Summer Unscripted

by Jen Klein

  Here, the air still feels warm and impatient and jittery, but at least I’m alone. At least, no one can see the way I shake my hands in front of my body, trying to catch my breath. It’s ridiculous—I know it’s ridiculous—and yet I can’t seem to get my pulse rate under control. Even though I’m aware of the smallness of my role on that stage, of the fact that no one is going to be looking specifically at me…

  An entire auditorium is going to be looking toward me. If I mess up in a spectacular fashion—the way I messed up this summer—they’ll know. Someone will know.

  And it’s not like I have to stay. There’s no more blackmail. No more Tuck—at least, not really. Waiting for the school year to figure things out with him is the most realistic plan, anyway. I could bail right now, just flee into the woods and circle back to the parking lot without anyone seeing me. I could pack up my stuff and be back in Dobbs by midnight….

  I tighten my fists into hard balls and squinch my eyes closed. I slow-count to ten, then relax my fingers and let all my breath out in a long whoosh. When I open my eyes, Milo is there. “Rainie, are you okay?”

  “Totally.” See, sometimes I speak the truth, and sometimes lies spew out of my mouth like vomit. “It turns out this is how I get ready for opening nights. Walking out into the forest. It’s gonna be my thing.”

  “Right.” Milo cocks his head, sizing me up. Seeing straight through me. “But what’s up? Really?”

  I try again. “I’m getting some exercise before the show.”

  “You don’t look like you’re exercising.”

  I open my mouth to produce another lie, but a version of the truth pops out instead. “I’m kind of freaking out.” Milo doesn’t answer immediately, so I hasten to lighten it with a wide smile. “I know, it’s stupid.”

  If Milo had been pretty much any other boy, he would say the thing—No, it’s not—but he’s not every other boy, so instead he pauses. He thinks about it. When he finally speaks, he does so slowly. In a measured way. “It’s not stupid. But I don’t get nervous here because of the way I grew up. It was different from almost everyone else.” He stares down at me, and without meaning to, I notice how the early-evening sunlight dapples through the trees, casting speckles across his light brown skin. “When something’s normal for you, like going to Thanksgiving dinner with your grandparents, you don’t get nervous. It’s just what you do. It’s a thing that happens once a year.”

  “But this year is different for you too,” I remind him. “You’ve never played Achilles before.”

  “True. I guess I could worry about screwing up my death scene. I’ve never died onstage before…so now that you mention it, maybe I am worried. Thanks for that.” Milo flashes me a grin, but I don’t speak. His grin slips away. “Hey, what’s wrong? Really?”

  “I’m scared.” Suddenly I’m even more naked than before, because what I’m admitting is so absurd and dumb. “I don’t want to go out there. Why doesn’t it make you feel like that at all?”

  “Because I don’t care—” He stops, like he said too much, and runs a hand through his choppy black hair. “Look, all this…it isn’t really me.” I stare at him and, after a moment, he tries to explain. “I get this place. I’ve been coming here my whole life. It’s like…”

  He pauses and I fill in the blank for him. “Home.”

  “Yeah. My parents love it, and it’s part of our family life, but it’s not…” He pauses again, and this time I don’t know what to say, so I just wait. “It’s not the thing I’m aching to do.”

  I don’t know how it happened, but somehow we’re closer together. We’re maybe a foot apart, standing in a swirl of acorns and curled rhododendron leaves and scattered rocks. I stare up into Milo’s angled face. “What are you aching to do?”

  “To create.” The minute the words come out of his mouth, he looks embarrassed. “I mean, it’s not enough for me to say lines in a script that someone else wrote. You know?”

  I don’t know specifically—and it suddenly seems very personal to be hearing about it—but there’s a part of me that understands a little. A part of me that gets it—how it might feel to need something that comes from you, that what already exists just isn’t enough. “What do you want to create?” I ask him.

  He looks me dead in the eyes. “I want to have babies.”

  I stare back at him. He wants—what?! What high school boy says that? Does he mean now? Is he propositioning me? That’s an insane thing to let loose with. Is he—

  Wait.

