by Annabel Lyon
“Biggest size,” I say confidently, because this I’ve thought through. We might be here for an hour, and I need something that will last all that time so I don’t have to get up and down and line up and spend more money. If I get something too little and drink it too fast, they might ask me to leave.
Nervous? Moi?
I pay and carry my big black brimming coffee over to the table with the lids and sugar sachets and so on. The lid is also part of my plan, so I don’t make some big Edie-gesture and get coffee all over everything. Next is where to sit. There are the seats along the window, the aforementioned armchairs in front of the aforementioned fireplace, the little tables along the skinny hallway where the washrooms are, and right at the back there’s a bigger space that opens out unexpectedly, with some more tables. This is by far the most private and quiet part of the shop, and I’m disappointed to see someone already sitting at one of the tables. Then I realize it’s Regan.
“How did you get here ahead of me?” I say. I’m rattled.
“I skipped Leadership.”
She’s got her army jacket over the back of her chair and her books spread out on the table, and seems to be doing calculus. Today she’s wearing a black T-shirt, the tartan miniskirt again, black leggings, and orange high-tops she’s scribbled on with a green marker. She wears a necklace made of safety pins. She doesn’t have a drink yet, and immediately I feel rude.
“Can I get you something?” I say.
“No, thanks,” she says. She moves her bag off the chair opposite hers and tells me she’ll be right back. “Sit.”
I sit and busy myself pulling stuff from my bag. She’s back in a minute with a cup the size of mine, but trailing a tea-bag string instead of a thick black coffee smell. I go to sip my coffee through the eensy little hole in the plastic lid.
“Relax, Edie,” Regan says when I stop spluttering and my eyes have cleared. I burned my tongue. “You’re so twitchy.”
“Did you really skip Leadership?” I ask.
She shrugs.
“I wish my sister would skip Leadership sometimes,” I say. “She already has too much leadership. I wish she would take a class called Followership.”
I think this is funny, but Regan just looks at me with her spooky pale eyes. “I know your sister,” she says.
I wait for her to say something nice, or not nice, but she picks up the copy of King Lear I’ve put on the table and starts flipping through it.
“You worked on last year’s musical, right?” I say, for something to say.
“I did the costumes.” She puts the book down. “What’s the story?”
“Sorry?”
“The story. What’s it about? What happens?”
“You haven’t read it?”
She looks at me.
“There’s this king,” I say quickly. “He has three daughters. Cordelia, Goneril, and—Regan, actually. One of them is named Regan, like you.”
She blinks.
“Weird, right?” I say weakly.
“Are you making this up?” she says.
I turn the book around and point to the name on the page so she can see.
She squints at it then leans back. “Okay,” she says. “Then what?”
“He tells his daughters he’ll leave his kingdom to whichever one of them loves him most. Two of them are evil. They give evil, lying speeches about how he’s the best dad in the world, but the third daughter, the youngest, refuses to try. She’s the only one who really does love him, and she can’t put it into words. So he disowns her. He’s got this court jester, called the Fool, who makes fun of him all the time but gets away with it because, after all, he’s a jester, that’s his job. There’s a bad guy called Edmund, and a guy who goes blind …” She’s still looking at me, expressionless. I’m probably boring her silly. “There’s a big storm, and Lear goes crazy and runs around screaming. You hate it, don’t you?”
“Show me that part,” she says. “Where the king goes crazy.”
I flip through the book. “‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!’” I read. “‘Rage! Blow!’” I read some more.
Regan listens with her chin on her fist, staring at the table between us, her forehead slightly wrinkled. When I’m done, she looks up. “He’s mad at his daughters?” she says slowly.
Around us, the tables are filling up. I see girls from school look at us and whisper to each other. I don’t know if being seen with Regan is a good thing or not.
“You’re going to hate me, okay?” she says. “I think we should write it in plain English. I mean, we can’t just cut this—we have to make it easier to understand. Nobody can say this stuff.” She twists the book around so she can read from it. “‘You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, singe my white head!’ I mean, like, what?”
