I could get better, sure. But if I wasn’t good enough to sing Hot Box Girl harmonies, it was a decent bet I’d never be good enough to sing a solo, much less carry a lead role.
“Show what Sadye can do”—that’s what Demi had told me. But it was becoming increasingly clear that what Sadye could do was
less
than what a lot of other people could.
Was I good enough to be at Wildewood?
What would I do if I wasn’t good enough?
What would I do?
Who would I be?
“Hey there, Sadye!” It was Nanette, coming down the path alone. The last person I wanted to see just then. Her with her big voice and her two leading roles and her “perfect, sweetie” self.
But Nanette looked so small, and so lonely, walking in the dark. So I said, “Hey, darling,” and sat down on one of the benches that lined the path.
Nanette joined me. “Let me ask you something.”
“Sure.”
“I know they’re all talking about me,” she said. “They are, right?”
“Who?”
“The Hot Box Girls. Maybe not you and Iz, but Jade and the rest of them.”
“What? No.” I lied.
“Be honest. They hate my guts, I can feel it.”
Of course it was true. I had done it myself, though nothing as bad as Bec, Dawn, and Kirsten. “Child can’t tap to save her life, she’s barely getting through the routine.” “She can’t fill out her evening dress, I don’t know how that’s supposed to be sexy.” “Little Miss Perfect, thinks she’s better than a chocolate cupcake.” “Her and her lemonade.” “Her and her
Annie
.” “Ugh.”
Thing was, I did like Nanette. For all her pretensions and her attitude, I could see she worked harder than anyone else and I admired her talent. Plus, she made me laugh. But I had never told any of the girls to shut up, and it was me who told them she was the understudy in
Annie
.
Not only that, I’d said I wished she’d stayed home. I even had it on tape.
Now, looking at her determined jaw quivering as if she were about to cry, I felt like a monster. “They’re just jealous,” I said to her. “We’re all jealous. We can’t help it.”
“So they
are
talking about me?”
I nodded. “It’s the situation. They’d talk about anyone who was Adelaide.”
Nanette sighed. “It was like that in
Annie
, too,” she said. “The girl who played the lead? Jenny Forsythe. We all hated her. We’d get quiet whenever she walked in the dressing room, and we’d all go to the mall without her on the days off. Then she got bronchitis for three weeks and I had to step in, and it was like the other girls suddenly hated me instead. I was so relieved when she came back, but it took a while before they were nice to me again.”
“Um, Nanette?”
“What?”
“Maybe it would help if you didn’t talk so much about
Annie
and
Fiddler
and stuff.”
“What?”
“You talk about them, like, all the time.”
“But it’s my life. Everyone seems to think it’s interesting.”
“It
is
interesting. But it also makes us kinda sick.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Nanette reached down, untied her shoe, and retied it. “Is this what school is like?”
“You mean with the girls talking about each other?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t have any girlfriends at school,” I said. “Not really. I only have Demi.”
“Well, that’s more than I’ve got.”
* * *
I
N
Bye Bye Birdie
, which Demi and Iz rehearsed in the afternoons, there is a put-upon dad character whose shining moment comes when he and his family get to be on
The Ed Sullivan Show
, which was a TV show like
David Letterman
, but even bigger. The dad is so, so excited to be on the show that he sings this song called “Hymn for a Sunday Evening,” which basically has only one lyric—“Ed Sullivan”—sung like it’s a religious epiphany. A chorus comes in behind him like a choir of angels, and he’s just ecstatic.
Anyway. When not immersed in
Guys and Dolls
or
Bye Bye Birdie
, Demi was as excited over Buff Blond Blake from Boston as this dad was over Ed Sullivan. And he’d sing, to the same tune:
Blake Polacheck!
Blake Polacheck!
I wanna be on
Blake Polacheck!
Blake! Blake!
Pol! Pol!
Someday we’ll recall,
The greatest lay of all!
Blake Pooooooool-a-cheeeeeeek!
So long as Blake wasn’t present.
And he wasn’t present, not often. I’d estimate he kissed Demi twice more in the days leading up to the
Guys and Dolls
performance. Most of the time he was elusive—always running somewhere after class, rushing off to take a shower, going to meet someone he’d promised to hang with.
To anyone with even a moderate amount of experience, or even to me, it was obvious Blake wasn’t that interested. He could have his pick of any guy or girl at Wildewood, and he clearly found Demi cute enough but too flamboyant, or maybe just too much
person
.
Whatever. Only someone who’s lived his entire romantic life in his dreams could fail to see that Blake was not signing up for the role of Blond Boyfriend, and that he was sending “back off” messages whenever he wasn’t licking Demi’s neck.