  Hold on.

  The corners of Milo’s mouth are twitching, just a little.

  He’s screwing with me.

  “Not cool!” I whap him on the arm, and he mock-flinches away. “I thought for a second—”

  “I know.” He grins down at me. “I saw it on your face. Like, ‘What weirdo teenage dude says he wants babies?’ ”

  “Okay, seriously.” I give him my best imitation of Nikki when she’s all stern and reading us the riot act about getting here late or standing in the right place. “What do you want to create? Tell me one thing.”

  Milo looks uncomfortable. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, dropping his gaze to the forest floor beneath us. “I’ve been taking photographs.”

  I almost laugh. “I know that. Everyone knows that.”

  “No, not for the show. Other stuff. Old things, mostly.” I swear his angular cheekbones darken. “Abandoned houses. Train stations. Stuff like that.”

  It sounds cool. No, it sounds interesting. I don’t know anyone else who does that.

  “I’d like to see them sometime.” I don’t really think about the words—they just come out of my mouth.

  “Maybe.” He still doesn’t look at me. “I haven’t really…I mean, it’s not like I’m submitting to galleries or anything.”

  “But could you? Submit to galleries?”

  He nods, and then we’re both silent for a while before he drags his gaze back to my face. “So here’s how you do it. Get through the show tonight, I mean.”

  “If you say I should imagine the audience in their underwear, I might actually punch you.”

  “To be fair, you already did hit me.” Milo rubs the spot on his arm where I whapped him. “But if that does it for you, then, sure, imagine whoever you want in their underwear.”

  And just like that—right there in my brain—Milo’s in his underwear. They’re boxer briefs.

  They fit perfectly.

  Stop it.

  “Ready for my wisdom?” Milo asks. I gesture for him to give it to me, and he leans over, bringing his mouth close to my ear. When he speaks, it’s in a whisper. “It’s. Not. About. You.”

  I pull back, offended, to find him grinning again. “No, really,” he says. “Think about it. It’s freeing. Everyone out there, they’ve got their own story. They’re on a first date or a last one. They’re in a fight with their boyfriend. They’re mad at their mom. They failed biology. They’re trying to find a job. Everyone’s in the middle of their own shit, and they’ve either been here a zillion times and will recite the lines and sing along, or this is their first time. Or somewhere in between. Or none of the above.”

  I think back to my most important recent theatrical experience: the high school monologues. When Tuck was standing on a stage, seemingly speaking right at me…except he really wasn’t. He was in his own head, doing his own thing, thinking about his own girlfriend. I was projecting my own crap onto him. It wasn’t about me then….

  It’s not about me now.

  I don’t say any of that. I only reach out a finger and poke Milo in that same spot on his arm. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Oh, and happy birthday.” I give him a sheepish grin. “Belatedly.”

  “Thank you.”

  The theater is packed. That’s what the assistant stage manager loud-whispers as he runs down the wooden deck an hour before curtain. Of course, in the case of Zeus!, “curtain” is a metaphorical term, as t
here are no actual curtains hiding the stage from the audience. It’s just a giant expanse of packed (and raked) dirt leading to row upon row of aluminum benches marching up toward the top of the amphitheater.

  By the time I’m in my “whites” (costume-speak for the togas we wear as the Greek chorus), everyone is whispering about how Zeus! hasn’t had an opening night like this in twenty years. Our company manager—also known as Ella’s uncle Rob—comes down from the offices to give a little speech about how we’re upholding a tradition that has been passed along through generations. When he’s done, Del Shelby gives a speech that is all about Art and Truth. After his, Nikki gives her own speech that, when boiled down to its essence, is “Don’t screw it up and make me look bad, dumbasses.”

  Ella and I line up with everyone else on our side of the stage, waiting for our grand entrance. We hear the applause as Eros and Eris walk out into view. It’s loud and it’s a little unbelievable that all those people are so hopped up about two actors in golden diapers….

  But it’s really, really cool. The energy is cool.

