Leading Ladies #2 (5 page)

“I totally messed up. Can I start again?”

Messing up was putting it lightly. Audriana had started the song okay, but just a few lines in, her voice broke in a disastrous squawk. It sounded like the cry of a goose that had just seen a flash of the butcher's knife.

Mr. Barrymore walked to the front of the auditorium and stared up at Audriana like she was a statue with an extra arm or two feet facing backward.

“We
never
break during an audition,” he said. “And we never apologize or make excuses. I need you to get this because we only have today and tomorrow to rehearse before Friday's auditions.”

I watched curiously, scribbling a few notes and feeling thankful I did not have to get up on that stage.

“But then what do I do if I mess up?” Audriana asked him.

She stood clutching her sheet music, running one hand through her already neatly combed hair. Today she was dressed head to toe in black—she looked like a ninja, but a safe and perhaps teensy bit ordinary one.

“You continue your audition as if you did nothing wrong,” Mr. Barrymore said. “
You
know that you made a mistake. The
director
knows that you made a mistake. But it doesn't help to make a face and apologize. Asking to start over again just calls attention to the fact that something went wrong. Project the energy of confidence. Mistakes happen all the time in the theater. You are a professional. You are flexible. You can recover.”

Audriana took a deep breath and held up her sheet music. The accompanist, who was also the assistant librarian, played a few opening chords on the piano.

“
The sun'll come out . . . tomorrow . . .
,” Audriana sang.

She made no mistakes this time. Her voice was clear and very pretty.

How do people do that?
I wondered.

Singing in front of people just seemed so . . . brutal. It was like letting people peek into a part of you that might not be so flattering. Like, how your hair looked in the morning when you first crawled out of bed.

“She's doing great, don't you think?” I whispered to Tally, who was sitting in front of me.

“She'll do better with a Miss Hannigan song. It's not so much about technique,” Tally whispered back.

Huh.

Audriana's
technique
sounded pretty good to me. But I guess I had no basis for judging. You would never see me onstage, let alone singing in front of a crowded auditorium.

Tally half turned in her seat to look at me. “Hey, you're still coming over tonight, right?”

I nodded. There wasn't a known force in the universe that could keep me from watching
Nebula Wars
tonight—and being at Tally's house to do so would just be the icing on the cake. Drama Galore. The kind that had nothing to do with me. My favorite.

“All right,” Mr. Barrymore said to Audriana. “You've worked on the singing. But where's the story?”

Audriana looked behind her, like The Story might be lurking there, making rabbit ears behind her head and sticking its tongue out.

Mr. Barrymore continued. “
Why
will the sun come out tomorrow? What's going to happen then? How long has it been since Annie has seen the sun? This is an opening into a character's soul, not a weather report. What was Annie's day like yesterday? Does she say that ‘the sun will come out tomorrow' every day of her life, or did something happen to make this day different?”

Audriana seemed riveted by Mr. Barrymore's barrage of questions. Several of the students sitting and watching began leafing noisily through their scripts.

“Don't look for answers in the text,” Mr. Barrymore commanded.

The sound of rustling pages stopped abruptly.

Mr. Barrymore climbed the steps up to the stage and stood next to Audriana. He tapped himself on the chest.

“In here. That's where you'll find your answers,” he said. “These are the kinds of questions you need to ask yourself about a character
before
you audition. What did Annie have for breakfast? What did she do last night? What's the last thing that made her laugh? How long has she been wearing the same pair of shoes? Each of you will come up with a different set of answers. It doesn't matter what they are. The only things that matter are that you know what
you
think Annie had for breakfast, and that every line you deliver supports the idea of what she had for breakfast.”

Audriana looked off into the distance, her eyes narrowed in concentration. She made a C shape with her hand and half lifted it to her mouth.

Egg McMuffin
, I thought.

“He's right,” I whispered to Tally. “I know what Audriana's thinking!” But Tally didn't respond. Her eyes were closed tight in concentration.

