Dramarama (7 page)

Up we went, numbers one to twenty, and sat in the red-carpeted aisle, directly in front of a short flight of steps that led to the stage. My hands were sweaty and I looked over my music again, though there was really no point. I couldn’t read the notes.

The first few people up were unremarkable—nice, on-key voices, solid acting. But nothing special. Poor number five forgot his lines and made jokes. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten—all of them could sing, though nine had picked a song with a note she couldn’t reach. Eleven was unimpressive. Twelve cried during a monologue about a dead baby but then sang off-key (“Straight play!” whispered Nanette )—and then thirteen was Bec, the brunette with the turned-up nose who flirted with Theo. And she sang my song. “Popular.”

She was Kristinish in the extreme. Petite, soprano, a bright, clear voice. She hit every joke and every note.

I shook and looked down at my hands, trying to be calm, telling myself it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter.

“Just remember, you don’t have to be like all the others,” whispered Demi, squeezing my shoulder. “It’s not important what you sing. Because none of these girls is Sadye Paulson. Only you are her. She. Whatever. The point is, only you.”

I love Demi.

I took deep breaths, in and out.

Nanette (number fourteen) did her speech from
The Bad Seed
, in which she seemed like a truly evil little girl. Her acting style was broad—but she was well-rehearsed, loud as hell, and extremely confident onstage. Then she sang “Tomorrow”—and well, you already know she understudied that part in a national tour, so what else is there to say? Nanette got paid to sing onstage, and there was good reason for it.

I was so nervous I could barely breathe. I felt a cramp in my leg and stretched it out, grateful to be concentrating on something other than having to perform in front of all these people. When I looked up, Demi’s
Top Dog/Underdog
monologue was nearly done—he was sweaty and full of passion.

Then he sang.

A song I’d heard him sing a thousand times—on the street, on the bus, whenever he was feeling down— but not one I’d ever dreamed he’d sing for an audition.

Liza.

Demi Howard was singing a Liza Minnelli song— “Cabaret.” He’d had the pianist bring it down an octave, and he was belting it out like a total diva, singing how life is a cabaret, and you might as well live big. What good is sitting alone in your room? It’ll all be over soon enough. You’ll be dead eventually. We all will. So live wild and fast and hard while you can.

True, a few people tittered when they realized what he was singing—but they shut up when they saw how good he was.

So, so good.

It was supposed to be sixteen bars, but the pianist kept playing and Reanne didn’t cut him off. Demi sang all the way to the end, selling the song like his life depended on it—and when he was through, half the audience applauded, though we weren’t supposed to.

Demi jogged over to collect his music from Robert, and disappeared back into the throng.

* * *

I
WAS UP.

Juliet. I’d gotten into Wildewood with it. But that was in a small rehearsal room, in front of only four people. Very different from standing alone onstage in a four-hundred-seat theater.

Remember, I had no training at all. No technique as an actress. As I began the monologue—“O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?”—I could hear how thin and dry my voice sounded. I kept talking and tried to speak louder, but my throat felt closed, and then I thought, I shouldn’t be thinking about my throat and how loud I am, I should be thinking like Juliet.

I tried to remember how I wanted something—a good part, Theo for a boyfriend, a solo in a musical, a life away from Ohio—but instead of really wanting it, I was only thinking how I
should
want it now, and listening to how small my voice was, and wondering, suddenly, what to do with my hands.

I wasn’t Juliet. I wasn’t even Sadye speaking through Juliet.

I was just a person saying a collection of words as loud as I could in a memorized order. Words that had meant something emotional to millions of audience members over hundreds of years, but which meant nothing at all now. Because I made them mean nothing.

It was over before the two minute limit. I had timed it repeatedly at 1:45, so I knew I wouldn’t get interrupted.

The piano tinkled the opening notes of “Popular” and I struck the pose I’d planned to start with. I growled out the first few lines of the song—but it was like I could hear Kristin’s sunshine voice in my head, and beneath that, the soprano-voiced, piggy-nose Bec who’d gone before me—and I couldn’t hear myself.

Couldn’t hear how I should sing it, couldn’t find the notes.

I’d choreographed a dance, figuring to play again to my strengths, and had practiced it over and over in the mirror at home. But as I did it now, it felt mechanical. My movements didn’t come out of the music; I couldn’t feel the rhythm and let it push me along, the way any halfway decent dancer can.

The whole song was flat and awkward and plain bad. I could tell it was even as I was doing it, and that made it worse.

When Reanne finally said “Thank you,” I grabbed my music and ran off the stage, up the aisle, and out the door. We weren’t supposed to leave, but I didn’t care. I’d humiliated myself in front of all these people who would now know that I was an utter poser.

I mean, I’d consistently behaved like I was on a level with Iz and Nanette. Doing walkovers in the sand. Acting condescending about Shakespeare and dance classes. Saying I wanted to play Miss Adelaide.

