1
“How do I look?”
April tugged her blue velvet jacket down and adjusted the white wig over her hair. Her little sister, Shirley, sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed, looking her up and down. She took out the cherry lollipop that had been rolling around in her mouth—a nine-year-old’s idea of breakfast.
“Like an old guy who’s just come back from the dead.”
April rolled her eyes. “That’s what I’m going for!”
“Then strike a pose!” Shirley said, holding up April’s phone. On the case was broadway, spelled out in light-up marquee letters.
With the camera aimed at her, April tilted her shoulders back, lifted her head, and pointed to the ceiling. She gave her audience— a crowd of patiently sitting stuffed animals—a determined look, the kind you give when you’re about to start a revolution.
Shirley lowered the phone. “Doesn’t Hamilton have brown hair in the musical?”
April adjusted her wig again, out of habit, even though thirty bobby pins ensured that it was immovable.
“Lin-Manuel Miranda had brown hair in the musical,” April said, “but all the history blogs say Hamilton’s hair was powdered white.” She paused, a shadow of doubt passing through her mind. “I did my research. It’s fine.”
She raised her finger, pointed her shoes forward, and wore that look of determination again.
Shirley counted down. “Three, two, one!”
Tck! Tck! Tck!
With each shot, April switched her pose—she held up a fist, she stood tall with her arms folded, she swiped her blue velvet coattails so they swished in midair as the camera flashed.
“You look like my Spider-Man action figure after I’ve dropped it on the floor,” Shirley said, smirking.
April opened her mouth to clap back but thought better of it. She closed her eyes and breathed in, reminding herself that she was a sixth grader and therefore three whole years older than Shirley—no matter how many times her sister insisted on “two and a half.”
April took back her phone and plopped onto the bed. She flipped through the photos, deleting the duds and bookmarking the one where she was pointing upward in Hamilton’s iconic pose.
Next, she opened her favorite app in the entire digital universe, and the words Starring You! flashed across her screen.
It was pretty simple: All kids had to do was upload an audition video to be considered for a play or musical. The top videos with the most likes won. All the winning videos got featured on the main channel, appearing together as a complete set list or series of mini acts. April had never downloaded an app so fast.
But—that was as far as it went. Since it was all digital, there was no real-life stage. No productions actually took place. Still, it was competitive. The possibility of having hundreds of other kids watch April, who had fallen in love with theater two Christmases ago when she saw a national tour production of Hamilton, was thrilling. She adored the pearlescent pink, turquoise, and yellow dresses the “Skylar” sisters wore, how all the songs sounded like poetry. It was cheesy, but ever since then, she had dreamed of becoming a star. Until that day came, Starring You! was perfectly fine with her.
She uploaded the photo, adjusting the brightness and saturation of her blue velvet jacket. Shirley watched over her shoulder, making sticky kissing noises with the lollipop in her red-tinted mouth.
“Do you have to tell them about your trach tube?” she asked, nodding at the small, white tube protruding from April’s neck.
“Nah. I mentioned it in my profile, though, in case anybody has questions.”
Speaking of which . . . April paused and reached into her bedside drawer. She took out some gauze and a pink plastic vial of saline, which she squirted into the small tube. She coughed out a bit of phlegm and threw the gauze away. The whole process, like blowing your nose, took about three seconds.
Starring You! was also one of the few places where April didn’t have to answer The Questions all the time.
“What’s that around your neck?”
“Does it hurt? Can I touch it?”
“What is making that strange noise? It sounds like a sleeping dog.”
It was never a fun conversation, and April had learned how to explain that she had a disability called bilateral vocal cord paralysis— a mouthful that made her vocabulary seem way more sophisticated than it actually was.
To add to her glossary of long-winded terms that sixth graders rarely used, she would explain that she wore a medical device to help her breathe called a tracheostomy tube, pronounced TRAKE-ee-OS-toh-mee, or trach for short. It worked like a nose or mouth, giving April a third airway to help her breathe more easily. A silver chain kept the trach tube in place, and if the tube ever fell out—“God forbid that ever happen,” Mama often said—April wouldn’t be able to breathe.