But Demi didn’t see it. And when I told him, he said, “You don’t know what it’s like when we’re alone, darling”—and what can you say to that?
On the Friday of the ten-day wonder dress rehearsal, I walked to lunch with Blake and Demi. We all had Pantomime in the same building, though with different teachers.
Demi was bouncing along, talking about
Guys and Dolls
, so in his element, so pleased with himself, a hundred thousand times happier than I’d ever seen him in Ohio. And Blake said, “Dude, I gotta meet someone. I’m gonna skip lunch. I’ll catch you guys later,” and ran off toward the dorms.
We went to lunch and then back to Demi’s room for the twenty minutes before class, since he had a box of chocolates there from his parents, who were still on their European tour/safari and not coming to see the show.
We walked in, and there was Blake on Demi’s low bunk, making out with Mark.
They had their clothes on. But still. Demi took one look at them and bolted through the door. I could hear his footsteps down the hall and out.
Blake and Mark lay there, looking at me. “Do you mind?” Blake finally said.
As if it were his room. As if it weren’t Demi’s bed. As if he didn’t know me.
“I need to get the chocolate,” I answered, keeping my ground.
“S’over there,” said Mark, pointing to the top of Demi’s dresser. “It’s Godiva.”
“Those are the best,” said Blake, stretching himself out flirtatiously on the bunk.
I grabbed the box and left.
* * *
D
EMI WAS
waiting for me outside. I put my arm around him and we walked down to the lakeshore. I opened the chocolates (it was a large box), and we sat silently in the sand, poking the bottoms with our fingernails until we found the ones we liked best.
Demi ate two at a time, like he wanted to flood himself with some sensation other than what he was feeling about Blake and Mark.
Finally, he said, “I’m thirsty.”
“Me too. Chocolate does that.”
“Hm.”
“We can stop at the lounge on the way back and get sodas.”
“Okay.” Demi poked his thumb into the bottom of a strawberry cream. “Are we late for rehearsal?”
“We’ve got five minutes.”
“How could he do that to me when I have a show? With Mark, Mark who I have to sleep underneath in that stupid bunk bed.”
“I know.”
“Ugh, they were on my
bed
even, how gross is that?”
“Very.”
“I feel like, oh, like a discarded napkin.”
“You’re so much more than a napkin, darling.”
“No, I’m a napkin. I’ve gone from top Bunburyer to limp, dirty old napkin in the course of an afternoon.”
I patted him on the shoulder and offered him another chocolate.
“What should I do? Do I talk to him? Let it all hang out and like, cleanse my system of all this badness, or do I pretend like it never happened?”
“You pretend like it never happened,” I said. “You keep your dignity.”
“Ugh,” Demi cried. “Why Mark? Why
Mark
? I mean, that guy doesn’t even know how to flush a toilet.”
“He’s a jerk, Demi. Blake is a jerk.”
“But even so, why would he pick Mark over me? Why?”
“There’s no why. It sucks.”
“I can’t do the show tonight. Or tomorrow.” Demi stood up decisively, wiping his eyes. “I’m going to have to tell Morales I can’t go on. I’m never going to make it through, seeing Blake and Mark onstage, knowing they were Bunburying behind my back.”
“Yes, you will.”
“No, I can’t do it. I’m going to crack, forget my lines, my throat will close up. It would be more professional to admit that and step down. Let the understudy do it.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Look at me!” he shouted. “I’m a napkin! That boy has reduced me to a napkin!”
“Demi.” I stood up and grabbed his arm.
“What? You don’t know how I feel just now, Sadye. Like I’m limp. I’m dizzy. I feel like I’m going to throw up,” he yelled. “I’m not fit to do
anything
, much less sing and dance like freaking Elvis Presley, which I have to do all afternoon, then sing selections from
Porgy and Bess
for M-TAP, and then put on a lilac suit and be slick and romantic, singing full-out high notes and kissing Candie Berkolee, which is exactly what I’m scheduled to do. And my throat hurts now, I can’t have my throat hurting, I won’t be able to do it. Sadye, I’m so freaking tired, and I can’t believe he did this to me, and I can’t believe what I’ve got to do today, it’s not possible, just no way I can do it, don’t you see?”
“Demi! Demi!”
“My throat hurts! What?”
“Stop it. You have to stop it. Deep breathe!”
He didn’t deep breathe, but he looked at me quietly.
“You can’t drop
Guys and Dolls
because of Blake,” I told him. “You can’t. Look. Blake Bunburied with Mark because . . . Mark sucks. He’s only halfway decent looking, he’s not even funny, and you told me yourself he can barely remember his lines. Blake
wanted
someone mediocre. Otherwise he’d never pick Mark over you.”
