“What?”
“Your actors might trust you to direct a play, because you’re very good at what you do—”
“Of course they do,” he said.
“I admired you so much when this all started,” I said. “A real Broadway director, someone who can make a show click. But now—maybe this exercise works when a group of students has terrific trust in a teacher, maybe it works when people aren’t afraid to walk out if they can’t stand it, but you—we’re terrified of you.”
“Pardon me?”
“All I could think about while I was lying there was that it gave you some kind of joy to make all of us cry.”
“What?”
“You were manipulating us, like puppets. And none of us had the guts to leave, because you control our lives here.”
“You can’t deny it had an effect on you.”
“Maybe it did—but you can’t take a whole group of kids who are scared sick of you and then make them feel like their parents are dead and their pets are strung up by the neck. It’s not right. It’s not acting.”
Morales held up his hand to stop me. “That’s enough. This is not your place.” He walked to the door. “Your place here is to study and learn. I’m sorry to see you’re so blocked and so angry, Sadye, but it’s none of my concern.”
And he was gone.
Thing was, part of me felt happy that he knew my name.
I
WANTED
to talk to Demi about what happened. I ran out to look for him, but he’d already gone to his singing class, which was different from mine.
I went through the rest of the day with this strange adrenaline rush from my argument with Morales. Went to lunch with Nanette and Candie,
Midsummer
rehearsal, Restoration Comedy, dinner with the girls from that class, and an hour of
Cats
rehearsal, eight to nine p.m.
They let me and Jade out to make room for another group of dancers, and we went back to the dorms. None of my friends would be back from rehearsal for an hour or more. I took a shower and changed into regular clothes.
Then I went outside with the intention of going up to the boys’ roof with a flashlight and a book until everyone else got free.
Before I reached the stairs, though, I ran into Theo.
“Hey,” he said. “I thought you were at
Cats
.”
“Got out early.”
Theo smiled. “I heard you talked back to Morales.”
I nodded. I had told Nanette at lunch, and Nanette could never keep her mouth shut. I changed the subject. “Didn’t you have
Midsummer
principals?”
“Reanne let us out.” He shrugged. “She wants to work Bottom and Titania. That girl still has no idea what she’s talking about.”
“Titania?”
“Yeah. I wish someone would explain to her what her speeches mean.”
“I tried.”
“Really?”
“I think I was nice about it. But she was unamused.”
“That’s our Sadye.”
“What?”
“Poking in the nose.”
“What, am I obnoxious?”
“Maybe.”
“I am?”
“A little.”
“You think I’m obnoxious?”
“That came out wrong.”
“What right way is there to tell someone she’s obnoxious?” I asked, hurt.
“I didn’t say obnoxious. You said obnoxious,” answered Theo. “I mean . . .” He sighed. “Here. Come walk with me. Don’t be mad, you’re not obnoxious.” He took my arm and walked us out of the dorm and down the path toward the dance studios. “You care, right?” he said. “You speak up. That’s why you complained to Morales about that acting exercise, that’s why you kvetch at Reanne, that’s why you try and help Titania. All this stuff matters to you. I don’t see anyone else caring that much.”
“Reanne thinks I need to be more of an ensemble player,” I said. “She said maybe I shouldn’t be an actor if I need to be irreplaceable.”
“Nah,” Theo said as we walked into the open dance studio where we’d first met. “You have strong opinions. That can be good in a lot of contexts.”
“But not in this one.”
“I don’t know.” Theo sat down at the baby grand and played a few chords. “What do you want to hear?”
“How about ‘Seasons of Love’?”
“Ah,
Rent
. Yes, I can play
Rent
,” he answered. And launched into it.
I sat on the piano bench next to him, watching his fingers move across the keys. Wondering what they’d feel like if he ever touched me. Listening to this music about time passing, looking at all the ways we measure our lives—in minutes or moments of connection, cups of coffee, bridges burned. In love.
I didn’t want the summer to end. Even after what happened with Morales.
After “Seasons of Love,” Theo played the intro to “Sue Me” from
Guys and Dolls
. “Sing,” he told me.
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“Because. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my time here, it’s that when people ask me if I sing, my answer should be no.”
