Viola in Reel Life (6 page)

I look in the mirror. I think my bangs grew a little
today. If I really yank, when they’re wet I can almost get them to go behind my ears (almost). I really want them to be that long by the time we go to the dance at Drab Dull. That would be great.

I brush my teeth and think about Andrew and how, no matter what it is or when I call him, no matter what I need, he is
there.
I don’t think any of my new friends here have someone like Andrew back home. They have friends, but not friends like
him.
I’m very lucky.

Caitlin used to tell me that there are no accidents in life—that people come into your circle because you have something to learn from them. I think about Suzanne who has definitely helped me be very cool about boys. Romy has encouraged me to be as athletic as is possible with my limited talents in that arena. And Marisol has been good for everything else—I can tell her anything and she never acts shocked or judge-y.

Even if I crash and burn academically here, and socially at Drab Dull, I
do
have the support of my roommates. This is not a small thing for someone like me who spent the first part of the semester wishing I was anywhere but here. I’m beginning to understand that there is only now, and even though now isn’t perfect, and South Bend isn’t Brooklyn, that of all the billions of places I could be, this is what I’ve got right now. I’ve
made three good friends, and hopefully I’ve become one for them too, and maybe that’s what my mother meant when she said she never forgot her year at PA. Maybe it was the friendships that got her through—and is the part that she will always remember.

FOUNDER’S DAY IS A MUCH BIGGER DEAL THAN I
EVER
thought it would be. It’s more like Founder’s Week. The rehearsals, filming the video for the show, editing the footage, adding music—the bells and whistles of production—well, all of it has eaten up most of the month of October, which is good, as the notion of time flying around here is one to embrace and celebrate.

My grandmother texts me to see how I’m liking school, as she was very worried that I wasn’t adjusting. (My mother can never keep my emotional state to herself—not ever!)

Nerves are, like, totally out of control at the final dress rehearsal for the Founder’s Day play called
The First Academy
. I am, seriously, the
only
person who is calm and refuses to freak out. That’s because all my work is done
and all I have to do is hit the cues and change the blue screen when the scenes change. Also, I have help.

Mr. Robinson is a true computer geek. Prefect Academy had a whole theatrical computerized light and sound system donated from a mega-rich alum (Trish told me), but no one has really used it to full effect. Until our show. Until now.

Mr. Robinson hooked up my laptop and the blue-screen program Andrew sent me to the main board in the mezzanine of the theater. My scenes look like, well, Broadway quality.

The play opens with some footage of the winding road that leads up to the academy. I shot it in early-morning light, and it’s beautiful—lots of pink light—and I shot this cool effect (which I totally stole from
Saturday Night Fever
) where I follow the feet of the first student (Clare Brennan in character) to register in 1890. Then I widen out to show the first hall ever built.

The play proper stinks. The dialogue is stilted and the costumes are homemade. The upperclassmen wear uniforms from the past just like Mom remembered. Diane Davis wears a tennis outfit, white bloomers over the knee with a dress over it. Trish went for the gray serge jumper with the drop waist. It’s actually as hilarious as it is educational.

But my scenery is amazing if I do say so myself. The
girls onstage can hardly give their lines as they look upstage at the skrim and my backdrops. Their jaws drop as the scene behind them changes from different points of view, to skylines, to day, to night.

Diane Davis shouts from the orchestra, “Viola! Can you hold the sunset over Geier-Kirshenbaum?”

I check my computer log and click on the image of Geier-Kirshenbaum. It appears onstage in full.

“Stunning!” Diane waves and gives me the okay sign.

“This program is really something,” Mr. Robinson says as he sits back on his stool with wheels and folds his arms across his chest. He’s bald and wears glasses, like every computer science teacher in the United States of America.

Romy, Marisol, and Suzanne sneak into the mezzanine from the exit door and sit in the back row. I turn around and wave.

“Cue the atrium shot,” Diane directs.

I pull up the atrium shot of the girls on their way to class first thing in the morning.