“What?” Demi obviously never read women’s magazines. “Why?”
“People like mediocrity because it makes them feel better about themselves. He was intimidated by you,” I went on. “Because Blake may be king of the cuteocracy, yes, he probably is—but
you
, you are king of the meritocracy. A guy like Blake doesn’t want to play second string. He’s used to being, like, the captain of sports teams and always getting his way. So think about their mediocrity, when you get onstage tonight. Think, ‘There you are, two untalented dudes with shaky ethical foundations.’ Think, ‘There you two dudes are, dressed as policemen in the wings, and here am I, singing “Luck Be a Lady” center stage.’ Think, ‘I am king of the meritocracy, and your afternoon make-out sessions are nothing to me because Broadway is my next stop and you two are gonna be eating my dust!’” I was shouting now, holding Demi’s hand.
He finally smiled. Then he hugged me tight. “Thanks, Sadye.”
“Of course.”
He kept hugging me, like he had forgotten what we were doing and started thinking about something else. I could feel his mind begin to regroup and race on. “You’re gonna be late for rehearsal if you don’t leave now,” I whispered in his ear.
“Oh, no! Is it one already?” Demi released me and bent down to pick up the chocolate box. “I gotta move. You’re the best, Sadye. I love you. The most incredible girl.”
“That’s what they tell me,” I said.
He ran off at top speed, holding the gold box on his head with one hand.
(click)
Sadye:
Hello, posterity. I’m on
the beach, after lunch. Demi
just ran off to
Birdie
rehearsal,
but I’m avoiding
Midsummer
.I know Reanne is waiting for me.
And it’s rude and destructive to
be late, because it destroys the
spirit of the ensemble. But I
hate the show.I hate being a tree, I hate being
a man, and I hate the way Reanne
is pushing people to embody the
spirit of whatever in the forest
when it’s clear that Titania,
for example, has no idea what
the heck she’s saying. She
doesn’t know what her speeches
even mean, but Reanne isn’t
going to tell her because she’s
encouraging the spirit of
discovery and empowering the
actor. Except I doubt Titania is
ever going to figure it out, and
she’s going to go up there in
performance and just speak in
this vague fairy way, and no
one is going to know what’s
going on.The set design is junky and
distracting to the audience.
Yesterday we began “canvas work”
and spent half the rehearsal
experimenting with wrapping
ourselves up in this bright
green canvas to look like trees.And add to that, we’re all wearing
unitards. Reanne announced--and
can I just say she actually
seemed happy about this?--that
there were extra unitards left
over from the order they’d
placed for
Cats
, and our
production was going to have
brand-new, shiny black unitards
to wear. I guess she thought
we’d be glad to have something
new, since most of the
productions use costumes from
the shop’s collection that get
reworked, rather than built from
scratch.Think about it.
Lyle. In a unitard.
Me, in a unitard, playing a man.
No one wants to wear them.
How is anyone going to tell the
fairies from the mechanicals? Or
from the
trees
? There are so
many amazing ways you could
dress the lovers--one couple in
reds, another in blue--one
conservative, another goth--one
Elizabethan, another modern
day--and instead we’re going to
have trouble telling brunette
Helena from brunette Hermia in
unitards.I wanted to talk to Demi about it,
but he’s all freaked about
Guys
and Dolls
and Blake messing
around with Mark and--I can’t
bring it up with him until after
tonight.
And now I am late. Right this
minute. On purpose.Because it’s one thing to be
committed when you believe in
what you’re doing. But what are
you supposed to do when you
don’t
believe?
(shuffle, shuffle, click)
I
SPOKE UP
. In
Midsummer
rehearsal. And while in hindsight I should have arranged to talk to Reanne privately about my staging ideas and the deadening confusion of the tree spirit thing we were all doing, I didn’t. I let myself get irritated after twenty-five minutes of standing with my arms out, trying to keep an expression of bemused wonder on my face as the principals rehearsed.
“Reanne?” I said, when she stopped the lovers to fine-tune some blocking. “Starveling and Snug and me shouldn’t have to be trees while we do this. It’s gonna take forever and our arms are gonna snap off.”
Snug and Starveling put their arms down by their sides when I spoke, but they didn’t say anything.
Reanne took a few steps toward me. “Sadye, are you telling me how to direct this rehearsal?”
And you know what? I was.
I was mad about being a tree, yes. I admit that was part of it. But Starveling looked close to fainting, and I felt it was time to speak up—not just about how uncomfortable everyone was on tree duty, and how humiliating it was to stand around there and basically be furniture, but also about the way it was going to look onstage.
