Enthusiasm (23 page)

In no time at all, the day of the dress rehearsal arrived. I woke hours early and couldn’t get back to sleep. Just one more day, and I would be singing in public.

I felt a horrible foreboding, but I dismissed it as stage fright. I slipped on my lucky thumb ring.

The first hint that something really was wrong came in homeroom. Yolanda sat in uncharacteristic silence, brushing tears away with her tapered fingers.

“Landa,” I said hesitantly (since she seemed almost quiet enough to be Yvette), “what’s the matter?”

She gave a little yelp and began to cry audibly.

I patted her back. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Mom caught Yvette being me.”

This was serious indeed. In the Gerard household, masquerading as one’s sister was a grounding offense.

“Oh, no! How long are you down for this time?”

“Two whole weeks—both of us! We’ll miss the play!”

Yvette confirmed the news at lunchtime. “I told you we should have switched the nail polish too,” she said bitterly.

Yolanda started crying again. “Mom never noticed before,” she gulped.

“That’s ’cause you never wore green before.”

What would Benjo do? I shuddered to think, but there was no warning him. Forefield boys were forbidden to use cell phones, except during certain evening and weekend hours.

Ashleigh broke the news as soon as we arrived. It took Benjo a while to understand, since he hadn’t even known about Yvette’s existence, much less her role in his production. As the news sank in, his face grew taut. I watched him pull himself together. He stood up straighter.

“Is there anything we can do to convince Yolanda’s parents to change their minds?” he asked.

“Maybe if Ms. Wilson or the dean or somebody goes and talks to them?” said Ashleigh.

“Maybe my mom,” I suggested. “She’s friendly with Mrs. Gerard.”

Benjo sent a second former to find the adults in question.

“Well, there’s nothing else we can do about it today,” he said. “Julie, you’ll have to take over Tanya for now.”

“What?” I gasped.

“You play Tanya. You know the part, don’t you? You helped them rehearse. I thought you understood—you’re the understudy.”

“But my part—who’ll play Headmistress Lytle?”

“Ned can do it.”

“Uh, Benjo?” said Ashleigh. “Ned’s a guy. He’s a
bass
.”

“Well, I know
that
. He’ll have to be Head
master
Lytle. One thing’s for sure, he knows the part. He’d better—he wrote it. Okay, guys, help me get the cast together so I can make the announcement.”

Hard as this may be to believe, it wasn’t until Parr said, “So Julia’s going to be Tanya?” that I realized what my new part meant.

Chapter 20

My Fifth Kiss
~
Mom to the rescue again
~ Midwinter Insomnia ~
Conservatory flowers
~
Ting is such Sweet Sorrow.

I
dreamed about kissing Parr. Asleep in my bed, awake in my bed, in that limbo between waking and sleeping that’s known as tenth-grade European history, I dreamed about it. But I never dreamed that our first kiss would take place onstage, in front of the entire production of
Midwinter Insomnia
, including my mother.

Although this was the dress rehearsal, there was clearly no way to make the twins’ Tanya costume fit me. The clothes I had put on that morning—jeans and a sweater over a long-sleeved, scoop-necked T-shirt—would have to do.

I stood in Tanya’s position, twirling my thumb ring on my upstage hand and looking out over a sea of furrowed brows. Concern shone from every eye in the audience, which included everyone in the production not actually onstage. I watched them worry: Would I remember my lines? Would my voice carry? Would I ruin the production they all had worked so hard on?

Gratifyingly, though, after a few minutes the brows began to clear. I was indeed going to remember the lines, my watchers decided one by one. My acting might not be as nuanced as the twins’, my singing voice nowhere near as strong, but at least I wasn’t going to totally flub it. My mother smiled encouragement at me. Part of me began to relax.

At the same time, though, the rest of me—the better part—began to clench up. For as I stormed at Parr, ordered Alcott Fish around, fell under the spell of the tainted drinking fountain, and fawned over Kevin Rodriguez in his Butthead costume, I knew that the moment I had so often dreamed of was about to arrive, in the most humiliating form imaginable. I would be kissing Parr—Parr, who had been avoiding talking to me, even looking at me—and I’d be doing it in front of an audience. My throat went dry. My voice dropped to a whisper, and Benjo had to say, “Speak up, Julie! Let’s take it again from ‘Do you admit you were a jerk?’ ”

Then there was no postponing it. As Owen, Parr admitted the error of his ways. As Tanya, I forgave him. He drew me close—and kissed me.

Was it like kissing Zach? Only the way the merry-go-round is like the Cyclone at Astroland. Only the way sliding down the hill behind the elementary school on your mother’s roasting pan is like skiing down Mont Blanc.

I was glad I had kissed Zach. Because of that experience, I didn’t flub the kiss onstage any more than I flubbed my lines. I met Parr’s lips head-on, without slipping or crashing, and the outside world went dim.

