Drew snorts.
“What?”
“The first scene in Act Two is actually a nice, long Polonius scene, which got cut, just like most of my part.”
“Fine. The first scene in our Act Two.”
“Caddie, did you have any of your lines cut?”
“No,” I say.
“There are only a couple of female parts in the whole play,” says Mandy, “and Ophelia doesn’t get that many lines to begin with.”
Drew shrugs. “I just think it’s interesting who Nadia puts her faith in, when some people can’t get through a simple stage kiss without having a breakdown.” He drops that bomb with easy innocence, and Mandy’s mouth hangs open.
How many other people did she tell?
“Can we please just work on the scene?” I say.
Mandy gathers herself. “Yes. So, Ophelia, you’ll enter from over here.” She leads me to one side of the playing space and lowers her voice. “I’m sorry he’s being such an ass. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“I know.”
“He’s my boyfriend. I tell him everything. Even when I shouldn’t.”
“It’s okay. I don’t care what you say about me.”
“I didn’t say anything bad, I just—”
“It’s okay, Mandy, let’s work.”
Mandy pivots between Drew and me. She looks lost. “So, this opening part is setup for the speech where we’re going to break from reality and bring Peter in.”
“Because Peter’s not in enough scenes already,” Drew says.
“I didn’t cast you as Polonius, Drew, so stop taking it out on me,” Mandy says. “I didn’t get the part I wanted either, did I?”
“No,” he says, “Caddie got it because she’s so good.”
“You guys! Please!” I jump into the scene because I don’t know how else to make them stop: “Alas! my lord, I have been so affrighted!” I run to Drew and grab his arms, gloves and sleeves between our skin.
Don’t touch, I think and then stifle it.
Practice, practice.
I’ve caught him off-guard, which is right for the scene, and it takes him a second to catch up. “With what, in the name of God?”
“This is where we’ll bring Peter in,” Mandy says, “but for now let’s do the reality of it.”
I go into the speech, imagining Peter doing all the things Ophelia describes. The improv that we did with him chasing me—it scared me, but it did help me understand. Ophelia loves Hamlet, but he’s turned into someone threatening.
“Mad for thy love?” Drew asks.
“So when you say that,” Mandy says, “let’s make it clear you’ve already decided that’s what it is.”
“Can we get through it once?” Drew says.
Mandy sighs but manages to make her voice positive, “Sure, yeah, keep going.”
“My lord, I do not know,” I say. “But truly I do fear it.”
“What said he?” Drew takes me by the elbow and holds me too close, so as I tell the story I pull away and face out, pretending Peter’s there.
“He took me by the wrist and held me hard . . .”
To my side, Drew’s acting up a storm, nodding and making faces in reaction to everything I say. Mandy looks like she’s choking. When I reach the end of the speech, Drew tugs at my arm. “Come, go with me; I will go seek the king. This is the very ecstasy of love—”
Mandy cuts him off. “Great, so let’s go back to Caddie’s speech.”
“Really?” Drew says. “We just got to my part.”
“Well, the whole scene is your part,” Mandy says. “Not just when you’re talking.”
“No small parts? Only small actors?” says Drew.
“I stopped because I didn’t feel like you were listening. You were acting like you were listening.”
“Oh, my God!” Drew says, and lurches around to brace himself against the curtained back wall. “Do you hear this? She thinks she’s Nadia.”
“I do not,” Mandy says. “But that is what she’s been teaching us—if you’ve been listening.”
“This was not a good idea,” Drew says, spinning around to face us.
“What?” Mandy says.
“For you to direct me in a scene. For you to direct at all.” He sounds like he’s pleading for reason. “You’re still a student.”
“So are you,” Mandy says, “and they’re letting you do Shakespeare, but I guess that’s okay because you’re such an expert.”
Drew deflates, sinking back against the curtained wall, and mutters, “It’s not the same.”
“What’s with you?” Mandy’s dropped her bravado. She’s just hurt.
I should say something, stop this. Mandy and Drew have their problems, but we were just talking about how much Mandy loves him, and I think he loves her. They’re digging a hole they might not be able to climb out of.
But the best I can manage is, “Should I give you guys some privacy?”
They answer together in a definitive “No!”
“I’m just doing my job,” Mandy says, recharged.
“Your job?” says Drew. “You mean the job that Nadia gave you to keep you from being all pissy that she didn’t cast you in the play? That job?”
“She wants to mentor me,” Mandy says.
“You can tell yourself that,” says Drew. “Seems like a bad idea to put someone in charge of other actors when she wasn’t good enough to land a part herself.”
Mandy stands straight, but there’s something inside her that’s fallen down. Otherwise she’d be pushing back, incinerating him where he stands.
“Caddie agrees with me,” Drew says. “Don’t you, Caddie?”
“I don’t.” But Mandy’s already gone inside herself. She’s not hearing me.
“She doesn’t want to do your whole ‘break from reality’ scene either. She’d say so if she wasn’t terrified you’d drop her.”
“I’m not,” I say, but I hate that he can see my fear.
“Okay then, tell her,” he says. “You don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“It’s not that I don’t think it’s a good idea . . .” The polished wood floor feels very far away. I’m too high above it, off balance.