“Wow!” Marisol blurts.

Diane covers her eyes and looks up into the spotlight. “This is a closed rehearsal!” she reminds us. Marisol covers her mouth and slinks down into her chair.

When the final dress rehearsal is over, Diane confers
with her actors onstage.

“I’d say the blue screen is the hit of the show,” Mr. Robinson confides as he closes his laptop.

“Thanks for your help,” I tell him.

“Nope, don’t thank me. This is all you, Viola. And that program you bogarted out of Brooklyn.”

“That made a difference,” I agree. I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Romy, Suzanne, and Marisol come down the aisle to join me.

“That was amazing,” Romy says.

“Sorry I shouted like that. It’s just that the backdrop was so gorgeous,” Marisol gushes.

“You knocked it out of the park,” Suzanne agrees.

I look at my roommates who are so proud of me that it makes
me
proud.

“Group hug!” Marisol says. Suzanne and Romy swarm me with Marisol. This is the closest thing I will ever feel to having actual sisters. I’m so glad they came.

“Viola? Can you come down here please?” Diane calls from the orchestra.

“Gotta go. I’m getting notes,” I tell them. Two weeks and I’ve already got theatrical lingo down. As I gather my stuff, my roommates turn to go. “Hey, guys.”

They turn as one and look at me expectantly.

“Thanks for showing up. You’re the best.”

My roommates smile and I watch them push through the door of the mezzanine to the upper lobby. I feel, for the first time since I unpacked at PA, that I have a purpose. I’m
doing
something. Who knew that something would be a Founder’s Day show? And who knew that the best audience would be my roommates?

I head back to Hojo after dinner to do a run-through of my computer images on the stage. It was hard to concentrate earlier when there were so many people around. Diane gave me my notes and there are a couple of adjustments I have to make. I wish Andrew were here to help me. We’d knock it out in no time.

I push open the door to the theater. The work lights are on, bright beams of white light that turn into murky gray pools when they hit the painted black floor of the stage. I walk down the side aisle and climb the steps to the stage. I turn and face the 300 seats in the theater. It scares me to stand here when the place is totally empty. I feel tiny, as though I’m standing on the ledge of the Grand Canyon. I don’t know how actors do it. I admire Grand even more knowing she has to actually act on different stages all around the country in front of total strangers. She is very brave.

The scent of a flowery, powdery perfume fills the air. Theaters have a specific smell, a mix of wax, paint, and perfume that is worn either by the audience or the actresses—or maybe a mix of both. Whenever I went to the theater with Grand, I noticed the heavy perfume, and she said it was “the ghosts of drama past.” I should’ve put that in my paper for Mrs. Carleton’s English class. I bet I would have swung a B+ instead of a B-. Oh well.

I walk backstage into the wings and look over the racks of costumes. The characters’ names dangle off the crook of the hangers. The costumes are pressed neatly in place and are organized by scene. The corresponding shoes rest in a neat row on the shelf above the rolling rack. On a table close by are wooden forms that hold the hats of each era, also arranged by scene. The hats smell like expensive perfume, roses, and honey. They’re vintage hats with brims of velvet, satin bows, and fronds of feathers. Some have flounces of netting, others have hat pins made of rhinestones and pearls stuck into them. The work lights catch the facets of the rhinestones. They sparkle like the sun hitting the water in the fountain outside our room at dawn.

There’s a table along the backstage wall, behind the skrim, marked with tape for the props from each scene. Putting on a play is a very methodical and organized
process. I pick up a wooden ladle and a matching bucket, careful to place them back where I got them. After we do our show all of this will be put away, stored for another production. I’m a little sad to think I don’t have an artistic venture planned after this one. And I wasn’t counting on anything about lame Founder’s Day being
this
much fun.

