Voices swirl around me. My heart feels like it’s jammed in my chest. I squeeze under elbows, between girls, my breath coming out in spurts.

Play.

Lucia — Mindy Kagan

Maria — Chani Schwartz

Mother — Hadassah Berman

Father — Bruchy Goldfeder

Names. Names, names, and more names. There are 20 parts in the play, maybe 30. I skim the list, anxious, desperate. I have to have made it in the play. I just have to!

Then, a few lines from the end, I see it.

Maid 1 — Rena Wieder

Maid 2 — Baylee Price

“Rena….” Baylee is saying something, but I can’t make out the words. There’s something in my ears, buzzing, roaring. I shake my head, backing away from the offensive lists. I want to run; I don’t know where.

“Isn’t it great? We’ll be together on stage all the time!”

Dimly, I register Baylee’s excited face just in front of me. I nod, mutely, then the heaviness pressing up my throat overpowers me. I turn on my heel and run, run, run for the bathrooms before the tears start to fall.

I make it just in time, before I mortify myself in front of my entire grade. Crying over production parts is for ninth graders. But standing there alone, I bury my head in the elbow of my sweatshirt and I cry anyway.

Eventually, the tears run dry, but my heart is still pounding furiously. I’m shocked, devastated, angry.

So angry.

At the production heads, the play heads, Miss Weller.

Miss Weller. Why couldn’t she have gotten me a better role? I did so well in try outs; I know I did. That smile she’d given me, the quick note she’d written on her page after I’d thrown myself into the role, and done it better than the other girls in the room. And me performing together with Baylee? She wasn’t even interested in acting. She’d only tried out because I did. And now we were going to be the two maids bustling on and off stage together in drab, matching uniforms. Will I even have lines to speak?

I think of my sisters: Yael, starring as Esther in The Adopted Princess; Temima heading production; Perli as Toibe, the brave Holocaust survivor; and Lani in her role as Rachel in some modern-day play that I hadn’t quite followed.

I imagine them dutifully coming to the production, sitting beside Ma, riveted by the grand performance of Lucia. Mindy. The dramatic showdowns, Mother, Father, the sisters, the betrayal, the arrival of the Inquisition. Oh, and conscientiously nudging each other when Baylee or I appear onstage. Look, there’s one of the maids, is it Rena? Does she have any lines to speak? Oh — shh, Lucia’s solo is starting.

Maid 1. I don’t even have a name.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Teen Pages, Issue 888)