“Aw, I’m not asking if you sing,” Theo said, vamping on the piano.
“Yes, you are.”
“No.” He took his fingers off the keys. “I’m asking you
to
sing.”
“Oh.”
“You know you love it. You should see the look on your face when music starts.”
“I go flat,” I told him. “And I don’t have a lot of range. I was told to lip-synch the Hot Box numbers.” I had never confessed that to anyone before. Not even to Demi.
“So?” Theo seemed unconcerned.
“So, I’m not a singer.”
“This isn’t an audition. This is you and me and the piano.”
I remembered how before I got to Wildewood, Demi and I used to burst into song with zero encouragement. We’d sing on the bus, in the drugstore, walking down the street in Cleveland, jumping on his couch. I’d sing in the shower or while washing dishes. We’d sing along with movies on the DVD player. But here I had stopped. Of course I had to sing every other day in class, but that was always in a group. We did vocal exercises and learned harmonies. We never had to sing alone.
And anywhere but Singing, I had been silent. Making other people serenade me, directing them, dancing while they harmonized. Because I didn’t want people to hear. All those people who could really sing.
Maybe my problem wasn’t what Morales and Reanne implied—that I lacked humility. Maybe my problem was that I lacked confidence.
“Sadye, I’m vamping here.” Theo was playing the introduction to “Sue Me” again, waiting for my Miss Adelaide to swing in with her list of lovelorn complaints.
Not that confidence would make me a singer when I didn’t have the voice. It wouldn’t. I would never have the voice.
Theo started singing the Adelaide part himself in a comical squalk. “Okay, okay,” I said, shaking myself out of contemplation. “If you’re that desperate to sing a duet, I suppose I can oblige you.”
“I’m desperate!” he yelled. “My kingdom for a duet!”
“Shut up!”
He started over with the vamp. “No, you. Shut up and sing.”
And so I sang.
And Theo sang.
We sang together, easily, ’cause we’d heard the song a thousand times during rehearsal.
Then we sang “Money, Money” from the movie of
Cabaret
, and “Anything You Can Do” from
Annie Get Your Gun
, though we messed up the lyrics.
It was so, so fun. I missed the high notes, and at first I was embarrassed, but then I didn’t care.
When we finished “Anything You Can Do,” I pretended to collapse on the floor from exhaustion. “It’s nearly curfew,” I said, pointing to the clock on the studio wall.
“Nearly, but not.”
“Demi and those guys will be wondering where I am, up on the roof.”
He shrugged.
“Do you wanna go?”
Theo shook his head. “Nah, I’ll stay here. You go along.”
What? Why wouldn’t he want to come? After we’d just had such a good time. “I can’t figure you out,” I finally said.
“What? I’m an open book.”
“No, you’re not.”
“What do you mean?”
I stood up and paced the room. “First you offer to come back to my dorm with me, then you won’t even dance with me. Next you walk with me in the moonlight and then sprint off like I’ve got cooties.
Then you show up at the cast party with Bec.”
“Sadye—”
“I’m not done,” I said. “After that, you come up on the roof a couple times, tell everybody you’re single, and for some unknown reason, never show up again. And now you tell me I’m obnoxious, then drag me out here in the middle of the night.” I folded my arms. “I can’t tell what you think of me, Theo,” I said. “And I have to say, I’m tired of worrying about it. Like me, don’t like me, but don’t play around with me.”
Theo stood up from the piano. “I wasn’t playing around.”
“Oh, no?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Well, it feels like it from my end. Why don’t you want to come up to the roof?”
“Because I want to stay here.”
“Why?”
“Sadye.”
“What?”
“Sadye.” He stood up. “I think you’re—” He crossed the dance floor, reached out and grabbed my hand, pulled me in close, and breathed the words into my neck. “I think you’re—whatever I think of to say sounds like a line. But—”
“But what?” I asked. Theo’s hands were on my shoulders. His lips were almost on my ear. Was he pouncing?
“You’re funny, you’re unusual,” whispered Theo. “You’re probably too smart for your own good.”
“Oh.”
“I think about you all the time.”
“You have a lame way of showing it.”
“What I want to know is—” Theo was still whispering. “There’s something I’ve never had the guts to ask.”
“What?”
