Open Mic (3 page)

“Not really,” Henry said, but he realized this wasn’t entirely true, because ever since moving to Renham, he’d been acting — wasn’t the definition of acting pretending to be somebody you weren’t?

“You’re a natural,” the drama teacher said.

And so just like that, Henry finally found himself a full-fledged member of a group. After tryouts, they headed for the late buses, where they ran into the JV wrestling team, who shouted, “Drama queens!” and “Fairy losers!”

The actors were furious and shot back insults, but not Henry. He smiled blissfully, repeating the taunts in his head as if they were the most beautiful sounds he’d ever heard.

Drama queens . . . Fairy losers . . .

The plural was music to his ears.

Question: There are two high-school juniors in a room. They’re waiting to audition for the talent show. One is an Asian girl. The other is a white guy. One is tuning a violin. The other fiddles with a scrap of paper containing notes for a stand-up comedy act.

Which one is which?

Yeah. I know what you’d say. That’s what I’d say, too, except that I happened to be the guy. Holding the violin. On which I was about to play Fritz Kreisler’s “Praeludium and Allegro.” Hopefully in a non-sucky way.

And then there was the girl with the scrap of paper. She was tiny and cute and already sitting there when I walked in — we were the last two auditions of the day — and I knew who she was, though we’d never spoken. The last time I’d seen her was two years ago in personal fitness class, which is what they call gym at our school. It was usually taught by Mr. Choffley, a very, very in-shape gay guy who liked nothing better than calling his students fatties and mocking the contents of their lunch bags. But the semester I took it, Mr. Choffley was on sabbatical,
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so we had Ms. Hain. She was normally just the chemistry teacher, and while she cared very much if you were wearing goggles while wielding a pipette of sulfuric acid in lab, she didn’t give a crap what you did in personal fitness, as long as you were physically moving the whole time.

And so I spent a semester’s worth of Tuesday and Thursday afternoons walking during fifth period. As did the girl who now sat before me. We’d both stroll lazily around the track, and since her pace was slower (
impressively
slower, actually) than mine, every once in a while I’d lap her. And nod as I did so. And get a nod back. We never had a class together again, but now here she was. Still tiny. Still cute. And there was nobody else in the room, and her audition wasn’t for another eight minutes, and I was nervous as hell about my own audition, and when I’m nervous, I like to distract myself.
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Here went nothing.

“Hey,” I said as I sat down. “Gretchen, right?”

She looked up at me, startled, and then I saw it slowly register on her face. The register turned into realization, which turned into a smile. “Personal fitness,” she said.

I nodded.

“Josh?”

Oh. She knew my name, too. I hadn’t expected it. “Yeah. I don’t think we ever introduced ourselves, but . . .”

“Yeah, I don’t know, I just heard along the way or something. . . .”

“Yeah, same here.”

“Yeah.”

Silence.

“So what’s your talent?” I asked. I couldn’t discern it from looking at her.

“Well,” she answered, pulling a scrap of paper out of her pocket and waving it in my general direction; I could see messily scrawled notes in purple ink. “I don’t know if I have a talent for it yet. But hopefully it’s, um . . . stand-up comedy.”

The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them: “That’s not very Asian.”

She seemed amused instead of offended, thank God, raising an eyebrow as she glanced down at my violin. “Your talent isn’t particularly Jewish.”

Hey, look at that. She knew more about me than just my name and the fact that we’d had gym together. That was promising. “It’s not
non-
Jewish,” I pointed out. “Plenty of famous Jewish violinists.”

“True,” she agreed. “A non-Jewish talent would be, like, flashing some foreskin and then performing feats of strength.”

I burst out laughing. “I hope that’s one of your jokes.”

“It isn’t.”

“Okay, well, tell me a joke, then. Do part of your act.”

“No.” She seemed almost horrified that I’d asked.

“Come on!”

“Hell no!” She crumpled up her notes and stuffed them back in her pocket.

“If you’re too scared to tell one person, how are you gonna tell a whole audience?” Oops. Gretchen was now scowling. I had clearly crossed the line from “Hey, he’s interested in my act, how flattering” to “Who is this belligerent dipwad, and would an uppercut or a right cross be the best way to punch him in the face?”

“That’s completely the wrong logic,” she snapped. “People laugh more when there’s more people.”

As if on cue, we suddenly heard muffled laughter through the audition-room door. “Who’s in there?” I asked.

“Ballet dancer.”

“Yikes.” I pictured some girl twirling around and then falling on her head or something — although that probably wouldn’t make the teachers running the auditions laugh. Kids, maybe. Me, certainly.
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But not teachers.

“She probably just said something cute. Or did something cute. I heard them laugh when she first went in, too.” Now we heard a smattering of applause, and Gretchen pulled out her paper again and started fiddling with it. “Okay, now I’m getting nervous.”

“I’ve
been
nervous,” I said. “Welcome to my hell.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m gonna screw it up.”

“Oh, you are not.”

“No, I probably am.” She said this very matter-of-factly, as if her voice wasn’t concerned, but her hands sure looked like they were. They weren’t shaking, they just looked . . . tense.

“So?” I asked. “What’s the worst that could happen? Last year I was so nervous I dropped my bow and it broke.” I’m third chair in the school orchestra, so it’s not like I can’t play in front of an audience, but the competitive aspect of auditioning makes normal performance butterflies into an entirely different, well, animal. Butterflies on steroids. Butterflies with Uzis and anger-management problems.

“Oh, I’m sorry!”

“It’s fine, I got a new one.” I held up my bow. “Seriously though, if you don’t make it, that sucks, but it’s just a school show, right? And there’s always next year.”

Gretchen nodded. “Plus, if I do make it, I’d have to tell my parents.” Her hands were now twisting the paper. It looked pretty ragged. I had doubts about its survival into the audition room.

“Well, yeah,” I said.

“They wouldn’t like it.”

“Why not?”

She gave me a “You’re kidding, right, you complete and total idiot?” look. “Asian,” she said, gesturing at her face.

“What? I don’t know your parents. Maybe they’re progressive Asians. Maybe you’re adopted.”

“Nope and nope.”

“Maybe once you get into the show and they come see you and see how talented you are, they’ll change their minds and think their daughter doing stand-up is the most awesome thing in the entire —”

Gretchen rolled her eyes so hard I expected to have to chase them across the floor and give them to her to put back in her head.

“Okay, never mind,” I said.

“I’m not even supposed to be here right now,” Gretchen said. “They think I’m working on my science-fair project.”

“So what
are
you gonna do if you get in?”

“Cross that bridge,” she said darkly.

We sat in silence for a moment. I glanced at the clock and felt myself getting nervous again.

“Just tell me your opening line,” I said.

“Oh, my God, I said no already! Why don’t
you
play something for me, and
then
we can talk about whether I’ll —”

I was already whipping through a four-octave G scale before she even finished her sentence. It turned out flawless. I hadn’t expected it to, but somehow, channeling my nervous energy into talking to Gretchen (or goading her about her act) had calmed my fingers down. My left hand was no longer jumpy. My right hand was no longer oddly stiff. I finished with a flourish that was a hair too exaggerated, but I didn’t bother to feel embarrassed because it’s not like she was familiar with my playing style. For all she knew, I was normally that dramatic.
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