“Hello,” I mumbled back, trying to smile. I felt like some goddam troll who’d just been released from his cage. I took a step back behind Stewart.
She cocked her head a little and gave a quick smile. “Perfect, perfect,” she murmured, then turned and headed over to talk to a few new arrivals.
“What were you doing down there?”
“I’m too high, Stewart. Too fucking high.”
“So what?” he said. “No one cares. No one even knows, so get it together. No fear, remember?”
“No fear, no fear,” I began whispering to myself. Christ, I thought, I’m starting to sound like Stewart.
But just because you say it doesn’t make it so. That’s what my father used to tell me. No fear, no fear, no fear. It was too late—my tranquillity had vanished the moment I stepped onto the stage. Of course, it didn’t help that most of the other kids had stopped talking and were now looking at us with a mixture of amusement and resentment. I could tell they were all wondering what the hell we were doing on their turf.
The theater crowd was a squirrelly gang—all artsy and dramatic, a weird combination of kids from other cliques. There were a few of the special ones—the popular, attractive, athletic, your typical well-bred all-American teen—mixed in with a random assortment of creative types from band, chorus, dance club, wherever. Then there were the techs, the ones who did lighting and set design. They were always goths. I think it was a rule or something. Anyway, stick them all together, add a dose of competition, and you’ve got the makings of a really intense scene. And I didn’t even come close to fitting in.
“Hey, Stewart,” a girl’s voice said.
Stewart and I both turned to see Kaela Smith standing before us, her hands behind her back, leaning forward ever so slightly with an expectant smile, her eyes on Stewart. Kaela was a semi-goth, semi-cute junior who had hung out with us on a few occasions. She had a bit of a crush on Stewart, though he always seemed oblivious.
“Hey, Kaela, what’s up?” he replied, his voice all smooth as he smiled with that silly-stoned grin. Fucking Stewart. All the nervousness I’d felt in him before seemed to have disappeared. “You trying out for the play?”
“Actually, I’m going to be stage manager.” She waved the clipboard she’d been holding behind her back.
“Cool, cool,” Stewart said. “That sounds, like, important.”
“The stage manager is in charge of tech,” she said with a shrug, blushing. “What about you? Come to join my crew?”
Stewart beamed and shook his head. “Nah. Frenchy and I are here to try out. We’re going to be actors!” he added with a flourish, his voice rising so that both Kaela and I jumped a little.
“Oh.” She gave me a quick glance.
There was nearby laughter, that sort of scoffing laughter that makes your teeth grate. And it was obvious it had been directed toward us. We all turned.
It was Quentin Bernard. Quentin was a fellow senior, a pretty boy who’d been awarded the lead role in just about every play since middle school. He’d made quite a splash in last year’s musical, and ever since he’d been bragging about going to college for acting in New York. As if anybody gave a shit.
Kaela looked back and rolled her eyes. “Well, good luck, guys,” she chirped, and she went back to the tech table.
Stewart and I were scribbling our names and other information on the forms, trying not to giggle, when Quentin sidled over to us.
“So you guys are really trying out, eh?” he said.
“Hell yeah,” Stewart said. He started laughing. Then Quentin started laughing. It seemed like they were laughing for a really, really long time, like they were trying to outdo each other, like it was a goddam laughing contest. I just kept my head down and tried to concentrate on the form.
“That’s great, that’s great,” Quentin said, like he was auditioning for an infomercial or something. “It’s good to have new blood. Really, really good.”
“Thanks, Quentin. I take it you’re trying out as well?” Stewart said, mimicking Quentin’s tone so perfectly I glanced back to see if it was really Stewart who had spoken. Then I turned to Quentin. A look of astonishment flashed across his face, but he recovered pretty quickly.
“Uh, yeah. La Mancha was my idea, actually. Ms. Vale loves it when we make suggestions.”
“Good to hear,” Stewart replied. “I’ve given her a few suggestions of my own.”
Quentin’s eyes widened. He glanced at me in confusion. I shrugged. I didn’t know why Stewart was making shit up, but I knew he could mess with someone’s head when he wanted to. I even felt a little twinge of pride—Stewart may have been rattled by the Pokers, but he certainly didn’t seem intimidated by Quentin. Not like I would’ve been.
