Short Read online

I love that, because my name is Julia Marks.

  This is of course a coincidence, but it’s a really big one.

  When you go to your spot, it’s called “Hitting your mark.”

  If I had to have a business card right now I would want to it say:

  JULIA MARKS

  Ramon’s Best Friend

  Acting in Semi-Professional University Theater Production

  A Lot Older Than She Looks

  “Marks Hits Her Marks”

  I’m not sure that business cards have slogans. I don’t think my parents have anything on their cards but their names, but they work for big companies. I’m just me.

  My business card would also have a fun logo. Maybe of a dancing dog or singing shoes.

  If I had a business card, it would be a great addition to my scrapbook.

  Maybe I can ask for this for my next birthday. I don’t know who would want a copy of my card, but if I had them I would be prepared, which is something that I’ve been told in school I need to work on.

  It’s now Saturday, which is the end of our first full week of rehearsal.

  Shawn Barr gets up on a ladder to watch us in a better way and still sing all the other parts. He’s not, of course, playing the piano up there. He’s clapping out the beat of the music. He shouts to us before he starts: “Sing loud, performers! Don’t think about the tune, just belt it out for now.”

  I guess we were all singing too quietly, because he shouts again a few minutes later from his place on the ladder: “I can’t hear you!”

  This time he sounds like he really means it.

  We have no choice now but to sing super-loud. And we do. Or at least we try to.

  I’m pretty much shrieking and I can’t even hear anyone else, even Olive. She’s twirling and all of us are spinning because we’re supposed to be dancing and singing. Quincy and Larry are going faster than any of the other partners, and Quincy looks like he’s ripping Larry’s arm out of the socket.

  Shawn Barr keeps on clapping and watching us, and then a really bad thing happens.

  I guess Shawn Barr forgets that he’s on a ladder, because he just steps forward—but there’s nothing there, and the next thing we know he falls.

  We all stop dancing and singing at the top of our lungs and we run to Shawn Barr, who is lying on the stage moving around like a worm that got kicked off the dirt onto a dry sidewalk.

  All kinds of curses come out of Shawn Barr’s mouth. Olive whispers to me to cover my ears.

  I don’t.

  Then Randy gets close to Shawn Barr, and I hear him say, “I fell off the roof and broke my ankle once. Maybe you have a broken ankle!”

  I don’t correct him by saying: “You jumped off a roof and broke your ankle.”

  My parents have explained many times that correcting people when they are talking, even if you are right about the facts, can be bad manners and doesn’t help most situations.

  It feels like this is one of those situations.

  Larry runs to the office to call for a doctor. The Woman with the Clipboard takes off after him. Olive and Quincy gather us all together, and Olive says we need to go wait out front.

  We then evacuate the building like it’s a fire drill.

  No pushing or shoving.

  We walk with our partners.

  Everyone is silent. I take my position right next to Olive. This is the way it should be. We go last to make sure the area has been cleared.

  I don’t want to leave Shawn Barr, but Quincy stays with him, and Olive wants to be with the kids to make sure they don’t do anything stupid.

  We watch, minutes later, as an ambulance pulls into the parking circle and two medical guys get out and head into the theater (moving pretty slow, in my opinion). They’re both carrying what look like orange fishing tackle boxes but of course are not fishing tackle boxes.

  They then come back a few minutes later to get a stretcher, and they return to the theater.

  When we see them again they have Shawn Barr strapped down on the stretcher. He has what look like seat belts around his chest and his legs.

  He is able to get one of his hands free and gives us a thumbs-up sign as he passes, just to show that he’s okay.

  We won’t know until Monday the extent of his injury.

  I want to get in the ambulance and ride with him to the hospital, but I know I wouldn’t be allowed to do that, so I don’t even suggest it.

  After the ambulance drives away I see a wrapper from the rubber gloves one of the guys put on before he helped Shawn Barr. There is a picture of a hand on the white paper pouch, with the words: STERILE GLOVES. And then in small print below, it says: Very well accepted by customers from more than 100 countries globally.