What had I been thinking? These were people who’d been on Broadway, or at the least starred in their school musicals. And let’s get real: what had I done? Danced the blue-dress solo in the
West Side Story
medley at Miss Delilah’s annual concert.

I rushed out of the dark, air-conditioned theater into the blazing sun. It was strangely quiet outside. The soundproof doors didn’t let anything through. I sat on a stone bench a few yards from the front of the building.

Demi would come outside for me soon, I was sure—and though my face felt hot at the thought of my failure next to his success, I still wanted to feel his arm around me and hear him tell me that I’d been wonderful, that I was wrong about it going badly, that I was Sadye Paulson, and I was going to be famous, and I was a fabulous wondergirl, and Jacob Morales was an idiot if he couldn’t see my talent.

But Demi didn’t come.

And didn’t come.

Maybe he’d been stopped by one of the teachers while coming out. Maybe something happened and he couldn’t get to me.

Or maybe—he wasn’t coming.

Thing was, in all the time I’d spent with Demi, especially since we got our Wildewood acceptances, I’d been thinking of myself as special. As charged with talent. As big.

Demi believed in me, and I’d begun to believe in myself. Only now, after what I’d done—how could I?

(click, shuffle)

Sadye:
We’re in the cafeteria,
posterity, so forgive the noise
levels.

Demi:
Me, Nanette, Lyle, Iz, and
Sadye are consuming potato
products and discussing the Meat
Market.

Nanette:
Sadye is depressed, so
we convinced her to listen to
audition horror stories from
our disreputable pasts.

Sadye:
Darlings, I’m fine, really.
I can keep my chin up.

Demi:
You were good. It was just
an off day.

Sadye:
How can it be both?

Demi:
I don’t know.

Sadye:
It can’t be both.

Demi:
Don’t jump on me, darling.
I’m trying to say the right
thing.

Lyle:
It happens to everyone.
Auditioning is like a weird
skill that’s not even the same as acting.

Nanette:
Exactly. There are great
actors who audition badly.

Sadye:
Then how do they ever get
parts?

Lyle:
They just do. They get better, or word of mouth gets around, or directors see something in them even though they messed up. Last year, there was a guy--oh, that guy Dean, you see him over there in the black shirt? His voice cracked so bad in his audition he ran off the stage and forgot his sheet music. The piano player had to chase after him. And he got Doody in
Grease
and, um, let me think, a decent part in
South Pacific
. So it can happen.

Nanette:
When I auditioned for
Beauty
, I was so nervous I wet
my pants a little in the waiting
room. Like the seat underneath
me was wet.

Iz:
Gross!

Nanette:
I know. Don’t go telling
people.

Lyle:
Beauty
what?

Sadye:
She was in
Beauty and the
Beast
.

Nanette:
On Broadway. Anyway, it wasn’t exactly wet, but damp, you know? And I was scared to change seats, and too scared to tell my dad what happened. I didn’t want to go to the bathroom in case they called my name while I was there, so

Demi:
Wait, how old were you?

Nanette:
Eight. I know. Really too
old to be wetting your pants.

Iz:
That is so gross. So did you
sing wearing wet clothes?

Nanette:
I did.

Sadye:
And then you got it?

Nanette:
I got the understudy.
Then later I stepped into it.

Lyle:
So there you go. Wet pants
and a success story.

Iz:
When I tried out for
Born
Yesterday
at my performing arts
school, I had too much drool in
my mouth. I was halfway through
the scene we were supposed to
do, and I realized there was a
string of drool that went like,
all the way from my mouth to
almost my knee. I am dead
serious.

Demi:
What did you do?

Iz:
I pretended to drop my script
and wiped it off. But I was so
sure I wasn’t going to get the
part.

Sadye:
But she did. She told me
she played--what’s the character
called?

Iz:
Billie Dawn.

Lyle:
Another success story with
bodily fluids. See, Sadye? It’ll
be fine. You didn’t even lose
control of your functions.

Sadye:
Thank goodness for small
miracles.

Lyle:
My first year at Wildewood, I was only like, fourteen, and I went up on my lines in a monologue. I was trying out for
The Front Page
and I--I don’t even remember what speech I was doing, but I had no idea what came next. Just stood there, stuttering, until the director asked me if I wanted to take it again from the top.

Demi:
And did you?

Lyle:
I would have--because
you’ve got to get back on the
horse--only I couldn’t remember
the beginning of it anymore,
either. I was a complete blank.
So they said “Thank you very much” and sent me out.

Sadye:
Did you get the part?

Lyle:
No way. I was barely in
anything that whole first year.

Sadye:
That’s not encouraging!

Lyle:
Yes, it is. Because look,
here I am. I did five shows last
year, and no one remembers what
happened back then. Except me.

Demi:
Do you feel better now,
Sadye? Tell us you feel better.

Sadye:
Okay, okay. I feel better.

If you let me have the rest of
your French fries.