Yeah, everyone kept telling me a good actor should commit fully and not undermine the director’s vision— but most of these people were goofing around and making jokes and hadn’t even learned their lines. I was the only one who even cared enough about the show to do anything about the fact that the trees sucked, and morale was down, and the show was falling apart. So in a way, I was more committed than any of them.
“The trees aren’t working,” I said. “They’re distracting from the scenes, no matter how good a job people try to do.”
A few of the actors nodded.
“Really, if you sit there and watch the scenes, which I’ve done when I’m not a tree, people are moving unintentionally. And they look tired, or bored, which takes away from the action. Plus, it’s really hard to believe they’re trees because they’re
way
too short.”
“Especially me,” quipped Snug, and Starveling laughed.
“Maybe we should have some actual trees built of cardboard or wire, instead of people,” I went on. “Or what if—what if we weren’t so literal, and had a set that wasn’t a forest but like an interpretation of a forest. Like a forest entirely of roses?”
Reanne raised her eyebrows.
“Or a city. A city that was like an urban jungle of dark corners and streetlamps instead of trees. Or what if it felt like we were underwater somehow? So it would feel less pedestrian. Like an underwater wonderland, like we’d all fallen into a magical ocean.” I knew I was babbling, but the ideas spilled out of me.
“Sadye,” said Reanne, her voice sounding almost sad. “Can we please continue the rehearsal?”
I liked Reanne. I did. And I could tell that she thought I’d been horrible and obnoxious just then. So I nodded and put my arms out like a tree.
But I felt sure I was right.
A
FTER REHEARSAL
, Lyle, Theo, and Starveling walked with me to Restoration Squash-your-boobs-up. “That was very Peter Quince of you,” Lyle said, putting his arm around me. “And I mean that in the nicest possible way.”
“How ‘Peter Quince’?”
“You know, he’s the director, he’s trying to make all these layabouts behave themselves and put on a decent play. But they’re out of his control.”
“Oh.”
“You fought the good fight,” said Theo. “Even if she didn’t want to hear it. I like the underwater idea.”
Lyle shook his head. “Oh, no you don’t. I personally veto the underwater idea.”
“Why?”
“It’s enough I have to wear a donkey head. No way am I wearing a bathing suit. That’s worse than the unitards!”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “We could all wear period bathing suits, like 1940s ones so we’d look like Esther Williams.”
“Excuse me, Madame With the Ideas,” said Lyle. “I’m like Winona Ryder. I insist on the no-nudity clause. The forest of roses idea was better.”
“Thank you. I like that one myself.”
“Were you, like, thinking of those in advance?” asked Starveling.
“Not exactly,” I said. “I didn’t plan to tell them to Reanne. They popped out. But I had to think of something while I was on tree duty.”
“Wow,” said Starveling. “I think about sex.”
“Is that why you’re always about to faint?”
“Maybe. Probably, yeah.”
Lyle squeezed my shoulder. “You know she’s never gonna do any of those, right?”
“Yeah. I know it.”
“I’m gonna drink some orange juice before rehearsal tomorrow,” said Starveling. “I really almost fainted this time.”
M
Y PARENTS
drove up from Brenton the next night to watch
Guys and Dolls
. I saw them for an hour before the show—they came to dinner in the cafeteria. My dad brought me a bouquet of flowers, limp from the long car ride.
There wasn’t much to say, somehow. Demi sat with us, since he had no family there to see him—and I realized, thinking about Brenton for practically the first time since we’d arrived at Wildewood, that I hadn’t seen Demi’s straight-boy drag since we left Ohio. Not that he used it with my parents anymore, anyway—but all vestiges of it had disappeared.
He took one of my roses and put it behind his ear for the entire meal. Then the adults got coffee and we had to leave for our call.
“Break a leg!” my mother said, signing at the same time. “Break two legs!”
“Thank you!” said Demi. “I didn’t know you knew that phrase.”
“It’s the right thing to say, isn’t it?” she asked. “My friend at work told me.”
“Absolutely, Mrs. Paulson.”
“Okay, so break them!” she said. “Go, go!”
We went.
T
HE SHOW
was fantastic.
Demi was dashing and manly and utterly convincing as the tough guy brought low by his love for the good-hearted mission worker. He had been a little off in dress rehearsal the night before, but in performance he didn’t choke, or lose his voice, or betray his broken heart in any way except that he sang with so much emotion I believed every note. Candie was wounded and gentle at the same time: her Sarah was a woman with a heart so big she didn’t know what to do with all her feelings about the world, so she worked for charity and squelched her personal life so her passions wouldn’t overwhelm her. Nanette was brassy and tough and falling apart underneath. We all looked sexy-ridiculous in our chicken hats. And Lyle brought the show to a halt with his fat man dance and his eleven o’clock number “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat.”