Chapter 22
It’s the night of the performance, and I’m standing in the hallway listening to the overture and trying to breathe away the jitters when Richard slides up next to me.
“Look, I’m a professional, and I know you’ll be one, too.
” He puts out his hand like he’s selling me a car. “Let’s concentrate on the craft.”
God, craft? How did I ever find him sexy? That’s one thing Asha was right about. He is a full-fledged tool.
The fact that he’s so transformed in my mind is tragic, my passion obliterated like a snail shell smushed on the sidewalk.
Tragic, but also useful. When I watched Amanda and Richard do the first performance last night, the obvious fun they were having with each other made my nose wrinkle like I was smelling a fart.
That was not surprising. What was surprising was how their good chemistry actually seemed to hurt the portrayal.
It was so light and smooth, it didn’t fit the intensity of the character dynamics at all.
So I’m sort of glad for the hard feelings tonight, for his coldness, for my disgust. Maybe that’ll be what makes everything real.
“Craft is my middle name,” I say. Get ready to rumble, dick.
The first few scenes go great, but suddenly it’s déjà vu.
Here I am again, rushing offstage into total darkness for a lightning-quick change that I’m not equipped to manage alone.
Too late, I realize my error. My whole solution was wrapped up in Richard not being an asshole, and I have forgotten to come up with a plan B.
Richard isn’t here. Of course he’s not. How could I think I could still rely on him to help me out with a little stage logistics when he basically left me to die in the snow? He’s a professional, my ass.
My mind is racing as I try to troubleshoot the possibilities. I could start shouting for help, but the audience will hear me for sure. I need a quiet way to get help.
Mason. Maybe Mason, if it’s really an emergency, can help guide me.
He helped me down that mountain. He could get me to the props table.
But how to summon him? I couldn’t do it on demand at the ski resort, so what could I do differently now?
What are the common denominators of all the times he’s shown up?
One thing is that I’m usually feeling raw, vulnerable, and just generally like a total fuckup, so maybe that will work to my advantage now.
I start picturing his face. Mason. Mason.
Mason. A couple of seconds tick by. How long can I wait?
I’d really hate to do another awkward square dance during an actual performance.
I squint into the backstage void. “Help me, Mason,” I whisper, and to my utter surprise and joy I feel two hands on my shoulders, steering me to the table.
My tunics are quickly exchanged and then the garlands are placed across my outstretched palms and I am led back over to the edge of the lit stage.
It all happens so fast that I actually have to stand and wait for my cue, in awe that Mason has touched me, and that his hands felt so warm and real, so alive.
“Go get ’em,” the owner of the hands says now, and I realize that I haven’t been helped by Mason at all, but by a girl. Amanda. It’s seriously demented that I think it would be less strange to be helped by a bona fide ghost than by her, but demented is getting to be my specialty.
Intermission comes without any more close calls, and I head to the band room/makeshift greenroom to relax for a few minutes.
But relaxing is out of the question. The only person wearing street clothes in a sea of tunics and draping gowns, Amanda draws my eye immediately.
And she sees me. I’m going to have to say something to her, something that acknowledges that she helped me out despite the fact that I almost physically assaulted her the other day, and possibly also explain why I was busy whispering a dead guy’s name.
I wonder what an etiquette book would suggest for that scenario.
As I approach, I have to push the idea out of my head that this, too, is some sort of trap.
Rise above, I tell myself. For your own sanity.
“Thanks for your help out there,” I say, my voice husky with the effort to sound casual.
“No problem. It’s going great so far, don’t you think?
” she says. I nod, but she’s already turned away to help a freshman girl unlace her corset.
Last night, when I came to the performance Amanda was starring in, I stayed in the audience during intermission.
It didn’t even occur to me to come back to the dressing room to help people change.
I hate that this makes Amanda seem nicer than me.
Am I the only one who sees the trick, that she’s the absolute worst?
As if on cue, she says, “I didn’t tell on you, you know.”