I pull out my video camera and begin filming the backstage area. I press Record and then Audio:

“The Viola Diaries continued. It would appear that I am showing you rows and rows of objects called props. They are. This is my first theatrical venture. The program calls me the set designer, though really I didn’t do any of the crappy wooden chairs and tables you see in the scenes, but rather the high-tech visual landscapes that appear behind the actors as they play through their scenes. It’s probably important to make note of this because someday, when I look back, it may signify the very moment where I set foot in the theater and stayed for a lifetime. Who knows? I can’t be sure. I’m fourteen and it’s pretty obvious to me that things change. But this is where I am today. At the Prefect Academy. South Bend, Indiana.”

I sign off and lock in the date.

The theater has the scent of buttery wax and fresh paint. I go onstage and face the audience. I close my eyes
and imagine a stage filled with ballerinas or World War I soldiers or a 1930s dinner party where ladies wore gowns. I open my eyes. I wonder if this feeling I’m having right now is “the bug.” Grand always talks about when she was a girl and was bitten by the acting “bug”—as though it’s a virus that races through you and once it does, you’re never over it. And I think that might be true. Look at Grand. She’s in her sixties and she’s still got the “bug.” I wonder if I’ve caught it too.

I look up and squint past the glare of the work lights. In the rafters over the stage, where complicated skeins of pulleys and ropes, wires and beams that lift scenery and hold lighting instruments in place live, I see a flash of red.

Whatever I’m seeing sort of freaks me out. I’m not one to stand still when I’m freaking, so I move quickly across the stage in rapid small steps like a geisha. When I get to the stairs that lead into the audience, I quicken my pace. I grab my laptop and my backpack off the lip of the stage and head up the aisle to go out into the lobby.

“It’s only me,” a voice says.

I turn slowly, afraid of what I’ll see.

Mrs. Belldoin, the janitor, pushes her cart loaded with cleaning supplies through the stage door and onto the stage. When she sees me and the look on my face and
the way I’m gripping my backpack like a pillow during a bad dream, she says, “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’m okay.”

“You know we lock the building at eight,” she says.

“I know.” But instead of heading out the door I get some courage, mostly because Mrs. Belldoin could take any guy in a fight, and there’s nothing to fear when she’s around. So I walk to the downstage lip of the stage and look up, up through the ropes, pulleys, and wires, past the work lights, and into the grid. The flash of red is gone—but not the scent of perfume. That stays.

I can literally feel the admiration from my roommates when I enter the dining hall for breakfast the morning after our show. The Founder’s Day show was a hit and it was a sellout crowd, mostly because every teacher in every class at PA made attendance mandatory for credit.

Some of the teachers who have been around here since the 1980s tell me it’s the best Founder’s Day they ever saw, and I got my own applause because Diane Davis made me stand up and take a bow during the curtain call. Now I’m sure I’ll be hit up for every camera- and scenery-related project on campus. That’s okay. I can always say no. And who knows, I might even say yes. I’ve never been treated this well. Trish made big comedy and tragedy masks for our quad door and trimmed them in glitter in honor of opening night. She made sure that I had a bunch of roses too. She’s cool that way.

Mom and Dad video conference from Afghanistan:

“You guys look exhausted,” I tell them.

“We are,” Dad says.

“How’s it going?”

“We’re hanging in there. It’s grueling,” Mom says.

“We’re on the move a lot,” Dad explains.

“So come home,” I say. “You’re coming home in December anyhow, so just cut it short. Remember—you did that when you shot the documentary about street gangs in L.A.”

“We’ve made a commitment and we’re going to see it through,” Dad says. “Besides, we’ve rented out the house until the end of your school year. The guy is nice enough to let us take it for two weeks over Christmas break; I don’t want to push it.”

My dad is always the font of practicality. “Okay, Dad.”

“How are things going?” Mom leans forward. I can see in her eyes that she’s afraid to ask.

“Good,” I tell them.

Dad leans forward. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope. I’m totally blooming where I’m planted. And it’s a complete freak accident.”

“Honey, you know I don’t like the words freak and accident together,” Mom says.