Chapter 5 #3
It’s everything my ego ever wanted to hear in this situation, but really, it just embarrasses me.
If only this kid knew that she’ll never see me on that show again, that this is the current professional highlight of my year: working for my parents.
No one knows this is all I have. I remember being that kid; I remember being in high school and in love with theater, in love with actors and all of it.
The whole thing seemed so romantic. Now I am booted out of my tower, disenchanted, and turned back into the frog I secretly always was.
The cast is going out for a drink to celebrate the read-through.
I’d forgotten about how much self-congratulatory drinking happens in theater.
I look around to catch Theo’s eye to take cues from him.
I’m not sure if it would be good for morale for us to attend, or awkward that we don’t have something better to do.
I look around for Will. Is he going? He is in the back corner surrounded by a group of older women, who are chattering intently at him.
One gestures over at me, then quickly drops her hand when she sees she’s been caught.
I’m not in the mood for group dynamics. The truth is, the entire thing has been kind of overwhelming.
I feel like I’ve revisited my whole past in a day, and it wasn’t exactly the warm, fuzzy nostalgia tour Theo seems to be having.
I tell Sally I have a headache and slip out the back door.
The guy who plays Lysander is leaning against the back wall smoking a joint. “Hey,” he says warmly. “Good job in there.”
“Oh, thanks, yeah, you too.” I’ve forgotten his name already.
“Max.” He smiles. “Want some?” he offers, holding out the joint. I’m tempted, I really am. Escape would be nice right now.
I have a sudden flashback to being fifteen years old, out behind the dumpsters after our school production of Peter Pan, standing in my Wendy nightgown with bows in my hair, smoking my first joint with all the stage crew boys.
Partly because I really liked them—they were fun and sweet and awkward, which was relaxing to be around.
But also because I wanted to scandalize the rest of the cast, who didn’t believe I was bold enough.
It didn’t agree with me. I took three puffs, less than the guys, but it hit me so hard they found me wandering the football field in my nightgown.
“No, thanks,” I say. I want to add something to sound cool, so it will seem like I just can’t ’cause I’m busy or something.
I want this guy to think I’m chill, that I totally smoke weed.
Except I don’t. “Weed doesn’t agree with me,” I say.
“No judgment!” I add quickly. “It just . . . makes me really loopy . . . like it hits me differently than other people. Like, it might as well be LSD.” I am oversharing. Wonderful.
“Bummer!” He shrugs amiably and takes another hit.
I don’t know why I’m being so weird. I feel like an alien.
I don’t know what my role is, and I don’t know how to be.
My default is a bumbling idiot. He reaches out a fist, which I take in both hands before I realize it’s supposed to be a fist bump.
I pat his hand awkwardly and he chuckles.
“It’s cool,” he says kindly, like he knows I know what an ass I am.
I laugh awkwardly and immediately walk away, cringing completely and, not for the first time today, hating myself.
The whole year after the Tempest production, I was off my game.
At school, I was okay in scene studies, in class, even in rehearsals for the big end-of-year production of The Importance of Being Earnest, where I was playing Gwendolen, but in performance, I choked every time.
There was no rhyme or reason to it; at least once a show, at a completely different spot every time, I would blank on my lines.
I kept coming back to that moment in Tempest with Bill, the moment that underscored this new, secret truth: Under pressure, I was fallible.
It was true. It had happened, and now it was happening again.
My body, buzzing from adrenaline, would suddenly go soft, my vision cloudy.
My hearing would fade, and the lines were obscured in my brain.
My classmates covered for me where possible, but I heard them grumbling about it backstage.
My acting prof stopped looking me in the eye.
At the end of the year, there was a big showcase for all the local agents, and all the acting students had a chance to do two monologues in the hopes of getting signed.
It was the single most important event of my university career.
This was where most people got an agent, and even then, maybe only a quarter of us actually got signed.
Up until Earnest, everyone, including me, thought I was a done deal.
There was no way I wouldn’t get signed. And yet when I stepped onstage and the lights dimmed, and I looked out into that darkness that held my entire future, I choked again.
I opened my mouth and nothing came out. I stood there for an excruciatingly long moment.
Someone coughed in the darkness, jolting me out of my freeze, and I ran offstage, feeling like my throat was closing in.
I threw open the stage door and stood in the daylight, gasping for air.