I wave my hand. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I can’t start arguing about the evidence of her betrayal now. I still have Act Two to do in about five minutes, and I don’t want to have to redo my hair and my makeup after I tear her delicate flesh from her bones.
She grabs my hand and looks into my eyes hard. “Hattie, I’m serious. Honestly, I didn’t even know why you were so mad at me at first. I mean, can you imagine me giving you a beer and then snitching on you for drinking it? I would never.”
Of course I can imagine it. That’s pretty much all I’ve been imagining for the last several days. “You were the only one who even knew,” I say, pulling my hand away and shrugging at the obviousness of this “case closed” investigation.
She looks guilty then. See, I fucking knew it! Let the flesh-tearing begin.
“That’s true. I did tell someone. But not to snitch! I was just talking about our night. I never thought you would get in trouble over it.”
Just talking? On what planet is that an excuse? “Sure,” I say. This is exactly how I didn’t want to feel in the middle of the show. Worked up and childish. “’Cause you and Mr. Pinski regularly do lunch to spill tea and—what—swap recipes?”
“Oh my gosh, Hattie, you’re so extra sometimes! I told Richard, okay? I just told Richard. That’s all.”
His name makes me jump. He’s probably in the room right now, and if he hears me talking about him, it’ll be total humiliation. I scan the kids sitting around us. No Richard. Even still, I walk over to a practice room and wave Amanda inside, shutting the door behind us.
What she said is starting to sink in. “So wait, Richard told on me?”
Amanda looks uncomfortable. If she wouldn’t tell on me to the school, she probably doesn’t want to tell on Richard to me, either.
A piano takes up three-quarters of this tiny room and she starts tapping two adjacent keys back and forth, like she’s playing the suspense music in a horror movie.
Then she stops. “He said he was just trying to protect me.” She sighs and shrugs.
“’Cause I was already caught smoking with everybody else.
He thought if you were implicated, too, we’d both get to keep our parts.
Which is basically what ended up happening.
But I swear I didn’t know anything about it until it was already done.
” She’s been looking at the floor, grinding the toe of her boot into the carpet, but now she looks at me again.
“Just don’t hate me, okay? I like you. I want to be friends,” she says, then with a hint of smile adds, “Or at the very least not have you attack me in the halls.”
The stage manager, Sofi, opens the door a crack and pokes her head in. “Places, ladies, places,” she says, then hustles on.
My mind is swimming. For some reason, I keep misreading Amanda.
But she didn’t betray me. She likes me. She likes me enough to tolerate a lot of bad behavior from me and still want to be my friend.
Enough to be honest with me right now. I really hate hating someone.
It means walking around ready for battle all the time, and every time I see the target of my hate, adrenaline shoots to every nerve ending and my mouth goes dry.
I would love to stop doing that, and start liking her instead.
But letting go of a feeling that I’ve been gripping so tightly is giving me a weird sensation, like I’m falling.
I step through the doorway and then look back at her. Say something to make her feel better. She deserves it. “I’m putting my claws away, I promise,” I say.
“Thank you,” she says, chuckling. “Have a good second act.”
I do. I have a great second act. Partially because Richard and I are obviously competing, one-upping each other.
We’re so “professional and focused on the craft” it’s like we’re maniacs.
I wish someone was keeping score because this is clearly an act-off.
Every push of intensity on his part amps me up, too, and vice versa.
This is the time in the play when Guenevere has fallen in love with Lancelot and cheats on Arthur.
Richard always transmits the torment of the situation well, but this time his performance is also filled with total disgust for me—I mean, for Guenevere, and her unethical behavior.
His noble dignity is condescending. It lights a fire in me.
I need to show how Guenevere had no other choice, that fate was driving her into Lancelot’s arms and it was impossible to resist. I sing “I Loved You Once in Silence” with so much passion that Carter actually looks taken aback at first, like he might be a little afraid of me.
But the level of power is contagious, and soon we’re both swept up in it.
We’re just supposed to hug at the end, but this time, we somehow both fall to our knees together, overcome.
The song gets a huge round of applause. It’s so freaking fun.