I don’t say anything.
“What do I know?” she says. “My thing is costumes.” She leans back and looks around, and I realize she’s going to pick up her bag in a minute and go.
I twist the book back so I can see it. “Lightning,” I say slowly. “Lightning is better than his daughters. Thunder is better, rain is better. His daughters are more evil than a storm.”
“Simpler,” Regan says.
“I would rather get hit by lightning than go into my daughter’s house. I would rather stand out here in this storm than ask her nicely for shelter. I would rather die than ask my daughter for anything.”
“Which is the good daughter?” Regan says. “Cordelia, Goneril, or Regan?”
“Cordelia.”
Then she really is putting her coat on, packing up her books, picking up her tea.
“Wait!” I say. “You said you’d help me!”
“You don’t need my help,” she says. “You’ll be fine.”
I watch her sweep off, little eddies of whispers in her wake from all around the store. Forget King Lear; she is the crazy one.
I take another sip of my coffee. It’s still hot and bitter, but bearable, just. I glance at the book again, then take out a clean piece of paper.
I would rather get hit by lightning …
“… and then she just took off.”
“Slow down, Edie,” Sam says. “What time is it?”
“You weren’t asleep, were you?” I say. “I can’t sleep. I’m not sleepy. I’ve got the shakes. Regan is so strange. Were you sleeping? I’m still working on the play. I think it’s going really well. Can I read you some? Were you sleeping?”
On my desk, The Shot’s biggest coffee cup is empty, for the fourth or fifth time.
One week later. I’ve been sitting in Mr. Harris’s office for the last forty minutes or so while he reads through what I’ve written. At the beginning I tried to say something, but he looked up and said, “Don’t talk.”
Now he puts the pages back together, taps them square, and hands them back to me. “It’s a start,” he says. “What about the music?”
I pull out my sister’s iPod (she can kill me later) and give him the earphones. Right away his eyebrows go up.
“We’ll have to change the words,” I say.
“Apparently,” Mr. Harris says.
We talk some more about what I’ve proposed: plain language, each actor adapting his or her own lines so it will sound natural. We’ll use my CD for rehearsals, and Sam thinks the Concert Jazz Band would work for the actual performances. She’s already talked to her band teacher, who can get the scores and is willing to help.
“Very nice,” Mr. Harris says. “Very collaborative. One thing we haven’t discussed is direction. I think the three of you can share that, yes? Regan for theatre experience, Sam for musical experience, and you.”
“I don’t have experience.”
“You’ve read the play,” Mr. Harris says. “Nice to have at least one person involved in the production who’s done that.”
Is he serious? “You’ve read it too, though, right?”
Mr. Harris gives me a look I can�
�t read. “A long time ago,” he says finally. “I think I remember the important parts.”
“People,” Mr. Harris yells. He holds his hands over his head and claps. “People!”
Sam, Regan, Mr. Harris, and I are sitting in the fifth row of the theatre. The rows in front of us are empty. Behind us, the rows are filled with students, everyone buzzing with anticipation.
“Who’s first?” Mr. Harris asks.
I look at Regan. “Lear,” she says. “We need to get him right. Everyone else has to fit in around him.”
“That’s right,” Mr. Harris says. Then he yells, “LEAR!”
Two boys walk down to the stage and stand there as if they have to pee.
“Two?” I say. “That’s it?”
“That little one is no good,” Regan says. “Isn’t Lear supposed to be old? Like, fifty or something? That one looks like he doesn’t even shave.”
“What’s your name?” Mr. Harris calls, pointing to the little one.
“Quinn?”
“Are you sure?” Mr. Harris calls.
“Yes?” the boy says.
“What about you?” he calls to the taller one with the Canucks jersey.
“Rob.”
“Hockey player, Rob?”
He shrugs.
“Tell me about King Lear, Rob,” Mr. Harris says.
He shrugs.