“Then what?” Mandy says. “Why are you being so mean? Both of you.”
“Mandy, I’m not—” She cuts me off.
“No, you are. You’re both undermining everything I do, and what I don’t get is why?” She looks between Drew and me, and then inhales sharply, a question she can’t ask.
“Oh, my Lord, no,” I say. If I’d told Mandy everything, she would know how ridiculous it is to even think there might be something between Drew and me.
“Caddie, we can talk more about this later,” Drew says, and stretches a hand out toward me like we’re best buds, or more. His steps seem to tip the floor, tilt me toward Mandy—I’m dizzy—and then he’s gone.
She stands facing the door, not looking at me.
“I don’t get it,” she says.
“Mandy, you know there’s nothing going on between me and Drew. He’s trying to piss you off.”
“I know,” she says, “because I know how obsessed you are with Peter.”
“I’m not—”
“Save it,” she says. “I’m sick of you telling me things that aren’t true.”
Her words are a slap. “Mandy, I never said a word to Drew about the scene, I swear.”
“But you don’t like it.”
“It’s not that. It’s . . .”
“Just say what you mean.”
She spins toward me, making me wobble—it’s as bad as standing on the diving board, this falling apart.
She says, “Look, are you still mad about the understudy thing, because I told Nadia I wouldn’t do it. Even if you dropped out of the play, I wouldn’t do it.”
She has tears in her eyes, and I feel so guilty for not trusting her. I didn’t try to wreck her scene or steal her boyfriend or whatever other evil thing she
thinks I might do, but I haven’t been fair.
“Mandy—”
“I tried to be so nice to you,” she says. “I tried to help you fit in, even when you acted super weird.”
“I know. You’ve been great, I—”
“I tried to help you with Peter.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Mandy, I thought—I thought something different.”
“You thought I was out to get you,” she says. “That I set you up to fail.”
“No.”
“You did. I didn’t understand till later. You should have given me the benefit of the doubt, Caddie. You should have talked to me.”
“Yes.”
“What about? What should you have talked to me about?”
It’s an interrogation, and I’m choking.
“About . . . about Peter. About you understudying . . .”
She shakes her head. “Wrong answer. God, you can be such a fake, Caddie. You’re always faking something.”
“I don’t . . . mean to be.” My words are thin, throat tight—I’m going to lose Mandy and everything that comes with her. “I’ve been having a lot of problems in my family.”
“You and I both know that’s not your only problem. You don’t like being touched,” she says. “That’s why you’re wearing the gloves.”
Zap! Mandy’s zapped me—the water in me is a superconductor. I twitch.
“It took me a while to see it, but I’m not an idiot, Caddie. What I don’t get is why you won’t talk to the person who’s supposed to be your best friend.” She goes still. “You don’t trust me, Caddie, and you know what? I don’t think I trust you.”
If she sounded mad, that would be one thing, if she were saying it to dig at me, but she’s not. She looks sad and confused.
“Mandy, I’m sorry I’ve been strange.” I’m afraid to go to her—I’m so dizzy, the floor will tip—we’ll go plummeting into the black.
She shakes her head like it doesn’t even matter. “It was dumb of me to think we could go back to being best friends like we were. Things change,” she says. “It is what it is.”
She leaves me alone in the pool of light, one tiny piece of solid world with dark all around. I drop, press my face to the cold, tilting floor, and try to stop spinning.
After that, Mandy mixes it up at lunch and sits on the opposite side of the table from me and close to the end.
Livia gives her a look the first time—that’s Hank’s seat—but Mandy plays oblivious.
“What happened to the seating chart?” Hank asks when he shows up and finds Mandy in his place.
“We don’t have assigned seats,” Mandy says irritably.
“Well, yeah, we sort of do.” He’s already pulled a chair up to sit at the end between Livia and me, making Livia beam.
Usually the guys end up at one end of the table, the girls at the other, with the “couples”—Mandy and Drew, Livia and Hank—at the middle, but the turnover leaves Mandy’s seat open when Peter arrives. If the change-up surprises him, it’s a happy surprise. I shift closer to Hank’s end.
Peter sets his tray down and sits with his knees almost touching my legs. “You figured out your costume?” he asks.
My first thought’s of Ophelia. “They’ll tell us what to wear, yeah?”
“Halloween,” Mandy says. Her face is tense, purposefully free of expression. Actual Halloween’s not till next week, but Mandy’s party is on Saturday.
“Oh, right. No, I don’t know.”
“I’m going as a vampire,” Oscar says. “You could be my thrall.”
“I don’t think so,” Peter says. With everyone watching, he lifts one of my gloved hands in both of his. This is the definition of PDA, and my nervous system’s shooting off fireworks. But the party, of course, the party would be the perfect time and place to solve our . . . “problem.”
Peter bats my hand back and forth. It doesn’t hurt, but the threat is there. If Peter brushes my gloves the wrong way, they’ll scrape off, take my skin away with them.
Mandy’s eyeing me. Her expression’s impenetrable, but her lips purse in question.
Peter lays my hand down on the table. I catch my breath, but my hand still pulses.
