m starting to get a prickly feeling in my stomach. But then Lulu walks up to them and says, “Congratulations, you guys! The two queens are really fun parts!”

  Blair sneers at her. “Easy for you to say.”

  Lulu steps back, like Blair’s words actually shoved her a little. My sister has spent years getting smaller parts than she deserved, and she’s probably trying to be nice because she knows how they feel.

  “I’m sorry,” Lulu says. “Did I do something to upset you guys?”

  Blair starts full-on crying then and runs off toward the bathroom. I hope the cockroach eats her.

  “Oh, nothing much.” Maddie stands to face Lulu in the aisle. “Only convinced your mom to give you Blair’s part.”

  Maddie turns to go and Lulu’s blinking back her own tears and I can’t help myself, I really can’t.

  “She didn’t,” I call out. “The thing is, our mom likes to give people challenges, and playing an evil witch would come too easily to you two.”

  I’m not sure who’s more shocked—Maddie or Lulu—but right then Mom calls everyone to the stage.

  Maddie glares at me. “Talk about not belonging here,” she mutters as she stalks away.

  Lulu’s eyes are still bugged out, looking at me like she’s seeing her first extraterrestrial.

  “Go on,” I say. “Aren’t you supposed to go up there?”

  It’s starting to get weird that Zach’s not here by now. I head down the aisle to grab Mom’s phone and text him. Which was a mistake, because Mom notices me and beckons me onto the stage.

  “You too, Zadie,” she says. “All-company meeting!”

  Oh space junk.

  But it’s not really. If it were an all-company meeting, Mrs. Freymiller, the costume designer, would be here. And Fiona, who does sets and props. But not our long-time lighting designer, Grandpa Bob, who’s not my grandpa, or anyone else’s that I know of, but who everyone’s called Grandpa Bob forever. He retired to Arizona after the last show, and I don’t know who’s designing lights this time.

  I trudge up the stairs on the side of the stage. I’ve been to lots of first rehearsals, but I’ve always been looking down from the grid, or listening from underneath the trapdoor, or watching from behind the dark glass of the booth. I’ve never been on the stage with all these kids who actually want to be up here, and who look at my mom like she’s some kind of superhero.

  (She is not.)

  Since Zach isn’t here, I sit in between a new boy with spiky green hair and Olivia, an islander who always plays small parts but is never rude about it.

  “Marinee, Blair’s in the bathroom,” Maddie calls out as Mom motions for everyone to sit down.

  “That’s all right. Blair’s heard this opening speech a few times,” Mom says. “For those of you who are new, though, always let me or the stage manager know if you’re running to the bathroom during rehearsal. There’s one in the lobby, and one backstage.

  “Speaking of the stage manager, we’ve got someone new who I’m very excited about. I think you’re all going to really like her. She missed her ferry, but she’ll be here soon, and I know you’ll give her the same respect you give me.”

  Maddie raises her hand but calls out again without waiting to be recognized. “What’s Zadie doing here? She wasn’t on the cast list.”

  Mom takes a breath. “Zadie is… helping out.”

  “Doing tech? I thought kids didn’t do tech at BYT.”

  “Thank you, Maddie. She’s not doing tech. Let’s call her… an assistant producer.”

  Assistant producer? I actually kind of like the sound of that.

  Mom gets back to her opening speech—all the boring rule stuff. For something supposedly so fun, there are an awful lot of rules. Don’t be late. Don’t tell other actors what to do. Don’t move someone else’s prop. No electronics in the theater. No jumping off the apron.

  “What’s the apron?” asks a tiny kid with a shocking amount of freckles.

  “Good question,” Mom says. “The apron is this front part of the stage. It’s close enough to the ground to be tempting, but it’s far enough for twisted ankles, or worse. The stairs on either side of the stage are there for a reason.”

  “Can we jump off the apron in an emergency? Like if there’s a fire or an earthquake or a tsunami?”

  Mom blinks at this kid for a second. Then she says, “An emergency is all the more reason to follow rules. Mostly, I want you to use good judgment. Sometimes things go wrong or mistakes get made. We can talk about those! But there’s no wiggle room on the safety issues. Absolutely no jumping off the apron.”

  She starts to talk about how there are no small parts, only small actors, and I know that small actor with the freckles really wants to ask a question about that, too. I don’t blame him. I’ve heard her say it infinity times, but I still think it’s totally dumb. There are absolutely, no-doubt-about-it small parts.

  There’s a reason Blair and Maddie are so prickly.

  My mind is kind of wandering, and also my eyes, which is why I notice Blair coming back from the bathroom, slipping into the auditorium from the lobby. She’s carrying a clear water bottle out in front of her like it contains toxic gases. I focus my laser eyes on the bottle.

  Oh my shooting stars, it does have something toxic inside.

  Not toxic, I guess, but terrifying to a lot of people. There’s no mistaking the black thing scuttling around inside the bottle. Instead of heading straight down the aisle toward the stage, Blair darts over to a seat with a purple magic sequin backpack on it. Lulu’s backpack. Blair unscrews the lid from the bottle.

  I see it happening in slow motion, but what my mom sees is me shouting, “Oh no you don’t!” while I leap off the edge of the apron.

  6 No Kids Allowed in the Booth

  Nobody believes me, but Blair was about to drop a cockroach in Lulu’s backpack. Blair, who knows exactly how my sister feels about bugs because she got mad when Lulu wouldn’t go see her play the Centipede in James and the Giant Peach. But then in all the commotion of me jumping off the apron, and Mom yelling, and everyone yelling, Blair dumped the poor cockroach out and held up an empty bottle and swore I was making it all up.

  But I’m a terrible actor! And she’s supposedly such a good one. Doesn’t logic say she’s the one lying?

  I think Lulu might have believed me. But that didn’t mean she stood up for me when Mom said, in front of everyone, that it was inexcusable to jump off the apron immediately after her safety lecture, and there would be serious consequences.

  Like what? Banning me from the theater? I wish!

  So now I’m waiting out rehearsal in the booth, where the stage manager sits during shows and controls all the tech. It’s dark and cozy and no one comes up here until the week before a show opens, so it’s perfect for hiding out and awaiting my doom. There is one corner where the roof leaks when it rains, which is a lot around here, but not so much in summer. And anyway, astronauts have to put up with much more challenging environmental considerations when they’re rocketing through space.

  I run my hands over the levers that control the lights. It’s not as life-and-death as flying a spacecraft, but it might be as intricate. I’ve sat here, watching stage managers run shows. They have everything at their fingertips, and it’s all so logical. You push a lever up, and the lights go on. Press a key on the computer, and the sound goes off. It makes so much more sense than everyone down there, all pretending to be someone they’re not.

  It makes so much more sense than every member of my family who’d rather be down there on the stage.

  “Um, no kids allowed in the booth.”

  I tell you what: I am not in the mood for someone I’ve never even seen before telling me I’m not allowed in the booth where I took my first steps. (That might be what my parents call a fabrication, but if I didn’t take my first steps in here, I at least had my diaper changed in here.) But one glance at her all-black clothes, no-nonsense ponytail stuck through with pencils, and incredible utility belt, and I know she’s the new stage manager.

  And she’s awesome.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m Marinee’s kid.”

  “I’m Ana María. And there are no kids in my booth.”

  I get up, and she immediately sets down her Oregon Shakespeare Festival tote on the chair.

  “You’ve been to Ashland?”

  Lulu’s been begging Mom to take her to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival since she could recite her first lines from the Bard. (You’d think they might have been something easy, like “To be or not to be.” But because Lulu is Lulu, she memorized some complicated thing with a bunch of rhyming.)