Dream, Annie, Dream: Chapters 1–7

Ground control was annoyingly loud and insistent this morning.

Although I knew the story by heart, I still giggled at its sheer silliness—her expanding and shrinking!

Flamingos used as croquet mallets!

I stuffed the book inside the back of my jean shorts and clambered down.

If I curled it—even when I used hairspray—within hours it would resume its natural state: a stick-straight black waterfall that tumbled just below my shoulders. Except for when I had it up in a ponytail, which was almost always in the summer to keep it from glomming onto my neck with sweat.

As you all know, the Topeka Repertory Theater puts on a summer production every year.

Unlike the older, more established Topeka Civic Theatre, Topeka Repertory had only been around for a few years.

But it quickly established a name for itself when it wowed everyone with its flashy and professional production of Oklahoma! last summer.

Annie the movie had come out a few years ago, and the rags-to-riches story about the spunky little redheaded orphan was our absolute favorite.

As Ms. Tracy rambled on and Jessica read through the handout next to me, a rumpled and frazzled lady who had just huffed and puffed her way into the theater caught my attention.

Her mousy brown hair was a partially grown out, chin-length perm, and her oversized faded camo-green G.I. Joe T-shirt was half tucked in, half out.

Ms. Tracy turned with a flourish and held out her arm toward the guest like she was the Queen of England.

We have a bona fide Hollywood director on board!

But not even the late-June Kansas heat could quell my excitement about playing Annie in this year’s community theater production.

My little brother, Tak, careened down the stairs, his black hair sticking up like little demon horns. He would have toppled headfirst if I hadn’t been there to stop his forward momentum.

She was not on board with my name change, but after hearing my real one butchered at the elementary school graduation ceremony, she relented.

Then he dribbled circles around me, like he was asking for me to steal it from him. Even though he was forty years old, he was still pretty spry.

Dad looked so excited that he might have actually piqued my interest that I almost felt sorry for him.

I have to admit, my mind wanders a little when he gets on these tangents.

He didn’t have much money, so he created some matrix that determined which schools in the US were cheapest but paid the most for their graduate teaching assistants, and then he took cost-of-living expenses into account and ta-da!

Inside on the dinner table was a large platter of battered and golden-fried little fishies, slivered onions, and red bell peppers tossed in an oil-and-vinegar dressing with parsley and garlic.

Sure enough, my mom’s expertly sliced onions and red peppers were mixed in with big uneven chunks that looked like they were hacked at with an ax.

“Wow, thank you for helping with dinner!” As my dad praised Tak, he looked up at my mom sheepishly. We all knew that supervising my little brother with a sharp blade probably wasn’t as much fun as shooting baskets across the street.

“It’s like when she said she was going to be a princess like Diana, and you actually said that was a great idea.”
Ugh! I couldn’t believe my mom had to bring that up. I was six then! And highly impressionable.

Plush ivory-colored carpet covered almost all the floors in her house.

Even though the Kellys wore shoes in their house most of the time, the carpet seemed resistant to dirt and stayed the same light ivory, day in, day out.

Jessica jumped onto the cotton-candy-pink comforter that covered her canopy bed, and closed its sheer lavender-colored drapes embroidered with butterflies around her.

Jessica sighed with exasperation.

I peekaboo’d through the light purple canopy drapes a few more times until we were both laughing so hard we could barely breathe.

Ms. Tracy had told us that it was okay to dress casual for auditions. That we should be comfortable but not sloppy.

Jennifer delivered her rendition of “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile.”

Unfortunately, “Maybe” is a pretty sad and depressing song. This kid’s bouncing and smiley version of it was kind of...confusing? Like I wasn’t sure if she was trying to be ironic?

I looked over to my right, where the piano player had his hands poised over the black and white keys.

As the opening notes to the song played, I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering all the sadness I conjured up at Jessica’s house when we were practicing.

I mustered up all the sadness from that time and put it into my singing.

That, combined with how Sam sighed, long and loud, after Natalie finished her song, did not bode well.

Instead of her stylish acid-wash jean shorts and pastel polo shirt that she often wore, she was dressed in a drab, oversized dress and a ratty gray cardigan.

“I heard this new doctor is good with allergies too.”
As if on cue, a young woman in a white jacket opened the door.

If the Kellys’ car was like Apollo’s golden chariot pulled by fiery horses across the sky, our car was like a rickety rickshaw pulled by some unfortunate guy, sweating buckets while pulling his passengers over bumpy cobblestoned streets.

When I told my dad this a while ago, he got really excited and told me that “rickshaw” actually is from the Japanese word jinrikisha, which means “human-powered vehicle.” Instead of feeling bad that I didn’t like our car, he laughed and said if he was driving a rickshaw, then it was like the next best thing to driving an actual Japanese car.