“Moving on,” Mr. Barrymore said, consulting the clipboard he held in one hand. “Next up we have a Valerie Teale.”

Tally went very still and pretended to be leafing through her pages. But I knew she was intensely focused on Valerie.

Here we go
, I thought as Valerie stood up and walked to the stage. She was wearing a variation of Monday's outfit—a lemon-striped scarf was wrapped around her neck over a blue T-shirt. She wore faded jeans layered with bright-yellow leg warmers. She looked like she had a little SpongeBob SquarePants wrapped around each of her calves.

Valerie hit center stage with confidence, turned to face the audience, then gave the accompanist a polite nod. Mr. Barrymore sat in the front row, one hand under his chin, watching Valerie so intently it was like he was trying to make her levitate. She didn't seem thrown by it.

Boy
, I thought.
That girl has got confidence.

The accompanist played a few bars of what even I—the only Non-Theater Person—recognized as the opening notes of Annie's biggest number “Maybe.”

Valerie took an enormous breath and opened her mouth to deliver the first note.

“Mayb—”

“Stop!” Mr. Barrymore barked.

Valerie stopped, a look of fear flashing across her face before she regained her calm, poised demeanor.

I looked at Tally. She seemed about ready to jump out of her chair in celebration. Her eyes gleamed and a smile tugged at the corners of her lips. Everyone was on the edge of their seats, waiting to hear what Gideon Barrymore would say to Valerie Teale.

“Why have you picked this moment to sing?” Mr. Barrymore said. “Why do you choose the word
maybe
? Why not
definitely
? What are you unsure of? What did you just see that sparked these memories?”

“A scrap of paper on the floor,” Valerie said, squaring her shoulders and looking Mr. Barrymore directly in the eye.

Ah. Confidence.
Someday
, I told myself,
I will have a little of that, too
.

Mr. Barrymore snapped his fingers and pointed at Valerie. “Okay. What's on the paper?”

“Part of an address. And a postage stamp,” Valerie replied, without missing a beat.

“Yes, all right. And?”

“And the address is crossed out. It says ‘Return to Sender.'”

“This is clear! This is good!” Mr. Barrymore exclaimed. “Take it another step.”

“Annie wants to be that envelope,” Valerie said. “She's ended up nowhere, and she knows it must all be a mistake. She wants to be returned to her parents. Annie wants to go home.”

Valerie and Mr. Barrymore were nodding knowingly at each other like a couple of scientists standing over a groundbreaking discovery. I looked at Tally. Her mouth dropped open in shock. Her eyes filled with dread.

“Okay,” Mr. Barrymore continued. “Now don't tell me. Show me. Not when you start singing. I want to see everything you just told me in the moments before you start singing.”

I was pretty interested to see how Valerie was going to show Mr. Barrymore that she was half of an envelope with a stamp on it. This was fascinating. I made a note to ask Tally more about an actor's process that night. Maybe we could run a tips column next to my article on
Annie
and Tally's first-person perspective in the magazine.

The end-of-after-school-activities bell rang before Valerie could start singing again. She looked bummed that she couldn't show off a little more.

“All right then, actors. To be continued tomorrow. Nice work today,” Mr. Barrymore said.

Tally shot to her feet and leaned down toward the row of seats in front of hers where Audriana and Buster were sitting together. They turned around to look up at her at precisely the same moment.

“Yes!” Buster said.

“No,” Audriana countered firmly.

“Okay, y'all, but just listen for a second,” Tally implored. “Seriously—I've got a plan!”

Tally often had a plan. They tended to be very wordy and difficult to convey.

“Tal, I'll see you at seven thirty, okay?” I said, giving the back of her denim jacket a little tug.

She gave me a peculiar look. “In the morning?” she asked.

“Tonight,” I said, laughing. “
Nebula Wars
?”

Tally clapped her hands together and started to say something. But Buster shushed her and pointed. Mr. Barrymore was standing within earshot.

“Seven thirty,” Tally mouthed. “See you then.”

