Damsel Distressed (23 page)

There's a single knock before Grant opens the door and enters dressed in his stage blacks with his headset over his messy hair.

“How are you feeling, Gen? You're going to be great. Are you ready?”

It seems he might be almost as nervous as me.

“I'm…I guess I'm okay. I mean, there's no stopping now, is there? And of course, I figure if I fall down dead from embarrassment, you'll be the one to blame, so I can at least take solace in that.” Adrenaline is coursing through my veins, and my attempt to lighten the mood has left a quiver in my lips that I can't seem to shake.

I stand and face him, all decked in my dirty, swampy Act I garb.

He looks me in the face like he's got something important to say, but he can't find the words.

I open my arms wide, and he breaks into a smile. His eyes look relieved and worried all at the same time. He wraps me in a hug that almost crushes me in half, and I look up into his face as he looks into mine.

“I'm so unbelievably proud of you,” he says.

“Thanks.” I pause. “I'm so scared.”

He moves his hands toward my face, but stops short.

“Makeup.”

He smiles and uses one gentle finger to tilt my chin up so that I'm looking in his eyes.

It feels like an electric current pulsing between us—or maybe a magnetic pull.

That gravity.

His gravity.

That makes me spin and keeps me right where I belong. He looks at me for longer than I expect, and I can't shake the feeling that he's not doing or saying the thing he came in to do or say.

“Just go out there and stare into those lights. Let the glow drown out all of the audience members, and put on a great show—for me. Pretend that it's just me and maybe your dad. And your mom. All the people who love you and want you to have this moment to shine. Break a leg, Gen. I've got to go. We're at places.”

He drops his hands and turns in one motion.

I nod my head, forcing the tears back behind my well-adorned eyes, before reciting the traditional echo, “Thank you, places.”

23

T
he first few numbers don't involve me.

I'm standing in the wings listening to the audience laugh and clap, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to pass out. I review my lines and try to keep it together, and I remind myself of where I'm supposed to go when I enter. Cross downstage, say a few lines, and then, of course, just belt my face off. I keep waiting to lose consciousness as the songs drone on and on, and I feel like hours have passed while I wait.

And then I blink, and I'm suddenly certain that I've missed my cue. I hear the Minstrel repeat his line.

Oh my God, that was my cue.

I inhale deeply, as if I might never breathe again (and that may, in fact, be the case), and I step on to the stage.

The lights, bright and blinding, shield me from all of the faces looking up at me expectantly.

I adopt the posture of the woebegone princess, soaking and covered in seaweed from her unconventional entrance through the castle's moat.

The audience chuckles.

But not at me.

At Winnifred. This princess who's skin I get to share tonight. I take it in, and as I say my first few lines, I soak up the adrenaline. I feel like someone else.

My heart swells, and my head focuses intently on the words my fellow actors are saying. I'm basking in the blazing-surface-of-the-sun-like heat of the stage lights. I melt away and carry myself across the stage as somebody other than Imogen.

I laugh as her. Joke as her. I'm confident, as she is. I am unafraid because she is.

I'm singing, hitting each note—or at least getting pretty close. And I'm remembering more words than I'm forgetting. My brain is both completely focused on my stage actions and, at the same time, completely distracted by the absurdity of my presence on the stage at all. I glance out into the bright white of the lights. Suddenly, with my arms reaching toward the sky, my smile painfully tight, I realize that I've finished my first song.

For the briefest of instants, I imagine my mother sitting in the audience of a show she'll never see, watching her daughter sing a song she'll never hear, and applauding her triumph. I can hear her clapping and cheering in my mind.

But the clapping isn't hers. It belongs to the crowd.

Their cheers and laughter and whoops of approval grow and swell, and it all crashes into me like the heat of an open oven door.

I sprint through the wings and find Brice standing there, holding my next costume piece. Without a second thought, I rip the dirty potato sack dress down past my shoulders. No one backstage spares a single glance for me in my camisole and bloomers. I literally don't have time be insecure or to even care that, technically, I'm in my skivvies in the same small space as fifty other people. Brice drops the next costume over my shoulders and whips me around, tying things tight and tapping me on my shoulders while I head back to the side of the stage.

I've taped cue cards to the walls on both sides so I can glance at them each time I have to enter or exit. I double-check myself to be sure I know what's happening, and then I walk back out into the blistering lights.

I'm in the home stretch of the first act. All I have to do is get through the most embarrassing dance number in the history of the world. When we worked on it this afternoon, I kept saying, “Don't worry. I've got a plan. Don't worry.” And I managed to convince everyone that there were more important issues to address.

But now I'm standing around dozens of other girls dressed as princesses, and they're about to start this huge dance number, and I know there's no chance of my dancing it. Even worse, the whole point of the scene is for Winnifred and Prince Dauntless to out-dance the other couples.

I'm about to lose a marathon dance-off against twenty girls and
also
ruin the plot of this sixty-yearold musical in front of almost a thousand people.

The music plays, and the couples start their choreography.

