Being Sara (Home Run Edition)

Chapter 1: Red Carpet Dreams

It’s Oscar Night and there’s excitement in the air. All of Hollywood’s biggest stars have come out. Wearing expensive designer clothing, they step out of stretch limousines. Hanging around their necks are diamonds, sapphires, emeralds and pearls as big as olives. Smiling for photographs and looking fabulous, they walk the red carpet with confidence.

Nearly one billion people around the world are watching these events unfold on live television. From New York to Paris, the best of show business is seen around the globe.

Back at her Malibu beach house, Sara-Elizabeth takes one last look at herself in the mirror. She admires the fancy dress she had custom-made for tonight. Meanwhile, her makeup artist applies the finishing touches to her face. Her friends probably wouldn’t recognize her all made up. That’s because she normally wears a pair of comfy blue pajama pants.

Sara says a quick goodbye to Jessica, her three-foot-long pet iguana. Then she steps out the door and into a zebra-striped Hummer limousine. It’s only the best for the most promising newcomer Hollywood has seen in years.

On the way to the Oscars, a Young Jeezy song plays loudly on the stereo. Sara sticks her head out of the Hummer’s oversized moonroof and feels the wind whip through her hair. Cruising down Ventura Boulevard, she takes it all in.

The Hummer, with its tinted windows, comes rolling up to the theater. Sara ducks back inside, grabbing her handheld mirror and taking one last look at herself. “Looking good,” she whispers. “I am ready to go.”
Taking a deep breath as the car slows, Sara is ready to make her grand entrance. Her driver opens the door slowly. The flood of noise breaks through and rushes into the car. Sara steps out onto the red carpet and suddenly it all becomes very real.

The paparazzi turn their attention to Sara. They gather around her with flashbulbs snapping. Being a star feels exactly the way Sara had always imagined it would.

“Sara, look over here!”

“Who are you wearing tonight, Sara?”

“Just one more shot before you head in!”

“Do you think you’re going to win?”

Sara’s mind begins to wander as she passes through the crowd. What if I do win? she wonders. The possibilities are endless!
In the midst of these thoughts, the flashbulbs get brighter until Sara can’t see anything else. The lights surround her. She hears her name being called out. “Sara…Sara…Sara-Elizabeth…. You’re dreaming, Sara…Wake up!”

Sara awoke to find herself in the middle of a long line. She had let herself drift off, ending up in a familiar red carpet daydream. Her father was tapping her on the arm. “Sara,” he whispered. “Hello?”
“I’m here,” she said dreamily. “I just forgot where we were for a minute.”

Looking down at the script in her hands, it all came rushing back to her. She and her father had taken a trip to New York City that morning for her very first movie audition.
Sara observed the competition surrounding her on all sides. There were hundreds of girls gathered in that line with her. They were all different sizes, shapes and ages. But they were all driven by the same dream: to be a star on the big screen.

In April of 2007, the magazine American Girl had advertised an open casting call in several major cities. The magazine was casting for a new mystery movie. It was based on one of the magazine’s characters, Kit Kittredge. They were looking to fill the role of Kit’s best friend. And they had sent the word out for girls to come out and give it a shot.

The chance to be in a movie with Abigail Breslin—the young actress who starred in Little Miss Sunshine—was too big to pass up. Sara got permission to miss a day of school and headed south to New York City. It was about ninety miles from her home in the town of New Paltz, New York. She just had to take her shot at making that red carpet dream a reality.

Not surprisingly, a “few” other people had the same idea. When Sara and her father had shown up in Manhattan, they were greeted by a line that poured out of the American Girl headquarters. The line went around an entire city block. Over a thousand people had shown up to audition for a single part! The scene was electric and the competition was intense.

Just in case you have never seen one, a line of a thousand teenage girls is a sight. There were cell phones ringing every couple of seconds, and constant laughter. There was more text messaging, US Weekly-reading, and lip gloss-applying than you could possibly imagine. Most importantly, this line of teens moved very, very slowly.

Thirty-five games of Twenty Questions later, Sara and her dad felt as if they hadn’t moved very far. At one point, they had to look around to make sure the line hadn’t begun moving backward.

The line crept along like that for three hours. But as they turned the last corner of the city block, they could finally see the entrance to American Girl. The building was as beautiful as they had heard it was.

As soon as they stepped into the building, a staff member took a whole group of girls aside. She explained to them what to expect in the first audition. “We’ll call you into the auditorium. You’ll line up on stage with your toes on the blue tape. We’ll go down the line and ask each of you who you are. Then we’ll have you read the lines you’ve prepared for us,” she said looking out at the girls. “This is the process for the first audition. If you make it through to the next one, we’ll give you a number and ask you to stick around. Good luck, ladies.”

Sara’s heart started to beat a little faster. It wasn’t out of nervousness, but out of sheer excitement. About five minutes later, the auditorium door flew open and Sara’s group was called inside. Sara grabbed her script and headed through the doorway. She found the blue-tape line and put her toes on the edge of it. The rest of her group found their spots and the audition began.

“Tell us who you are. Then go ahead and read the lines from the script you brought,” a woman called out from the auditorium seats. Two men were sitting beside her, holding notebooks and looking very serious.
The first girl in line began, “My name is Denise Thomas. Should I just read my…” she cleared her throat and then began to read her lines: “Mother, I’m going to Kit’s house with Francis...”

Two more girls followed right after her. One did really well, and the other one pretty much freaked out. The girls seemed either really nervous or super confident. One forgot her lines and left the room without saying a word. The sixth girl in line had a different problem altogether: “My name is…uh…uh…wait, can I start over?”
Sara was next. She looked straight at the judges with a smile. “My name is Sara-Elizabeth,” she began, and then delivered her lines in a confident voice. “Don’t worry, Ruthie. Bad guys always get caught in the end.”

She nailed it.

After the last three girls went, Sara headed for the exit with the rest of her group. She had one foot out the door when she was pulled aside and handed a piece of paper. Sara turned it over and saw the number 116 printed on the other side. “We’d like to invite you to a second reading, so stick around and we’ll call your number a little later.” Sara, holding the piece of paper tightly, smiled brightly.

Sara rushed out of the auditorium door. She ran over to her dad and hugged him. Clutching her number tightly, she wasted no time getting out her script. She wanted to prepare for the second round of auditions.
The problem was that she was too excited to focus on the script. While beginning to daydream again, her script dropped to the floor. She leaned forward to pick it up. The one short leg of her wobbly chair caught her attention. There was a crooked line of initials making its way down the chair’s leg.

Sara reached into her pocket and pulled out her key chain. She was thinking about all the other girls who had sat in this chair before their auditions and left their initials behind. Sara decided to do the same. She grabbed her house key and carefully etched the initials “S.C.” into the wooden leg. Her dad leaned over and asked, “What are you doing, Sara?”

“I’m making history,” she said. “This is a great moment. I want to remember it—and be remembered.”

Sara had had a childhood filled with uncertainty, and had dealt with a serious medical condition. Because of this, she had learned to appreciate life’s great moments. For much of her life, she had not thought an experience like this would have been possible. As she stared down at her initials, Sara began to realize that she had become part of something special just by showing up at that audition. Getting invited to the second reading was the icing on the cake.