“One more thing,” May says, and I notice the crowd is thinning out behind her.
“What?” I ask with a grimace. “Do I want to know?”
“There’s an asterisk next to your name.”
“What?”
“You should go talk to her,” Richard says.
I squeeze through a couple of people—one girl is crying because she didn’t get a part at all—and I do see a small blue asterisk next to my name. I look to the bottom of the list and an asterisk is there too, with the line: See Ms. Taft ASAP for further instruction BEFORE rehearsal begins. I am the only one with an asterisk.
I rejoin my friends in the hallway as Panda struts by into the now barely there crowd. He’s wearing a shirt with a fake tuxedo front and Wayfarer-style Ray Bans.
“Do I even have to guess?” I say, changing the subject away from me.
“Bottom,” we say in unison.
Panda joins our little circle and bows. “The most illustrious performer, Bottom, at your service.”
“I always knew you were an ass,” Richard says, and Panda kisses his cheek. I walk to the bulletin board again. Karen is, in fact, Titania, and Wes is King Theseus, Hippolyta’s husband, and as Taft explained during auditions, he’s also the fairy king, Oberon.
“I’m starved,” Panda says, and reaches into his back pocket for a small bag of potato chips. “Let’s celebrate with Burrito Heaven for lunch.”
“Ooh, good idea,” May says.
“You can’t, you’re not a senior, remember?” Richard says gently.
“You think that will stop him?” May says just as Karen hurries from around the corner to the bulletin board. She hesitates, pulling back from the list, as curious as I am why Taft split the parts. When she sees me standing there, a smile immediately plasters on her face and she joins May, Panda, and Richard celebrating. They start heading down the hall to sign out at the main office.
“You coming?” Panda calls to me.
“I’m gonna go talk to Taft,” I say.
“Go get ’em!” May calls. She cackles in happy celebration. I exhale sharply, surprised by their support. They turn the corner, out of the hallway.
“You will not quit. You will not get a case of the nerves,” Taft says, pacing before me. She is holding a piece of paper in her hand with a large hand-drawn blue asterisk.
“No,” I say. Taft’s eyes dagger at me. “I mean, no, I won’t get the nerves. I really want this,” I say quickly. I sit in Taft’s office chair and she walks back and forth again and again.
“You will not dodge phone calls or ignore your friends. You will not show up late even once,” she says.
“But!”
She holds up the asterisk and I immediately silence. After years of working every summer with this woman from fourth through tenth grade here at EG and at OSTC, I know she only thinks you’re listening if you are looking at her directly in the eyes.
“Maybe it’s the fireflies taking over the town and eating all my flowers, but I’m on edge, Berne.” She stops pacing and points at me. “I’m giving you a chance, Penny. One more chance.”
I open my mouth and she shakes the asterisk in my face and continues.
“You will communicate if you are still prohibited from driving and if someone else is going to make you late.” I don’t want to meet her eyes but her expression momentarily softens. “You will use your cell phone to communicate if something is happening at home to make you late.” She jumps back into “drill sergeant” mode.
“As you are so wont to do—you will not complain about late rehearsals, itchy costumes, and you will not voice conflict of production approach. Do you agree to these terms?” She places her hands on her hips and I try not to focus on the dot of fresh mustard on her blouse. I can’t help it and she looks down. “Oh hell,” she says, and snatches a tissue from her desk.
“Do you?” she asks again while dabbing at the spot.
“I do.”
With a toss of the soiled napkin, she opens the top drawer in her desk.
She takes out something small that she’s able to conceal in her hand.
“Open your palm,” she says.
“Is this the part where you strike me with a ruler?”
She erupts into a loud, horsey laugh, but clears her throat immediately and frowns.
“Palm,” she demands.
I hold up my hand. In it she drops a white button, and on it is a blue asterisk.
“You made me a button?”
She holds up the button in place of the paper.
“Your final contract requires you wear this asterisk until dress rehearsal,” she says.
“So this is my scarlet letter?”
She lowers herself into a chair across from me and all joking leaves her voice.
“No,” she says in a low but sincere tone. “It’s so you never forget, Penny, how close you came to losing it all. I know you don’t remember, and I don’t fault you for that. But I believe, deep down in your heart, your soul knows what happened that spring and I even know that some of it was out of your control. You don’t want it to happen again.”
I pin the button on my blouse.
“Well, you don’t have to wear it now.”
“I want to.”
“You are always responsible for your own life, Penny,” Taft says. “Even when things happen to you that you can’t change, you’re in control of how you handle those tough situations.”
I stand up. I don’t have to wear the pin right now, but it doesn’t matter. I’m in the cast. I’m part of the cast again. I want to hug Taft, but she’s not a hugger. Instead, I grip the door on my way out of her office and make sure to look back.
“You don’t want to leave this,” she says, and hands me the paper with the hand-drawn asterisk.
I take it from her. “Thank you,” I say. “For everything.”
“You bet. Now go learn your lines,” she says, and points at me with her pencil.