He hesitated. “Are you taken?”
“Taken?” I stepped back in surprise. “By who?”
“By Demi.”
“Demi’s gay, Theo. He’s with Lyle. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that. They’re all over each other.”
“You seem taken by him anyway.”
“I do?”
“You put your arms around him. You dance with him. You talk about him like he’s your boyfriend.”
And I knew it was true.
It was true.
Part of me
was
taken by Demi, and maybe always would be. I loved him.
“I’m not taken by Demi,” I whispered in Theo’s ear. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
We kissed, there in the studio, trembling and nervous, with light from the streetlamps outside spilling through the window into squares of white on the floor.
I
RAN INTO
the girls’ dorms just under curfew and threw myself into bed two seconds before the hall monitor called “lights out.”
But I couldn’t sleep.
Iz, Candie, and Nanette gossiped for a few minutes in the dark. Candie had recently moved her affections from the split personality half-monster
Jekyll & Hyde
to the psychotic dentist from
Little Shop of Horrors
. He had kissed her for real (not just onstage) about a week before, and she was filled with new emotion over his attentions.
I didn’t want to tell them about Theo, somehow. Well, I wanted to tell Nanette , but I didn’t want to deal with Iz’s competitive streak or Candie’s overenthusiasm. So I stayed quiet as Candie rattled on about the dentist, and when they drifted off to sleep, I grabbed my micro-cassette recorder and snuck out to knock on Demi’s window.
He opened it—not asleep yet—and the two of us ninja’d up to the roof, keeping silent until we got through the door and shut it behind us.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey, hey! My Sadye!” Demi walked over to the corner where we stored our snacks under a pile of ratty wool blankets. “You’re in luck. Beverages are still—well, still a bit colder than warm!”
“Who made the beer run, you or Lyle?”
“Me,” he answered, handing me a beer and rummaging under the blanket. “They needed extra time with ‘The Telephone Hour,’ so they let me go early. We waited for you, but— Ooh, look. There are potato products left. Did you know you’d be so lucky?”
“Ooh, they had the sticks?”
“Sticks and . . . ripple-y chips and salt and vinegar.”
“Amazing.” I grabbed a blanket and spread it on
the tar surface of the roof. We settled on the blanket, lying side by side. “I kissed Theo,” I told Demi. “Or Theo kissed me.”
“Finally.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Finally.”
“Did you get to feel his buns?”
“Demi!”
“I’m just asking. They’re like a total mystery.”
“No.”
“The buns of mystery. The mysterious buns of Wildewood.”
“Stop it. It was romantic.”
“OOOOOhhh.”
“It was!”
“No really, that’s good,” Demi said. “I’m happy for you. He seems all right.”
“I wasn’t asking for your approval.”
“Sorry, did I say the wrong thing?”
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t about buns, that’s all.”
“Okay, I take it back about the buns. Forget I ever mentioned buns.”
Neither of us said much for a bit. I turned and looked at Demi’s beautiful profile, his nearly bald head curving into his sharp cheekbones, round nose, and full lips. Suddenly I wanted to kiss him.
Which was bizarre and wrong.
And he’d be grossed out anyway, I knew.
Besides which, he had a boyfriend.
Besides which, we were friends. And I loved Lyle.
Besides which, I had Theo now. I mean, I had just been kissing Theo.
Besides which—
I sat up and tried to make the feeling go away by opening the bag of potato chips. “Did you guys redo ‘Sincere’?” I asked, referring to the choreography on one of Demi’s solos.
“This afternoon,” he answered, sitting up as well. “It’s better the new way. How’s
Cats
?”
“Good,” I said happily. “I think it’s gonna be good.”
“I hear you had a fight with Morales.”
“What? Not a fight. Did Nanette say fight?”
Demi shook his head and laughed. “I didn’t get it from Nanette. It was all over the rehearsal room. No one’s got secrets.”
“I did tell him off.”
“What did you say?”
I explained: how Morales manipulated people’s feelings. How it wasn’t a trusting environment. How he controlled our lives, had too much power over us. And even though I knew Demi loved Morales, even though we’d argued about it before, I still expected him to take my side.
Because we’d been best friends when neither of us had anyone else. Because we’d saved each other.