My Invented Life (4 page)

“Your next play is
Wind in the Willows
, right?” Dad says.

“I told you we’re doing Shakespeare.”

Dad has “gotcha” written all over his face. “The new hair and the new diet,” he says, holding up a bamboo shoot. “I thought you might be auditioning for lead beaver.”

“Ha, very funny.” I flick my new tail. “A person who hasn’t changed his hair for twenty years wouldn’t understand.” Dad’s retro hippie mop is the perfect complement to his ancient Jerry Garcia sweatshirt.

“You both have adorable hair,” Mom says.

She stands up to close the new drapes against the prying eyes of P. Tom, our very own neighborhood perv. P. Tom is big news in Yolo Bluffs, the most excitement we’ve had since the peach blight two years ago. No one has caught him yet, but he leaves traces—extra-large Birkenstock footprints and Juicy Fruit gum wrappers by our windows.

Eva finally comes home sans Bryan. “Didn’t he want cocoa?” Mom asks.

“School night.” Eva collapses on the couch.

“He’s such a good boy.”

I point at my new hair. Eva looks away, and I can feel desperation like a screw tighten one more turn in my chest. Do I have to pierce my nose with a small yet tasteful spear to get her to notice me?

“Well, do you like it?” Mom says, oblivious to Eva’s snub.

My sister smirks in my direction at last. “Is it a mullet?”

I imagine a big fish growing out of the top of my head, though I know a mullet is also a hairstyle. “We all can’t be as boring as you,” I say and then exit.

Back in my room, I dial Bryan’s cell. I have the good sense not to call him when he’s with Eva. This time he picks up.

“What was the big secret last night during chat?”

“My dad’s girlfriend moved in with us,” he says.

“Lucky you.”

“I guess.” I imagine his beautiful hair splayed across his pillow as he talks to me. “Except she’s mean. And she hates me.”

“How could anyone hate you?” I reach for the photo of him I keep stashed under my bed and kiss the curve of his smiling lips through the glass.

“She told Dad to confiscate my skateboard . . . just because I forgot to water her dumb plants.”

“Did he listen to her?” Bryan’s skateboard is like an appendage. Taking it away would be the equivalent of cutting off one of his feet.

“No, but he doubled my chores.”

“Poor baby,” I say.

“Want to wash his car with me tomorrow after try-outs?”

I could tell him about my date with Jonathan to see if he gets jealous. Then again, I haven’t met Jonathan yet. He might have a giant
L
for loser blinking on his forehead, for all I know.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“It would be fun. You, me, soap, and a hose.”

I wish Eva could hear how he talks to me when she’s not there.

M
om hovers at the fringes
of my life. She’s a vegetable crops professor at UC Davis. The long commute and the “publish or perish” credo of the university keep her busy. Combine that with Eva’s constant stream of performances, recitals, ad nauseam, and sometimes weeks can slip by without her noticing me. Which means I get away with a lot, barring the obvious stuff like hacking off my hair. A few times a year, she drives us to school. Today is one of those days. When I slide into the backseat, she frowns at me.

“Is that Dad’s shirt?”

I pretend to misunderstand the question. “I told you. I’m going for a new look,” I say. “If you paid attention to fashion, you’d know button-down shirts are the rage.”

Eva hops into the front seat. Her neon pink fiesta skirt glows through the fog like flower petals strewn across a muddy lake.

“Look how perky you are,” Gethsemane says.

The word
perky
makes me ill. Mom passed Parenting 101, so she never actually says, “Why can’t you be more like Eva?” Still, it’s pretty obvious she thinks it.

I stick my finger in my mouth, the universal gag sign. “I don’t believe in perky.”

Eva laughs. “You look classy in a man’s shirt,” she says, doing an impersonation of the old Eva for Mom’s benefit.

After we de-SUV at Yolo Bluffs High, I rush to the bathroom to adjust my new look. Undoing yet another button helps. When I enter homeroom, Mr. Beltz yammers away at the front of the class, oblivious to my tardiness. Homeroom mixes juniors and seniors, an experiment dreamed up by administration, which explains why Carmen and I are in the same class. Today she’s clad from cleavage to ankle in skintight black. How nineties is that? Okay, I’m jealous because her outfit shows off her olive skin and tiny Latina waist. Black makes my skin look like uncooked chicken.

