Some Side Effects May Occur

1. Wannabe I shouldn’t be here. But then, I knew that when I answered the audition notice. It’s never stopped me from showing up yet. The rest of the girls in the lobby cross and uncross their surgically extended femurs in their uncomfortable folding chairs. Willowy arms fidget and adjust blouses over breasts that hold their own shape and waists smaller than my thighs. All of their enlarged, color-enhanced eyes scan and size each other up. A few look at me with confusion or a raised, sculpted eyebrow, but they move on quickly. I am not a threat. I will be, one day, when I can qualify for a loan for my own procedures, but not today. Today, I am hardly the same species as the rest of them. The girl across from me and one chair to the right is having some sort of panic attack. She keeps looking up at the clock, rubbing her face with her hands, and making these squeaky little sounds in the back of her throat. I’m not sure why. She’s probably the most beautiful girl in the room; I could fit my hands all the way around her waist with room to spare. Maybe this is even more nerve-wracking for people who stand a chance, because what happens on that stage will actually make a difference for them. Just another hurdle for me to look forward to. I’m both relieved and sorry I made Sophie wait in the car. When she comes in to auditions with me, all I want her to do is stop putting her feet up on the chairs and telling me how much a*s I’m going to kick and how worrying is neither helpful nor fun at an inappropriate volume. When she doesn’t, I kind of miss it. And now, when I get the urge to whisper something even more inappropriate about the resemblance between one girl’s sweater and what the preserved pelt of a popular children’s show puppet would probably look like, there’s no one for me to whisper to. “Is there any way I can go next?” the panicking girl asks when the door to the auditorium opens. “I’m not feeling so good.” She has to take her hands away from her face when she makes her request, far enough for me to see why. The left half of her mouth has gone slack, like she’s just had heavy dental work done. Or maybe she’s having a stroke. The receptionist puts a firm hand on her upper arm and pulls her out of the chair and toward the street exit before the woman in the auditorium has to answer her. “No!” the girl protests. “It’s nothing, I’m okay!” A security guard joins the struggling receptionist and escorts the girl efficiently outside. The other girls stare at their shoes, the glowing screens of their mobile scrolls, or at the woman in the doorway, so the meltdown girl can’t see their expressions, the same one I know I’m wearing in spite of my own negligible chances. One down. The woman in the auditorium squints down at her clipboard-sized business scroll. “Rachel Blum?” Part of me wants to follow that guard outside and pretend I was never stupid enough to come here in the first place, but it’s an urge I’m used to squashing. I don’t keep coming to professional auditions because I expect to be picked. I come for the free practice, and the free chance to let industry professionals see my work so that someday, when I’ve lost enough weight for them to see a glimmer of the potential star underneath, one of them might say to one of their contacts at the Public Aesthetics Endowment or one of the private talent agencies, “Rachel Blum? Oh, yeah, I think I’ve seen her do a monologue or two. She’s pretty good, if you’re willing to make the aesthetics investment.” As Mom would say, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Besides, backing out now would mean wasting Sophie’s time even more completely than usual. When I can afford my own car, I can take wasted trips when I want and cut my losses when I want and feel like s**t about it when I want, but until then, I’m going to be excited and good-nervous and kick what little a*s I can, and thank Sophie for every single audition she drives me to like it might be the one. There aren’t exactly a lot of other people lining up to help me. I stand up in answer to my name. The woman with the business scroll looks up from it and almost completely conceals her look of apprehension when she sizes me up. Almost. This won’t take long. I follow her into the auditorium and down the darkened aisle, focusing on the nearly invisible scars along her hairline from her last facelift, in exactly the same place my mom has them. She looks nearly forty, long past her leading lady days, but I can tell she was gorgeous. She directs me up the steps onto the stage and takes a seat in the front row between two other scroll carriers I can’t see properly through the blinding stage light, which must be throwing every detail of me into harsh relief. “Whenever you’re ready,” one of those front row shadows sighs, his features made twisted and ghostly by the glow of the screen beneath. I am here. I am on a stage with an audience, and I will make the most of it. With one slow, focusing breath, I disappear. In my place is another girl, one from my book of monologues, the one who is written, suspended forever in time, in a pivotal moment. She’s having an argument with her best friend, begging to stay at her house for the weekend to get away from her stepfather. “Please,” she begs, using my mouth. “I can’t be alone with him. I’ll be out of your way as soon as my mom gets back from her trip.” This other girl is unaware of being watched. She does not ask permission to take up space, or apologize for taking too much of it. She worries about things I will never have to, things too big to leave room for any of the commonplace details that will determine my life. “Tell who?” she says. “Tell