Authors: S. Stevens
Tags: #General, #Fiction
YOU, CAN GO HOME, OR BACK TO YOUR DORM, OR WHEREVER IT IS YOU CAME FROM. MAYBE YOU COULD GO VISIT TONY IN JAIL -- THAT COULD BE FUN. BUT ONE THING YOU WILL NOT BE DOING TONIGHT IS PLAYING BELLA. I MAY HAVE LOST THIS ROLE TO ANOTHER CRUDUP STUDENT BEFORE, BUT I’M NOT GOING TO LOSE IT AGAIN, TO A HAS-BEEN ACTOR’S GIRLFRIEND, NO MATTER HOW GOOD YOU ARE. SO JUST LEAVE!
Bonnie and I glared at each other but I saw defeat slink into her eyes. Ben and Foster clapped, and soon everyone applauded my performance. “Whatever,” Bonnie tossed off weakly before leaving. Foster caught me up in a giant bear hug. Lindsay gave me a high-five and said he didn’t know I had it in me. Even Kristina smiled from the edge of the room.
My bravado melted quickly, though. Two altercations before show time -- this was not my desired method for role preparation. I changed into my costume quickly and snuck off to the wings on stage right. Technically, cast members weren’t allowed in the wings yet, but I needed to be alone and this was the best available place. Still shaky from the Bonnie encounter, I tried to think of nothing while staring into the darkness and slowing my breathing.
I was still there when the house lights went down. I couldn’t see Mrs. Zowicki walk on stage in front of the curtain but I heard the clunk as she turned on the microphone.
“Good evening, and welcome to the premier of the Crudup Drama Club’s original production of
Twilight: The Musical
.” She waited for the applause to stop. The house sounded full of three hundred students, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and reluctant younger brothers and sisters, dragged to watch their siblings in a play that might have vampires but also had yucky romance.
“Before our show begins, I’d like to make a few announcements,” the principal continued. “First, a few corrections to your program. The part of Bella Swan will be played by Sadie Perkins, not Lucey Landau--” she stopped abruptly. Someone hissed at her from the front of the audience, probably Mr. Ellison – “that is, not Bonnie Carver as it says in your program.”
“Hey, how’s that sound?” someone said softly. I whirled around in surprise. Alex stood right behind me, his hair damp, his shirt actually with a collar. “Starring Sadie Perkins. About time, right?”
I hmphd, hoping a casual attitude would disguise my thumping heart. “Yeah, great, I got the lead because the original lead got pregnant. That will look good on college applications.”
He thought for a second. “Like anyone needs to know that detail. It’s show biz, right? All smoke and mirrors. It doesn’t matter how you got the part. It matters what you do with it.” I could have said his last, predictable words with him.
“What are you doing here, anyway? We’re about to start,” I whispered.
“I had to tell you ‘break a leg’.” He looked hurt at my less-than-warm reception, but his expression changed to concern as his eyes adjusted to the dark and he got a good look at my face. “What’s wrong? You’re not nervous, are you?”
My defenses dropped. “Honestly, I don’t know if I can pull this off, Alex. Acting with Nigel, I mean. After what he did to Lucey, and then to you -- letting you take the blame. I know it shouldn’t matter but I can’t see Edward when I look at him. I only see double-crossing Nigel.”
In front of the curtain, Mrs. Zowicki was explaining that the performance was being directed by Mr. Ellison alone as Mr. Lord was otherwise detained.
“Sadie.” Alex put his hands firmly on my shoulders, the heat from his skin going right through my shirt. “You can do this. Take charge of the situation, like you always did with me. When we were kids.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. “I wasn’t in charge. We did those shows together, you and me, like Bonnie and Clyde.”
“Really? What did I contribute, Sadie, huh? You wrote the scripts, made the costumes, made the sets…it was all you.”
Mr. Ellison was being given his award now, the principal droning on about how the English teacher created CDC and built the program over the past few years, and how he’d be missed when he retired at the end of the year. I was too intrigued by Alex’s words to care that my role in starting CDC hadn’t also been recognized.