  As Eros and Eris start their monologues, I’m strongly aware that what Milo said is true. This is not about me. I’m nothing but a cog in the immense and lengthy machine of this play, but nonetheless…

  I think I’m excited about the machine.

  Yes, this might be actual excitement.

  Beside me, Ella grabs my elbow. “Break a leg,” she whispers. There’s a smudge of tangerine lipstick across her front teeth. I point it out, and Ella runs her finger over the smudge. She bares her teeth at me in the cheesiest of wide, cheesy grins so I can give her the A-OK. Her goofiness makes me smile in return.

  I guess there’s just something about opening night.

  “Can you believe you’re here?” she asks. Since the honest answer would be “Oh, hell no,” I shrug and smile again. “Tonight, it’s even all right that I’m a skunk.”

  “Really?” Because there’s nothing nice I—or anyone else—could say about that wig.

  “Yeah. I mean, when else in life am I going to dress up like a skunk?”

  The assistant stage manager beckons us to our places, and we crowd closer to the stage. We’re hidden from the audience by a thick row of trees and hedges and carefully placed boulders, but I have a clear vantage of the wings on the other side, where the rest of the Greek chorus waits to go on. I find Milo in the middle of the crowd. He’s already looking at me, and when we make eye contact, he jerks his thumb in the direction of the audience. Then he makes a no gesture with his hands before quickly miming glasses over his eyes and pointing at me.

  They’re not looking at you.

  I grin back and shoot him a thumbs-up…

  …right as Ella’s fingers encircle my upper arm. Eros and Eris have almost finished talking and—

  It’s go time.

  Just like that, I walk out onto the giant stage with Ella and Paul and a bunch of people whose names I still don’t know.

  And it’s fine.

  The entire show is utterly fine.

  Everything goes just like we practiced.

  Zeus falls in love with Leda and then shows up as a swan. The eggs crack on time. Pollux squawks like he’s supposed to. Everything is perfect. Even Gretchen’s boob is where it should be for the ray of arrow-love to hit it at the exact right moment. In fact, the only surprise—at least, for me—is Zeus himself. I’m in my bunny outfit, getting ready to wander out onto the stage, when I see him up on Mount Olympus, waiting for his cue. He turns his back to the audience, pulls a small flask from inside his Zeusian tunic, and tips it up to his mouth.

  Onstage.

  Mid-performance.

  I almost laugh out loud. If the star barely has any lines and he gets tanked during the show, theater is really not what I thought it would be.

  When I meet Crow Milo in our Grecian forest, we smile at each other before we start our fake-whispered-conversation-that-is-really-an-actual-whispered-conversation. “You’re not dead of stage fright,” he tells me.

  “Hugh Hadley is drinking,” I inform him.

  “Oh yeah, that happens. He’s been here a billion years and he knows his lines, so…I guess everyone puts up with it.” Milo glances across the stage, where the three goddesses are fighting over the golden apple of discord. “Almost time to go.” He flaps his wings at me.

  I twitch my tail in return and immediately regret it. I make a solemn vow to myself that next time I’ll wiggle my nose instead. Noses are way less flirtatious than tails.

  “Logan’s party tonight?” Milo asks. “You and Ella?”

  “Yep,” I tell him. “Me and Ella.”

  •••

  Here’s both the best and the worst thing about being in Zeus!: at the end of the show, the entire cast walks out onto the stage and stands in a great big semicircle. We hold hands, and we bow.

  And the audience claps.

  A lot.

  Logan lives in an apartment complex called the Oaks. Ella and I walk there because—as Ella says—it’s less than half a mile away and maybe I’ll want a drink or something.

  I think the “or something” is a figure of speech, but I’m not completely certain….

  As we enter the complex—a series of narrow streets running between brown buildings—Ella slows down. She looks uncertain. “Number twelve, right?”

  Her concern is short-lived because fifteen minutes later we’re in the middle of the party and she’s lost any trace of apprehension. Apartment number twelve is packed wall-to-wall with Zeus! people. Some are dancing, most are drinking, and all are engaged in shouted conversations. The shouting is essential because of the blaring music: a mix of pop songs and Broadway show tunes.