I feel like a deer ready to be run down on a highway, and I catch a few wide-eyed glances as I stand there, center stage while the rest of the girls dance.

I feel the mask of Winnifred slipping down as the fear climbs up my spine.

And then Andrew is at my side, with his hand out for mine. He starts making up words, loudly, so they're heard over the music. “I don't know the steps to this one either. Let's just show them a Royal Freestyle!”

And then he throws himself to the ground in a breakdancing move, stands, takes my hands, and starts jumping around. The audience loves it. The room shakes with laughter. I hesitate for a second, looking out into the audience at the hidden, shadowy faces.

And then I start jumping and bouncing and laughing, too. I'm instantly out of breath and red-faced. Thank goodness my stalling took up part of the song because, when it's over and I step backstage, I fall to my knees and almost hyperventilate.

Stagehands walk through, whispering, “Tenminute intermission, guys. Ten minutes.”

“Thank you, ten” echos around me.

“Jessica, grab Imogen a bottle of water,” Andrew demands before checking on me one more time. “You okay?”

He's on his knees beside me, and his face is just as sweaty as mine is. He's smiling, and he takes the bottle of water and opens it for me.

“Yeah. Thanks,” I say. “You really saved me out there.”

Somehow I feel surprised about it, which means I don't have much faith in the guy, but he really stepped up.

“Don't mention it. Dust yourself off and get your game face back on.” He smacks me on the left shoulder as I stand and take a giant gulp of water.

The cold burns as it sloshes down into my growling stomach. I haven't eaten since the Crestwood High School Theatre Troop Booster Club moms brought sandwiches around noon.

“Where's Imogen?” I hear Brice's voice calling through the wing. “There you are! We've gotta get you changed. You good?”

“I'm good.”

“Of course you're good. You're freaking fabulous.” He smiles at me, and I laugh so hard my cheeks ache.

As everyone sets for Act II, Brice ushers me into a corner and helps me out of and into smy dress. My heart is still flying, and I can feel that my face is fire engine red and drenched in sweat. He reaches up and dabs at my face as if on cue.

“And here's a little more powder to set your lipstick so Captain Tight Pants Junior doesn't get red all over his face.”

There it is. I had forgotten. Again.

“Oh my God. Brice, I totally forgot. I can't actually kiss Andrew Bates. I mean, I really can't!”

“You can and you will. Now get back in there.” He swats me on the butt as I walk to my entrance and check my cards one more time.

I trip on my way into position, but the crowd just laughs because it seems like it fits the character. There are a couple of scenes, and then it's almost time for my solo and the most embarrassing moment of my life to unfurl in front of a live audience.

I'm going to kiss Andrew Bates. And my first kiss ever is going to be this scripted thing happening between two people who aren't even real.

The lights cook my brains like scrambled eggs, and I feel my costume is soaked with sweat even though I'm no longer dancing. My brain's on autopilot, and I move into position and my mouth says words, I guess, but I can't really be sure.

I hear Andrew's voice and my voice, and then I'm looking at his face, but not really because I can't remember what I'm supposed to do next. And then my solo, after the kiss, is about to start and I can't remember the first line of my song, but as the music starts, I begin singing which means apparently we kissed, but I really can't remember anything about it, even though it must have happened.

Every single thing seems to whiz by me in a blur.

In and out of the wings, costumes flying, laughter, and the sound of dozens of voices singing all together.

And then, we're bowing. I feel like one of those people who talks about having split personality or whatever and losing time because, if somebody offered me a million dollars in cash to tell them the details of how I moved my body and said words and sang songs over the past several hours, I would walk away broke.

We're all holding hands, and the parents and grandparents and kid siblings who were dragged to the show are all clapping and cheering and whooping for us. At the end, my castmates shove me toward the front of the stage and gesture for me, giving me a special little moment in the limelight.

The feeling of the applause soaks me to the core. I feel like if someone struck a match, the sound of their praise would ignite and I would go right up in flames.

And I briefly wonder, who are they celebrating?

The uncouth but lovable character in the show? Or the hot-mess teenager who—as Mrs. Gild announced in her curtain speech—just learned the part today and filled in at the last minute so the show could go on?

I think, just maybe, they're clapping for the both of us.

24

E
ither I survived my stage debut or the afterlife looks a lot like a high school lobby following a musical performance. Parents and students are rushing about. Castmates are half-in/half-out of costumes, hugging friends and family, and I'm looking around, saying thank yous to strangers who are being so terribly sweet.

As many of my cast and crewmates greet their parents, I wish I had my phone with me—that it wasn't tucked into a pocket of my jeans on the floor of some dressing room. I wonder if my dad got my message. I didn't think I'd care, but it would have been nice for him to have seen it.

“Oh, Imogen,
darling
! You were brilliant. Just wonderful and amazing!”

I recognize Evelyn's voice before I turn around. I spin and look to her left, to her right, over her head. A hopeful grin is stretched across my face. “Is my dad here?” My brain knows he's not, but I can't stop the hope from crawling up the back of my neck as I crane to look over the crowd.