  This is interesting to me because it seems like the person who might want to know this fact never gets to read about the global acceptance—whatever that even means.

  So the sentence just seems like useless bragging.

  I know immediately this should go in my scrapbook.

  I fold the paper packet in half and put it in my back pocket.

  Obviously rehearsals are over for today.

  The Woman with the Clipboard will stay with us. Olive and Quincy and Larry say good-bye and leave. They’re adults and don’t have to wait for parents to pick them up. I’m curious to watch them drive because I don’t know if I could reach the gas pedal on my mom’s car, and Olive is my size.

  Does she have a custom car seat?

  Or maybe special ways to operate the vehicle?

  How does that work?

  But the three adults disappear down a walkway and not into a car, and us kids are left to sit together in the sunny spots on the rock wall and think about Shawn Barr.

  I wish we had been singing loud enough, because then maybe this accident wouldn’t have happened.

  I don’t want to play the blame game, so I’m not going to blame myself or the other Munchkins for not having enough projection in our voices.

  If I did point a finger, which I’m not going to do, I would just say that ladders are very dangerous when a person is excited.

  EIGHT

  The show must go on.

  This is an expression that people use about all kinds of things, but in our case this is more than just a saying. The Wizard of Oz will continue on schedule despite Shawn Barr having a broken coccyx—which is his tailbone.

  It is not nice to say that Shawn Barr has a broken butt, which is what Jeremiah Jensen told some of the kids.

  Jeremiah is the tallest Munchkin and that makes him think he’s in charge of us, which he’s not.

  Olive and Quincy and Larry are because they are adults.

  Anyway, Shawn Barr was very lucky to only have this coccyx injury, because it could have been much worse. He could have hit his head and now not know that mustard is in the relish family.

  While we are waiting for all of the Munchkins to show up on Monday afternoon, Quincy says, “Falling can be very serious. There was a man named Vincent Smith and he worked in a candy factory in New Jersey and he slipped and landed in a big tub of chocolate. He then got hit in the head by a wooden mixing paddle, which knocked him out. The chocolate was one hundred twenty degrees and it took ten long minutes for the other workers to get Vincent Smith’s body up and he died from being cooked. And maybe also because he couldn’t breathe in the melted chocolate.”

  No one says anything, but Olive turns and glares hard at Quincy.

  He then mutters, “It’s true. Look it up if you don’t believe me.”

  The story of Vincent Smith reminds me of chocolate fondue, which we have once a year because part of my mom’s family is Swiss. That part was her dad’s grandpa but I can’t remember his name because I never knew this Swiss great-great-grandpa.

  Anyway, the fondue he liked to eat was chees
e, but we do chocolate in our family. The word “fondue” is French for “melt.” That’s what Dad once told us. Also, Dad says that when you eat fondue you shouldn’t double-dip, which means to put your stick into the pot twice with the same piece of fruit or bread on the end.

  This isn’t sanitary.

  I hate the word “sanitary.”

  It just sounds bad.

  Tim double-dips when we have fondue and doesn’t care what anyone says. I like the idea of fondue, but when we actually have it I feel like it’s a lot of work for not a lot of payoff.

  Now I will always associate fondue with a man named Vincent Smith who had bad balance and bad luck.

  Thank you for that, Quincy.

  Shawn Barr doesn’t want us to miss any of our rehearsals, even though he’s off for a few days and under the influence of pain medication.

  So the assistant director, the Woman with the Clipboard, is in charge.

  Now that she has this position I will call her by her name.

  Charisse Hosie is super-happy with her new (but temporary) job. She’s a graduate student at the university, and doing this play is part of getting her degree. Charisse reminds me of an Australian sheepdog. There’s one of those dogs down the hill from my house and it’s named Gravy and it wants to herd things or chase a ball all day long.

