Swing of New York

Chapter 1

Some people have memory books or keepsake boxes. I have my charm bracelet. Every charm reminds me of a time in my life. People joke that theatre kids know pointing in their life from what show they were performing in at the time. So on my bracelet every charm represents a show.

My bracelet was a present from my parents on the opening night of The Sound of Music. It was just a local show, I was only in it because Caleb was and when I was five I refused to leave him alone. However, my Grandma said I was the cutest Gretel that she had ever seen. The first two charms were a music note and a pony. That's when I caught the bug. I found what I loved to do. Act. Sing. Dance. It became my life – acting class on Mondays, tap and ballet on Wednesdays, singing on Thursdays.

If it wasn't for Caleb it probably would have just been a hobby, I wouldn't have taken it too seriously. Sure when I was five I said that I wanted to be an actress but I also said that I wanted to be a fairy mermaid princess so it's not like anyone took me too seriously. But Caleb suggested to Mom that I should get an agent and start going to auditions. He's the one that got me to where I am.

I was seven at my first audition. It was for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I watched the movie every day for a week before it even though Georgie cried each time the Child Catcher came on the screen. I didn't get it. They said I was too young.

So I played roles in community theatre and at school. I was the Cat in The Cat in the Hat in second grade (that got me a cat charm) and young Jane in Tylville's production of Jane Eyre (a book charm). I was enjoying it and I was getting better. On stage I could be myself, in school I was rather quiet, I wasn't very comfortable with the loud children in my class who didn't understand my love for musicals and therefore dismissed me as odd.

But then we heard about Annie.

Annie was the only audition I've ever had where I really, really wanted a part. It was my movie. I dressed up as Annie for Halloween when I was six and sang Maybe at the school talent show, I knew every line of the film and had seen the show on stage twice. The waiting was awful, every day for two weeks I asked Mom a billion times if she had heard yet and she'd say 'no' and that I shouldn't get my hopes up, but then I got the call. I was going to be Molly in the national tour.

Aunt Emma went on the road with me cause Dad was working and Mom had to take care of Georgie and baby Julian.

Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, Pittsburgh. Each city was a whole new adventure. And I was with people my age who loved what I loved. Doing Annie introduced me to my best friend McKenzie. They called us the twins even though we looked nothing alike because we were always together and could finish each other's sentences. I toured for two years playing Duffy when I outgrew Molly. Afterwards I was glad to be home but I was restless, I was only eleven but Tylville was too small for me. I liked the rush of living in a big city, where not everyone knew you as the 'Willis girl – the one that sings'.

I had only been home a few months when the Mary Poppins audition came up. Playing Jane Banks on Broadway. I never thought that I could make my debut on Broadway so young. I had expected that I would need years of training then I'd studying theatre at college and then maybe after few years I'd get to Broadway. It was amazing. My short run in Mary Poppins added two charms to my bracelet – a bird and an umbrella. I got to live in New York with Caleb and do my school work online and go to professional classes and take part in activities that I could never have done at home. Mom and Dad couldn't get over how much I'd grown up when I got back home. After my time in the City that never sleeps we decided that I'd finish school in Tylville and then go back to auditioning because there weren't many parts for teenagers and they missed me too much to see me go again.

The no auditioning for professional productions was fine. I did local shows – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Grease, West Side Story. That was until I heard about Newsies.