“But you helped paint the sets, and played the parts.”
“Right, I played the parts. Because it made you happy. And okay, I liked it too. It was a good escape from my home. But you were the leader all along. To be honest, that’s one reason the past few months have been good for me, in a way. I needed to see if I could lead something, without you directing me.”
He had my full attention now.
“So go on, Sadie, and do this. You’ve got the lead.”
I must have looked confused because he tried another tack. His hands still on my shoulders, he turned me around so I faced the empty, dark stage, hyper aware of him standing right behind me.
“Don’t worry about Nigel. That,” I sensed him nodding at the stage, “is make believe.” He twisted me back around to face him. We were so close I saw his chest moving up and down in the dim light.
“This -- is real life.” He leaned over and kissed me, so quickly and lightly that I almost thought I imagined it. “See the difference?”
“Um, I can’t really see much of anything right now. It’s dark back here.” Sarcasm aside, my heart floated right out of my body and hung over Alex’s head like a cartoon bubble.
“Do you need me to show you again?” I felt as much as saw him laughing.
“You know I’ve always been a slow learner,” I said weakly, biting my lip.
“Hardly,” he smiled, turning me back to face the stage. “Make believe,” he said, pointing with his finger without letting his hand leave my shoulder. Twisting me back to face him, he was forming the words “real life” when I muffled them by kissing him. Just in case he thought the interest was one-sided.
Scuffling announced the arrival of the stage crew and other cast members in the wings. Alex quickly whispered “Break a leg” in my ear and disappeared.
I was ready to conquer the world.
26: Nigel Comes Clean
W
E GLIDE ONTO THE STAGE and take our places behind the closed curtain, all twenty-six of us, in our street clothes costumes. We silently form three rows across the stage, and lower our heads. Nigel and I stand in the back row so we won’t be seen.
Electricity zings through me in little bursts. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. As I exhale, the curtain opens on its squeaky rollers. The expectant hush from the audience is beautiful. Quietly, from somewhere near the front of stage left, Mr. Ellison whispers 1-2-3-4. Heads still down, stage still dark, the girls start the attention-grabbing a cappella doo-doo’s of “Don’t Stop Believing” while the guys sing the undercurrent of longer doo-doo’s like a bass line. It’s magic. It’s show time.
Foster lifts his head as the spotlight hits the stage and grows to embrace each successive singer. He takes a step forward from the front row, and sings the opening line: “Just a city girl / livin’ in a lonely world / she took the 10 a.m. flight to Washington”.
Kristina steps forward to meet him, singing: “Just a small town boy / living in a loveless world / he took the long way home to Forks, Washington”.
Lindsay, trying not to grin at one of his favorite lines, jumps in with “A vampire in a science lab / a smell of human blood so fab / for a smile he can end her life / it goes on and on and on and on”.
With these words, anyone in the audience thinking we were simply re-creating “Don’t Stop Believing” from
Glee
would have their view corrected. A few nervous laughs escape the audience, rippling over the actors on stage.
The soloists and those of us continuing to sing the background vocals gradually increase our volume to match the building music. The guitar solo hits and the front row of cast perform a simple but frenzied, modern jazz-type dance for eight measures. Now the entire cast sways back and forth as we belt out the chorus in a web of sound: “Don’t stop believing / hold on to that feelin’ / luckless people / oohhh”. Like in
Glee
, we end with the words “Don’t stop” cut off short. We drop our heads to our chests and our hands to our sides as the stage lights cut out, leaving us in black just as we started.
God, I love performing.
*
T
HE CURTAIN CLOSED, I turned to rush off stage with the others but a hand caught mine, holding me back. I tried to shake Nigel’s hand free but he wouldn’t let go. He leaned toward me and said, “Sorry,” just loudly enough that I heard it over the dying applause. “Really, Sadie, I’m sorry. For everything.”
Maybe it was the thrill of performing or a desire to be on-kilter with my leading man. Or maybe it was the earnestness of his hand touching mine. But I forgave Nigel right then and there.