• • • • • • •

While the whites were chugging around for their final minute in the dryer, I curled up in an old beanbag chair with my laptop. I typed in the address of the
4 Girls
blog.

There was no real reason for me to sit in our laundry room other than the fact that I loved the smell of fabric softener and the gentle hum of the dryer helped me relax. Plus, Kevin never came down here because he was convinced the room was haunted, which guaranteed me a little peace and quiet.

The screen read:
YOU HAVE NINETEEN (19) NEW POSTS.

Wow.

I pulled out half a Twizzler I'd been saving and gnawed on it thoughtfully as I began to read. The first nine posts were a continuation of the back and forth argument going on about what qualified as an actual vampire movie. A random Harry Potter fan had jumped in. I sighed, only half reading them. It was more of the usual: This is best ever/worst ever. I adore/detest this character. The movie is never as good/always better. Someone always started harping on
Twilight
again. The same people saying the same things. What did any of this have to do with
4 Girls
?

But there were a few new posts. I opened one.

Oh, great idea
, I thought. I typed a quick response.

The subject of photos reminded me of Ivy's shots for the cover. I fired off a quick text reminding her to bring her camera tomorrow and telling her I was going to Tally's to do some research on Gideon Barrymore.

“Paulie? Paulina? Are you down there?
Paullllliieeee?
”

I sighed and walked to the foot of the basement steps.

“Yes, I'm here, Kevin,” I called. “Come on down.”

“No way! I'll get possessed and be levitated to another planet. I can't find my green marker. Can you come help me look?”

If I said no or asked him to hang on a few minutes, he'd just stand at the top of the stairs calling my name. I sighed.

“Okay,” I called.

“Make sure there's nothing attached to you,” Kevin added anxiously. “You might accidentally bring a demon up here.”

“Okay,” I called again. It was easier just to humor him.

And just to be safe, I gave my jeans a quick check. If I had any demons stuck to me, I couldn't see them.

Tally lived way out on the edge of town. Like Tally herself, the house was adorable on its own but was given a unique look by the bits of extra splash on the outside. The shrubs by the driveway were draped with little orange lights in the shape of chili peppers. A green-and-white flag with a red dragon in the center fluttered above the front door. A roomy-looking tree house was wedged precariously in the
V
of a huge, old tree in the front yard.

Wow
, I thought.
It must have been so cool to grow up here
.

I rang the doorbell while my mother waited in her car to make sure that I got in okay. The door opened, and I took a second to register Tally's outfit—a stiff-looking red dress that looked about two sizes too small, white kneesocks, and a pair of scuffed patent leather shoes.

“I think it's just
stupendous
the way you're always on time for everything,” Tally said.

I waved to my mother and followed Tally into the house.

“What can I say—I am known throughout the world for my punctuality,” I said.

Tally led me into a small, cluttered living room. It was a room that seemed designed for comfort—huge, mismatched armchairs flanked an overstuffed sofa piled with pillows. Tally flung herself into one of the chairs with a sigh. I noticed she was holding a bedraggled-looking teddy bear, which she clutched to her chest.

“Are you okay?” I asked, taking a seat on the couch. Tally seemed a little out of sorts . . . even for her.

“I am so hungry I could faint dead away,” she replied.

“Haven't you eaten?” I asked. “I already had dinner.”

“If you can call one tiny bowl of watered-down gruel and a rind of cheese dinner, then I guess I have,” Tally responded. “That's all she would give me, and I was lucky to get that much. How I loathe her.”

Whoa.
What had I walked into? I knew of girls who had terrible relationships with their mothers and lived in a constant state of warfare at home—I just never figured Tally for one of them. But really, I didn't know much at all about Tally other than what I saw at school. I started to feel uncomfortable. Was her mom really that awful? I didn't want to pry . . . but Tally's exhausted tone kind of concerned me.

“Does she know you're still hungry?” I asked quietly. For all I knew, the woman was lurking in the hallway, waiting to pounce.