Demi:
Good.

Sadye:
I’m as better as I can
feel, anyway.

(click)

T
HAT NIGHT
we saw an all-teacher performance of
The Importance of Being Earnest
, done in the black box theater. Theo was there, of course, and so was James. But I ignored them both after my humiliation at the auditions. It was easier to stay with Demi and Lyle, who liked me for my personality rather than for my (at this point highly questionable) talent or (apparently limited) sex appeal. All I wanted was not to think about how badly I’d done and how stupid I must have looked.

After the show we stood outside in the crickety night, leaning against the brick wall of the building and watching the Wilders mill around. None of us was ready to go back to the dorms since there was nearly an hour before curfew.

“There’s an all-night convenience store two blocks off campus,” Lyle mentioned. “They’ll sell me beer, if you guys feel like making a run.”

“Do you have an ID?” asked Demi.

“No. They’re lax. If they didn’t sell to kids from Wildewood, they’d have hardly any business. What do you say?”

I shook my head. I could tell the invitation was meant as a temptation for Demi, not me. Besides, I’m not much of a drinker.

Demi tilted his head at Lyle, looking out of narrowed eyes. “Isn’t that the sort of escapade that can get you kicked out of here?”

“Actually,” said Lyle, “this guy on my hall got booted a couple months ago for having a bottle of whiskey in his locker. But darling, wasn’t it you who said life is a cabaret?”

“That doesn’t mean I’m risking expulsion.”

“No way is Farrell going to catch us, and if he does, he won’t
do
anything,” said Lyle. “He’ll just take our beer and drink it himself.”

Demi looked tempted, and Lyle went on:

“I’ve got the run down to eighteen minutes, door-to-door, if you go over the stone wall at the south end of campus. We timed it with a stopwatch last term.”

I thought Demi was going to say yes, because he’s never one to turn down adventure, but then Blake came up to us.

Blake, who had a chain of bright blue beads around his neck, surfer-style; Blake, who had ignored Demi all day, flirting with girls and boys alike in the front row, where we could see everything he did; gorgeous, selfish Blake came up and flirtatiously banged his shoulder into Demi’s. “Hey, where you been?” he asked.

Like we hadn’t been down the table from him at dinner, and behind him in the theater.

Demi turned on his smile. “Bunburying.”

(This was a joke from
The Importance of Being Earnest
, and I should explain it since there was a lot of Bunburying going on at Wildewood. In the play, whenever a guy named Algernon wants to escape social obligations, he claims he’s got to go and visit his sick friend Bunbury, who doesn’t exist. Then he goes and does something he finds more entertaining than whatever he was obligated to do, and he calls this whole evasive maneuver “Bunburying.” During the intermission that night, Lyle told us that they’d studied the play in English and that some people interpret the whole Bunbury motif as homosexual. Like, to Bunbury is to go off and have homosexual adventures while lying to your family about it—it’s a code. So it means slagging off some obligation,
or
it means guys fooling around with each other, or it means both. Great word.)

Blake laughed and said, “I heard you can get up on the roof of the dance building, want to go check it out?”

“You used to be able to, but you can’t anymore,” said Lyle. “They alarmed the door at the top of the stairway ever since they found bottles up there.”

Blake ignored him. So did Demi. “I’m in!” he said, running off across the quad. “Bet I beat you there!”

Blake laughed and chased Demi over the grass.

They were gone.

Lyle and I stood there. “Sorry,” I finally muttered.

As if I could speak for Demi. And meaning, Sorry, he doesn’t want you; Sorry he’s so shallow; Sorry, I know you’re worth a thousand Blakes; Sorry, he’s never been anywhere like this where he can be out of the closet all the time and I think it’s gone to his head; Sorry, it’s like this in the world, with the beautiful people running off with each other. And also, Sorry, I wanted him to stay, too.

“You know what?” Lyle said thoughtfully, looking off in the direction they’d gone, although we couldn’t see them any more. “It ain’t over till the fat boy sings.”

T
WENTY MINUTES
after I got into bed, my roommates came in and woke me up. Candie was in a tizz because Nanette had told her there was no way she could sing “Memory” for her audition the next day. “Tell me why, again?” sniffed Candie plaintively, as she changed into a nightgown.

“It’s unprofessional,” said Nanette. “You can’t sing a song from the show you’re auditioning for. No one does it. You’re not supposed to.”

“But I didn’t know they were doing
Cats
. They didn’t tell us what they were doing till we got here!”

“You try to find out,” said Nanette. “That’s what I did. Or you look on the Web and see what they did last year and the year before, because you know they won’t repeat those.”

“You knew your agent, who knew Morales,” put in Iz, walking through the room naked on her way into the shower. “I’ve been here two other summers and even
I
didn’t know what they were doing.”

“Do you have any other sheet music?” I asked Candie.

She shook her head.

“Okay, let’s be practical,” said Nanette. “What else can you sing?”