Chapter Eleven
Rehearsals for The Sound of Music are put on a two-week hold for the holidays.
With Noah working a lot of extra hours covering shifts for his coworkers, and my family making our annual trek to visit my mom’s side of the family in Omaha, I don’t see him at all.
Thanks to modern technology, however, not a day goes by that we don’t talk, if only with our thumbs.
Still, I miss him. It’s the oddest sort of loneliness, kind of like that mid-July feeling you get when you’re not ready to go back to school yet, but you really miss seeing your friends all day.
Except it’s weirder because I also feel like I’m missing part of me.
It doesn’t make sense, but I don’t know how else to explain it other than .
. . I’m more “me”—or at least a more complete version—when I’m with him. But I’m not with him, so . . .
Noah:
Faith:
4, 3, 2…
Noah:
Happy New Year, Madeleine Faith!
Faith:
Happy New Year, Noah… I don’t know your middle name!
Noah:
Thomas. After my dad.
Faith:
Nice. Happy New Year, Noah Thomas!
When Christmas break ends, life resumes at a frantic pitch. January speeds by.
Noah:
I get off at 3. Want to hang out?
Faith:
I wish. Speech after school + Dance Team practice tonight. Sorry.
Noah:
Oh. Grab dinner w/me before rehearsal Friday?
Faith:
Absolutely! Speech practice, tho. Meet @school @4:30?
Noah:
Yes! Finally! Seems like forever.
Faith:
At least we’ve had thumb speak.
Noah:
My thumbs salute your thumbs
Faith:
My fist bumps your fist
Noah:
I’ll see that fistbump and raise you a ((hug)) on Friday.
Faith:
Deal.
Noah is pacing beside a loudly purring Eliza when I come out of school.
“Why aren’t you inside the car?” I call out. “It’s freezing!”
He looks up, grins, and closes the distance between us. “I promised you a hug, didn’t I?”
Before I can respond, he wraps his arms around me and lifts me off the ground, spinning two full circles.
After the initial gasp, I laugh—three exhalations of varied pitches that free something I didn’t even know was trapped inside, imparting nothing less than relief as he spins me one more time before setting me down and taking a step back.
“You, Madeleine Faith Prescott, are a sight for sore eyes.”
“You, too.” I’m grinning, the cheek-aching kind of grin. “It’s been forever.”
“Too long. Hungry?”
“Starving. Today’s mystery meat selection did not appeal.”
“Does cheese-free pizza sound good?”
“Sure.” Cheese sounds better, but dairy before a rehearsal is a hard no.
We eat at a little pizza joint on the square in Leopold.
They do mostly delivery, but there are a few wobbly tables.
It’s piping hot—much appreciated on this frigid January night—and so loaded with other toppings that I almost don’t miss the cheese.
He insists on paying. After fifteen seconds of useless argument, I let him.
Even bundled up as we are, it’s a cold jaunt to rehearsal.
Walking along the sidewalk just outside the Opera House, we amuse ourselves by trying to make fog shapes with our breath in the January air.
We’re terrible at it, and the laughter we share takes the edge off the tension I’ve felt since I looked at the schedule and saw which scene we’re rehearsing tonight: our duet, “Sixteen Going on Seventeen.”
We’ve done the blocking, our lines are memorized, and we’ve practiced the song several times with and without Dr. Hitchings’s direction—even over the phone once or twice. Tonight, we’ll put it all together.
And finally add in the end-of-scene kiss.
I’m nervous. So, so nervous.
This is the first rehearsal Dr. Hitchings scheduled for a Friday. Lucky for me, it was an away basketball game night, so I didn’t have to perform with the Dance Team at halftime. We linger over our pizza but still arrive in time to see three other scenes, mostly featuring nuns.
I should say Noah watches three other scenes.
But first, like the gentleman he is, he goes back out into the cold and retrieves my book bag from Eliza’s backseat.
Yes, it’s Friday, and I have the rest of the weekend to do my homework, but I need something to focus on other than our upcoming kiss.
Otherwise, the subtly fluttering butterflies in my middle might take over my brain.
My relationship with Noah is a strange incarnation of the friendzone.
I can’t deny I have romantic feelings toward him, but ever since the age-thing came up that day at the waterfall, we haven’t spoken of dating, only of hanging out.
The three months since we met have gone by quickly, but so .
. . deeply. Somewhere on that timeline, I forgot that he’s nineteen and I’m sixteen and we’re the old best friends we’ve just met.
Sometimes, our hands end up entwined. And ohmygosh, he gives the best hugs. But . . .
But tonight—on that stage, in this scene—I am going to kiss Noah Spencer.
It’s just acting, I try to tell myself. We’re just actors, acting.