“Well, good luck. There are plenty of parts in this one, so you should get something. You two would make perfect prisoners in the Inquisitors’ dungeon.”
“Thanks, Quentin,” Stewart cooed. “That means a lot. I look forward to sharing the stage with you.”
Quentin’s face darkened a shade. He scurried back to his friends. Stewart looked over at me with a sly grin.
“Not bad,” I said, taking a deep breath.
“Oh, Frenchy, I’m just getting started.”
“Okay!” Ms. Vale called out. “Let’s get going, shall we? Circle up.”
Everyone scrambled to join the ring at the center of the stage. I had no idea what was going on, but suddenly I was as excited as everyone else. It felt like Christmas Eve.
“First things first.” She leaned into the circle to catch our eyes. “I want you to shake it out. Everyone’s too nervous, and it’s freaking me out. Shake your arms, shake your legs, get the nerves out.”
There were a few titters, but all the kids started shaking their limbs—flinging their arms around, lifting their legs and kicking back and forth, shrugging their shoulders up and down really fast, making goofy sounds and faces. I glanced over at Stewart, who was dancing like an epileptic chicken. He stuck his tongue out at me and laughed.
“Come on, Frenchy, get loose!” he yelled.
I had yet to really move. I suddenly felt all stiff and self-conscious, even though no one seemed to be paying much attention to me. And the wilder Stewart got, the more frozen I felt. Good Lord, I thought, what have I gotten myself into?
Kaela saved me, God bless her. She crossed the circle and grabbed one of my arms and started shaking it, a shy smile on her face, then she grabbed the other arm and started shaking it even harder. Her touch was like a jolt of electricity, shocking me out of my stupor. Something broke inside of me, and before I knew it, I was wobbling and bobbling with the rest of them. I could just picture the grin plastered across my face as I moved. In fact, it was easier that way—to imagine myself outside of myself, watching from the side, like my body belonged to someone else, like it could be anybody else. Maybe that’s all acting really is, I thought.
Kaela moved in a slow circle before me, throwing her head back and closing her eyes with a smile. Watching her, I got a funny feeling in my gut. She looked pretty good all of a sudden, and I wondered why I’d never noticed it before. She opened her eyes and caught me staring.
“Nice moves, Frenchy.” She laughed. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Me neither,” I said. “Life’s full of surprises, I guess.”
She laughed again, and we kept on grooving until Ms. Vale called us all back to the middle of the stage.
We moved on to the next part of the audition, taking turns reading unrehearsed lines from the script. This was where the real audition began, and where things got truly weird.
“Here you go, Frenchy,” Ms. Vale said when it was my turn. She handed me a sheet with some lines on it. “Try this.”
I looked down at the page.
“Ms. Vale, I think there’s some mistake here.”
I figured I’d have one or two lines at most—a minor part—one of the random prisoners, just like Quentin said. But the highlight
ed lines were all for Cervantes’s servant, who also doubles as Sancho Panza.
She smiled. “No mistake. Give it a go.”
It was strange to see the words on the page, having just heard them the day before yesterday. Compared with the movie, they seemed flat and lifeless. Stranger still was reading the lines in front of everyone, under the lights, feeling their heat and blinking back against their glare with my half-baked ember eyes. Beyond the stage, everything was black, as if the whole world had been snuffed out, leaving nothing but shadows.
“Not bad,” she said, and handed me another sheet. “Now try this.”
The next thing I knew, Ms. Vale had me reading all kinds of parts: the Governor, a crazy old dude who runs the trial; the Duke, that asshole who gives Cervantes a hard time. But mostly she kept coming back to the Sancho Panza character. By now, I’d come down a bit and was feeling pretty good. I even started to have fun. So I figured what the hell. I laid down the thickest Spanish accent I could muster and slapped my gut a few times. If Stewart could ham it up, then so could I.
But I was nothing next to him.
“Okay, Stewart,” Ms. Vale called out. “You’re next.”
Stewart jumped onto the stage and slid into the spotlight with his arms stretched out.
