My Life After Now - By Jessica Verdi Page 0,45
be me—behind.
I squeezed through the crowd and made my way to the front of the line, where Roxie was sitting behind a folding table, piling up headshots and resumes and handing out numbers.
“Hey,” I said.
Her face lit up. “Oh my god, yay! You made it!”
“Yeah. So, um, should I sign in or something?”
“No, that list is only for people with appointments. But don’t worry, I’ll get you in. Can you hang out for a while?” she asked.
“Sure.” It’s not like I have any other friends to hang out with, I thought.
“Great, just go have a seat and I’ll come and get you when there’s an opening.”
As I maneuvered back through the crowd in search of a place to sit down, something occurred to me. My exact thought had been that I didn’t have any other friends to hang out with. So that must have meant that somewhere, deep in my subconscious maybe, I considered Roxie to be a friend. When had that happened? I barely even knew the girl.
I found an empty patch of carpet and sat there, on the floor, for an hour. Occasionally I caught a few looks from the other girls as they eyed my outfit. I was the only one in jeans, and I barely had any makeup on. Whatever. Let them stare.
At four o’clock exactly, Roxie stood up on her chair and loudly addressed the remaining girls. “The casting team is not going to be able to see anyone else today. Sorry for any inconvenience and thanks for coming!”
An uproar of groans and complaints emerged from the crowd, and I had to stop myself from joining in. What had I waited for, then? I knew I didn’t have an appointment, so I didn’t have much of a right to be annoyed, but still. Roxie shouldn’t have told me she could get me in if she actually couldn’t.
I went back up to the sign-in table. “Well, thanks anyway,” I said. “I guess I’ll see you next week.”
“Wait, where are you going?” she asked.
“Um, home?”
“No, silly. I told them I had a friend coming. They’re expecting you.”
“Oh. Really?”
“Yes!” she said. At that moment the door opened and a girl came out. “You’re up!” Roxie said to me.
The room was empty, except for the two men and a woman sitting behind a desk, and a camcorder set up on a tripod. I was immediately thrust into audition mode.
“Hi,” I said, a smile on my face for the first time all day. “I’m Lucy Moore.” I approached the desk and forked over my headshot.
“Hello, Lucy,” one of the men said, handing me a sheet of paper. “Please stand on the mark and, when you’re ready, read these sides directly into the camera.”
I quickly skimmed the lines. It was some boring copy about NYU being an exciting place to learn. But there was nothing exciting about the words at all. In a flash, I realized that I hadn’t actually known anything about this audition. I should have asked Roxie for specifics. But I understood now that they weren’t looking for an actor, they were looking for a spokesperson. A pretty face to entice people to invest four years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars into an overrated education.
The smile fled from my face. I didn’t want to read this. I didn’t even want this job. I just wanted to get to perform for three lousy minutes. Was that too much to ask?
I don’t remember making the decision to do it, but before I knew what I was doing, I’d tossed the paper to the floor, cleared my mind, and begun doing April’s butterfly monologue from Company.
There may have been some murmurs of protest from the casting people, but I shut them out and continued with the little story about the cocoon and the butterfly and the cat and the boyfriend, embodying this character whose biggest problem in life is that she’s a little dumb. Maybe I was losing my mind; maybe all the pressure and distress from the last two months had finally made me snap. I didn’t care.
When I was finished, I refocused my attention back on the befuddled casting team.
“Well…that was…” the woman began.
Best to cut her off now, while I was still riding high. “Thank you all so much for your time,” I said, and escaped from the room.
Roxie had finished packing up and was waiting for me with an eager grin. “How’d it go?”
I let out a chuckle. “Let’s just say that I