I Don't Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star Read Online Free PDF Page B

actress in the Detroit area. She had head shots, and I think she’d done some commercials or maybe industrial films (which she never forgot to remind us of) by the time we met in high school. Marci and another girl named Melissa were also in the high school acting program I auditioned for. Marci and Melissa were very best friends, they made that clear, and I would only ever be a third. I was welcomed into their inner circle, but only if I understood that their friendship came first and I would never, ever be as close to either of them as they were to each other. I didn’t really care, because I had my own best friend, Nicole, but she was supersmart and took the smart classes, and I needed some friends in my own classes. Besides, I’m pretty competitive by nature, so I enjoyed the challenge of seeing how close of a third I could be or if I could win one of them over. I never did. Once we all went our separate ways after high school, we quickly grew apart. Well, I did. Maybe they’re still close. I hope so.
    By the time we were thinking about colleges, I was at a loss. I didn’t know where to go or what I wanted to do with my life. The only place I could think of was New York, but my parents said it was too far away and they wouldn’t pay for school if I went there. My parents were always baiting me with tuition. The first time was when they pulled me out of private elementary school—they promised I could go back if I hated the public school, which I did, and then they changed their minds. They said the private school was too expensive and too far away. I tried again in high school, begging them to send me to a fancy private boarding school aboutforty-five minutes away. They said I could go there, but then I would have to pay for my own college tuition since that would eat up all their college savings. Again, I stayed in the public school. And finally, when college time came around, they conned me into staying close to home by telling me, again, that I would have to pay for myself if I went farther away. Since I can remember, all I wanted was to leave home and see the world, so I sat down with my parents and asked them seriously, how far away are we talking? What is the absolute farthest away I can go and still have you pay? Chicago was agreed upon—it was a train ride, fast flight, or a five-hour drive away, which was totally doable for a weekend if I got homesick (read: my mom missed me) or if I needed to come home for a weekend (read: laundry).
    My secret fantasy was always to be a fashion designer, but I couldn’t (and still can’t) draw, so I didn’t think I would ever get into a design school. But other than that, I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. Even though I was already taking acting classes, doing school plays, and so on, it didn’t occur to me there was a future in it. I just had fun doing it and I made some friends and it was a fun way to pass the time in high school until college, when I was sure I would really blossom. One day, in acting class, Marci announced that of the many theater programs she was considering for college, she was auditioning for an acting program at a college in Chicago and it was so exclusive that they only accepted 10 percent of the people who auditioned for it. Marci implied that an acting dilettante like myself would never get in and shouldn’t try because it was only for those who were really serious about acting. Well, Marci was right: I wasn’t serious about acting, but I was serious about Chicago, and I wasn’t really good at anything else yet. When I got home from school that night, I told my mom about Marci’s latest brag and that she thought it was too exclusive for me to get into … blah blah blah.My mom wasn’t having it. She got all fierce and said, “No one tells my daughter she can’t get in anywhere.”
    “Mom, the audition is this weekend. Today’s Tuesday. There’s no way I will get all the paperwork and crap together in