Enthusiasm (13 page)

“Ned’s not my boyfriend,” I protested. “I only met him twice.”

“Yes, but you called him a Darcy, remember? Pay her no mind, Yolanda, she is too modest to admit her true feelings,” said Ashleigh.

“Whatever,” I said testily. The alternating waves of anticipation and terror, disappointment and relief, which had been sweeping over me for the past few weeks, had taken their toll on my usually even temper.

But how had I gotten a part, after such a spectacularly bad performance at the audition? Ash and Yolanda insisted that I had sung sweetly and spoken well, though softly at the end. But I knew they were just trying to make me feel better. No, the only possible explanation was lucky (or unlucky) chance. Five girls had auditioned—five had been cast. If a sixth had shown up at the tryouts, she would surely have won the part of Headmistress Lytle.

Nicole Rossi, Ashleigh’s mother, picked up our scripts for us at Forefield that evening on her way home from work.

While
Midwinter Insomnia
may not be the very silliest play I’ve ever read, it’s up there. It takes place in a boarding school rather like Forefield, but coed. The scene opens with romantic mixups among the fifth formers, or juniors: Xander (played by Ravi Rajan) is going out with Hermia (Ashleigh); Daniel (Chris Stevens, apparently typecast) is trying to steal her away; and Helen (Erin) has a hopeless crush on Daniel. Meanwhile, Owen, the captain of the debate team (Parr), and Tanya, the president of the student body (Yolanda), are having a lovers’ quarrel over a third former (that is, a freshman), formerly a member of the debate club, whom Tanya has enticed to serve on the student council, which meets at the same time, therefore forcing him to quit debate. To punish her, Owen convinces his younger brother, Rob (Alcott Fish), a science geek, to sneak into the chem lab and create a love potion that he can give Tanya, causing her to fall for the ridiculous Butthead (Kevin Rodriguez), who plays Romeo in the middle school’s laughable production of
Romeo and Juliet
. When Rob mischievously taints a drinking fountain with the love potion, Xander, Hermia, Daniel, and Helen begin a game of musical partners that ends only with the grand finale.

I played the headmistress, Miss Lytle, who puts in occasional appearances calling for order, scolding mischief makers, and presiding over the happy ending. She also sings a duet with the dean of students, a cameo appearance by Forefield’s actual dean, Mr. Hanson. Altogether, she has eleven lines, not counting the duet.

I was afraid they would be eleven lines too many.

“I envy Yolanda—oh! how I envy her,” said Ashleigh, squeezing Juniper until he gave a reproachful kitten squeak.

“She does have more songs, but you have more lines,” I pointed out.

“Faugh! Little do I care for lines and songs! It’s the
kisses
that I envy. She gets to kiss Grandison Parr!”

“Yes, but you get to kiss Ravi Rajan—isn’t that the guy Yolanda thinks is so cute? Maybe you’ll be so swept away, you’ll forget all about Parr.”

Ashleigh gave me her look of Reproach Tinged with Disgust. “Forget! Forget Grandison Parr! Ask me to forget my own name—my father and mother—my native tongue—the points of the compass—I will forget what it means to be human before I forget Grandison Parr!”

As for me (I thought with a sigh), I had better forget Grandison Parr before I forgot what it meant to be human. In the weeks that followed, I came much closer to that goal.

Not that I ever managed true forgetfulness: how could I, when I saw him at least twice a week at rehearsals? But practice made my heart grow tougher, like a blister that breaks and hardens to a callus, until I could smile at him, answer his remarks in sentences longer than a word or two, and even meet his eyes.

The hardest moment was my first rehearsal, when I felt him watching me. It took all my willpower to obey Benjo and focus on my character’s quarrel with the dean—far too lenient a man, in Miss Lytle’s opinion. When Benjo directed me to stamp my foot, turn my back on the dean, and face the audience, I trained my eyes on the exit sign until I could bear to look at them directly. After a week or two, though, I grew used to having an audience.

Talking to Parr took even more courage, but I found I couldn’t avoid it. Although Ashleigh and I had relatively few scenes with him, he made a point of seeking out our company.

“Hey,” he said, coming up behind me as I was helping Ashleigh go over her lines before the second rehearsal, “can either of you think of a better rhyme for Hermia? Barry says
germier
is revolting, and anyway, I’m not even sure it’s a word.”

“Wormier?”
suggested Ashleigh.

“Wormier?
Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that. It’s . . . a possibility,” said Parr.

“Oh, Ash, ig! That’s even more revolting,” I said.

“All right,
squirmier? Sp—
no—well,
you
think of something then, Julie, I have the highest confidence in your abilities. Julie writes poetry, you know,” she told Parr.

He turned to me keenly. “Do you?”

“Oh, Ash,” I moaned, feeling squirmier myself. “Not much, and it’s not any good.”

“What do you mean, it’s not good?” cried the loyal Enthusiast. “What about that beautiful poem you wrote in seventh grade about the sunset and—”

I moved quickly to stop her, before she could recite one of my juvenile efforts; she likes my older, flowerier poems the best. “I know!” I said. “What about
hypothermia
?”