I sit down in the empty seat next to her. “Hey, Carmen, nice earrings.” I’d rather slap her around than suck up, but honey catches more vermin. “Do you know what’s going on with Eva?”

Carmen’s eyes widen when she takes in my new coif. “Yikes. Did you have a close encounter with a low-flying helicopter? Or is your lawn mower possessed?”

“Har-dee-har. My mom likes it,” I say.

Carmen extracts a long strand of her lovely black hair and nibbles on the tip. It makes the point rather effectively without a single eye-roll. I don’t like the direction this conversation is headed. I return to my original mission.

“Eva’s been acting a little strange, don’t you think?”

“You’re rubbing off on her, I guess,” Carmen says.

I punch her arm—lightly, of course. “Has she said anything about me?”

“No.”

“What’s the big secret?”

Carmen’s eyes harden. “I’m not playing your asinine game, whatever it is.”

Frustration at my failure sets in. “The SATs are so over,” I say. “You can stop using the ten big words you learned for the test.”

That came out nastier than intended. It’s not entirely Carmen’s fault that she uses uppity vocabulary. Her mom made her take three SAT prep classes. Then again, I don’t need to tiptoe around her. When it comes to dueling, the point on Carmen’s rapier is almost as sharp as mine.

“I prefer the taciturn Roz to the garrulous one,” she says. “Or do I mean verbose? No, loquacious.”

Which is pretty funny, actually, but I’m not in the mood to let her win this conversation.

“Nice top,” I whisper. “Were they out of your size?”

“Don’t be a
sheep-biting moldwarp
,” she says.

Dang. She found the online Elizabethan curse generator too. While I ponder my next insult—
sour-faced malignancy
perhaps—the sharp crack of wood against desktop startles me into looking up. Mr. Beltz shakes his medieval wooden pointer our direction. “Christmas is so over, girls. Do I need to separate you this morning?” He’s the original Grinch.

“We’re done talking,” I concede graciously.

Your typical theater geek spends the lunch minute hanging around the school theater (a converted barn), attempting to outperform the other theater geeks. Whoever can do the best impersonation or pop out the funniest line from a play
claims the most attention. More talking happens than listening. Most drama types would rather plumb the depths of hell than set foot in the cafeteria. Eva crossed over to the other side, though, when the cheerleaders started eating there.

Today I skip both options in favor of the library computers. Our stray mutt—a mascot of sorts for Yolo Bluffs High—accompanies me. After he stepped into a bucket of blue paint last year, someone dubbed him BlueDragon from a video game. The name stuck, though he’s more round-nosed dope than fierce serpent of the sky. My special relationship with BlueDragon comes from our shared social status. When Sierra left, I drifted between groups during lunch. Everyone acted friendly toward me and would give me a few pats on the head, but I never felt welcome to stay long. Maybe I have doggie breath, too.

In the library I take surreptitious bites of marinated tofu while keying in my get-Carmen project. The resulting page is perfectly wicked. Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall. Translation? Good behavior is for losers. Before school lets out, I sneak a copy of my dastardly deed into Sapphire’s office.

Soon after the last bell, every drama wannabe piles into the Barn. The old plank walls are covered with movie posters and funky tapestries. Nothing can mask the faint but permanent odor of anxiety, the underarm kind. Slanted light from the window illuminates the dust kicked up by herds of jittery feet. Before Sapphire starts with the actual auditions, she introduces us to her nephew from Bakersfield.

I’d pictured Jonathan as a minor badass sporting a
torn denim jacket and a sexy eyebrow stud. Instead, his retro shirt, brown corduroys, and Afro give him the look of a
GQ
saint. Sapphire didn’t lie about his looks; he’s a hottie through and through. But she neglected to mention a minor detail. He’s African-American, which she is not.

Bryan reads first for the dashing Orlando. In seconds, I fall under his spell. He practiced a lot, and it shows. I take a bite from my high protein bar, careful to chew with my back teeth to prevent unsightly spots when I smile. The bar is gritty and doesn’t satisfy my real hunger. Two freshman girls whisper in the seats in front of me, oblivious to my presence.

“God, he’s cute.”

“He has a girlfriend.”

And a better girlfriend waiting in the wings
.

“Besides, I saw him at the movies last weekend
with his parents
.”

“That’s so gay!”

I wait until Bryan finishes his reading to drop my notebooks on their heads. They shriek appropriately.

“Oops.” I gather up my scattered things. “I didn’t see you there.”

