The Fall Musical (2 page)

Casey pulled a folded sheet out of her pocket. “Liebowitz.”

“Lifer,” Brianna said with a nod. “Sometimes forgets things, like his socks or toupee. Two naps short of Alzheimer's. I'm going the same direction.”

Casey opened her locker and stashed her jacket and book bag, arranging them so that the jacket hung perfectly, and the bag was available with a quick arm swipe.

“That looks like an ad for a catalog,” Brianna observed. “Are you always that neat?”

“Only when I'm nervous,” Casey admitted. “It's just first-day jitters.”

Brianna grinned and pulled open her own her locker. The inner door was already decorated with family snapshots and magazine photos. A couple of the usual movie stars—Casey was not into them—but also some other shots that she did not expect to see.

“The loves of my life,” Brianna said, noticing Casey's curious glance. “The child holding the disgustingly obese hamster is Colter Glaser, my adorably obese brother—”

“Putnam County Spelling Bee . . . ” Casey said, glancing at a photo of a white-shirted Latino guy dressed as a kid standing in front of other young men and women, also dressed as kids. She'd seen the show three times, as well as all the other shows represented on Brianna's door.

Avenue Q
.
Phantom. Les Miz. Wicked . . .

“Jose Llana is so hot, but you could never tell by this picture,” Brianna said.

“I know,” Casey replied. “I saw him in
Rent
.”

Brianna's face brightened. “Me, too. Didn't you just want to jump his bones?”

“Well, I was little, but—”

“Jose, don't take this the wrong way, but we
love
you!” Brianna gave the photo a kiss, shut the locker door, then slid over to Casey's and closed hers. “The trick is, after you do the combination, lift the handle first and
then
pull. If you try to do both together, it sticks. I think Mr. Liebowitz installed these, just after the Depression. Try it and let's go.”

Casey did, it worked, and she ran to catch up to Brianna, who was already gliding down the hallway with long, graceful steps.

“Do you sing?” Brianna asked.

“Not really,” Casey said. “I'm more an instrument type. Piano, clarinet. I mean, I like to sing, but I've done only regular plays, not musicals. So I kind of suck.”

“Sucking is not a relative act. One either sucks or doesn't. No ‘kind of' about it. But I'll be the judge of that. In terms of singing, I mean. In any other sense of the word, that's your business.” Brianna tossed her a smile and a wink. A
wink
! Casey had never met anyone who actually
winked
in normal conversation. “Now, speaking of sucky singing . . . ” Brianna nodded toward a thin girl in fashionably baggy clothes and a fedora, whose red hair flowed nearly to her waist. “That's Darci. You know what we say about Darci. Dances like a butterfly, sings like a bee. Hey, Darse—this is Casey—you coming to the audition?”

“Heeeey!” Darci ran to Brianna and gave her a huge hug, waving to Casey at the same time. “When is it?”

“A week from today, September 11. And if you can sing in tune, which is a big if, callbacks are Thursday.”

“LAAAAH!” Darci hooted in a mock operatic voice that sounded, well, pretty sucky.

“Work on it,” Brianna said. “A lot.” Walking on, she leaned into Casey. “Hope you don't mind. I'm recruiting. Usually, I'm the star, but for this show I'm student director. It's something I've wanted to try, but you can't do that
and
act. Unfortunately.”

Casey trailed her around the corner, where a group of guys (and one Goth girl) was playing Magic cards in the hallway. “The two handsome guys,” Brianna said, “are Ethan Smith and Corbin Smythe, who sing in the a cappella group, the Vanderdonks, which comes from when this place was the Adriaen Van der Donck School for Boys, I kid you not. Anyway, they have a stand-up act called—three guesses—Smith and Smythe. They are actually funny. The guy in blue is Jason. He can sing, but he acts with his shoulders. Ask him to be happy, he shrugs. Sad, he shrugs. The girl is Lilith. She likes Jason's shoulders very much. Often you will see her crying on them. Hey, guys!”

“Yo!” some of the boys shouted, including Jason, who shrugged.

“Now, Lori Terrell over there, the one with the huge crucifix hanging from her neck, will be singing at the Met someday—that's the Metropolitan Opera, not the museum,” Brianna said, waving to a modestly dressed, raven-haired girl who looked like she knew her way around the plus-size rack at Talbot's. “She's a senior. Standing stalwartly beside her is Royce Reardon, also a senior. We call him Royce of No Voice, but he's tried out for every show and he's sweet. And there's Reese, our star dancer-slut, who at the moment is involved in her favorite activity, baring flesh before the clamoring multitudes.”

“Hey, Bri,” called Reese, a girl with pulled-back red hair who, right there in the hallway, was doing a split that revealed the longest, most perfectly bronzed legs Casey had ever seen—although they were a little hard to see through the thicket of boys surrounding her.

“Drool alert, Mr. Ippolito—all over the floor next to Reese!” Brianna said to a custodian who was approaching with a mop. “Mr. Ippolito, by the way, played Hector, the third Iowan from the right, in this school's 1972 production of
Music Man
.”

“How do you know that?” Casey asked.

“I have a photographic memory.”