“Of course she knows,” Tally answered. “It's one of the ways she controls me. She is pure evil! I was up before dawn this morning scrubbing out the toilets, and when I was done she called me a lazy, monstrous little creature and told me to scrub them all out again. With bleach! My hands are practically bleeding!”

Now I was really worried.

“This is . . . maybe we could ask my mother how to . . . I mean, can't you explain that the bleach hurt your hands?”

Tally's lower lip quivered, and she stared at me with her huge, blue eyes.

“If I complain . . . ,” she began, dropping her voice to a whisper, “I'll be
beaten
.”

My mouth dropped. “Your mother . . . beats you?” I whispered.

Tally looked in the direction of the doorway to make sure no one was standing there. Then she leaned in toward me. “Not my mother,” she whispered. “Miss Hannigan.”

Wait a minute.

Miss Hannigan? Wasn't that the woman in
Annie
who ran the orphanage?

“Um, Tally, are you practicing for auditions right now?”

Tally flopped back in the chair, tucking her feet up under her.

“Not practicing,” she said in her normal voice. “
Rehearsing
. It's called method acting. I'm going to completely immerse myself in the character of Annie until auditions on Monday. Every chance I get I'm going to be Annie. Her thoughts are mine. Her
life
is mine. And right now, my frail and bony little body is dangerously close to giving out from sheer exhaustion and starvation!”

Well,
THAT
was a relief. Not the starvation part. The acting part.

“I haven't had a proper meal in months,” Tally told me. “I dream about—”

“Darlin', here are your Twinkies,” I heard as a box came sailing through the air. Tally leaped out of her chair and caught it.

“Oh yummy. Thanks, Mom.”

I turned and saw Tally's mother in the doorway. She looked a lot like Tally, with the same open face and expressive eyes. Her hair was curly, too, but the blond was mixed with gray, and it was cut much shorter. She wore black sweatpants and a striped sweater.

“And you must be the famous Paulina M. Barbosa,” Tally's mother said. “Welcome to our crazy house.”

“Thanks,” I said with a smile. Inside, I was laughing at the idea that mere minutes ago, I believed this woman forced Tally out of bed before sunrise to clean bathrooms on an empty stomach.

A second person appeared in the doorway, an older girl with thick-rimmed glasses and her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail.

“Tallulah, this book is my property, and you cannot violate me by removing it from my desk without my knowledge and treating it with disrespect.”

Who is Tallulah?
I wondered.

“Paulina, this is Tally's big sister, Marlene,” Mrs. Janeway said. Neither of her daughters appeared to hear her.

“I was using it for research,” Tally said. “You should be flattered anyone wanted to borrow that boring, old thing.”

I could see the title of the book in question:
German Philosophers on the Sisyphean Conundrum of the Poverty Cycle
.

“I am
not
flattered. And you left Cheez-It crumbs in the spine!”

Before Tally could respond, her sister turned and abruptly marched off, taking the book with her. Tally flopped back in her chair and sighed like the weight of the whole world had just lifted off her shoulders.

Mrs. Janeway smiled at me. “You girls enjoy your show and give a shout if you need anything,” she said. Then she turned and followed her outraged older daughter down the hall.

“Tallulah and Marlene?” I asked Tally with a grin.

“After Tallulah Bankhead and Marlene Dietrich,” Tally said, beaming. “My Dad's a
huge
old movie buff. My sister was plain old Molly until she got to college, but now that she's a philosophy major we all have to call her Marlene.”

“I didn't even know you had a sister,” I said. “Is she on a break from college?”

Tally shook her head, ripping open the box of Twinkies with enthusiasm.

“Nope, she goes to Hillston U. You know, over in Stipville. She lives here instead of in the dorms. It saves a pile of money.”

“That's great,” I said.

“No, it isn't,” she said. “Oh, four minutes to go!”

Tally dug around the seat cushion frantically, then pulled out a remote and pointed it at the television. As I shifted on the couch to get more comfortable, Tally switched the TV on with one hand while tossing me a Twinkie with the other. The timing was sort of off, and I ended up partially sitting on the little cake and squashing it.

