Inevitable and Only(29)
“Yeah,” I said, still stunned. “Yeah, of course.”
We sat on the curb outside the 7-Eleven while she smoked and stared off into the distance. I didn’t ask her for a cigarette and she didn’t offer one. Not that I wanted one, anyway. I mean, I’d never smoked before. But Elizabeth, a smoker? That was the last thing I would’ve ever suspected about her.
“Cadie,” she said finally, “thanks for coming with me. You don’t have to come back next week. I mean it. But thanks for coming today. This would’ve been—really hard to do alone.”
“I have to come back next week,” I said. “I have to explain to the priest that I am not a mortal sinner. Thanks to your incomplete, incompetent instructions.”
She laughed a little and stubbed out the cigarette on the pavement, then fished in her pocket for a handkerchief. She had an actual handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and then we went home. I didn’t realize till we walked in the door that we’d forgotten to buy the milk.
Monday after school was our first Much Ado read-through.
“Gather round, people, and our revels shall begin!” Robin announced.
We sat cross-legged on the stage, as usual. There were twelve of us, plus Robin, as well as Micayla and Heron Lang, who were doing costumes and set design. Two guys wearing all black skulked near the back of the theater until Robin yelled, “Techies! That means you, too!” and they reluctantly emerged from the shadows.
“Now, people, tonight and tomorrow night’s read-throughs will be the only rehearsals we’ll have where we’re all gathered together like this. Until tech week, of course. After tomorrow night, we’ll rehearse scene by scene, and you only have to show up for scenes you’re in.” He handed out a thick schedule packet. “Let me amend that. Please show up fifteen minutes before your scene is scheduled. If you show up at the time you’re scheduled, you’re late.”
We did five minutes of centering, then five minutes of stretches and vocal warm-ups. Which meant yodeling, humming, reciting vowels, and saying things like “The big black bug bit the big black bear” with as much enunciation as possible.
“Micayla, Heron, Troy, Davis—you’ll meet with Peg now to get started on concepts. I’ll have a separate meeting with you on Wednesday.”
Peg, the art teacher, waved from the front row of seats, where she’d been listening to our vocal warm-ups with a smile. She had a shock of canary-yellow hair that stood straight out from her head, like duck fluff, and full-color tattoo sleeves on both arms. Peg was awesome.
The tech and design crew jumped off the stage and went into the classroom to work. Meanwhile, Robin was handing out scripts. I slipped my pocket Much Ado into my backpack, hoping no one had noticed that I’d brought it along. I thought we’d have to bring our own copies. Robin noticed, though, and nodded at me. “Great edition, Acadia. Definitely read the introduction; it’ll help you understand the background of the play.” A warm little light sparked in my chest. Even if I hadn’t actually read the introduction yet, at least I was doing something right.
Then we started in on the reading.
It was a halting, stumbling read-through. People forgot what characters they were playing, missed lines, mispronounced words all over the place. None of the jokes were funny. None of the verse flowed like music, the way it had on stage at the theater in DC.
And yet. Some of the lines sounded like more than just words on a page, written four hundred years ago. Not everyone’s lines. Mostly Zephyr’s. He was sitting across the circle from me, hunched in his leather jacket, but I was hyperaware of every word he spoke. It was as if everyone else was reading from the dictionary but Zephyr was just talking. He made his lines sound casual, as if he wasn’t waiting for a cue but actually listening to what the person was saying to him, and coming up with a response on the spot—only his response happened to be in Shakespearean English. I couldn’t figure out how he was doing it; if anything, it was something he wasn’t doing that everyone else was. Trying too hard, maybe?
Most of the cast was also in my drama class. Sam Shotwell was Don John, the villain—I tried not to make eye contact with him or stare when he was reading, but he definitely caught me looking at him once and grinned, which turned the thermostat on my face up to about a zillion degrees. Rina Crane was a good choice for Dogberry, the main comic relief character, because Shakespearean fools had to be so over-the-top; still, I thought she was overacting most of her lines. A sophomore named Tori Lopez was playing Claudio, the other main male character besides Benedick, and Priya Pashari was Hero, Beatrice’s cousin and Claudio’s love interest.
When Kieri Cantor complained about getting cast as Leonato, Hero’s father, Robin told us that back in Shakespeare’s day there was lots of gender-bending on stage, since only men were allowed to be actors. “I like to even the scores now when I can,” he said. “Kieri, you and Tori and Rina will be our banner bearers.” Besides, we all knew that there was a shortage of guys in the drama department.
“Good work, people,” Robin announced after the second act. “We’ll pick up with Act Three tomorrow night.”
I met Micayla outside the Shed and we went out to her car, a beat-up Ford station wagon that she’d spray-painted with wild loops of color. “As long as it fits all my canvases in the back,” she said, “I don’t give a rat’s ass if it is a granny car.” Half-finished paintings were also stacked in the back seat.