I squeezed his hand and rushed off to get my backpack prop for the next scene.
In Scene 3, when Nigel and I appeared on stage together in the cafeteria, we caught each others’ eyes as the script called for. Conveying a blend of attraction and intrigue in my look was easy.
In fact, the rest of Act I was easy. Effortless. As if I’d been born to perform this role.
Nigel was a natural, and we played off each other as if we’d been rehearsing together for weeks. The rest of the cast performed their usual solid singing, dancing and acting, supporting the leads as if one weak link would make the entire chain fall apart. Which it would.
The audience loved the musical numbers, especially the techno-dance of “Closed Off Mind” (“Poker Face”) that ended the act, confirming that we created the right mix of ballads and up-tempo songs in styles ranging from show tunes to grunge. Somehow, the resulting medley of music worked while ensuring we had something for everyone.
Nigel cornered me near the water fountain during the fifteen-minute intermission. He gave a genuine smile, not his snake-oil-salesman smile, reminding me why I’d been attracted to him in the first place.
“You’re right, Sadie.” His smile twisted into a pained grin that touched his eyes.
“Right? About what?”
“About everything. I am the one who got Lucey preggars. We agreed not to tell anyone so I wouldn’t get shipped back to Leeds. Leeds is a horrible place,” he said with perfect tragicomic pitch. “Seriously, I didn’t want to screw up my year here, and—well, we’d already screwed up enough, hadn’t we? Lucey was good enough to go along with the charade. She wavered when the Mr. Lord rumors started, but then your friend Alex came in to save the day. I owe him for that.”
The fact that Lucey protected Nigel stunned me, but I still wanted an answer regarding Alex.
“But Nigel, how could you let everyone think Alex was the father? You know the right thing to do would have been to own up to it.” I sounded like I was pleading. Maybe I was. He could still step up and save Alex’s reputation.
“I know. Maybe I’m not so brave. I was afraid of what Ben’s parents would say, not to mention Lucey’s and my own. And I was afraid of being sent back to my old life.”
“What’s so bad about your old life?”
“Let’s put it this way. I’m a better actor than you think. The Nigel you see isn’t the one people at home see. My parents would kill me if they saw me dressed like a punk.” I flashed back to the image Tom saw at the mall, of Nigel dressed in chinos and a sweater. “I generally look more conservative – like your average British wanker, you might say. Coming here was a chance to re-invent myself, and be one of the cool kids for once.”
I stared at him. “Are you even in a rock band?”
“Weelll, show tunes are more my speed. Although I do love all the music you and I talked about.”
I laughed. “I knew you were a closet theatre freak all along.”
He didn’t laugh. This was serious to him. “But you see, I got carried away with the role I was playing. I never had a girlfriend at home. Suddenly, here, I was a ‘hottie’ as you Yanks say, and girls were interested. Lots of girls. Lots of pretty girls,” he added, looking at me meaningfully. “I decided it was my time to live large. But I got carried away with my own image.”
“You can say that again.” I thought about how easily I could have been in Lucey’s place. “What are you and Lucey going to do, anyway?”
“She hasn’t decided. She’s still discussing it with her parents. Of course, I can’t be involved in that decision.” He was strangely quiet as he said this last part. For the first time, I thought about how Nigel must feel.
“Nigel, can’t you tell your parents and talk to the Landaus with them? You can’t keep this a secret forever.”
“I know. And telling my mum and dad seems inevitable, doesn’t it? I’ve been thinking about that a lot.”
“It’s a good first step.”
“A good first step,” he repeated and turned away. “I’ve got to hit the loo before we start up again.”
“Hey, Nigel?” My words caught him before he got too far. “You’re not a wanker – I looked it up.” He stared a second and laughed. “A poser, maybe, but not a wanker.” His laugh faded into a resigned smile.
“Yeah, a poser I am, and a poser I shall be. After all, we’re theatre-lovers, aren’t we? ‘All the world’s a stage’ and all that.”
27: CDC Rises Again