Chapter 14
Six and a half weeks until Opening Night
Nick’s first rehearsal is the next day. Sally assembles us, as usual, but before my dad can tell us the plan for the day, Nick stands up.
“May I say a few words?” he asks, though it is clear he is unconcerned with permission.
My father sits back in his seat. “I just want to say what a pleasure it is—an honor, really—to be so welcomed into your production. I know I am in great company here, that this stage has been shared with many other famous actors, and I am excited to join in their footsteps.” Theo smirks at me from across the room.
I roll my eyes. “I know the process by which I came into the role is a little, uh, different than usual, but I saw the opportunity to give back, so I took it.”
Took the role from someone else, I want to say, but I am trying to be on good behavior.
I look around the room to see how everyone else is responding.
A few people are drinking the Kool-Aid; they practically have stars in their eyes.
The fairies are all sitting together in the back row, crocheting calmly, and I can tell they are tuning him out.
Nick finishes his speech and looks around. I think he is hoping for applause.
My father stands up abruptly. “Act two, scene two,” he barks.
“Titania and Oberon. Wynne, Marcus, get into position. Lovers,” my dad calls out.
“Please go in the other room and review the scenes you know with Mr. Nolan. Take him through the blocking, get him up to speed.” He pauses.
“Mira, you lead.” I catch his eye pleadingly; for a moment, I feel like a kid complaining that I have to do my chores, but he just nods staunchly at me and turns to the actors at hand.
Max, Bailey, and Nick follow me into the large dressing room.
They all stare at me expectantly. “Okay, so, opening scene, Nick, you just enter along with everyone else. This is the palace of Theseus, the duke of Athens. Hermia’s father has come to ask the duke to force his daughter to marry Demetrius, but she loves Lysander.
” I take them through the basic blocking, Demetrius’s exit with the duke.
“Okay, good, then Hermia and Lysander run away together. They meet Helena, me, on their way out of town and tell her their plan. Helena is jealous of their happiness because Demetrius played her and dumped her.”
“Yeah, he did!” Nick chirps, before realizing the admission he’s nearly made. Max and Bailey laugh a little. They seem intimidated by him. I stare at him for a long time before continuing.
“So, Helena plans to tell Demetrius, and he decides to follow them, and she follows him. So that brings us to . . .” It’s too much. “Um, Demetrius and Helena alone in the forest. So, she’s chasing him, and he wants nothing to do with her. So, we enter from here . . .” I lead him upstage right.
“It’s a little on the nose, don’t you think?” Nick whispers as we’re walking.
“Shut up.” I hate this man. “Okay, so you go ahead of me, and I chase you, then we end up on that bench there by this line.” I point to his script. He gives me a thumbs-up. “You should be writing this down,” I say.
Nick taps his head. “It’s all up here. I’m a pro.”
“Theater is different.” It’s very hard to not contort my face each time he speaks. We go back to the starting place. “Okay, go.”
Nick storms onstage. “I love thee not, therefore pursue me not!” he bellows in a booming, exaggerated British accent.
Bailey looks at me, wide-eyed. I blink at her, a quick understanding passing between us, a hint of a smile on my lips.
We let him continue. “Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more!” It’s not even British.
It’s terrible. It’s a caricature of what he thinks Shakespeare is.
“Do I not in plainest truth tell you, I do not, and can not love you?” He pauses.
“Pretty good, huh?” He looks around proudly.
“It’s my line,” I say. I don’t know how to begin to comment on his performance. “And even for that do I love you the more . . . spurn me, strike me, neglect me, lose me, only give me leave, unworthy as I am, to follow you.”
Nick stops.
“Why aren’t you acting?” he asks.
“I am acting.”
He pretends to think very hard. Or maybe it is hard for him. Who knows. “So, I just feel like our vibes aren’t matching. Like, could you do it more . . . Shakespearean?”
“It is Shakespearean, by virtue of it being Shakespeare.”
“See, now that was better.”
I will kill him. “Let’s just get through the blocking, okay?”
We get to the part by the bench. This is the single moment I am dreading.
“Okay, so, here he sort of turns on her to call her bluff, so you are going to back me up against the bench and sort of . . . push me down on You do impeach your modesty too much . . .” I hate this.
“He’s messing with her head, teasing her, like, You want me?
I’ll let you have it, and she’s like, Give it to me.
” Nick is facing away from the others, and waggles his eyebrows at me.
“Sounds sexy,” he murmurs. “Sounds . . . familiar . . .”
“Fuck off,” I whisper. “Run the scene.”
