SEPTEMBER 1992 #3
“Ivan,” I started, still choked up. I wouldn’t have to waste hours photocopying. I wouldn’t have to spend more money on textbooks—secondhand or not. This was a little room to breathe.
“Just don’t go spilling coffee on any of the books,” he said. “Develop an awareness of the back row and the cups in front of you.”
I swatted him with the nearest pillow.
To my mind, Ivan giving me that card was the real start of our friendship.
He has always insisted it’s when I threw a pillow at him and gave him a glimpse of “just what sort of diva he was dealing with.”
“Let’s finish this,” he said, raising the remote to press play once more. But first his voice softened, and in it there was the sort of understanding I didn’t know I craved. “And then … then you should get some sleep, Nadine.”
———
As the weeks went on, factions formed within our class: the musical theater kids, the Shakespearean thespians, the fame-hungry despots, and the film magnates.
I’ll give you one guess where Harper Moore fit in that equation.
After the monologues, it was clear I no longer interested her.
But when I was on a stage, her eyes would light on me—like I was so perfectly forgettable until the moment my talent shone.
Yes. That’s what I wanted. To be something you couldn’t look away from.
Your attention, whether you wanted to give it or not.
I might not have been friends with them all, but what did that matter? Wasn’t that why I loved to perform? It wasn’t just them seeing me but me seeing them in turn. It was a dialogue, a way of connecting (frankly, the only one I knew how to do).
I remembered that day of the monologues, the way everyone had so swiftly disregarded my talent as soon as there was a different opinion to follow, and I determined to never allow it to happen again.
I made myself undeniable.
———
One day magazines were passed round—Harper’s headshot emblazoned in the corner of page seven.
I tossed it out without looking, then went to a corner shop afterward to find the article again.
Catwalk—a fashion and modeling magazine in which Harper’s mother, the infamous Greta Liao, had a bimonthly editorial.
In this one, there was a whole section about her daughter and the joy of watching her pursue her dreams, turning down so many modeling opportunities to attend drama school instead.
But Harper didn’t seem pleased. In class, while the handful of copies were snatched up, she sat in the back filing her nails and drolly announced, “Oh, now she’s pleased. I thought you did not need school to act if you actually had any natural talent for it.”
I hadn’t really singled Harper out by that point.
I disliked her, sure, but in the way I disliked that entire subset of our class.
The ones who did not have to try as hard because they could afford to take poorly paid roles for the exposure, or whose parents could buy them parts—maybe even whole theaters—and who would probably sail through on charm alone.
Like the monologues, I’d had moments of similar tension with half the class.
Flora McCarthy snatching the last copy of The Real Thing, so I had to scrawl my lines on a ratty sheet of notebook paper.
Paul Jacobs bemoaning my inclusion in The Importance of Being Earnest because clearly I wasn’t suited for comedy.
And, of course, Zoe Holland and her cruel barbs landing on anyone with the misfortune to appear before her.
But we aren’t here to talk about my petty feuds with any of them. We want the one that matters.
And that’s Harper. So here it was, the moment I truly took note of her.
The girl with the connections and the money and her face in a goddamn magazine who still found something to complain about.
Looking back, it was little more than light competition—choosing someone to make a rival of because I needed someone to push me to be the very best. I don’t think Harper considered me a rival in turn. I don’t think Harper noticed me at all.
There were other reasons, too, ones I couldn’t see then but can admit now.
Because I was lonely, and Harper was popular, and some awful part of me was jealous.
Because she was capable of being the person I’d always envisioned myself becoming.
Because I was eighteen and scared and anxious, and Harper—vicious, beautiful, charismatic Harper—had the nerve to make it all look so very easy …
How it began is not what mattered. If it remained as that—her disinterest and my muted dislike—then I wouldn’t be here talking about it.
I knew I was talented. It was the core of me, the thing that never wavered when the rest of me shifted like restless sands. But at CADS I felt like I constantly had to prove it. And Harper was a way to establish that beyond reproach. If I bested her, maybe I’d finally feel like I belonged.
So I worked for it, because that was all I’d ever done.
All this to say, before Harper Moore took full rein over my life, I was brilliant. I was dedicated.
But my god, I was boring.
Everything was dull before Harper.