  Charisse (like the dog Gravy) is very eager in the eyes.

  After everyone has arrived, Charisse reads us a note from Shawn Barr. When she has finished I raise my hand and say, “Do you think I could have Shawn Barr’s note?”

  I ask for it because this would be an excellent scrapbook piece.

  Charisse makes a strange face and says, “It’s not appropriate for you to have his private correspondence.”

  I think this is unfair because it wasn’t private. She just read it to us.

  What’s the difference between me hearing it and me having the actual piece of paper?

  Our new director leaves her clipboard on the piano during our bathroom break, and I see Larry go up and look at it. Maybe he wanted to keep it too.

  Charisse’s rehearsals are very different from Shawn’s.

  We don’t do mirror exercises or work on hitting our marks. She asks us to sit in the audience seats. She stays up on the stage. I guess this way she can see us without getting up on a ladder, but we can’t move, which might be her point. Also, she must not know how to play the piano like Shawn Barr and she doesn’t sing the other parts. She hums when it’s Dorothy’s turn or when the Wicked Witch has something to say.

  She has us do the songs over and over and over again.

  It’s not long before we are all singing as if we’re chewing celery.

  It’s like cooking fondue: A lot of work for what you get in the end.

  Finally Charisse springs an idea on us: She says to try singing in squeaky voices that are not like our own voices. I guess she thinks that as Munchkins it would be good if we didn’t sound like kids.

  She says that Olive and Larry and Quincy can keep singing the way they’ve been doing all along. I wonder if that hurt their feelings somehow. I hope not.

  We spend the rest of the rehearsal trying to sing through our noses. I really have no idea what she means, but I try.

  Finally it’s time to go, and we are all very tired, even though we were sitting for most of the time.

  I decide that sitting can be really exhausting.

  My mom has a friend named Nancy, and I heard her say that “sitting is the new smoking.”

  I thought that was crazy when I heard it, but now I see her point. Both things can be hard on your body.

  As we walk out of the theater to the parking circle, Larry comes up to me and says, “Here, Julia. I got you the note.”

  He hands me Shawn’s message.

  I guess he just took it from the clipboard.

  I’m worried now that Charisse will think I did it and label me a thief. But she’s already gone for the day, because being the director is a lot more tiring than being the assistant director.

  I don’t want to look like I don’t appreciate that Larry took this piece of correspondence for me. So I say, “Thank you, Larry. You shouldn’t have.”

  I mean it, but it is also an expression, and so Larry looks pretty happy.

  I also notice that he’s trying to get Olive to see that he’s giving me the note. But Olive isn’t paying attention.

  The note is typed, and printed out on white paper. It reads:

  MY DEAR PERFORMERSSS,

  I AM THINKING ABOUT YOU ASSSSS I LIE HERE IN BED. I AM IN A GREAT DEAL OF PAIN, BUT I HAVE MEDICINE, WHICH ISSSS HELPING ME GET THROUGH THISSS.

  THE SSSSHOW MUSST GO ON. THISSS ISSSS PART OF THE GREAT TRADITION OF THE THEATER. EVEN IN VERY DIFFICULT TIMESSSS LIKE THESSSSE, WE MOVE FORWARD. CHARISSSSSSE HASSS INSSSSTRUCTIONSSS FOR YOUR REHEARSSSAL. I WILL BE BACK WITH YOU VERY SSSSOON.

  UNTIL THEN, SSSSING YOUR WORDSSSS WITH FEELING. FOLLOW, FOLLOW, FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD.

  YOUR DIRECTOR,

  SSSSSSHAWN BARR

  • • •

  The note is upsetting because of the situation with the S’s.

  No wonder Charisse didn’t want me to see it.

  Maybe Shawn Barr hit his head (as well as his tailbone), and he’s suffering from “concussion syndrome,” which is something everyone knows can be serious and this is why athletes have to sit down once they get clobbered.