Still, my heart is beating so fast, my breath can’t quite keep up. Or maybe it’s the cold air still imparting the almost-dizzy, can’t-catch-my-breath feeling? Nah, we’ve been inside for a while now.
Every Noah-interaction leaves me crushing harder on him. What if this scene is our make-it-or-break-it moment? What if the execution of this kiss determines every future thing between us?
Acting. We’re just acting.
Acting, acting, acting.
Breathe.
Maybe this kiss is simply the proverbial bandage we need to rip off and stash in the “be a professional!” acting bin. Maybe we need to leave the offstage reality of our relationship safely within the friendzone.
Except . . . I don’t want to stay in the friendzone—or whatever this somewhat-romantic, hand-holding friendship thing is—with Noah. I think . . .
I think I’ve fallen for him.
No, I know I’ve fallen for him. Hard. Beyond crushing. Far beyond it. But I don’t know what to do about that, especially within the framework of the scene—the kiss—we’re about to perform.
The Abbess and Maria are working through the “Climb Every Mountain” song now. When Dr. Hitchings is satisfied, he dismisses them and calls out, “Rolf! Liesl! You’re up!”
While the stage crew exchanges the last scene’s props for ours, Dr. Hitchings sends us through a scale or two to warm up and has us sing our duet by the piano once before sending us up to the stage. There’s no set yet, but the stage crew has provided a bicycle, a lamp post, and a park bench.
I can’t remember the last time I had butterflies this crazed in my stomach. But they’re not just in my stomach. They’re fluttering around my chest, pressing the outer walls of my windpipe.
Breathe, Faith. Breathe from your diaphragm. Be a professional.
My silent pep talk takes me off the fluttery edge.
We get through the lines, hit our marks, but the scene feels stiff. Off. And I can’t shake it. Noah sings. I react—
“More flirtatiousness, Liesl!” Dr. Hitchings hollers, and a moment later, “No, no, no! Stop.”
The piano halts. Dr. Hitchings motions us downstage. He puts his hands on his hips, scowling up at Noah and then at me. “What happened?” He crosses his arms at his chest. “Are you kids having a spat or something?”
“No, sir,” Noah says. I shake my head.
“Do you even like each other? At all?”
“Very much,” Noah responds.
I nod, but my brain is an echo chamber, repeating Noah’s answer.
“That’s what I thought. But even if you reach a point where you are sworn enemies, your guts writhing with animosity toward each other, it dies,”—he slices a finger across his throat—“before you take the stage. It. Dies. Understand? The nanosecond you step up there . . . all else disappears. You.” His points at me with such force I almost expect a sound.
“Once you set foot on my stage, you cease to be Madeleine. You are Liesl. You don’t ease into being some wishy-washy version of Liesl.
You are Liesl. Instantaneously. And you?
” He jabs his finger Noah’s direction. “You cease being Noah. On this stage, you are seventeen, going on eighteen, and you are alone with a pretty girl you want to impress with your maturity and worldly wisdom. You are Rolf. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.” Noah says, and I echo him.
Dr. Hitchings drops his arms and gives us one emphatic nod. “Now show me.”
We return to our opening blocking marks.
“Show me cat and mouse, Liesl!” Dr. Hitchings calls. “Man versus minx, with just a touch of innocence hiding behind your desire to fully develop your inner minx-ness. Got it?”
My inner minx-ness. Um . . . sure. I think.
“Okay.” I nod again, feeling a little bit like my head is on a spring. “Got it.”
“Go get him.” Dr. Hitchings flourishes a hand toward the piano. “From the top!”
My cheeks match my ears for heat. I’m so glad I wore my hair down tonight.
Top of the scene. Noah’s lines. My lines. He sings. I sing. We dance, we dance, and then comes the first lift—oh! It’s like flying! He’s never lifted me this high before—a spin, another lift, dance, dance, lift, twirl out, back and . . .
It’s time to kiss Noah.
Rolf. Rolf!
I reach up on my tiptoes . . . and plant my lips squarely on his lips.
He does not respond.
But that is the response expected from poor shocked Rolf.
I hold . . . hold . . . and then pull away, grinning: first at the boy I just kissed and then at the audience, but it’s a forced smile.
As the script and direction requires, I let out a “Whee!” and then kick up my heels and flounce off the stage, leaving Noah—er, Rolf—dumbfounded, center stage, awaiting the lights out that won’t actually happen until tech rehearsal, the week before the show opens.
I’m such an idiot. Such. An. Idiot! Why did I build up that kiss so much in my head?
Kiss? Ha! That wasn’t a kiss. That was counting, with timed lip-contact and an audience. And it’s hardly worthy of the smattering of applause coming from our cast members in the audience.
Inwardly cringing, I return to the stage for critique.