Gertie's Leap to Greatness (13 page)

June dropped to her heels. “Yeah. I guess she'll get it.”

Gertie looked at the dingy toes of her tennis shoes.

“She's practically an actress already,” said Ella, nodding. “I mean, her father's a director and she grew up with
Jessica Walsh
.”

“Yeah.” June's shoulders slumped, but then she smiled. “Hey! It'd be neat if she could get Jessica Walsh to be in our play.”

“What?” said Mary Sue, and suddenly she was between June and Ella. “I can play Evangelina as well as she could.”

June took a step back from Mary Sue and stomped on Gertie's foot. “I think it'd be neat if we had a famous person in our play,” June said. “That's all.”

Mary Sue rolled her eyes. “Being famous doesn't have anything to do with
real
talent.” She turned her back to June.

Ella and June raised their eyebrows at each other behind Mary Sue's back.

“I'm going to try out for the Cucumber,” Ella said at last, “because cucumbers are nice and slender.”

“What does that leave for me?” June asked.

“The Squash?” Ella said.

Junior was standing at the supply closet door now, with everyone urging him to hurry up. He closed his eyes and jabbed his pencil at the sign-up sheet. It landed on the Potato, and he wrote his name in the space.

Roy was standing right behind him. He leaned forward so that his face was right beside Junior's ear.
“Meow.”

Junior jumped, his arms flailing, and his elbow slammed into Roy's nose.

Roy clapped his hands to his face. “Ahhh!”

The class pushed away from Roy and Junior.

“Wham!” yelled Leo. “Direct hit!”

Junior stumbled away as Roy yelled and held his nose. Stebbins appeared by Roy's side, and everyone fell silent.

She squinted at him. “It's not that bad.”

Roy's eyes watered. “But—”

She rested her hand on the doorknob of the supply closet. The class shuffled back even further. “I've seen worse,” Stebbins said.

“You're right. It's not that bad,” Roy mumbled, obviously thinking about the poor kids who were probably still trapped in there with old paint and construction paper.

Gertie was the last one to sign up. She looked at the sheet and at her classmates' untidy handwriting in different shades of ink or pencil beside roles like the Orange, the Banana, the Cucumber, Candy, Cola, Chips.

Only one person had signed up for Evangelina. Mary Sue had written her name in such enormous letters that the only space left in the column for Evangelina was no bigger than a pinkie nail.

Gertie twisted her pencil in her hands. She didn't want to be the Banana. She didn't want to be Cola either. But it
would
be embarrassing if she auditioned and didn't get a part. Then everyone would be awful to her about
that
. The audition sheet swam in front of her eyes.

“Of course,
Gertie
's going to try out for the leading role.” Mary Sue raised her voice so that everyone turned toward her. “After all,” she said, laughing, “she's on a
mission
to be the best.”

Leo snorted a laugh.

Gertie bit her bottom lip between her teeth, put her face an inch from the sign-up sheet, and squeezed her name into the teeny-tiny space beside Evangelina Who Would Not Eat Her Vegetables.

“You're going to look ridiculous,” said Mary Sue. “Like usual.”

*   *   *

Gertie was
not
going to look ridiculous, because she was going to practice being Evangelina every waking minute. She knew that to get the part, she would have to work harder than she'd ever worked before.

“I
love
Twinkies,” she said to Junior on the bus the next morning. She shoved a whole Twinkie into her mouth. She tried to say,
I love sweets—I'm only ever going to eat sweets,
but her mouth was so full it came out, “Mwwah lug swees. Mwwah onee er go ee swees.”

“Good,” he said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Because I'm going to try out for the Potato, and I don't want to be eaten.”

Whenever Gertie fell or stumped her toe or got a twinge, she clutched at her stomach and said, “Oh, Mother, I feel terrible!” which was what Evangelina said when she got sick during the play's grimmest part. And she practiced swooning and collapsing onto a stack of sofa cushions until she got so good at fake swooning that she didn't even need the cushions. She could fall right on the floor without hurting herself.

Phase Number Whateverwhatsit: Become an acting
sensation
.

*   *   *

After practicing all afternoon in the front yard, she swept into the house, threw her coat off, and plopped into a chair just in time for supper. Aunt Rae spooned a heap of peas onto Audrey's plate and then took the pot over to Gertie's side of the table. Gertie tensed.

Aunt Rae dipped the serving spoon and then tipped it so that the juice strained off and started to move toward Gertie's plate. “Here we go—”

“No,” said Gertie-Evangelina, throwing her hands up as if she were warding off something so disgusting she would be blinded by the sight of that much awful. “I don't like peas.”

That didn't sound right. It wasn't Evangelina enough. She tried again.

“I can't stand peas. I loathe peas.
Peeeeas
—
ahhhh!
” she yelled in horror, and pretended to be strangling.