  Ella leads me to the keg, which is in the middle of the kitchen. On the melamine table beside it is a red plastic cup, overflowing with money. A handwritten sign next to it reads Suggested donation: whatever you got.

  “Shit.” Ella looks at me. “Do you have any cash?”

  From an early age, my mother instilled the lesson in me—yes, you might have a credit card, but always carry cash, just in case. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t talking about this sort of circumstance.

  I fish out a twenty and hand it to Ella so she can shove it into the cup. She looks around. “I guess we just help ourselves, right?” She pumps the keg’s handle and pours me a beer. I accept it, wait as she gets one for herself, and then touch the rim of my cup to hers. “Opening night!” she says.

  We both take sips. The beer is already going warm, and I make a sour face without meaning to. That’s when we hear the voice of Logan, portrayer of Pollux and host of the party. “Hey, can I see some IDs?”

  Ella rolls her eyes. “Very funny.”

  “No, really.” Logan points first to her plastic cup, then to mine. “Aren’t you guys still in high school?”

  “Yes.” Ella folds her arms in front of her chest. “Kinda like you were last year. When you were drunk all summer long.”

  Logan smirks. “You weren’t at those parties, were you? No. Because your uncle was always lurking around.”

  “I can switch this out for something else.” I hold out my cup, trying to be conciliatory. “I really don’t care.”

  Logan turns his attention to me. “I’m just saying, this is the opening-night party for a professional theatrical performance. You guys are still…kids.”

  Ella’s cheeks flush pink, and I take a step forward because I can’t stand to see how embarrassed she looks. “Quit it, Logan.”

  His gaze cuts to me, surprised. “Ah, the quiet mouse speaks.”

  “Actually, I’m a rabbit.” I tilt my head to the side, popping my hand onto my hip in a way that feels vaguely like a power stance. “And you’re pretty much a glorified chicken, so maybe lay off.”

  “It’s fine.” Ella looks at me in a way that seems beseeching…and feels embarrassing. “He’s just kidding.”

  I don’t think he is, but before Logan can confirm or deny, Milo is b
etween us. “Hey, you gonna throw me out?” He waves his own plastic cup at Logan. “I’m in high school. Drinking a beer.”

  Logan looks at him, some sort of war I can’t identify waging in his brain. Then he turns back to us. “Don’t spill beer on my carpet.”

  “We’ll try,” I tell him. He walks away and I turn to Ella. “What’s his deal?”

  “He’s a jackass.” She looks at Milo, who’s still standing by us. “Thank you.” She actually sounds sincere.

  “You’re welcome.” There’s a pause during which I think we’re all trying to figure out how to make conversation from here, and then Milo waves toward the living room, where most people are gathered. “Here it is. Just like all the parties everywhere.”

  We look at the crowd on the carpet. The music has changed to an old Britney Spears song that must be Gretchen’s anthem, because she’s standing on the back of a big upholstered chair, one hand pressed against the ceiling for balance. She sings along while others cheer her from below. Nearby, the assistant stage manager blows soap bubbles, and Paul swing dances with one of the pyrotechnics guys. I don’t see Tuck anywhere.

  Ella plops her cup onto the table. “I’m going in,” she announces. “You wanna come?”

  “In a minute.” I brandish my own cup at her. “We worked hard for this beer.”

  Ella’s gaze goes from me to Milo and back again. She nods. “Okay.” For once, she doesn’t say it in a snippy way. Maybe we’ve gotten somewhere after all.

  Several new people come in through the front door and make a beeline for the keg, so Milo and I retreat to a corner of the kitchen. I motion to his cup—“I thought you stayed on the right side of the law”—and he tilts it so I can see inside. “Water?” I ask.

  “Vodka.”

  “Really?” I say the word before I realize he’s joking. “That would be a lot of vodka.”

  Milo nods. “Sorry Logan’s such a dick.”

  “Eh.” I shrug. “I’ve met dicks before.” I immediately flush at my own choice of words, but Milo doesn’t seem to notice.