Bounce Read Online Free PDF Page A

quite figure me out.
    There is, of course, more waiting. I’m getting hot under these lights. Hot and bored. So I take the mic and start singing “Roxanne” by the Police.
    I hear a few laughs. Saul, the sound guy, pulls his headphones away from his ears. “Hey, kid. You got a really good voice.”
    I’m about to thank him when I see the first girl making a beeline toward me. She stops like she hits a force field, and makes a sharp turn to face the tables where Adam, Brooks, and Mia sit with a few other people I don’t know.
    â€œRoxanne Marguiles,” she states, like an inmate sounding off.
    â€œOkay,” Brooks says from the darkness. “Whenever you’re ready.”
    Roxanne walks over and sits next to me on the couch. She’s wearing a bow tie, which I’ve never seen a girl wear even though this one is feminine, red and pink, and her platinum blond hair is perfectly smoothed, not a hair out of place. It might actually be a wig. She’s also sweating so badly her makeup’s running.
    â€œHey, I’m Grey,” I say, offering my hand.
    She clears her throat. Looks at my hand. “Start,” she whispers.
    â€œOh. Okay.”
    I look at the pages and read the same dumb lines about I love you, Emma, you’re everything, Emma that I read earlier. I’m proud of myself for managing to deliver them without too much sarcasm.
    Then I look up, waiting for Roxanne-slash-Emma to hit me with her amazing lines back. But she just blinks at me with watery blue eyes and clears her throat. “Can you start over?” she whispers. “I forgot my lines.”
    â€œUm . . .” I look around, but get no help from the twenty people in the room who actually are in this line of work. “Sure.”
    So I read them again. Maybe a little more sarcastically.
    Here we go. Roxanne’s turn. I look up, ready for them.
    Her eyes are filling with tears. She’s about to cry, but then she gives me a wide, wide smile, which shocks me for a second because she has adult braces— a lot of them—and I didn’t expect that. I had no idea.
    â€œI am so sorry,” she stage whispers. “I forgot them again!”
    I hand her my stack of pages. “Do you want—?”
    â€œNo!” She puts her hands up, like I’ve just offered her monkey brains. “I couldn’t. I’m a professional .”
    She’s still whispering. I don’t know how she’s missed the fact that we’re both mic’ed up and Saul is on a ladder, holding a boom mic over us.
    â€œCan you start over?” she whispers. “Just one more time?”
    Oh, hell no. Jesus. What the hell do I do now?
    Fortunately, Mia comes over. “Roxanne,” she says, guiding her off the couch like she’s an eighty-year-old woman, “we’ll try again a little later, okay? Nothing to worry about. Everyone gets nervous.”
    I shake my head. Somebody ought to just tell her. She’s in the wrong line of work.
    After Roxanne comes Sheila, who manages to read her lines, but with a lisp. Cute, in all honesty, but cute like a three-year-old. Then comes Amanda, a brunette knockout. Her breath smells like onions and garlic. And corpse. I almost puke when she leans in and speaks her lines. Then comes Molly, who has no visible afflictions. She’s decent, in fact, but has no spark. No soul. No . . . ​style.
    Two hours pass this way. I’m sweating under these lights, and I’m getting more tired by the second. I ask for breaks. Brooks, Adam, and Mia take turns shooting me down. This couch is my prison.
    I learned the lines the first time I read them, so I make a few paper airplanes out of the script pages and try to peg Adam with them. That gets boring. So I make up a song and call it “Emma-Love.” It’s decent. People clap when I finish singing it.
    Then I hit a wall. My hangover shows up and