FIFTEEN
THE NEXT DAY, AFTER LUNCH, PANDA, MAY, AND I are in the hallway. We tried to go to the outside tables, but there was a sign on the door that until the “lightning bug” population decreases, the outside cafeteria will be closed. The door to the caf eases closed behind us with a fresh new VOTE FOR KYLIE poster—with yet another photo where I have been digitally removed. I shake my head, take a step, and freeze. I wiggle my toes to make sure.
I can feel them!
“What? Did your whole foot go numb?” Panda says. “Do we need to amputate?”
“I can feel my toes,” I say, and hold out my hand for May to take it—she does. The pins and needles in my right foot are gone. I take really small steps from one side of the aisle to the other, making sure to press on the ball of my foot. I walk up and down the hall, smiling.
“Oh my god!” I say with a jump. “Maybe my memory will come back or the figures will fade next.”
May hugs me and then Panda does too on top of her so it’s one smelly potato chip group hug.
This is the first real indication I’ve had that I’m healing. When we pull out of the hug, Kylie comes out of a nearby room and puts up another homecoming queen campaign poster. This one has the same picture but with a different slogan that reads: VOTE CASTELLI! HOMECOMING QUEEN 2016!
She rolls her eyes when she makes eye contact with me and turns her back to put up the poster. I gesture to May and Panda so they know I want a minute to talk to Kylie. Maybe it’s the new feeling in my toes, but I decide to be brave when I say to her, “You’re mad at me for being struck by lightning, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s crazy. I couldn’t help it!”
She turns slowly, her arms crossed. She’s clenching her jaw. Her features, small and unfairly proportionate, are sharp. “Is that what you think?” she says quietly. “That I’m mad at you because you almost died?”
“Well, when you say it like that . . .”
Kylie huffs and gathers another poster at her feet. She moves down the h
all.
“What is it then?” I follow her.
She doesn’t answer. I snatch the poster from her to get her attention but she yanks on it too and it rips straight in half. Kylie falls back to the wall.
“I’m sorry!” I say.
“Shit!” she cries. “Do you know how expensive it is to print pictures this big?”
“I’m really sorry. I’ll pay for it.”
“Of course you will. You’ll just fix everything.” She snatches her things and hurries down the hall.
“What are you talking about?” I yell, following her. Everyone in the hall is now looking at us, but I’m too angry to care. “Why are you being so mean?”
I stop. A new memory comes rushing back. May’s voice, “Why are you being so mean?”
“What are you even doing here?” I say. She showed up to the party in her best black blouse.
“Come back to the play, Taft will let you,” she says. In her eyes is a plea and they keep whipping back and forth between Kylie and me.
“Just go home, May. I’m done,” I say.
She pulls me into the kitchen. “Penny, just tell me what’s going on. Please.”
“I said, go home!”
“Why are you being so mean?” she cries.
Kylie’s voice pierces my memory.
“Why am I being mean?” she says, repeating my words. “Have you ever thought that it’s you who’s treating me like this?”
I shake my head. “What?”
“You’re treating me like crap,” she says. “I see you trying to get your friends back. You accidentally sat at my lunch table and for like, one second, I thought you actually wanted to sit with me. That you would make an effort to be friends again. But, no. Instead I watch you nearly break your back to get your old friends in your life who you were more than happy to ditch a couple of years ago. And I took you in as my best friend. And you couldn’t care less that I’m hurt, that I lost my best friend, Penny! I—” She stops herself. Kylie wasn’t shouting at first, but she is now, and I drop my chin to my chest, my body thundering with the truth of what she is saying.
The noise in the hallway has dropped to a hush. There’s light chatter around us; some people even pass by with a giggle.
“You don’t care that I don’t have anyone to call or ask advice. You don’t know.”
“You’re right,” I say, and when I look up, tears are in Kylie’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I haven’t thought about what you’re going through. I just thought, I guess I assumed from how you were acting, that you were angry.”
“That I watched you get struck by lighting and nearly die? That I called the hospital and the nurses’ station asked if I was some girl named May that you had been asking about. Someone I knew you hadn’t talked to in a year? Yeah, I’m mad at you for nearly dying, Penny. That sounds stupid just saying it.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I say, and step to her, but she gestures for me to stay away with the shredded poster in her hand.
“Don’t,” she says. “I don’t want your friendship like this. I don’t want it at all.”
“Do you think people might actually come to the show this year?” May says. We sit in the auditorium with our feet on the chair backs in front of us. “Football’s been canceled and there’s two months until basketball starts. People might actually need something to do on a Friday night.”
I keep going over what Kylie said in the hallway.
“Hello? Penny? Friend?”
I groan. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re distracted. You can’t be distracted at our second rehearsal. It does not bode well for Operation Get Your Life Back.”
“I don’t know how to say I’m sorry to Kylie,” I explain. “But I don’t know how to be friends with her either. We don’t have anything in common.” I lean my head back on the chair. “If I could remember, it would make my life so much easier!” I smack my script on the armrest.
“Okay, well, if wishes were horses,” May says, and rolls her hand over and over. “Concentrate. You have to run lines with Wes so get your asterisk A-game on.”
