Not Just a Stage

Chapter One

The lights hang over the front of the stage and shine down on me from their neat little row along the ceiling.

I am proud. I am happy.

I am exhausted almost to the point of being nonfunctional.

But it's absolutely worth it, because doing theater is everything.

It's wonderful: acting, being onstage-telling someone else's story.

Now it's my favorite part of the show: curtain call.

Not just because everyone is clapping for us (though, sure, that feels really good). But because when you have worked this hard for this long, and you get to the end, and you're just standing there, breathless, like, Hey, hi there! Did you like this thing I worked so hard to make for you? Did you? Didyoudidyou? and the audience waits that fraction of a moment to be sure you're actually done before they answer with every clap of their hands, saying, Yes! You did it! We loved it. Good job. It just gets me . . . way down in my squishy, marshmallowy center. I can't help it-I cry every time. I'm not always sobbing, but my eyes are always glistening.

Tonight's show was really good-you can just tell when everything clicks. Maybe because it's the last weekend. After tomorrow it's over. For some of us, it's just the end of this show, but for me and the rest of the former eighth graders, it's really goodbye to DCTK. The Denton County Theater Kids is a troupe for kids in first to eighth grade.

I turned fourteen a few weeks ago, and my best friend Joy's birthday is next month, and she and I have analyzed it deeply enough to know that fourteen is when getting older finally counts. Fourteen is when you know you're really a teenager . . . when you're not in your first year of teenagerdom anymore, so nobody can question if you're really old enough. At thirteen, you're basically still twelve, but at fourteen, you're almost fifteen, which is almost sixteen, and everybody knows that when you're sixteen, you're only a couple years from being eighteen, which is an actual adult.

So, basically, fourteen is the real deal, and we're ready for it, Joy and me. We're so ready to stop being kid actors in a kids' troupe and start being just regular actors who can go out for roles in high school productions or even in professional theater companies around the area.

Switching from a small pond to a big pond will have its drawbacks, but I'm fully prepared for that. Joy and I are basically whales in the puddle that is DCTK, but we're about to find ourselves out in the ocean, and there are a whole bunch more actresses in that sea. It's going to be a lot more of background actress number seven, but that's okay.

In this show, though, I have a big role with a big solo song that rests only on me and my voice and my acting. It doesn't work if I can't sing it full of heartbreak and sadness and make everybody want to cry. It's one of those songs that takes everything I've got every single time. But when I lock in on that note, the one people have been waiting to hear, it's one of the most incredible feelings in the world.

The clapping continues while I step back and watch as the rest of the cast takes their turns bowing, and then we all meet at the front of the stage again. I glance to my right as Joy steps up beside me and grabs my hand. She speaks loudly into my ear to be heard over the audience and the curtain-call music.

"We need a name for this bow!" She looks out toward the audience, grinning, and makes a gesture that seems to say Oh, stop it. You're being too kind. You don't have to clap for little old me! before bowing.

I laugh and wait for her head to pop back up before I say, "That one's gotta be called 'You're Making Me Blush.' "

Joy and I have been naming our silly bows since our first show together (we were little orphan backgrounders in Annie when we were seven). We've got bows called the "Volleyball Serve," where you raise one hand up high before you bend at the waist, and the "Look, Ma, No Hands," where you lock both arms firmly behind your back before folding over. Generally, I stick with the classic "Clap, Wave, Fold," which is boring but does the job.

Joy never seems to run out of funny ideas, even after my own comedic well has run dry. Over the final few seconds of bows, she makes up two more (the "Swan Dive" and the "Jolly Old St. Nick"). Her delivery and timing have landed her the comic-relief-type roles in every show she's auditioned for, which is just how she wants it. She's confused directors over the years because she looks like a picture-perfect leading lady, but that's just not her style. Joy was offered the part of Belle in Beauty and the Beast and turned it down because she thought Belle was snotty and too serious. Instead, she begged to be cast as Lumière the candlestick, which they gave her, and she ended up stealing the entire show. She's taller than I am (not that hard because I'm so short), white, with blond hair, tan skin, and green eyes. I, on the other hand, have sidekick written all over me. I have wavy brownish hair and hazel eyes, and I'm white with tons and tons of freckles. People see me and peg me as the main character's best friend, right up until I open my mouth to sing. Nobody thought I would be the type to play the lead in Legally Blonde last year, but I auditioned in a really great wig, and my director said that by the time I walked out of the audition room, I was already Elle Woods.

The whole cast takes hands now and executes the "Paper People Chain" bow, perfectly synchronized. And before the clapping and cheering have time to fade, the curtain shuts and the magic suspends until the next time.

In a split second, my acting balloon pops, and I feel my other excitement start to inflate in my chest.

I've got to hurry.

In just seconds, backstage bursts into action. The noise and lights come on fast as we all make our way back toward the crowded dressing rooms. The historic Campus Theater where we perform has a long dressing room upstairs where most of the cast has stations set up, but there is a smaller dressing room off stage left where leads or people with quick changes usually get ready-my station is in there. I'm in a rush, so I start gathering up my stuff while my friends laugh and talk and start taking off their makeup all around me.

Joy appears like magic. "Sunny! Did you see what time it is? It's already almost eight! Let's get this show off the road and then get the other show on the road, so that the right show is on the road, while this-the other show-is off-"

"HILARIOUS, JOY. Now, have you seen my shoes?" I am using both hands, one over my shoulder and the other around my waist, trying to reach the zipper on my back. Joy forcibly turns me backward so she can unzip me, and I step out of my costume. I throw on my vintage Fender guitar T-shirt, step into my jeans, and sit to tie my shoes while Joy peels my wig cap off and uses a brush to sleek my hair back into a tight bun in seven seconds flat.

"Joyyyyy," I whine as I try to buckle my belt. "What if I don't make it on time?"

"You're gonna make it. Go, go! I'll clean up the rest of your stuff, and then I'll be right behind you. Oh! Here! While you run!" She tucks a makeup wipe into my back pocket and gives my bum an encouraging little best-friend pat. "Don't worry! You'll make it! Don't get run over by a bus on the way! Be safe! Go knock 'em dead!"

In one fast motion, I reach for my bag, turn to walk, and yell over my shoulder, "Love you! See you after the set!"

She shouts something after me, but I'm already down the hall, and then shoving through the double doors into the alley, where I break into a run.