“Olé, amigos! Let’s do this!” he shouted, drawing laughs from the other kids. They all knew who he was, knew his reputation as a prankster, and were curious to see what he was up to.
Ms. Vale had him try a few of the Duke’s lines to start, but almost right away she cut to the lead role, having him read for Cervantes, who for most of the play also acts the part of Don Quixote.
He took the sheet of lines and looked them over for a minute. Then another. Everyone watched, silent, wondering what he was doing.
“Whenever you’re ready, Stewart,” Ms. Vale said. She seemed as puzzled as the rest.
Stewart glanced up from the sheet, smiled, and tossed it aside. There was a collective gasp as it floated to the floor.
Then he began reciting lines from the page. And not just Don Quixote’s lines. All the lines. I mean, it was scary. As he moved through the scene, I could see Ms. Vale getting more and more excited. Even the other kids were getting into it. The whole stage went quiet. Stewart had us all eating out of his hand.
A chill ran up my back, not just because he was so damn good but because it hit me that there was something much bigger going on. The curtain had been swept aside, the secret revealed. It was a trick, all right. How long it had been in the making, I didn’t know. All I knew was that I wasn’t in on it. In fact, I suddenly felt like I was on the receiving end.
I wasn’t the only one. Glancing over at Quentin, I could see his shock give way to glowering resentment. And his frustration only grew as the audition progressed. Sure, Ms. Vale also had him read some of the Cervantes lines—but only a few. And though he wasn’t that bad, you could tell it was just a formality on her part. It didn’t help that she kept having him read for the Duke, and when he went after Cervantes like the scene called for, the hostility was so real it was clear no one else could play the role but Quentin.
After that, it was time for the music.
With my voice all rough and husky, I’ve never been an amazing singer, but I can carry a tune well enough. Not that it really mattered—this wasn’t the goddam opera or anything. I already knew from watching the movie that you just had to be able to belt it out, so it wasn’t too bad. We all sang one of the songs from the musical with the accompanist, with Ms. Vale walking around from person to person listening in. We went through it over and over, until it started to get kind of boring. I tried to avoid her gaze as she came over to me, but I caught her smile from the corner of my eye, so I must’ve sounded okay.
We took turns singing solo with just the piano. I was a little shaky at first when it came around to me, but a wink from Stewart settled me down, and I managed to muddle through. Again, it didn’t really matter. Everyone was cool, even when a few sucky kids sang. It was a pretty supportive group, actually. I admit, I was surprised.
You could sense everyone’s ears perk up when it was Stewart’s turn. After the way he’d spouted those lines, people were eager to see what he could do with the music. Ms. Vale had him sing one of the Don Quixote songs: “The Impossible Dream.” It’s supposed to be, like, the big hit of the play. You hear the damn thing ten times in the movie. It was my least favorite tune from the whole musical.
Then Stewart sang it.
There was a collective sigh as one of the most beautiful voices I’d ever heard burst over the stage. In my semi-stupor, I looked around, wondering if Stewart had rigged up some sort of sound system and was just lip-synching like a teenybopper icon at the Grammys. The voice—rich, resonant—didn’t seem like it could possibly come from a goofball like him.
Hearing Stewart, it occurred to me that I’d never really heard him sing before, which was kind of weird. Then I realized I’d never heard lots of people I know sing. I don’t know why. Where do people usually sing? Church, I guess, but I never went. Back in middle school people sang some, but that wasn’t real singing—that was just the dull mumblings of a bunch of dorky preteens.
Not this. This was real singing. This was, like, American Idol–quality shit.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Stewart was good at just about anything he tried. Still, it’s an odd sensation to see a new side of someone you thought you knew pretty well.
They even clapped for him when he finished, me right along with them. Not as his friend, just one of the crowd. Maybe that’s why the whole thing bugged me. It was no longer the two of us against the rest of them, crashing the audition for a cheap laugh. It was only him, basking in his newfound glory. Just the way he wanted it.
“Ms. Vale?” he said when everyone stopped clapping. “Can Frenchy and I sing ‘Man of La Mancha’?”
