“I noticed that when you came in,” he replied. “Hurt much?”
“Nah,” I said. “Well, maybe a little.”
It was still throbbing a bit. By the time I got to school, the Band-Aid was pretty soaked and threatening to slip right off. My first-period teacher had a fit when she saw it and sent me straight to the nurse, muttering about pathogens or some odd shit, like I had the goddam plague or something. The nurse was pretty cool, at least. She clucked over me a few times as she carefully cleaned the cut and applied a pair of suture strips to close the wound.
“You should probably have stitches,” she said as she wrapped a few layers of gauze around the whole thing for good measure.
“Stitches are for wussies,” I replied, suddenly sounding like my old man. I winced as she tightened the wrap.
Between the cut and the thought of our first rehearsal, I’d been on edge all morning. I don’t know; maybe I just wasn’t used to spending the first part of school unenhanced. When you’re high all the time, it starts to become ordinary. Then it’s the straight world that seems bizarre. Whatever the reason, I’d been too nervous even to eat lunch, and now, in the quiet of Bryant’s office, it was starting to catch up with me.
“Can I have one of those?” I asked. Mr. Bryant always had a well-stocked bowl of candy next to the baseball on his desk. I’d never taken one before. Didn’t want him to think he could get to me that way.
“Help yourself,” he said, leaning over to push the bowl a few inches my way.
I grabbed a handful of mini Hershey bars and dug in.
“Oh, you’ll get a kick out of this,” I mumbled between bites. “I’m going to be in the musical.”
Bryant chuckled. “That’s what I heard. A lead role. Congratulations.”
“That’s right. Sancho fucking Panza. Pretty funny, huh?”
“I don’t think it’s funny at all,” Bryant said with a smile. “I think it’s wonderful. Good for you, Gerry.”
“Yeah, thanks.” I finished the last Hershey bar, then grabbed a few caramels.
“Man of La Mancha’s always been one of my favorites. I can’t wait to see how this production turns out.”
“Me neither,” I quipped.
“So what made you decide to go for it?”
I shrugged. “Stewart, I guess. It was his idea.”
“I wondered when I saw he’d been cast too. And as Cervantes, no less.”
“Yeah, he’s all hopped up to play Don Quixote.”
“And what about you? How do you feel about being Sancho Panza?”
Ah, here we go, I thought. Nice, Bryant. Nice.
“I don’t know. I’m a little nervous. I’ve never really been in a play before. Not a real one, anyway. But I figure it can’t be that hard—you just pretend to be somebody else. Somebody you’re not.”
“Some people find that hard to do,” Bryant observed.
“Really?” I shot back. “I thought pretty much everyone did it.”
Bryant smiled. “What, pretend? Sometimes, I suppose. What about you? Who do you pretend to be?”
“Me? Nobody. I’m just good ol’ Frenchy,” I said, screwing my face up into the best dumbass look I could summon.
Bryant laughed, louder this time. “That’s nice, Gerry,” he said. “Good one.”
“Goddam right,” I said. I was cracking up now too. Must’ve been the chocolate.
The laughter faded and a new silence settled into the room.
“So what does your mother think? She must be proud.”
I hesitated.
“Have you told her yet?”
“I’m going to. There just wasn’t a good time this weekend, that’s all.”
“You sound like you’re talking about a bad grade on your report card or something. Gerry, you scored a lead role in the Gilliam High School musical. That’s a big deal.”
I shook my head and looked away.
“Don’t you think she’ll be happy?”
“Yeah, I guess. It’s just going to be a lot of work. I’m going to be stuck in rehearsals every day. I mean, who’s going to make dinner?”
Bryant nodded. “I’m sure you’ll work it out. It’s only a month or two. What about your father? What do you think he would’ve said?”
“How the hell should I know? He probably would’ve said it was gay or something.”
Bryant didn’t reply. He just looked at me with that little Zen smile of his.