  Another explanation for the note is that Shawn Barr is taking very strong medicine. There are many YouTube videos that can be watched of people who aren’t themselves after taking pain pills. I’m not sure if it’s bad manners to laugh at these things, but they are funny.

  Another answer could be that our director has a crummy keyboard and the letter S sticks when he types.

  That happens.

  I spilled salsa on my mom’s computer last year, and after the accident the keyboard had big problems.

  Another thing that could be going on is that maybe Shawn Barr is worried about Charisse and the S’s are coming out this way because she has two in her name. But this last reason sounds like something Grandma Mittens would come up with.

  She sometimes puts two and two together and sees a robber.

  Once I get home I’m very happy that I have this note, signed by SSSSSShawn Barr. It goes right into my scrapbook. But then I look back through my first four pages of this Book of the Life of Julia (or BOTLOJ, as I want to start calling it), and I’m thinking that I’ve concentrated on negative things.

  I write out a Table of Contents.

  Losing Ramon (the first page with fur)

  The bad luck with the zipper (hitting a kid with a soft item making a bad result)

  The baby tooth that took forever to come out (and made me look like a little kid)

  The paramedic’s glove after Shawn Barr’s fall (showing the danger of ladders and musical theater)

  If someone is looking at this record many years in the future (let’s say if I’m famous or if there is a volcano eruption and our town is buried under twenty feet of molten lava and then discovered 1,500 years later with everything in good shape), I wouldn’t want people to think I was more interested in the bad than the good things.

  I’ve been sad about losing Ramon, but I want people to think of me as a happy person.

  I have to make this point.

  I need a page that shows something smiley.

  NINE

  My dad’s putting away laundry and my mom is at the market.

  I used to walk Ramon after dinner, so it’s no big deal to leave the house if I’m just on the street close by.

  I find a basket in the hall closet and take scissors from the junk drawer in the kitchen, and then I walk down to Mrs. Chang’s house.

  She has a lot of flowers in her yard.

&nb
sp; I don’t know her because no one knows her, but that doesn’t stop me. Mrs. Chang moved here only a year ago and she has kept to herself. I think people tried to welcome her, but I guess she’s private. The other neighbors have boring plants, but Mrs. Chang has spent the year growing pretty things.

  I walk up a short path to her front door. The people who lived here before had a small lawn, but she took that out and now everything is flowers. I could just reach down and grab a handful, but that would be wrong without asking permission. Plus I’m the kind of person who gets caught doing things, so I ring the doorbell and just hope she isn’t home.

  It only takes about two seconds before the door opens and Mrs. Chang is there. I quickly say, “Would it be okay if I cut a few of your purple pansies for a flower-pressing project?”

  I figure Mrs. Chang might not know that school is out. She’s old. If she has kids, then they would have grown up years ago, so I bet she’s not paying attention to the calendar anymore. But I’m not actually lying, because I do plan to flatten the flowers into my scrapbook, which is my project.

  It takes some time—while she thinks about her flowers, I guess—but she does finally say yes. She then goes back into the house, and comes out a few minutes later with an ice-cream bar. She hands it to me.

  I say, “Thank you.”

  She says, “I’ve seen you walk your dog.”

  I should tell her that Ramon died, but it’s too personal to share, so I just nod. “What’s your name?” she asks.

  For a second I wonder if the ice cream has been poisoned. Everyone knows you don’t eat food from people you just met.

  But it’s too late because I already took two bites.

  I’m still chewing, which isn’t polite, when I say, “Julia.”

  Mrs. Chang nods her head in a way that says every kid in the world is named Julia. Then she leans forward. “How’s everything in your life?”

  This is a very big question, and I’m not sure she is looking for a real answer or if she’s just trying to be nice.

  It feels like she’s seriously staring at me.

  I swallow the ice cream, and a big, cold lump gets stuck in my throat. I have to let it melt before I say, “I’m in a play this summer at the university. It’s called The Wizard of Oz.”