what? Nothing’s happened yet, and it won’t, as long as I can stay out of his way for two more months. Just two more months, and I’ll be away at college! I’ll be safe!” This girl does not care about me, and for a moment, forgotten in the boarded up attic of her mind, I am free. “Please, Beth, don’t walk away.” Then her words run out, the little snippet of her existence is over, and I am alone under the stage lights again, able to make out the outlines of the casting directors, looking away from me at the easier sights on their screens, waiting until they can stop humoring me. I step down off the stage without being asked. “Thanks for that,” I whisper to them on my way out, too soft to fill the space the way that other girl did, not waiting to be told not to call them; they’ll call me. Not. The back exit of the theater opens onto an alley, and for a moment, I’m turned around. I reach into my purse for my scroll and start the GPS app, starting toward the nearest real street at a brisk walk while I wait for the ancient software to load. It may not be as dangerous for me to wander downtown alone as it is for the richer, prettier, more delicate girls, but being lost and alone here, even for a few seconds, makes me nervous. Nervous enough that I almost think I’m imagining the cold fingers scrabbling at my skin, until they wrap around my upper arm and yank me to a stop. “Help me!” she cries out, turning me roughly around to look at her. I scream with startled revulsion, even as I begin to recognize her. The meltdown girl. “Please, tell them I can fix this! Just let me borrow your compact for a sec. I’ll buy you a new one. I’ll pay you double what it cost!” If she was melting down before, it’s nothing to what’s happening to her now. This is no stroke or nervous problem, and it’s nothing makeup can help. The flesh of the left side of her face is drooping almost to her collar bone, pulling away from her hairline, her shaved back eye socket, her pale little cheekbone implant. Something other than blood is oozing down her neck and staining her pale pink shirt a rusty orange, an infection of some sort, or maybe what that implant was supposed to be filled with. I’ve seen a few botched bootleg procedures before, but nothing like this. Looking at her when the auditions began, I’d never have guessed hers weren’t professional. “Please!” she tightens her grip painfully on my arm, her blood- and goo-caked hands colder than wet clay, and I throw her off of me with a hard jab of my elbow. I’m not usually squeamish; I can’t afford to be, but the fermented smell of that orange fluid stirs the acid in my stomach, and I nearly trip over backwards trying to lengthen the distance between us. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. I shouldn’t feel guilty about running. There’s nothing I can do for her. But after all the times I’ve been the smallest threat in the room, the one begging for a chance to try, you’d think I’d be able to think of something comforting to say to her. I sprint out onto a street that looks vaguely familiar and take what I hope is the long way around the block, back toward the front of the theater. I’m briefly glad, for once in my life, for my unaltered legs. As fat and stubby as they are, the work it takes to prevent them from getting any worse keeps me a lot faster than the meltdown girl. After the first two corners, the welcome purple-and-blue paint job of Sophie’s car comes into view, and I slow down to make sure the girl’s given up on me before heading toward it, remembering to practice my smile. I’ve perfected this smile. Big enough to prove the audition went well, not big enough to make Sophie think it went so well that I’ll be heartbroken when I don’t hear back. Nothing to invite pitying follow-up questions later. It’s a business as usual smile. Another day, another audition. All part of the fun. Certainly not the kind of smile that says I was just accosted in an alley by a girl with a melting face, because then Sophie would insist that we find her. Then Sophie would meet her, try to argue her into an ambulance, and not understand why she wouldn’t want to get in while the auditions are still in session. And then she’d spend the next few weeks marveling at what a poor, sad lunatic she is, what lunatics people like me are, people who actually care about making it, who can’t afford not to, who love what we do with our whole hearts. I’ve tried explaining this concept to her before. I don’t need to again. I rap on the car window, and Sophie unlocks the door. “That was fast,” she says. I go on smiling. But the meltdown girl has thrown off something in my smile performance, and Sophie sees something on my face that makes her backpedal. Maybe she thinks fast sounds like they kicked me off the stage. “I mean, finally. That took forever. You so owe me dinner.” Her backpedaling accelerates. “Um, well, your company for dinner. Your moral support, so I’m not sitting in a booth alone just because I’m dying for crispy shrimp and the microwave kind suck. I’ll buy.” I actually like that Sophie routinely forgets that her dad sells houses to other rich people, while mine sells computers to chumps, or tries to. It makes things less weird. I like her mild obsession with crispy things a lot less, though, so I hesitate. “Oh, come on, like you’ve got other plans?” she says, tapping the ignition to life and starting up her scroll where it sits in the dock. The soundtrack we were listening to on the way over picks up where it left off. “Well…” I shrug. “I was thinking of whisking Aaron Hawking and the male half of the cast of Swear off to Paris for a weekend of secret passion. But for you, I guess I can take a raincheck.”