It’s hard to feel nostalgic about your former lover when they are bellowing in a fake Shakespearean accent, so it’s actually easier than predicted.
Nick pushes me down, leans over me, shouting, “To commit yourself into the hands of one who loves you not, to trust the opportunity of night and the ill counsel of a desert place.”
I reach up, pull him toward me, Helena’s attempt at seduction, but I grab him by the collar and twist it as I coo my lines. “It is not night when I do see thy face . . .” He pulls back, coughing.
“Jesus, Mira, you’re choking me.”
“Shakespeare is very violent.” I shrug. “Let’s stop here.”
Nick shakes himself off. “I should get a sword for this scene.”
“You have one,” I mutter. “It’s just not very big.”
My dad enters and asks us to show him the scene.
“With pleasure,” I say.
Max, Bailey, and I play the scene as previously directed.
Nick throws himself around grandly, in his big, booming, Shakes-pee-ah voice, dipping in and out of the accent.
He has decided to mime a sword, despite the fact that in this scene he is fighting with a woman alone in the woods.
When the scene is done, he steps forward, beaming.
“Don’t worry, boss,” he says, and my father flinches. “I’ll help them with their accents.” My father sits, stunned. I can see the blood draining from his face as he realizes that his big get for the season is not such a coup after all. He leans in and whispers to Sally.
“Nick, a word, please.” She gestures to him.
“Oh, no, anything you have to say to me . . . We’re all here to learn, right? Go ahead!” He looks around at us encouragingly.
“Oh!” Sally is flustered. “Um. Okay. So. The voice.”
“Ye-es?” booms Nick in The Voice.
“Yeah, so, don’t . . . do it?” I’ve never seen her so nervous. She’s usually such a battle-ax.
I see him tense instantly. I’ve seen it a hundred times on set. Nick is a treat until you give him feedback.
“What? Sorry, I thought this was a Shakespeare play. I thought maybe you wanted to see some real acting.” Beside me, Max and Bailey snort.
“As you so aptly said,” my dad interjects, “we are here to learn. And while the instinct to take a fully, ahem, classical approach is . . . a choice”—he pauses—“it can be distracting from the character’s true motivations and”—he clears his throat—“the integrity of the scene.”
“So, what, two sessions with my acting coach just out the window?” Nick says. “I spent five hours perfecting my accent.”
My father coughs, and I nearly choke on my laugh. “Let’s consider a more natural approach,” he says. “Just . . . say the lines. Like . . . a person.”
Theo has snuck up beside me. “There we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously!” he whispers in Nick’s Shakespeare voice.
“Take pains! Be perfect!” I explode laughing.
Everyone turns to look at me, and I hold a hand up in apology, my body shaking with laughter.
I slip out into the hallway, where I lean my head against the wall.
“That bad, huh?”
I pull my head back, surprised to see Will.
“What are you doing here?” I catch myself. He flusters me. “I mean, hi, but—”
“I’m helping with the set build,” he says. The side of his mouth twitches as he tries not to laugh at me.
“Ah, lovely,” I say. “That’s very nice of you, considering . . .”
“How heartlessly I was cast out?” He shrugs genially. “Tell me, though.” He leans in. Apples. “How is rehearsal going? Am I . . . Is it bad to ask that?”
“Not as bad as this rehearsal,” I say.
“Gotcha.”
There is a small pause. He is wearing a denim button-down. I like it. I like him.
“I didn’t know if I’d see you again,” I blurt. “When? If? Um . . .” I am really nailing this. I want him to ask me out again, but I’m worried I’ve blown it. He hasn’t brought it up since we were at the fire with Theo.
He smiles for real this time. “Small town,” he says. “You run into everyone eventually.”
“Not that small,” I say.
“Yeah, well . . .” There is another pause. “I guess I’ll run into you again sometime.”
“I guess so,” I say, hoping I sound cooler and more casual than I feel.
“Good.” He nods, smirking a little, and heads up the stairs to the main theater, giving me a little wave. Something about that guy makes me a mumbling, smiling idiot. It is a most unexpected sensation. Maybe even a welcome one.
And that’s it. That’s when I remember who Will is.
It was that night at Mike Bale’s, the spin-the-bottle fiasco.
I know I had gotten really drunk really fast. I don’t remember much after the thing with the hockey player.
I know he left me there. I don’t know how much time passed before Theo found me.
I was curled up in the fetal position with my shirt ridden up.
Theo carried me to a car. Some guy was driving.
“Whose car is this?” I mumbled.
“This is Reed,” said Theo. “He’s driving us home.”
“Oh. Okay.”