She looked over at Franco, the piano player the school had hired to serve as accompanist. He was a huge man who dwarfed the electric piano in front of him, playing it the way a two-year-old would—slapping the keyboard nonchalantly with his meaty hands, staring absently up into the dark recesses of the auditorium. Amazingly, the guy never made a mistake.
Franco shrugged and nodded. “Got the music right here,” he grunted.
“Actually, it’s a fine idea.” She pulled out a couple sheets of paper. “Come on up, Frenchy.”
I hesitated, a bit confused. Wasn’t “Man of La Mancha” the name of the play? Besides, I’d already done my singing.
“Come on, Frenchy,” Stewart yelled, giving me a malicious grin.
A few kids joined in on Stewart’s call, but I could see the rest screw up their faces. Their hospitality had finally reached its limit. Though we were both upstarts, they’d indulged Stewart—he at least had obvious talent—but this was too much.
“Ms. Vale, it’s getting kind of late,” Quentin muttered.
I could see her crinkle her nose, inwardly debating which way to go. I jumped to my feet. Screw Quentin, I thought. Screw all of them.
“All right,” I said in the most reluctant voice I could summon.
I grabbed the lyric sheet from Ms. Vale and bounded over to Stewart. As soon as the music started, I recognized the tune—it was the very first song Don Quixote and Sancho Panza share while riding across the plain. Stewart sang first, picking up the tune as Franco finished the melody and started over. There was no question which part he was going to sing:
I am I, Don Quixote, The Lord of La Mancha, My destiny calls and I go, And the wild winds of fortune Will carry me onward, Oh whithersoever they blow. Onward to glory I go!
Then it was my turn:
I’m Sancho! Yes, I’m Sancho! I’ll follow my master till the end. I’ll tell all the world proudly I’m his squire! I’m his friend!
And so on. There’s really not much more to it than that. But we made the most of it, bellowing out the lines. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the kids who’d been glowering
a moment ago laugh in spite of themselves. Only Quentin continued to glare.
We finished to even louder applause than before. It was one of the weirdest feelings of my life: That energy I’d felt after watching the film, the sense of power, the sense of possibility, the strange beauty of the world—it all came back, standing there under the lights.
I was so giddy that I hardly noticed when the audition ended shortly afterward. Aside from a brief sense of relief as I stepped out from under the stage lights and plunged back into the quiet darkness of the auditorium, I don’t even remember leaving. I just remember Stewart and me crossing the parking lot, exchanging high fives, laughing the whole way to the car. The Pokers were long gone now. Everything was good.
We drove around and smoked another joint, still laughing. Then we went for pizza and laughed some more, rehashing the exercises, the lines and songs, re-creating the various looks of surprise and frustration on Quentin’s and the others’ faces, reminding each other once more just how luscious Ms. Vale truly was. Then he took me home, and we continued to laugh all the way up Suffolk Heights.
Ralph was there when I got back—sitting beside my mother on the sofa watching TV—but I didn’t give a shit. His hair was slicked back, his shirt was tucked in, and his hands lay folded in his lap, like some delinquent stuck in church on a Sunday morning. He squirmed a bit when I showed up, but I just smiled and said good night and headed off to my room, still riding the wave of euphoria.
It wasn’t until I shut the door that it all came crashing down.
I learned long ago that you don’t change your mood; it changes you. And as I stood there in the flickering glow of my shitty old computer monitor, reality ambushed me once again, springing from the shadows. I closed my eyes and shivered, then collapsed onto the bed.
I still don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before. Not on any real level, at least. I guess I’d just been so focused on the audition itself, then so caught up in its aftermath, that I hadn’t considered one important fact:
I might end up with a part. A real part.
I know. It’s pretty stupid. Pulling the pillow over my face, I relived the audition from start to finish, this time free from the hazy cocktail of smugness and weed. It was quite startling. From the moment Stewart introduced me to Ms. Vale to the ridiculous folly of our duet, it all added up. I groaned and writhed on the mattress, hoping that in my pot-addled state I’d mistaken the crowd’s annoyance for adoration, snide humoring for genuine enthusiasm. They weren’t laughing with Stewart and me, they were simply laughing at us, and I’d just been too cheesed to realize the difference. That had to be it. I hoped and prayed myself to sleep that that was it. Fucking Stewart.
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