“How about you, Quinn?”
“I memorized a speech?” Quinn says.
Mr. Harris waves him up onto the stage.
“‘Meantime we shall express our darker purpose,’” Quinn starts. Mr. Harris’s head snaps up to look at him. The theatre goes silent. “‘Give me the map there. Know that we have divided in three our kingdom: and ’tis our fast intent to shake all cares and business from our age; conferring them on younger strengths, while we unburdened crawl toward death …’”
After he finishes the speech, there’s absolute silence.
“Quinn?” Mr. Harris calls.
“Sorry?” Quinn says.
“How old are you?”
“Fourteen?”
I look at Sam, at Regan.
“Hockey player,” Mr. Harris calls. “Do you sing?”
He shrugs.
“What about you, Quinn?” Mr. Harris calls.
Quinn clears his throat and sings “O Canada.” His voice tremors all over the place and at the end he cracks on the high note.
“Sorry?” he says when he’s done.
“Dude,” the hockey player says. He looks offended. “Don’t do that to the anthem, dude.”
Quinn looks as if he’s going to cry.
“‘O Canada,’” the hockey player sings. He sings the whole thing in a strong baritone, and the high note at the end is solid.
“Nice,” Sam whispers to me when he’s done, as if I couldn’t have figured that out for myself.
His monologue, though, is awful. He stands legs apart and fists clenched, like a gorilla, and emphasizes all the wrong words, so that it’s clear he has no idea what any of the lines actually mean.
“Any more Lears?” Mr. Harris calls. “All right. Cast will be posted outside my office Monday morning. Next is—”
“Cordelia,” I whisper to Regan. The good daughter, the female lead. She nods.
“Cordelia,” Mr. Harris calls.
I count seventeen girls who advance on the stage at once and stand there flipping their hair and looking at the sample speech we photocopied and handed out for them to memorize. These are the popular girls, the girlie-girls, the wannabe singers.
“Blond, blond, blondity-blond,” Regan whispers.
Most of them, predictably, are pretty bad. Sam sits mumbling to herself, wincing, putting on a show of the pained musician, but I’m glad it’s not me up there trying to sing, and I try not to laugh or be mean. Frankly, I’m more interested in the speeches anyway. These girls aren’t like Rob and Quinn, who both ignored the plain-language speech I’d prepared and photocopied. They’ve got it memorized, like homework, and most of them zip through as fast as they can, as if they need to get the words out of their mouths before the words roll out of their ears and end up on the floor. No one jumps out at me, but there are a couple of good readers and a couple of talented singers, and I’m sure we’ll be able to come up with someone.
At first, when Mr. Harris calls for the Fool, I’m afraid we’re in big trouble, because only one boy comes forward. But Regan murmurs, “Perfect,” and Mr. Harris leans back with what you might almost call a smile on his face. I look at Sam, who always knows what’s going on. She’s smiling too. “Just watch,” she says.
It turns out this kid, Raj, spends his summers at circus camp, and he recites his entire speech—slowly, clearly, without mistakes—while juggling two oranges and a pen. He has a rubbery face, laughs easily, makes people laugh, and sings in a sweet, weak tenor. He’s the grade twelve class clown, and he’s perfect.
Slowly we make our way through all the characters, watching and listening, and sometimes trying not to listen, and taking notes. The only remaining surprise comes when we cast Goneril and Regan, the evil sisters. Mr. Harris suggests that to save time we ask the students to go up in pairs, so we can cast two sisters who look right together. I’m scribbling notes in my lap when Regan says, “Isn’t that your sister?”
Sure enough, Dexter and Mean Megan are just climbing the steps to the stage.
“I can’t believe you won’t tell me,” Dexter says that night at supper.
After the casting call, we went back to Mr. Harris’s office and made our final decisions. Mr. Harris said he would type up the list and post it on his door on Monday, and we should keep things confidential until then.
I hold up my hands as if she’s trying to rob me with a gun. “I’m not allowed!”
