Don't Touch (24 page)

I would have come up for air. I
would.

I should get Mom or Jordan to take a picture of this for my journal—me, in the bath, in my clothes, wondering what it feels like to drown. “It's an acting thing,” I could say. No need to explain more. But that would mean putting my head underwater again, and there's something too scary about the thoughts I just had.

I've been trying to get in Ophelia's head, but I don't want Ophelia
in me.
When I stand, my wet clothes make me so heavy, it's a struggle to lift my feet up and out of the tub.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Mandy's leaning on my locker first thing on Monday so that I'll have to deal with her. She left me messages over the weekend, but I never called back. I wouldn't have known what to say.

“I know you're mad,” Mandy says. “You're not being totally fair, but I understand.”

Mandy gets like this when she wants something settled—direct and practical. I bite my lip. “I'm not mad. Well, maybe at myself. Not at you.”

“I'm telling Nadia I won't be your understudy.”

“What?”

“I told her you didn't need one, and you don't, so I'm not going to do it.” She speaks quickly, driven.

“You don't have to do that.”

“I do. So don't worry about it.”

“Okay, well, thanks.”

I didn't like the idea of Mandy being my understudy, but I don't completely trust myself, either. “What if something happens, though? I mean, what if I really do need one?”

“You won't,” she says. “And now that you know there's no backup plan, you'll make sure you don't.”

She smiles—all done, problem solved—and spins away, asking Livia, “Did you decide about your Halloween costume?”

Nadia doesn't use me for days. I watch rehearsal to show commitment, but she barely looks at me. Then, midway through a rehearsal, Nadia calls a break and walks up the aisle with her head down like she's on her way outside. When she gets to my row, she pivots to face me. “Are you ready to work?” she asks.

“I have been.”

She tilts her head. “You know I'm worried about you.”

I nod.

“I didn't cast you so you and Peter could work out your personal problems onstage.”

“No,” I say. Lord, she thinks my freak-out was all part of some relationship drama. In a way, it is. I guess I'd rather she think that than know the truth.

She goes on. “I trust my actors to leave outside problems
outside
and to be one hundred percent focused on the task at hand when they're in this room. If you can't do that, you need to let me know that you're not up to this. We open in six weeks.”

I nod again. “I'm ready.”

She stares me down, tilts her head to measure me better, and a piece of her dark, choppy hair falls in her eye. She blows it away, gives me one last good glare, then stalks back toward the stage. I wanted so badly for her to like me. Now I would settle for indifference.

Without looking back, she says, “I'm sending you and Drew to work with Mandy while I work Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.”

Drew takes forever gathering his things, and Mandy and I stand side by side in the aisle waiting on him.

“This should be fun,” Mandy says, her face grim.

When Drew reaches us, he tosses an arm around my shoulders. We're both well-covered, but it's automatic to try and shrug away. He squeezes my upper arm with his giant hand and pulls me in tighter. The top of my head barely reaches his armpit. “Hey, sweetie,” he says. “Who's your daddy?”

“Ha-ha,” Mandy says flatly, and slides her arm into his, pulling him toward her. He sways in her direction but doesn't let me go, so we walk three in a row to the top of the aisle.

It's good for practice—touching with clothes in the middle and not freaking out. I breathe deep.

“Let her go,” Mandy says when the three of us have to squeeze through the door, and he does, but he lets go of Mandy, too, dropping back. The silence is horrible. Mandy tries to break it, turning and walking backward. “What if we blow off rehearsal and go out for fries?”

She's joking, but Drew says, “Might as well. This is busywork.”

Mandy stops walking and shoves at Drew's chest with both hands.

When he laughs, she says, “It's not busywork for me,” and turns front. We shut up the rest of the way.

When we get to our acting classroom, Mandy steps into the pool of stage light, which bounces off her hair, giving her a halo. She would be beautiful as Ophelia.

“All right,” she says, stepping out of the light and sitting at the foot of the risers. “We have the time, so we might as well work.”

Drew sits down at the piano on the far side of the space, plunking out sour notes. “This needs tuning.”

“I get it,” Mandy says. “You don't think you have anything to learn from me, you don't like me directing, you have the crappiest attitude that ever ‘tuded, but I'm responsible for this scene, so will you please, for me, try to get over yourself for, like, twenty minutes and focus?”

Drew stares, his fingers poised over the keys; then he drops the lid and swings to face Mandy, placid. “I'm ready. Direct me.”

Mandy exhales. “Thank you. Now get up.”

She leads him to the edge of the pool of light and pulls over a small table and a chair for him. “This is the first thing we see in Act Two.”

Drew snorts.

“What?”

“The first scene in Act Two is actually a nice, long Polonius scene, which got cut, just like most of my part.”

“Fine. The first scene in
our
Act Two.”

“Caddie, did you have any of your lines cut?”

“No,” I say.

“There are only a couple of female parts in the whole play,” says Mandy, “and Ophelia doesn't get that many lines to begin with.”

Drew shrugs. “I just think it's interesting who Nadia puts her faith in, when some people can't get through a simple stage kiss without having a breakdown.” He drops that bomb with easy innocence, and Mandy's mouth hangs open.

How many other people did she tell?

“Can we please just work on the scene?” I say.

Mandy gathers herself. “Yes. So, Ophelia, you'll enter from over here.” She leads me to one side of the playing space and lowers her voice. “I'm sorry he's being such an ass. It doesn't have anything to do with you.”

“I know.”

“He's my boyfriend. I tell him everything. Even when I shouldn't.”

“It's okay. I don't care what you say about me.”

“I didn't say anything bad, I just—”

“It's okay, Mandy, let's work.”

Mandy pivots between Drew and me. She looks lost. “So, this opening part is setup for the speech where we're going to break from reality and bring Peter in.”

