All the Way (6 page)

“You want to go eat outside?” I suggested to Ariel and Gina.

“It's a little cold, don't you think?” Gina said.

Yeah. It was freezing out. I guess I just wanted a break from all the pressure of being on display and having to act like I didn't care.

“Okay, we'll stay here.” I headed for the cafeteria line. “But don't be surprised if I pig out.”

“Bad choice of words, don't you think?” Ariel said. “Considering?”

“
Oink, oink,
and I don't care who hears me!” I said defiantly.

We went through the cafeteria line, and I opted for two servings of tapioca pudding instead of lunch—I needed some comfort food. Then we found a spot at our regular table.

Of course everyone stopped talking the minute we sat down.

Please just let this day end,
I thought.

But it dragged on forever.

So here's a brief recap of the afternoon: (1) another cute guy whose name I didn't know made a point of saying hi to me in the hall; (2) Molly's friend Isabel muttered, “I'm surprised you have time to do your homework, with your active social life,” when I turned in my essay in English, and Tyler North smiled when he overheard her; and (3) someone left a sticky on my locker with a phone number and the message “Call me next time you're in the mood.”

Could I really survive another eight weeks of this till school was over?

I didn't even care about the prom anymore. I just wanted to be a nobody again. I hadn't realized how lucky I was when I was invisible.

 

 

 

When the last bell finally rang, I hurried toward the door where I usually met Ariel to ride home with her. (Some days Ariel drove; some days my mom let me take our Honda Civic.) I couldn't wait to get out of school and away from all the gossiping and the stares.

But as I was about to leave, I noticed Mr. Richards, the drama teacher, putting up a poster in the front hall. It said:

Cool! My face lit up for the first time all day. With all the Joey drama going on, I'd totally forgotten about the upcoming musical. I'd been planning to audition for it all year. I'd always wanted to have a part in a school play, and this was my last chance. And besides, the one guy at Norton I had a huge crush on was guaranteed to be in the cast. Tyler North was the school's most talented actor/singer. According to Ariel, he had been fantastic in last year's production of
Rent,
and he was totally likely to get a big part in this year's play.

I ran out to the parking lot and over to Ariel's car.

“The musical auditions are Thursday,” I announced happily, feeling so glad to have something positive to focus on. “The sign just went up.”

“Really?” Ariel looked psyched, too.

“Are you going to try out?” I asked her. Not that I didn't want the competition—I thought it would be cool to do the musical with Ariel. I just didn't want her getting my part, the big lead opposite Tyler North!

She nodded. “I think so. Is it
Guys and Dolls
? That's what I heard, but everyone hoped Mr. Richards would change his mind and do
Phantom
instead.”

“No, it's
Guys and Dolls
,” I said. “Wow,
Phantom
would have been great, wouldn't it?”

“There are more parts in
Guys and Dolls
, though.”

“True,” I said. “They did it at Woodward Baines a few years ago, and I remember the cast was huge.”

“So you already know all the songs and everything?”

“No, I didn't try out. I didn't even go see it, so I have no idea what it's about. Do you?”

“Um . . . guys? And dolls?” Ariel played dumb. “Don't ask me.”

“Wouldn't it be amazing if I got a lead part opposite Tyler North?” I blurted out. “Then we'd have to hang out together all the time at rehearsals, and maybe he'd start to like me, and ask me out, and we'd start dating, and then he'd take me to the prom!”

Okay, I was getting carried away.

“You've got to get a part first,” Ariel said. “Maybe we'd better go rent the video and figure out which parts we want to try out for.”

“Yeah.” I snapped back to reality.

Hey—can you blame me for wanting to think about something happy for a change? I'd had a pretty bummed-out day.

“Blockbuster it is,” Ariel said, starting her engine.

“Great.” I flipped on the radio to K-Rock so I could sing along and get my voice warmed up.

I was halfway through the second chorus of Kelly Clarkson's “Since U Been Gone” when a terrible thought hit me. My stomach clenched.

“Does Joey sing?” I asked Ariel, who had pulled into Blockbuster's parking lot.

“No way. Are you kidding? He's such a homophobe, he wouldn't be caught dead doing a musical. And don't worry—Molly couldn't carry a tune if her life depended on it,” Ariel added. “If she sang in the shower, I think the water would turn off in protest.”

“Excellent,” I said as we headed into the store. I really didn't want Molly or Joey anywhere near the high school musical, spoiling my fun. “Oooh, look. The new season of
The OC
is out on DVD!” I noticed, veering off in the wrong direction.

“Hold on.” Ariel grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the musicals. “We've got trouble.”

As she jerked me around, I saw what she meant. There, smack in the middle of the musicals aisle, was a gorgeous girl with long wavy black hair, cherub lips, and pale blue eyes, holding the one and only copy of
Guys and Dolls
.

I recognized her right away as one of Molly's friends—the other girl who'd been sitting with Molly's crowd at the donkey ball game Saturday night.

“Who is that?” I whispered to Ariel.

“Natalie Anschell,” Ariel whispered back. “She's got a voice like Mariah Carey. You should have seen her last year, tearing up the stage in
Rent.
I know Mr. Richards will cast her.”

Shit. I knew the competition would be tough—Ariel had already told me there were a lot of senior girls who could sing and act really well—but it sucked coming face-to-face with one of my rivals so soon.

It doubly sucked that she was friends with Molly, who wasn't really my rival or enemy or anything, but she acted like she was. I mean, Molly clearly wanted to kill me for having sex with her guy. Which I didn't even do.

I took a deep breath and marched up to Natalie.

“Hi,” I said. “Are you renting that?” I nodded at the video in her hand.

“Duh.” She glared at me.

“Well, could you please return it as soon as you've watched it?” I asked nicely. “Because Ariel and I want to try out for the musical, too.”