“Brilliant! That’s perfect, Julia, thank you!” said Parr, making a motion as if to hug me. Startled, I drew back, and his gesture trailed off into awkwardness; but he continued to grin at me. He had very white teeth. I loved the way he called me by the formal version of my name—it made me feel like a grander version of myself.

“See, I told you she’d think of something,” said Ashleigh proudly. “You can always count on Julie.”

Although these moments with Parr were the shaky high points of my days, I naturally spent more time with Ned, who ran the musical rehearsals and stood in as my singing partner, the dean, for Dean Hanson, who rarely made it to rehearsals. The more I saw of Ned, the more I liked him. His tunes were so catchy that I often found myself singing them around the house, and more than once I noticed my mother humming “Who Would Want to Hook Up with Helen?” or “Oh Lord, What Fools!” And I soon came to appreciate Ned’s good nature as well as his music. In a room full of big egos—Benjo, Barry, Chris, Erin in her quiet way, Ravi—Ned’s was a hardworking and self-forgetful presence. He reminded me of another friend, a person of boundless energy and loyal encouragement: Ashleigh. Most musical directors would have lost their patience long ago, I was sure. Ned, though, never stopped encouraging me.

“That’s great, Julie,” he said. “You got a much bigger sound that time. Remember how quiet you were last week? Okay, now this time focus on the deer head across the room. You want to really make his ears curl. Great! That was great, now this time let’s see if you can really concentrate on keeping from going flat on the high notes. Nice and loud! Yes! Yes! Listen to you! Okay, I think maybe I pushed you too far that time, you went a little sharp. Not ‘ah,’ more like ‘ah.’ Try it again. Good! Ashleigh, did you hear that? Did you hear how great Julie’s sounding? That was really good, Julie, and you were definitely loud enough if Ashleigh heard you all the way over by the door.”

At first I was so caught up in learning my lines, governing my heart, and training my voice not to slink off with its tail between my tonsils that I had no time to watch my fellow actors. But as I grew more accustomed to the scene around me (except for Parr kissing Yolanda—I never grew accustomed to that), I began to notice several dramas.

The most obvious, because it touched me personally, involved Chris Stevens. Chris tried to ooze his way into the good graces of every girl in the production, with the sole exception of Emma Caballero, who was too young even for him. He persisted like an elegant insect, gently dodging any slaps and returning to buzz and brush against you. His technique involved floating around nearby and implying that
you
were interested in
him
.

“Sorry I didn’t see you much last time, Julie,” he said soon after we started rehearsals. “I was in the trophy room with Erin and couldn’t get away. But I don’t want you to feel I was neglecting you.”

“Don’t worry, Chris, I don’t,” I told him. “Actually, I’d prefer it if you
did
neglect me.”

As I soon learned, this was the wrong approach to take with Chris, who took resistance as a challenge. Far from keeping him away, it drew him to me as pheromones might draw a monstrous moth. I had learned all about pheromones during Ashleigh’s insect craze. Chris fluttered softly near me, fanning his vast, pale wings and reaching out with his hairy feelers. Ig!

Yolanda’s approach—treating his advances with friendly, offhand patience—worked far better. “Chris, how’d you get back there? Sorry, I keep stepping on you! Did I hurt your toe? Hey, didn’t you call me last night? Sorry, I meant to call you back—I didn’t forget about you, I swear, it’s just that I had a lot of homework, and then I was talking to Ravi, and then it got late, and anyway, don’t they make you turn off your phones after ten?” Something about her careless solicitude kept him, if not at arm’s length, at least at elbow’s.

Oblivious Ashleigh didn’t respond to his attentions at all, since she didn’t notice them. But Erin, poor thing, responded all too well. She developed an obvious, violent crush on him. Chris tormented her by ignoring her most of the time, giving her just enough attention to keep her going, and flirting with the rest of us whenever he saw her watching.

“Where’s Chris?” asked Erin one afternoon after we’d been rehearsing for several weeks. “We’re supposed to go over the scene where I give him the answers to the math test.”

“I last saw him with Yolanda,” said Ashleigh. “He said something about showing her the trophy room.”

Erin stiffened. “I’d better go find him,” she said, and she hurried off.

Kevin Rodriguez and little Alcott Fish giggled.

“What’s so amusing?” asked Ashleigh.

Alcott turned pink.

“You know, the trophy room? With all the sofas and everything?” said Kevin.

“What about it?”

Alcott turned pinker, and Kevin rolled his eyes.

“Oh, grow up, guys,” said Ravi. “It’s supposed to be where people go to—where people go for privacy,” he explained.

Of the actors, the most talented by far were Ravi, Alcott, and Kevin, who turned out to be a surprise comic genius. As Butthead, the boorish boy playing Romeo in the play within a play, he overacted with such flawless control that he never once overdid overdoing it. When Yolanda’s Tanya drank Rob’s love potion and fell for Butthead, Kevin turned into a parody of Chris Stevens subtle enough that Chris himself never noticed, yet broad enough to keep the rest of us choking back laughter. Yolanda deepened the impression by putting a touch of lovesick Erin into her Tanya, but only a touch. Either she didn’t want to be cruel to her old friend, or she was acting unconsciously, not quite aware of her influences.