“I don’t know,” I said after a while. “Maybe he wouldn’t have cared. He probably would’ve been glad that I was getting up off my fat ass and doing something. Even if it was gay.”
“Do you think being in a musical is gay, Gerry?”
“Not really.”
“Good.” He paused. I could tell he was working up to something.
“You don’t like to talk about your father, do you?”
“Not a lot to talk about,” I retorted. “He was gone for a year and a half, came back for a few months, then offed himself. What else is there to say?”
“You don’t even like to think about your father, do you?”
“Not much to think about.” I could feel my heart starting to pound. I looked at my watch. Twenty minutes to go. Fuck.
Bryant nodded. “It’s okay, Gerry. Something like this takes time. People go about it in different ways, at different paces. But you’ll get there, eventually. You’ll have to.”
“Get where?” I said. “Go about what? I don’t know what all this fucking psychobabble means.”
“The grieving process. Coming to terms. Acceptance. Death is never easy. And in cases like yours, it’s even more complicated. There can be other issues involved.”
“Issues, huh?” My brain was buzzing now, but I couldn’t get a hold of what was going on in there. It just sounded like one steady stream of static.
I could see Bryant’s face start to shift. I cringed. I thought for sure I was going to see the old pity look, but it was just a general sort of sadness, one that wasn’t only for me, and I wondered if that was even worse.
“I don’t know, Gerry,” I said. “I’d like to agree with you on this one. I’d like to be a team player, I really would. But the truth is, I’m over it. I’m even kind of relieved. I mean, he was messed up when he came back. Really, really messed up. And the sickest part of it all was that there was no help. No one did a fucking thing about it.”
“Including you?” he murmured.
Our eyes locked. We stared in perfect silence as the seconds ticked by until I finally had to look away.
CHAPTER TEN
“Hey! You’re going the wrong way.” Stewart swung me away from the auditorium and down another hallway.
“We have practice, don’t we?”
“Yeah, but it’s not in there. Not yet. We’re in Ms. Vale’s room.”
“Oh.” For some reason, I suddenly felt better. Hanging out in a classroom seemed somehow less intimidating than going right up onto the stage.
“Jesus, Frenchy, it’s a good thing you’ve got me looking out for you. I’m surprised you can even get yourself dressed in the morning.”
“It’s a challenge sometimes.” My head was still buzzing a bit from the Gerry session. Bryant had backed off after our little staring contest. We spent the rest of the time talking about my childhood and that sort of crap, but I’d been sufficiently rattled.
“Hey, did you get a chance to go over your lines this weekend?” Stewart asked. He’d given me a paperback copy of the script when he dropped me off from school last Friday. He’d ordered two copies from Amazon after the audition and had them overnighted.
“A little.” Actually, I hadn’t touched the script. I was still too pissed off. In fact, I’d thrown the goddam thing in my bedroom trash can as soon as I got home, though I’d come around enough by Sunday night to fish it back out.
“Got to work on those, Frenchy,” he scolded.
“Blow me.”
Normally he would’ve laughed at something li
ke that, but not today. He just sort of shook his head and frowned. I suddenly got the feeling that this was going to be a long seven weeks.
The drama room was a pretty far-out place. The usual corpse-colored cinderblock walls were obscured by a collection of bizarre posters, bohemian tapestries, and multicolored flags. Six-foot-tall puppet masks hung on either side of the whiteboard like sentinels. Not only that, the cheap-ass linoleum floor had been carpeted over. Lamps illuminated each corner of the room, playing off the decorations to give the whole place an almost decadent feel, like some exotic den.
There were a few kids there already, seated around a group of tables that had been pushed together to form a large square. Like last week, their expressions were all different: curious, annoyed, friendly. No one seemed indifferent to our arrival. The only thing that made it bearable was the fact that most of the looks were directed Stewart’s way. I was pretty much ignored. Life of a sidekick, I guess. Fine with me.
Stewart stopped before the table. I had to pull up to not run into him.