“Because Peter's not in enough scenes already,” Drew says.

“
I
didn't cast you as Polonius, Drew, so stop taking it out on me,” Mandy says. “I didn't get the part I wanted either, did I?”

“No,” he says, “Caddie got it because she's so good.”

“You guys! Please!” I jump into the scene because I don't know how else to make them stop: “Alas! my lord, I have been so affrighted!” I run to Drew and grab his arms, gloves and sleeves between our skin.

Don't touch,
I think and then stifle it.

Practice, practice.

I've caught him off-guard, which is right for the scene, and it takes him a second to catch up. “With what, in the name of God?”

“This is where we'll bring Peter in,” Mandy says, “but for now let's do the reality of it.”

I go into the speech, imagining Peter doing all the things Ophelia describes. The improv that we did with him chasing me—it scared me, but it did help me understand. Ophelia loves Hamlet, but he's turned into someone threatening.

“Mad for thy love?” Drew asks.

“So when you say that,” Mandy says, “let's make it clear you've already decided that's what it is.”

“Can we get through it once?” Drew says.

Mandy sighs but manages to make her voice positive, “Sure, yeah, keep going.”

“My lord, I do not know,” I say. “But truly I do fear it.”

“What said he?” Drew takes me by the elbow and holds me too close, so as I tell the story I pull away and face out, pretending Peter's there.

“He took me by the wrist and held me hard . . .”

To my side, Drew's acting up a storm, nodding and making faces in reaction to everything I say. Mandy looks like she's choking. When I reach the end of the speech, Drew tugs at my arm. “Come, go with me; I will go seek the king. This is the very ecstasy of love—”

Mandy cuts him off. “Great, so let's go back to Caddie's speech.”

“
Really
?” Drew says. “We
just
got to my part.”

“Well, the whole scene is your part,” Mandy says. “Not just when you're talking.”

“No small parts? Only small actors?” says Drew.

“I stopped because I didn't feel like you were listening. You were
acting
like you were listening.”

“Oh, my
God
!” Drew says, and lurches around to brace himself against the curtained back wall. “Do you hear this? She thinks she's Nadia.”

“I do not,” Mandy says. “But that
is
what she's been teaching us—if you've been listening.”

“This was
not
a good idea,” Drew says, spinning around to face us.

“What?” Mandy says.

“For you to direct me in a scene. For you to direct at all.” He sounds like he's pleading for reason. “You're still a student.”

“So are you,” Mandy says, “and they're letting you do Shakespeare, but I guess
that's
okay because you're
such an expert
.”

Drew deflates, sinking back against the curtained wall, and mutters, “It's not the same.”

“What's with you?” Mandy's dropped her bravado. She's just hurt.

I should say something, stop this. Mandy and Drew have their problems, but we were just talking about how much Mandy loves him, and I think he loves her. They're digging a hole they might not be able to climb out of.

But the best I can manage is, “Should I give you guys some privacy?”

They answer together in a definitive “No!”

“I'm just doing my job,” Mandy says, recharged.

“Your job?” says Drew. “You mean the job that Nadia gave you to keep you from being all pissy that she didn't cast you in the play? That job?”

“She wants to mentor me,” Mandy says.

“You can tell yourself that,” says Drew. “Seems like a bad idea to put someone in charge of other actors when she wasn't good enough to land a part herself.”

Mandy stands straight, but there's something inside her that's fallen down. Otherwise she'd be pushing back, incinerating him where he stands.

“Caddie agrees with me,” Drew says. “Don't you, Caddie?”

“I don't.” But Mandy's already gone inside herself. She's not hearing me.

“She doesn't want to do your whole ‘break from reality' scene either. She'd say so if she wasn't terrified you'd drop her.”

“I'm not,” I say, but I hate that he can see my fear.

“Okay then, tell her,” he says. “You don't think it's a good idea.”

“It's not that I don't think it's a good idea . . .” The polished wood floor feels very far away. I'm too high above it, off balance.

“Then what?” Mandy says. “Why are you being so mean? Both of you.”

“Mandy, I'm not—” She cuts me off.

“No, you are. You're both undermining everything I do, and what I don't get is why?” She looks between Drew and me, and then inhales sharply, a question she can't ask.

“Oh, my Lord, no,” I say. If I'd told Mandy everything, she would know how ridiculous it is to even think there might be something between Drew and me.

“Caddie, we can talk more about this later,” Drew says, and stretches a hand out toward me like we're best buds, or more. His steps seem to tip the floor, tilt me toward Mandy—I'm dizzy—and then he's gone.

She stands facing the door, not looking at me.

“I don't get it,” she says.

“Mandy, you
know
there's nothing going on between me and Drew. He's trying to piss you off.”

“I know,” she says, “because I know how obsessed you are with Peter.”

“I'm not—”

“Save it,” she says. “I'm sick of you telling me things that aren't true.”

Her words are a slap. “Mandy, I never said a word to Drew about the scene, I swear.”

“But you don't like it.”

“It's not that. It's . . .”

“Just say what you mean.”

She spins toward me, making me wobble—it's as bad as standing on the diving board, this falling apart.

She says, “Look, are you still mad about the understudy thing, because I told Nadia I wouldn't do it. Even if you dropped out of the play, I wouldn't do it.”

She has tears in her eyes, and I feel so guilty for not trusting her. I didn't try to wreck her scene or steal her boyfriend or whatever other evil thing she thinks I might do, but I haven't been fair.

“Mandy—”

“I tried to be so nice to you,” she says. “I tried to help you fit in, even when you acted super weird.”

“I know. You've been great, I—”

“I tried to help you with Peter.”

“I
know.
I'm sorry, Mandy, I thought—I thought something different.”

“You thought I was out to get you,” she says. “That I set you up to fail.”