Mr. Ippolito, a gangly man with sandy hair turning silver, began dancing with his mop. “Dancinnnng in the daaaark,” he sang. “Do I get a callback?”

“We love you, but keep your day job,” Brianna replied.

Casey stared at Brianna in wonder. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?” Brianna said.

“When you say those things about them—do they mind it?”

“They love it,” Brianna replied. “That's because it's said with love and honesty. Well, honesty at least. When you
don't
say things, when you pretend or keep secrets—that's when people freak. No secrets, no twisted knickers. That's the motto of the DC. Well, it's not, but it should be.”

“The who?”

“DC? You know,
Drama Club
?” Brianna looked at Casey as if she were scolding a child for forgetting her alphabet. “Which you're about to join?”

“I am?” Casey asked.

“Great! I knew you'd say yes!”

And like that, she was around the next corner.

Back in Westfield, when she was a sophomore, Casey knew a senior who liked to drive close behind trucks, claiming they created pockets of airspace that sucked you along. It was kind of dangerous, he admitted, but it felt great, like you were pulled into a magnetic field. That's what it was like with Brianna. Walking with her in a crowded hallway was like flying on someone else's power. The movement all around them changed—body language, eyes, crowd patterns, everything adjusted to Brianna. She was the only one traveling in a straight line—aside from Casey, who was only borrowing the pocket of airspace.

Casey's Westfield friends had been quiet and studious. The student government and yearbook types. They would have had plenty to say about someone like Brianna, none of it very nice. But Brianna turned expectations upside down.

Brianna stopped in front of Room 147. “Here we are, the Lair of Liebowitz. You know about theater in this school?”

Casey nodded. “The town rolls up on opening night,” she said. “Everyone shows up to the musicals. It's like football teams in Texas. The costume and set budgets are six figures—”

“You read about us in the
New York Times
.”

“Sunday Arts and Leisure section—”

“Good Lord, you are a total freak.” Brianna smiled, and the sun seemed to blast in through the windowless walls and ceiling. “Like it or not, girl, you are one of us. Have an up-tempo and a ballad prepared for next Tuesday. Ms. Gunderson will accompany, and she can play anything. For callbacks, we'll have sides available. This is not—I repeat,
not—
the Big One. The stores will not shut early, or any of that crap. It's our small fall musical, something new this year—Harrison's idea. He worked on getting permission all summer long. You'll like Harrison; he's Greek, but don't hold it against him. Actually, he's pretty hot, if you like the dark, smoldering, serious type. He swears his eyes are brown, but look closely, they're
black.
Anyway, the show is
Godspell
. Great music. As you know, it's about Jesus, but you don't have to be Christian. Stephen Schwartz wrote it, and he's Jewish. Actually, so was Jesus. You can sing from the show if you want.”

“Sides?” Casey said.

“Sections of the script you can read. Scenes. One of the other Drama Club members will read the other characters.”

“Okay,” Casey said, already numb from trying to remember the details.

“I'm the student director, which means I won't be playing a role. Mr. Levin—he's our faculty adviser—is the actual director, but only because the administration says kids can't direct. Which means I'll mostly be in charge.” Brianna looked at her watch. “Gotta go. Hey, do you know Alex Duboff? From Westfield?”

Clang
. The sound of the name smacked Casey right back into reality.

“No,” she replied. Which was true. Alex had been a classmate, but she didn't
know
him, just knew of him. And she did not feel like expanding this conversation. Looking backward was not in the plan. Who'd have thought Brianna would know Alex Duboff?

“Oh well, just wondering.” Brianna shrugged. “Someone I met at the beach over the summer.”

“How did you know I lived in Westfield?” Casey asked.

“Uh, because you told me?” Brianna gave her a grave look. “Already the nearness to Liebowitz is corrupting your memory. See you after school.”

As she turned to head down the hallway, the bell rang. Immediately kids scrambled toward classes, screaming and giggling. But Brianna did not vary her pace one bit.

“Please have a . . . a . . . seat,” came a thick, ragged voice behind her.

Mr. Liebowitz was a craggy old man with a robust salt-and-pepper toupee and a plaid shirt so often washed that you couldn't tell the colors. He smiled warmly at Casey, looking through crooked glasses, then leaned over his attendance sheet. “And you, my dear? You are . . . ?”

Casey quickly rushed over to his desk. “Casey. Casey Chang. There's a mistake on the attendance sheets. May I?”

Before Mr. Liebowitz could answer, Casey took a pen from the desk, crossed out the name “Kara,” and wrote in her new name, an action she would repeat eight more times that day.

2

 

“Um, when you say we have three minutes—does that mean
per song
or
per audition
?” asked Lynnette Freeman, whose hair had been cut, streaked, and shaped into something that resembled a sleeping raccoon. Not exactly the style of the musical
Godspell
, but interesting.

“Per audition,” Harrison replied for what seemed the hundredth time, holding a sign-up sheet toward her. “We will probably only be hearing
one
of the songs you prepared—but if we need to hear the other, we will ask you. Fill in a slot and give your music to Ms. Gunderson. She'll be playing piano.”