“Everybody ready?” he shouted. Everyone’s faces went blank. He continued, in full Stewart fashion. “Well, I am. Man, am I psyched!” He let out a whoop so loud, half the kids jumped in their seats. I could tell everyone was thinking what I’d just been thinking: It was going to be a long seven weeks.
Amid a few eye rolls and titters, he took a seat, and I sat down next to him, though at this point the other side of the table was looking pretty good. Then Kaela came in with a couple of her gothy tech friends. Seeing us, she skipped right over and sat next to Stewart.
“Hey, sweetie,” she said. She liked to call people sweetie.
“Hi, Kaela. Good to see you here.” Ever since we’d shown up, the place had gone silent, and he seemed glad to talk to someone.
I tried to muster up the courage to say something, but Kaela was totally focused on Stewart. So I just sat there like a retarded monkey as they chatted away.
“Hey, where’s Ms. Vale?” Stewart asked, looking around.
“She’s on her way,” Stacey McGovern said, striding in with Quentin Bernard at her heels. “She told everyone to sit tight.”
Stacey had been given a lead role: Aldonza, the barmaid-slash-prostitute who Don Quixote worships by the name of Dulcinea. It wasn’t a huge surprise—Stacey had already been the female lead in the last two musicals and could really sing. And she was hot and popular and good in school, a real diva, basically—the Gilliam High School equivalent of a movie star. But I just couldn’t buy her in the role. She was luscious but not in an Aldonza kind of way, all husky and busty and dark. Stacey was too pert, too blond, too coldly pure.
Stewart didn’t seem to share my skepticism. I could see his eyes light up the moment she came into the room, just like Don Quixote’s had the first time he saw Aldonza—a look of untainted adoration. And now Stewart would be confessing his undying love and service to her just about every day. Maybe that’s why he’d wanted to do the play so badly. I snuck a quick glance at Kaela. She was frowning. She’d noticed the look too.
Stewart jumped up from his seat and hurried around the table, meeting a startled Stacey at her chair. He pulled it out for her and beckoned. “My lady?”
Another round of giggles spread across the table. Stacey’s face reddened as she sat down with a prim smile. Quentin gave Stewart a nasty stare before plopping down beside her.
Kaela, meanwhile, continued to glare.
“So, you ready?” I said, leaning toward her. She pulled her gaze away and, seeing me, flashed a smile.
“I’m ready. Got my crew assembled and everything. Question is, are you?”
“Hell, no. In fact, I still don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“At least you’ve got Stewart,” she said, glancing back at him still hovering over Stacey.
“And you,” I said. “I mean, we’re going to be seeing each other every day.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a long season. I’m sure you’ll be sick of me by the time it’s over.”
“As long as you don’t drop a stage light on me, I’ll be fine.” I winced at the stupid joke, but she laughed as Stewart rejoined us.
A few more kids came in, followed at last by Ms. Vale, who marched in with a smile, balancing a stack of books with one arm and holding a steaming paper cup in her other hand.
“All right,” she said, setting everything down at the head of the table before dropping into her swiveling director’s chair. “Let’s get this show started. Is everyone here?”
“Check,” Kaela said, brandishing her clipboard.
“Excellent.” Ms. Vale took a sip of her drink before continuing. “I want to start by telling you how excited I am. I absolutely adore this musical, and I want to thank Quentin for suggesting it this summer.”
She paused for the brief smattering of applause. Quentin offered a smile in response. A very meager smile.
“This is probably the most talented cast I’ve worked with in my time here at Gilliam, and I have no doubt this will be a performance people will never forget.”
Everyone glanced at one another with quick grins.
“But we have a lot of work to do if we’re going to be ready for our premiere. It’s only seven weeks away. Seven weeks, people.”
Smiles faded, faces paled. I felt a twinge in my stomach.
She proceeded to cover the rules: which people were expected to show up when and where, at what point people were expected to have their lines memorized, that sort of thing. She used words like expectations, commitment, accountability.