Natalie just stared at me wide-eyed and laughed. “Sorry, I promised all my friends they could borrow it when I'm done,” she said without an ounce of regret.

“Are you kidding?” Ariel looked shocked. “You're not returning it before the auditions?”

Natalie shrugged. “That's life after late fees,” she said. “Get used to it.”

Oh-kay,
I thought.
Be as bitchy as you want
. No way was I letting her stop me from getting a part.

Ariel and I spun around and walked out of the store without speaking.

“Now what?” I asked on the way home. “How are we going to learn any of the songs in this thing?”

“I know ‘Luck Be a Lady,' ” Ariel said and instantly launched into a big Broadway-style rendition of it. I hate to say this, but her voice was really loud in the small car. Too loud.

“That was good.” I pretty much lied. I didn't have the heart to tell her I didn't like the way she belted it out at the top of her lungs.

“Thanks,” Ariel beamed. “Too bad I can't audition with that. It's not a girl's part.”

“Oh. Right.” Secretly I was thinking it was a
good
thing she couldn't do that song for her audition, because she'd never get cast if she did. “So what are you going to sing?”

“No clue,” Ariel admitted. “I'm going home to see if my mom has the CD or something.”

Good plan. Aunt Sharon had a lot of musicals.

“Call me if you find it,” I said, hopping out of the car. “And good luck!”

“You, too,” she called after me, like we were in this together.

Yeah, I guess we were. Sort of. I was just hoping I had a better shot at getting a part than she did.

I ran into the house, dropped my stuff, and then hurried out to the studio over the garage for some privacy while I called Rachel for advice. I told her all about Natalie and what had happened at Blockbuster.

“She sounds just like Nicki Richmond, doesn't she?” Rachel commiserated.

“God, you're right!” I said. Nicki Richmond was this smug, conceited girl who owned about thirty pairs of Lucky jeans and thought she'd stolen Sam from me because he rebounded right into her wide-open arms when I broke up with him. “You've nailed it: she has Nicki's same snotty in-your-face attitude and the looks to back it up.”

“Okay, here's what you do,” Rachel said. “Forget her. Download all the songs from iTunes and start learning the ones for the female leads. I'll go to the Blockbuster here and see if they have the movie. I'll call you if I find it.”

Now
that's
what I call a best friend.

I glanced out the window toward Molly's house, wondering whether she was home and, if she was, what she was doing. Homework? Plotting ways to get Joey back? Spying on me?

But her bedroom was dark.

That's a relief,
I thought. After all the stares and comments at school today, I didn't want to look out my own window and see Molly glaring back at me. Not that I didn't deserve it. I mean, I'd been peeping into
her
windows for months now.

I went back to my room in the main house, downloaded the songs from
Guys and Dolls
, and Googled the play to find out what it was all about.

From what I could quickly tell, the story was set in the 1940s or '50s. The leading man was a character named Nathan Detroit who ran the “oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York.” Nathan was engaged to Miss Adelaide, and in the end they got married.

Perfect! That's all I needed to know.

I figured Tyler would be going out for the part of Nathan, so I wanted to play Miss Adelaide. We'd probably have to kiss onstage, and we'd get married in the end!

I could just see it now: Tyler's wavy, sandy-blond hair falling forward as he bent down to kiss me. (I'm short, he's tall.) I'd tilt my head up, showing the audience my best profile, as his muscular arms encircled me . . .

We'd have to rehearse it a lot, of course, to get it right. And who knew what might happen after that? The prom was only three weeks away, and everyone knows leading men always fall in love with their leading ladies.

Why wouldn't he want to take me to the prom, once we'd spent all that quality time together?

Bottom line: I just
had
to get the part of Miss Adelaide. Getting a good part in the musical was the key to everything that could turn my life around.

 

 

 

“You look awesome!” Ariel gasped, staring at me in the restroom after school on Thursday. We were both getting ready for the auditions. And by getting ready, I mean changing our clothes and trying not to throw up from nerves.

“Thanks,” I said, sticking another hairpin into my crazy, retro hairdo.

“I'm serious, where did you get that dress? It's, like, perfect!”

I had just changed out of my Guess jeans and tan cashmere cowl-neck sweater into a slinky burgundy red vintage satin cocktail dress I'd bought at a thrift store. The dress was a little dingy, especially around the neckline, so I'd sewn on some dark burgundy lace and sequins along the seam lines to jazz it up. I added a sequin gardenia to the front left side of the skirt, too. The dress was slit up one side, exposing lots of leg, and I was wearing fishnets with a pair of vintage spiky black patent leather heels that my mom got from
her
mom, who was a shoe fanatic and bought lots of shoes she only wore once or twice, so they were still in great shape.

“Yeah,” I said, beaming. “I really worked on this. The dress was at St. Teresa's Charity Shop, but I changed it.”

“You are so going to be a fashion designer,” Ariel said. Ariel was sort of my own private little cheerleading section. It was so nice—she was totally supportive of everything I did.

“Let's hope so,” I said. “That's the plan, anyway.”

I leaned into the mirror to fix a piece of hair that kept falling into my eyes. I had worked hard to come up with a retro hairstyle that looked '40s but wasn't hideous—not an easy assignment, if you ask me. I also had the extreme makeup thing going on, too, with deep red lipstick and eyebrows arched halfway up my forehead.

“We'd better go,” Ariel said, checking her watch. “Mr. Richards said to be there and sign up by three thirty.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath and stuck my head high in the air, which is what I'd been doing every time I stepped into a hallway or classroom at Norton. The past few days hadn't been quite as bad as Monday—most people weren't staring at me anymore or making snide comments. But Molly's friends still treated me like scum, and I still felt like I had something to prove.