I nod and draw a deep breath, just as Taft comes out from backstage. She has some tape with her and marks an X on the stage; she walks a bit farther downstage and does the same. She’s considering spike marks, for blocking, which seems really early to me. The old me would have yelled that exact thought out to her, but the button on my chest keeps me quiet.
“Okay!” Taft cries. “Let’s get Theseus and Hippolyta up here.”
Wes, who’s in a row a couple down from us, gets up. “May, can you help Thomas with some costumes? He’s having trouble locating some doublets.”
“Ah yes, tights and breeches. How I love thee, Shakespeare,” she says.
Wes and I stand across from each other. “So, as you know when we did the read-through, you two are to be married. This is act five, scene one.”
We take a moment to flip to the scene.
“You two read it through together again and feel the emotional beats between the two characters. I’ll be back in a minute after you two work on that.” Taft walks off, calling for the mechanicals.
“What’s with the blue asterisk?” Wes asks, and nods to the button.
I chuckle a little and roll my eyes. “To remind me of my duties as a member of the theater.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It’s a long story. Let’s do the scene,” I say quickly. “Okay so, act five, scene one is the end of the play. Theseus and Hippolyta disagree about the stories the lovers tell.”
Wes looks at his script. “Theseus thinks the lovers are making up the story of the strange events in the forest.”
“Right,” I say. “And Hippolyta thinks they’re telling the truth.”
“We’re supposed to be at our—” Wes hesitates but it’s a fraction of a second. “Our wedding celebrations. After the play within a play.”
Wes and I lock eyes and I wish we were back in the woodworking room, our shoulders nearly touching. For a moment, we’re both stuck.
“Okay!” Taft says, coming back over. So”—she checks her notes—“this is the moment right after the wedding reception. We’ll scatter some people about, have the nobles dancing in the background while you guys have your initial dialogue downstage.”
Taft drags a table to the center of the stage.
“Grab some chairs.”
We do, and Wes moves his seat to the head of one side of the table, so I follow suit and go to the other end.
“Are you two kidding me? Could you be any farther away from each other? You’re married!”
We move quickly to the center so we’re sitting side by side.
“Okay, so let’s walk through it,” she says.
Wes puffs up his chest, which is so unWes, as he takes on the character of King Theseus.
“’Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.” I pretend to sip on a goblet of wine.
“More strange than true: I never may believe these antique fables, nor these fairy toys—”
“Wait, wait,” Taft says. “You need to show you’re married in your body language. I know marriage feels like a million years away for you two, but you get what it means to be in love, right? So act.”
I panic, but I can’t say anything. I promised Taft I would behave.
Blue asterisk. Blue asterisk.
Wes slips an arm over my shoulder and turns his knees toward me. I try to be cool, but my heart pounds and goose bumps trail up my arms and neck. I feel Wes stiffen next to me.
“Better,” Taft says. “Try again.”
We do, and we only get a few more lines down when Taft calls cut a second time. “Better, but it’s forced. You two need to relax. Wes, as you’re talking about what the lovers have told you, how might you still show the audience that you love Hippolyta?”
“I might be closer?”
“Yes. And what else?”
Wes pulls me closer, but it still doesn’t feel ri
ght. I offer the wineglass I am using as a prop. “What if we share the goblet?” I ask, and sit back down.
Taft is really getting going now. “I like that! Try to make sure you’re actually feeling it. Don’t just say the lines. Think about your motivations, how you feel.”
“Okay,” Wes says, and throws his arm over me again.
At his touch a white burst of light explodes in my mind. It makes me draw my hand over my eyes:
A white wine bottle rolls over the kitchen floor to my feet.
“Bettie. It’s my Mom,” I cry, and my voice is thick with worry and tears.
I gasp quietly when I blink the memory away. I cough to cover it up and pull the sleeves of my hoodie down over my arms out of nervous habit. I’ve seen a fragment of that memory before. I recognize Mom’s wine bottle.
“. . . consider Theseus’s backstory. What was it like when he fell in love with Hippolyta?” Taft is saying. But I didn’t hear anything that came before it.
“Can I take five?” Wes blurts out, standing up and quickly moving his body from mine. I have to catch myself on his empty seat.
Taft sighs. “Sure, take a minute. I need more time with the mechanicals anyway.” She runs her hand through her frizzy hair when something catches her eye offstage. I turn to look and Chris, the guy who plays Quince, is on Panda’s shoulders. “What are you doing? Get down or you’ll fall and break your legs and miss the play entirely!”
“I can’t concentrate with homecoming tomorrow night. I have to pick up my suit,” Chris says, and jumps down.
Taft runs through nine reasons why she doesn’t care and I watch Wes hurry up the aisle, and out to the hallway. I don’t notice May come up from backstage, but she’s next to me and leans to my ear. “Looks like someone else is having trouble with Operation Get Your Life Back.”
She raises a devilish eyebrow and scoots away to help with costumes. I watch the door ease to a close and fight the urge to follow after Wes. A little part of me smiles inside. He’s struggling with the marriage scene. I’m taking that as a good sign. Maybe I’m right and I am finally chipping away at his anger.
A Season for Fireflies Page 15