I slip outside to review my lines one last time. We don’t have to memorize for tryouts, but acting tends to go better if you aren’t forced to squint down at a paper and stumble over complex phrasings. Besides, Eva always memorizes the scene ahead of time. Learn from the master, I say. When I hear Jonathan’s voice carry across the theater, I hurry back in.

Jonathan is good, terrifyingly good. His voice has authority without being loud. He moves across the stage
with an athletic grace, drawing me in with a quiet magnetism. If he were reading for the lead role, he would snag it in a heartbeat. I notice Bryan’s jaw hanging down to the floorboards. Poor boy.

Nico reads next. His straight black hair cascades over his face and twitches every time he blinks. I feel bad for him because nobody could look good up there after Jonathan. It doesn’t help, though, that he stands like an oak tree bent from years of battering winds. And that no one can see his eyes. He usually goes for roles that don’t require much emoting.

After Nico reads, Sapphire calls for Rosalind hopefuls. That’s when I notice Eva’s absence. Omigod. Maybe she wants to give us mere mortals a chance at glory. A more likely theory? She was abducted by aliens. Carmen hastens onto the stage because she always wants to read first. Today it will be her undoing. She takes
my
handout from the top of the stack and runs her fingers through her hair. After a few well-delivered lines, she falls headfirst into my trap.

“So was I when your Highness took his pukedom,” she says. Amid snorts of laughter, she repeats the line. “So was I when your Highness took his
dukedom
.” She continues reading, her voice infused with indignation. “My father was no
prostitute
.” We erupt again.

“Cut,” Sapphire says. She passes a fresh handout to Carmen. “From the top.”

Carmen plows through the rest of the scene without error, though she fails to capture Rosalind’s gentle humor. She gives me a triumphant look as we pass on the side stairs, me on my way up, her on her way down.

“Sweet revenge will be mine,
fen-sucked ratsbane
,” she says in a low voice. Her face is a mask of pleasantry. Translation? Copycat Girl thinks she can outwit
me
.

I shrug it off and take center stage. Immediately my body goes rigid. Think Popsicle with a cute quasi-masculine haircut. Every audition is the same. I jump off the cliff and plummet toward the sharp rocks below. Before I hit the ground, my wings unfurl and I can fly.

“You’re on, Roz,” Sapphire says.

I fix my gaze on the empty seats in the middle of the theater. The only flying that occurs is that of my lines flying right out of my head.

Sapphire cues me. “Why, cousin, why, Rosalind! Cupid have mercy, not a word?” She fans herself with the handout I refused. I look at it longingly.

Carmen heightens the humiliation by reciting my first line from the peanut gallery. “Not one to throw at a dog.”

“Not one to throw at a dog,” I repeat.

Carmen would make a perfect yip-yap dog, the kind that lives on her owner’s lap. Thankfully, the image cheers me up, and my lines come back in a rush. Soon I am Rosalind, daughter of the banished king, telling off my overbearing uncle. When I finish, Sapphire leaps to her feet.

“We’ve found our Rosalind!” she bellows amid appreciative hoots from the audience.

I bow to the thunder of stamping feet.

Hit the back button
.

To be honest, no one appreciates my talents as much as I do. When I finish, Sapphire stands and says, “Good work, Roz. Who else is reading for Rosalind?”

I slouch in a front-row seat ready to pick apart the performances of my competitors. Eyeliner Andie sidles onstage like a ghost crab, and that surprises me. Techies usually have no interest in acting. They tend to dress in black, lurk in the shadows, and talk softly. Andie fits the type perfectly.

Except for her clothes. They scream to be noticed. Her ensemble today pairs a neon orange top with low-slung, button-studded pants that flare at the knees. A single streak of magenta slashes through her black hair, which matches her eyeliner. Flakes of mascara speckle her cheeks. I’d call her look neo-Goth shabby chic. There’s a rumor that she’s a lesbian.

She reads well, and I clap with the others when she finishes.

At that moment Eva races into the Barn.

“I’m sorry I’m late. A friend had an emergency. Can I still try out for Rosalind?”

Sapphire waves her up onstage. Carmen looks like I’m feeling, gray from head to toe with disappointment. She doubles over on a bench with her head down between her knees, ignoring Eva for the entire reading. This freaks me out because I’ve never seen Carmen act this way. As Eva dances down the stairs—not a trace of gloat on her face—Carmen stands up like a zombie to block her way.