After her choking and gagging had petered out, she lay with her cheek pressed against the table, tongue lolling, for five seconds. Then she sat up and pushed her hair out of her face.

Aunt Rae and Audrey stared.

“What in the Sam Hill are you doing?” Aunt Rae asked.

Audrey picked a pea off her plate and frowned at it like she was deciding whether or not she should bite it.

“I'm being Evangelina,” Gertie explained. “She's the main character of the play. Everyone loves her. She doesn't eat peas or any other vegetables.”

Aunt Rae dumped another spoonful of peas onto Gertie's plate so violently that pea juice splashed Gertie's face. “
I
don't like her very much.” She beat the spoon clean against the edge of the pot.

Gertie wiped her face and sighed. “Aunt Rae,
everyone
loves Evangelina,” she explained. “She's beautiful and interesting and she gets sick. But it's okay because in the end her mother feeds her all these vegetables.”

“Humph.” Aunt Rae wasn't happy. “What will your
father
say when I tell him you're refusing to eat your supper?”

Gertie pushed her peas around her plate. “Evangelina doesn't have a father,” she said. At least Gertie didn't think she did. Stebbins hadn't said.

The pea pot slammed against the table. “
You
have a father, and he's working right now on an oil rig.”

Gertie smooshed her peas with the back of her spoon.

“You look at me.”

Gertie dragged her eyes up.

“You're so busy wanting what you haven't got,” said Aunt Rae, “that you don't properly appreciate what you do got.” She shook her head. “I know you have more ideas than all the rest of us put together, but they aren't all good ideas, Gertie.” She stormed out of the kitchen.

Audrey leaned forward and whispered, “You don't want a daddy anymore?” It was the first time Audrey had spoken to her since Gertie had said the horrible thing.

“Of course I do,” said Gertie. She wanted a father. It was just that she wanted a lot of other things, too.

She ate a bite of her pea mush. Maybe if she ate her peas, just this once, it would be like making it up to Aunt Rae.

“My mommy and daddy love me,” said Audrey. She sounded like she was reciting a threadbare line from her favorite book. “And they want to be with me all the time, but they have to work sometimes.” Audrey sat on her hands.

Gertie squished her peas against the roof of her mouth.
No wonder your parents never want you around
rang accusingly in her ears. She swallowed.

*   *   *

Aunt Rae didn't eat a bite of her dinner. She did laundry instead. Gertie didn't know how Aunt Rae had found so many dirty clothes. She wondered if her aunt kept an emergency stash of dirties for when she needed some laundry to slam in the washer.

When the Williamses came to pick up Audrey, Gertie watched as Mrs. Williams strapped Audrey in her car seat and Aunt Rae waved to them from the porch.

 

19

A Potato
Never
Quivers

Gertie and her classmates were gathered in the auditorium, trying not to fidget.

“Roy Caldwell will be the Ham,” Stebbins announced.

“What about the audition?” Roy asked.

Stebbins looked over the top of her clipboard. “No one else wanted to be the Ham.”

“Of course they didn't want to be the Ham!” Roy jumped to his feet and headed for the door, waving his arms. “It's a stupid part. It's not like the Ham gets to destroy zombies or save the city from demon fire. Know what the Ham does? Gets eaten!”

“Where do you think you're going, Mr. Caldwell?”

Roy answered over his shoulder. “This isn't a real audition! I'm not missing recess for this!”

“Sit,” said Stebbins, and her voice was soft as a lock turning over in a closet door.

Roy stopped. He shoved his hands in his pockets and glared at the floor as he walked back. He sat.

“Jean Zeller, you will be Cola.” Stebbins continued down the clipboard, reading off the different parts and who would play them.

“That leaves,” said Stebbins, “Junior and Leo, who will have to audition for the part of the Potato. And Mary Sue and Gertie will audition to determine who will be Evangelina.”

Gertie watched Junior walk across the stage like a sailor walking the plank. He got to the middle of the stage and trembled.

Leo cracked his knuckles.

“Hold still,” said Stebbins. She came down off the stage, turned around, backed up a few steps, and considered Junior.

Junior put his hands in his pockets and trembled harder.

“Hold still,” Stebbins said again. “You are
quivering
. Jell-O quivers. A potato
never
quivers.”

“He should
be
Jell-O,” Ewan said.

“How could he make a costume for Jell-O?” asked June.

“It's better for you than ice cream,” said Ewan. “That's what my mom says.”

Stebbins put a hand to her forehead. “No, no, no.” She pointed at Leo, who sat in the front row. “You will be the Potato.”

“You will be…” Stebbins waved a hand at Junior. “Something else. Ask me later.”

Then, just like that, it was Mary Sue's turn to audition. She handed Stebbins a big envelope.

“What's that?” asked Leo.