When it was over—rather quickly, I think, because I didn’t hear any hooting from the audience, and they
must
have hooted if the kiss had really lasted as long as it seemed to me—I looked up at Parr. His eyes were opaque, abandoned. He looked as overthrown as I felt. Upstage, out of sight of the crowd, he crushed my left hand in his right. I heard a crack and felt my onyx ring snap in two and fall from my thumb.

We stood that way for only an instant; then Alcott Fish entered downstage right, Parr spoke his next line, and the rehearsal swept on to its finale. I spoke and sang mechanically, weak as a kitten.

Afterward, the entire cast and crew gathered around to congratulate me. I was their heroine. I had saved the day, and could now be counted on to save tomorrow too. I looked around for Parr, but it was too public to ask him anything or to tell him anything.

“Come on, girls, get your coats,” said Mom. “We’d better get going if I’m going to have time to tackle Marie Gerard before bedtime.”

And that was it. Parr and I parted without a word or a touch. Until tomorrow, that is—and tomorrow’s kiss.

But it didn’t work out that way. Mom’s mission was successful. Mrs. Gerard agreed to extend the twins’ sentence a week in exchange for their limited release over the next two days.

“How did you do it?” I asked.

“I explained the situation. Marie’s a reasonable person,” she said.

I gave her a doubtful look. Reasonable or not, Mrs. Gerard had never before reversed a punishment, to my knowledge anyway.

“Oh, all right. I threw myself on her charity. I told her that I was on trial for a job at the school, and that if I managed to get the girls back in the play, it would impress the dean and maybe land me the job.”

“Very clever, Mom! That’s worthy of Samantha Liu!”

“Yes, and it has the advantage of being true.”

With no clear prospect of another kiss from Parr, then, I dwelled on today’s. What did it mean? I had watched Parr kiss one twin or another dozens of times apiece, but this kiss seemed different. I had never before seen that look in his eyes—drowned, burning, transformed. Even though he’d hardly spoken to me since my father’s horrible remark about Seth, he’d kissed me as if he meant it. I thought it must mean something.

I thought it must mean he liked me.

But Ashleigh! Ashleigh. Even if he
did
like me, that didn’t release me from my obligation to my best friend. As long as
she
liked
him
, my hands were tied.

Had Ashleigh noticed anything strange? Apparently not. “You were wow, Jules!” she cried, bursting through the front door after dinner. “I told you you could do it! Did your mom get Mrs. Gerard to relent? She did? Really? Too bad! I mean, crisp for Yv and Yo, of course, but too bad for you, you were so incredible as Tanya! And Ned was great too. I don’t see why he didn’t want a part in the first place, he has a loudly crisp voice. I loved you in your scenes with Kevin, you were both so, so funny, and you were great with Parr too. You’re a natural. Next time you’ll get a bigger part. No question! You just needed the practice. I bet you could even get into a Byz production now, if it wasn’t such a popularity contest with Michelle Jeffries and all those people.” Et cetera. Evidently the struggle going on within me had made no impression on my friend.

After the excitement of the dress rehearsal, opening night seemed almost tame. I relaxed into my old role of Headmistress Lytle with a calm and control that surprised me, and I handed over Tanya’s part to Yvette with relief. Yolanda had agreed that after all her sister’s hard work and risky pretending, it was only fair for Yvette to go first.

Our parents came to opening night—the Rossis sat in the front row, clapping wildly at pretty much everything—but mostly the audience was a sea of boys in blazers. Ravi missed the line he always missed; he smiled his beguiling smile, and the audience forgave him with a laugh. Ashleigh sang loud and clear, Alcott sweet and true. We all hit our high notes and our low notes. The ensemble numbers went smoothly, nobody tripping or crashing. Numb with adrenaline, I watched from the wings as Parr kissed Yvette. I even enjoyed my bow and the applause that came with it. How far I had come from the terror of the audition so many months ago!

The cast party afterward didn’t last very long, since the performance was only a small part of the packed Founder’s Day schedule. Chris had managed to smuggle in a fifth of vodka, but Mr. Barnaby found it in the prop room and confiscated it with grim warnings before Chris could use it to spike the hot chocolate, punch, and other virtuous beverages provided by the school. Mr. Barnaby, Ms. Wilson, Benjo, and Ned all made speeches. Everyone hugged or hit one another on the back.

I saw Parr across the room. He looked away quickly. Was he not going to say anything, even tonight? I felt I couldn’t bear it. Everyone was happy, everyone was hugging. Even if he
was
Ashleigh’s crush, even if he didn’t seem to want to talk to me anymore, at least this one night nobody would think it was strange if I . . . I walked across the room and put my arms around him.

“Congratulations, Grandison, you were great,” I said, managing to keep my voice steady.

He hugged me back, hard. “Julia!” he said. “You too—last night, especially.” He looked at me at last, his eyes close enough to burn me with their gas-blue flames, and I thought . . . But then the twins and Emma came over to deliver their own hugs, and he let me go. The party ended soon afterward.

The second and final performance the next day was much the same as the first, but with Yolanda’s sunnier Tanya and an older audience, Old Boys (alumni) instead of current students.