After an embarrassing ad for a shampoo for guys with no hair (Scalp Suds!) and a brief October Chill update from the FlashFive News Team weather specialist, it was time for the main attraction. Tally bounced up and down in her chair and sang along with the theme music.

“Nebula Wars, we will fiiiight . . . on planets of yonder, through black holes of niiiiiiight . . . our Techutron foe and their nanoprobe bliiight . . . shall bow to the force of our Rebel-bred miiiiiight . . .”

Tally really had a great voice, though she couldn't sound less like little orphan Annie at the moment. I settled in to watch the show, unwrapping my flattened Twinkie and taking a bite. I had never seen
Nebula Wars
before, so I was sort of lost plot-wise. But I liked the main guy, Commander Saunders, and it was fun that every time a new scene started we looked for Gideon Barrymore. The show was more than half over when Tally shot up out of her seat.

“There he is!” she squealed, pointing at the screen.

All I saw was a quick shot of three men in lab coats. The camera was focused on Commander Saunders and a short, yellow-haired man standing next to him.

“Explain,” barked Commander Saunders.

The camera panned back to one of the scientists.

“Thuh Gidih Bah!” Tally attempted to exclaim, stumbling over her own words and a mouthful of Twinkie. But she was right. It was him, right there on the screen. He was playing an actual Science Guy in outer space. It is the weirdest feeling ever to see someone you know on TV—it had never happened to me before.

“My sensor readings indicate the presence of nano-tech radiation emissions,” Science Guy said.

“In plain English,” barked Commander Saunders. Science Guy blinked once before pointing at the short dude.

“Commander, this man is a Techutron!”

The camera zoomed in on Commander Saunders's grim face as the music blared in a Major Plot Twist crescendo. Then the screen went black, and the commercial for the bald-guy shampoo came on again.

“Can you believe it?” Tally shrieked.

“I can't!” I cried. “That was him. Your director! He was really on the show!”

“Did you see the way he blinked?” Tally asked. “Right before he pointed? Isn't he absolutely
amazing
?”

“Commander, this man is a Techutron!” we shouted at the same time.

Tally's glee was contagious, and it felt good to laugh until my sides ached.

Science Guy did not make another appearance during the final ten minutes of the show. But Tally and I were still giggling over Mr. Barrymore's performance as the credits rolled.

“Do you think they let him keep the lab coat?” Tally asked.

“Maybe he'll wear it to the workshop tomorrow!” I suggested.

We were still giddy over the show when my mother, even more famous than me for punctuality, arrived at nine on the dot. I saw her headlights turning into Tally's driveway, and felt . . . disappointed. This had been a lot of fun.

“Oh, I've got to go,” I said, genuinely wishing I didn't have to. “Can you thank your mom for me?”

“Definitely,” Tally said with a grin. “And, Commander . . .”

“This man is a Techutron!” I finished.

I cheerfully endured the usual Mom questions on the short drive back to our house. Did you have a good time? Does Tally have any brothers or sisters? What do her parents do? And the one she always casually sneaks in at the end—how's their house?—which is Mom's way of asking if they are neat or messy.

“I'm glad you had a good time, honey,” my mother said, smoothing my dark curls away from my forehead. “It's always nice to make new friends. Oh, that reminds me—Ivy called while you were out.”

“She did?” I asked.

“Yeah. She just wanted to let you know she is having trouble finding her camera and the pictures might have to wait another day. And that she'd see you tomorrow.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay then.”

That's strange
, I thought as I went upstairs to change into my pajamas.

I had texted Ivy telling her I was going to Tally's. So why would she call my house if she knew I wasn't going to be home? We usually texted and e-mailed each other constantly, but that had slowed down lately, too. It didn't make much sense. Could I have done something to upset her? Was she mad at me?

Everything had been going so well.

I was suddenly afraid it was all about to change.