“You’re still coming to the party, aren’t you?” Mandy asks. “It would be weird without you there.” I hadn’t thought about not going, but we are fighting. Now that she’s asked, I wonder if I shouldn’t be going.
I can’t read her, but because they’re all looking at me, I say, “Of course.”
Mandy nods, one firm twitch, and goes back to her salad.
April is at rehearsal on Friday.
She stays the whole time and sits halfway back.
Nadia doesn’t say anything about it, but I know April’s there to replace me, in case. Mandy said no, so if it comes down to an emergency, Nadia will lift April’s punishment and let her perform in my place.
My tears are so close to the surface. They come easily when we work the breakup scene, when Peter—Hamlet—says, “I did love you once.”
“Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.”
Peter touches me, holds me close and then shoves me away, like at the audition, and if it makes me clench or gasp, that’s good for the scene and good practice. I have to be able to touch him, not just through clothes . . . in a kiss.
Tomorrow night.
“What’s going through your head right now?” Nadia asks when we get to my soliloquy.
“I’m losing him. I’m losing him, and I can’t do anything to fix it.” It’s easy for me to believe I’m losing him. I am—will—if I can’t get myself under control.
“Yes! In fact”—she hops up onstage and kneels beside me, looks out over the audience where she means for me to see Hamlet in my mind’s eye—”all those things she says about him, how he used to be, use those to bring him closer to you. Try that.”
“But they won’t stick.”
“Exactly—for every good thing you remember, there’s the truth of what you’ve just seen. You’re trying to hold on to something that’s gone. Try as hard as you can. That’s the tragedy here because no one can do that.”
“But it’s so sad!”
She laughs. I’m afraid she’s going to squeeze me into a hug. She squints at me and says, “I knew I cast you for a reason. You understand something about loss.”
“I’ve lost some things. I don’t know if I understand—”
“Well, Ophelia doesn’t either. She’s in the middle of it. So that’s perfect.”
Perfect.
Except that Ophelia’s a wreck. She loses too much—and she sinks.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
29.
My hoop skirt keeps trying to escape from under the dashboard and smother me. Between the dress’s boned corset and my seatbelt, I can barely breathe.
This is what I get for not planning a costume. At the last minute, Mom called my older cousin Jess who used to be a Southern Belle docent on a historical plantation tour. I said no to the hat and parasol and added a shawl to protect my arms and shoulders. I’m hoping my makeup and hair steer it away from Scarlett O’Hara and toward my goal: Dead Prom Queen.
“Your first academy party,” Mom squeals as we near Mandy’s drive. “How exciting!”
So exciting, my hands won’t stop shaking. My heart wants to make a career change and work for a hummingbird.
“I told your father that going to this school would change the direction of your whole life.”
“The direction of my life” hinges on such tiny, fragile moments: What if Mom had said no when I asked to audition for the academy? What if she’d told Dad instead of keeping it secret? What if I bombed the audition? What if I never, at the age of six, saw my first play? Things can change in an instant—might be changing right now—and I won’t even notice until later when I look back and say, “That night.
That’s the night when things changed.”
“I’m proud of you, Caddie,” Mom says. “I’m proud of you for asking yourself what you want in life and going after it. That’s something I’m still learning how to do.” I can hardly look her in the eyes. If she knew how lame I’m being, how close I am to losing everything . . .
She says, “I admire you, sweetie,” and her eyes are wet at the corners, and I have to look away.
Lit up from below, Mandy’s house looks like an unstormable castle, a real Elsinore. I expected a lot of people, but not this many—cars are stacked all the way up the drive and line the street for a block or more in both directions. I make Mom drop me at the street and I trudge up the drive, careful not to let my skirt drag.
My people should be here, people I know.
As soon as I go around back to the pool, there’s a high-pitched scream from Hank and Livia and a guttural, “Ha-ha!” from Oscar. An eerie glow from the aqua-gold pool lamps catches the undersides of their faces. Splashes of light and shadow shift so my friends seem insubstantial, half-there. But they rush at me, proving themselves real. Oscar bounds to me in two steps, and Livia hauls Hank after her by the arm.
Livia and Hank both wear togas, hers green, his gray. Livia’s clearly Medusa with plastic snakes woven into her braids, and Hank’s “stone.” Hank planned ahead for the cold with a gray fur cloak, but Livia wears her green peacoat over her toga, which kind of undermines the scary.
Oscar . . . well, true to his word, he came as a vampire, but I guess he really wanted a thrall. There’s a blowup doll hugging his neck.
“Ew,” I say.
“Girls dig vampires,” he says. Oscar reaches for me, ready to pull me in for a hug. My hoop skirt and his doll form a buffer between us, but I still have to sidestep him.
“I’d hate to make your girlfriend jealous,” I say.
“Oh, Bethany? It’s cool. I think she’s bi.”
He makes the doll reach toward me, but she comes undone and he’s suddenly like a kid with a broken toy, begging Hank to fix it.
Livia reaches for one of my gloved hands. “Did you plan your costume around these?” she asks.
“Not exactly.”
“I bet you’d wear them in the water if it were warm enough for swimming.”
Don't Touch Page 19