Casting Call

Casting Call
Chapter	53 of 129 (list of chapters)
Published	March 22, 2010 (2010-03-22)
Page count	10
Major characters	Sue, Mike, Lucy, Jessica, Katie
Minor characters	Paulo, Abbey, Daisy
Locations	Roseville High School
Collected in	Volume Two, Omnibus 1
Chapter navigation
← Another Shoulder	Back and Forth →
Read chapter

Sue’s play is finally finished, and everyone had better show up to audition. Mike can barely read a script and Lucy greets the judging panel with her middle finger, yet somehow they both walk away with the leads. Sue swears it’ll all work out great.

Synopsis

Sue spends a long evening at her desk, writing, erasing, and burying her trashcan under crumpled drafts until she can finally hold up the “final draft” of her play. The next day at lunch, she announces that she expects everybody at the after-school auditions. Paulo declares the whole thing “Laaaaaaaaaame.” and gloats that he’s safe, since he has detention. He and Mike have also teamed up for a Blasto soda contest with a fifty-grand prize, Mike doing the buying and Paulo doing the chugging.

After the last bell, a long line of hopefuls files across the auditorium stage, and Jessica mows them down one after another with a curt “Next!” The final male candidate is Mike, whose reading is a disaster of mangled lines and lost places. Jessica votes for a boy named Felix instead, but Sue beams and hands Mike the role on the spot. When Jessica objects, Sue offers a deal: if Mike ruins the play, Jessica gets to direct next year.

The search for a female lead grinds on all afternoon without a winner, and the last name on the list is Katie, who stomps in correcting the stage manager on her name. Sue erupts, because whoever she was waiting for never showed, and sprints out to comb the school. In the hallways she spots Lucy pressed against a classroom door, grinning wickedly at whoever’s inside, and hauls her off toward the auditorium over her protests. The door turns out to have a “DETENTION” sign hanging on the knob, with Paulo serving his sentence on the other side.

Back in the auditorium, Sue hurls Lucy bodily onto the stage. Invited to astound the judges, Lucy crosses her arms, stares flatly, and raises her middle finger, and Sue leaps up to give her the part. Jessica demands to know what is wrong with her, but Sue only winks that she has an idea for the leads, and lets Jessica pick the rest of the cast. On stage, Lucy learns Mike got the other lead, offers him a handshake, and calmly slaps him hard enough to bruise. The stage manager hopes the leads weren’t picked for their natural chemistry, and a perfectly satisfied Sue answers only that “The girl can sing.”

Character dynamics

Lucy’s audition, in its entirety.

• Mike and Lucy: They come into this chapter estranged. Lucy’s confession was shot down in A Distance Apart, and in Another Shoulder Mike told her outright that he’s not her babysitter anymore. Sue’s casting leaves the two of them stuck working together whether either likes it or not. Lucy opens their first exchange since the falling-out by offering a handshake with “Break a leg, I guess”, right before the slap.
• Lucy and Paulo: There’s a new warmth on Lucy’s side since the night she spent being comforted (and kissed) at Paulo’s house. She blushes when he calls across the lunch table, and she sticks around after hours just to pull faces at him through the detention-room window.
• Sue and Jessica: At the judges’ table, Sue owns the play, and Jessica is the blunt second-in-command who expects the casting to make some kind of sense. Sue buys her patience with concessions. Jessica directs next year if Mike sinks the production, and she gets to cast everyone who isn’t a lead.
• Mike and Paulo: The Blasto contest has bought an unlikely truce between two boys who usually can’t stand each other. Sue herself marvels that a soda competition was all it took.

Trivia & observations

• The first page has no dialogue at all, just Sue writing, erasing, and filling her trashcan with crumpled drafts. Her wall calendar shows October with the days crossed off, which pins down when the chapter takes place, and Oliver’s commentary flags it with a cheerful “Date reveal!”
• Sue’s wall also holds a photo of Alec McCain. She got flustered over him back in Out of the Frame, slipping into calling him “Alec” before the two of them froze up blushing, and the framed picture shows the moment stuck with her.
• Mike’s audition text was posed as a puzzle. Veronica’s commentary wondered “how many fine, educated people can tell what Mike is supposed to be reading”, and readers pegged the seventy-yard-boot speech as Death of a Salesman.
• Veronica’s commentary sums up the judging panel, calling it a case of “Sue is good cop and Jessica is bad cop.”
• Under the detention reveal, Veronica jokes that Paulo’s detention was divine providence keeping Lucy at school just long enough for Sue to grab her, signing off with “That god being me lol.”
• As for who pays for all that soda, Veronica notes that Mike “has quite the allowance saved up.”

Related chapters

• Unrequited: Mike decides to try out in this chapter, telling Paulo he’d like to audition since Sue is directing. Sue is already carrying her finished script around, one chapter before its “final draft” debut.
• Another Shoulder: The chapter immediately before this one. Mike tells Lucy he’s through being her babysitter, and she ends up spending the night at Paulo’s house, where a kiss changes things between those two as well.
• Curtain Call: The cast chosen here finally performs the play. Lucy sings on stage while Mike stares in awe, which is what Sue’s parting “The girl can sing” was about all along.
• Participation Trophy: Talking it over years later, Sue eventually admits that her play was more about forcing Mike and Lucy together than about telling a compelling story.