“It’s a matter of national security,” Dad says, nodding sagely. Then he pretends to look confused. “No, wait. No, it isn’t.”
“Mom!” I say.
“Mom!” Dex says.
Now Mom holds up her hands as if we’re both turning guns on her. “I think if the teacher asked Edie not to say anything, we all have to respect that.”
“Thank you,” I say.
After supper, while Dex is in the bathroom, Mom grabs me. “Did she get the part?”
“Mom!” I say, shocked.
“I know. But Dex is going through such a rough time right now. First that thing with Robert, and now this play, which she really, really wants, believe it or not, and to get it she has to get past you. You have to know that is a bit—unusual for her.”
“Dex is going through a rough time right now?”
“I’m ready, Mom,” Dex says, suddenly appearing. She’s got her shoes and coat on and her school knapsack packed to bulging.
“I’m getting my coat right now,” Mom says.
“Where are you going?”
“Dex is going to Merry’s for a sleepover,” Mom says.
On Monday, I drop by Mr. Harris’s office at different times throughout the day, but there’s always such a crowd in front of the door that I can’t get anywhere near it. I know what it says, though: Quinn is Lear, Raj is the Fool, a girl named Nathalie, one of the best singers, is Cordelia. Mean Megan is Goneril.
“I don’t think Edie should have any say in this one,” Regan had said in Mr. Harris’s office. “She can’t judge her own sister objectively.”
“That’s fair,” I said, feeling relieved. I would be able to tell Dexter I had nothing to do with it, and she wouldn’t feel as if she had to thank me.
“Megan has the perfect look,” Regan said. “And I liked that red-haired girl for the other sister. She was kind of funny and witchy at the same time.”
“I agree,” Mr. Harris said.
They must have seen something on my face.
“Sorry, Edie,” Regan said. “But Dexter can’t sing to save her life.”
“But—”
“Ah,” Mr. Harris said sharply.
I don’t see Dexter in t
he halls anywhere today, which is one good thing. But when I get home, Mom is waiting, tight-lipped, whispering. Dexter came home early, she says, with a headache, and is lying down now, hopefully sleeping. That’s Dex-code for still crying.
I tell her about Regan and Mr. Harris not letting me have a say in the decision.
“Okay,” Mom says.
“I wouldn’t do that to her!” I say.
“Okay,” Mom says.
Mom must have a word with Dex, because she comes out of her room just before supper and comes straight to me and says she understands it wasn’t my decision.
“Dex, it wasn’t,” I say.
“Like I care, anyway,” she says. “It would have taken way too much of my time, actually, and eaten into a bunch of my other activities.” I can hear Mom’s voice in back of this one.
“Speaking of that,” Mom says, “when’s the last time you saw Merry, Edie?”
“I dunno,” I say, taking a bite of lasagne. Cheese, cheese, cheesity-cheese. My favourite.
“Merry was asking for you,” Dex says. “When I slept over. She said she wants to spend more time with you. She misses you walking her home from school.”
Aunt Ellie picks her up in the car every day now. I make a what-are-you-gonna-do shrug. “I’ve got the play now.”
Mom and Dad exchange a look.
“Merry was asking about the musical too,” Dex continues, taking salad. She’s being all casual and conversational, pretending to have a tough time deciding which dressing before she chooses the same one as always: raspberry poppy seed. “She loves musicals. We watched South Pacific the night I stayed over, and she knew all the words and could sing all the songs. It was pretty amazing, actually.”
“That is amazing,” Mom says, and looks at Dad, and Dad nods enthusiastically. They all look brightly at me.
“Hello?” I say.
Mom narrows her eyes. Dad and Dex both push their chairs back ever so slightly. Uh-oh.
“You’re using this play as an excuse to avoid your cousin,” Mom says. “I want you to find a way to include her.”
“You’re joking,” I say.
Dad and Dex both push their chairs back a little more. Dex might be sort of smiling at her salad.