Normally this is where I’d start rolling my eyes and stop paying attention, but for some reason, I didn’t. In fact, I found myself buying it. The whole thing. Maybe it was because I was falling half in love watching Ms. Vale’s beautiful lips move as she spoke in earnest tones and gazed into our eyes, or maybe I was just so freaked out, anything to hold on to was a relief. Then it occurred to me: Maybe I was ready for it. Maybe Stewart had been right. Maybe I did need this. It made sense, I figured—it was in my blood. My father had answered the call to service, to discipline and dedication. And now it was my turn. Of course, he’d served in the army and then the National Guard. He’d gone to war—two wars, actually, both in the Gulf. Me? I was in a fruity play.
“Okay, here are your scripts,” Ms. Vale said, patting the pile at her side. “You’re welcome to purchase your copies if you want to keep them, otherwise I’ll need them back.”
She began passing them around the table. When she got to Stewart, though, he gave his back.
“Actually, Ms. Vale, I already got a copy ahead of time. It’s okay, it’s the same version. I wanted to get a head start on the lines.”
“Okay,” she replied, a little surprised. But she quickly recovered with a smile. “Well, I admire the dedication.”
“Frenchy’s got one too,” Stewart added, clapping me on the back.
I smiled back and gave a sheepish nod. At this point, the other kids were all staring at me with a hint of murder in their eyes. I couldn’t blame them. I turned and glared at Stewart while Ms. Vale continued around the room.
Fucking suck-up. I did my best to project the thought. He just gave me a confused sort of look, as if to ask what my problem was, followed by a grin.
Ms. Vale finished handing out the scripts, and from there things took off. Day one of practice was what she called a read-through, which is basically just what it sounds like—all of us assuming our parts, reading through the whole script from start to finish. It took most of the afternoon, though skipping the songs helped. We’d work on those next, she said.
I did all right. No worse than anyone else. Ms. Vale didn’t say much as we plodded along, though she took a million notes. Stewart, big surprise, stole the show, reading with gusto, sometimes not reading at all but reciting from memory. Slowly, I could feel the others coming back around, especially the girls. Kaela blushed as Stewart intoned Quixote’s declarations of love and praise to Dulcinea. Even Stacey’s
iron jaw seemed to slacken a little when he hit a particularly potent line. Ms. Vale just gave a demure smile every time Stewart got going, but you could tell she was pleased.
Poor Quentin. I never thought I’d feel sorry for the guy, but I had a front-row seat to his own private hell. I could see his face flash from one kind of bitterness to another as we moved deeper into the script. I bet he never imagined when he proposed Man of La Mancha that it would turn out this way. Every time Stewart spoke, they were Quentin’s lines Stewart was speaking, his part Stewart was playing. It had to suck big-time.
And part of me did feel sorry for him. But not much. Life is full of surprises, I wanted to tell him. Most of them nasty. Better get used to it, pretty boy.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was after five o’clock by the time Stewart dropped me off. I grabbed the gift box with the cane in it from the trunk and hustled to the door. My mother would be home pretty soon, and I wanted to have dinner ready. I figured I’d make tacos. Tacos were quick and easy, and I was pretty beat. I’d never stayed at school that late before. Not even for detention.
The TV was blaring when I stepped through the door and into the kitchen, which was kind of weird since my mother’s car was still gone. Then I saw a pair of feet dangling over the edge of the couch and got really freaked out. Everything slowed down and turned all nasty, like a bad dream or one too many hits off the old bong. I slipped the cane from its box and drew the blade out as I stumbled around the corner.
It was Ralph. The douche bag was reclining across the entire length of the couch, right hand on the clicker, left hand in his pants, scratching his balls like he’d been doing all weekend.
The sight of me popping out, sword in hand, caught poor Ralph by surprise. He tried scrambling to his feet and ended up falling backward over the couch with a strangled, girly yelp. As tweaked out as I was, I had a hard time not laughing.
“Fuck me, Agnes!” he hollered. “You scared the shit out of me, Frenchy!”
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