“Girls!” Mama’s voice rang through the house. “It’s almost time to go.”
Crap. Being late in the second week of middle school was one thing April did not want to be known for.
“C’mon!” She jabbed Shirley’s shoulder and grabbed her backpack.
“Your costume!” Shirley giggled.
April looked down.
“Oops!”
With a pair of chopsticks, Mama heaped a generous spoonful of ground pork mixed with scallions, egg, and soy sauce onto a slice of bread and placed it carefully into a sizzling pan. Her shoulder-length black hair was tucked behind her ears, and her bangs covered her eyebrows like curtains. A savory aroma wrapped around the entire kitchen.
As the meat started browning in the pan, Mama loaded a fresh pile of pork onto a new slice. April tiptoed over and approached Mama from behind.
“BOO!” she yelled, holding her hands up like claws, but Mama only glanced at her with a raised eyebrow, clearly unamused.
“April Xue, you know I can hear you when you come in, right?” she said, nodding toward April’s trach tube, flipping the toast with a spatula.
Over at the table, Shirley cackled.
April groaned. “One of these days.” She grabbed a plate and stood waiting. The woks, pans, and cutlery were organized so well that although the kitchen was small, it never felt cluttered.
Mama slid a slice of toast onto April’s plate, her hands moving like parts of a well-oiled assembly line. She peered at April through a pair of red-rimmed glasses.
“Really?” she said, pointing at April’s Theater Is My Sport sweatshirt with the spatula. “You know I don’t like clothes with sassy words on them.”
April took the toast between her fingers and blew on it. “It was half price. I got it off Etsy.” She carefully took a bite and groaned with pleasure. “Mmm.”
Mama took a new slice of bread and started piling a fresh layer of ground pork onto it. “That’s what you needed my credit card for the other night?”
“I did tell you I was buying clothes,” April said, rubbing the back of her arm sheepishly and grinning so her eyes turned into half-moons. “And I could buy it with my own money—y’know, if you gave me an allowance.”
Mama chuckled. “Ha! You get a roof over your head and food in your belly—that’s what you get for helping us at the restaurant. Pretty good deal if you ask me.”
“You’re riiiiight,” April said. She checked the time and stuffed the rest of the toast into her mouth. “I gotta go now.”
“Āiya, April, eat slowly,” Mama said. “And no more shopping until I see your report card. I don’t want you spending so much time on that app.”
“Ma. It’s only the second week of school.”
“Never too early to start studying.”
“Like you and Dad cared about grades when you were in school.” The words slipped out before April could stop herself. She mumbled an “Oops!” as Mama shot warning eyes at her and Shirley dropped her toast, her mouth agape.
“April! Zuǐbā lăo.”
“Sorry,” April said, feeling a twinge of guilt for talking back. She cast her eyes downward at the tiles on the floor.
It was true, what she had said. Dad had gone to culinary school in lieu of college and Mama had given up on studying finance, though she often insisted that it simply “wasn’t for me.” As Dad recounted every year on their wedding anniversary, he met Mama while working at a gourmet pizzeria. They got married and decided to open Modern Dragon, Terrytown’s only Asian fusion restaurant, serving crispy truffle rice and fancy meatballs with bok choy. As far as April was concerned, that was pretty close to a dream come true.
Mama shook her head and sighed. “All I’m saying is, don’t let all that theater get to your head. It’s fun for now, but wait till you get older, when you have bills to pay and people to impress. The real world is not so kind, especially to people who are different. Zhīdào le ma?”
“Zhīdào le,” April muttered.
“Now get going. Text me when you get to school,” Mama said.
April nodded, planted a kiss on Mama’s cheek, and jammed her feet into a pair of red Converse.
“See you tonight!” she called to Shirley before hightailing out the front door.
It was only a five-minute walk to the school bus stop, and the warm August sun was already beating down on her. As she rounded a corner, April felt her phone buzz. One new notification from Starring You! popped up. Her heart skipped.
249 people are viewing your audition tape right now!
Copyright © 2026 by Wendy Lu. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
