Seven Ways We Lie(6)

I purse my lips. Damn right, she’s sorry. He’s given her this note a hundred times already. The show goes up in under three weeks, right before Thanksgiving break, and I’m starting to think she might never get it.

“It’s okay,” García says. “Hey. Emily? Don’t be upset. We’ll do some projection exercises later, all right?” He gives her a thumbs-up. “It’s a matter of trusting your voice—a confidence thing. You have this.”

God, García is patient. I would’ve yelled at half the people in this cast by now, but in five weeks of rehearsing, he hasn’t so much as raised his voice.

Emily nods once, her mousy hair falling into her eyes.

“Oh, and that’s another thing,” he says, scribbling a note on his omnipresent clipboard. “You’ve got to tie your hair back or something. It keeps hiding your right eye.”

I sigh, slouching down in my chair. He’s told her that note before, too. I don’t get why people can’t follow simple directions. Sometimes it feels as if García and I are the only ones giving this show everything.

It’s not that I think I’m more talented than the rest of the cast—the other kids are all good, in their own way. But . . . I don’t know. They don’t seem to need the stage, the space to fill, the echo of the voice, and the punch of the words.

“Kat?”

I look up. “What?”

García approaches me. “You’re doing great, but there’s something missing in the way you’re tackling this scene, I think.” He puts his clipboard on the table. “What’s your character’s objective in this scene? What does she want from Emily’s character?”

I figured all this out when I did the script work back in September. I answer without hesitating. “She wants Natalya to apologize.”

García runs a hand through his hair, making it stick straight up. He looks like a hungover college student, with his stubble and thick-rimmed glasses and messy hair. He’s a new teacher this year, but he’s chill and doesn’t give too much homework, so he’s doing pretty well by most people’s standards. “Yeah,” he says, “I can see the apology motive. But what else do you think it could be?”

I frown. “I’m pretty sure that’s it. Natalya ruined my character’s life, so it—”

A fit of giggling bursts out backstage. The frustration that’s been burning low in my chest ignites. I twist around in my chair. “Could you shut up?” I snap. The giggles die.

García’s eyes glimmer with amusement. “You can let me do that, you know. Believe it or not, I, too, am capable of saying, ‘Quiet backstage.’?”

“Sorry,” I mutter.

“Don’t be. Just don’t make it a habit.” García checks his watch. “Ah, nuts. Okay.” He hurries back to the lip of the stage, hops off, and retakes his seat in the front row. “All right, one more thing before it’s five o’clock. Let’s jump ahead to the last scene.”

Emily, who still isn’t off-book for this scene, runs to grab her script. We don’t have all the props yet, so I mime a chalkboard at center stage.

“Okay,” García says as Emily scurries back into place. “Last little bit of scene 6. Let’s take it from ‘What do you think?’ Whenever you’re ready, Emily.”

A short silence. Then Natalya Bazhenova says to me, “What do you think?”

I look at the blank space in the air, where my fingers hover over an imaginary chalkboard. I scrutinize an imaginary equation. “It’s beautiful,” I say. “It’s beautiful work.”

“So you see why I had to go? Why I had to resume my research?”

“No, I don’t. But it is still beautiful work.” Letting the imaginary chalk drop, I turn around. The lights won’t be set for two weeks, so all the brights are on too high. I squint into them.

Natalya approaches me. “Do you want me to show you the rest?” she asks, making me thirsty with imaginary want. “I could try to find a way,” she says. “I could go back and ask the other professors if you could join us at the university. I could—”

“Mama?” says a voice. I turn stage left. My character’s daughter enters. “I did it,” she says. “I made dinner. And—and we are all waiting for you at home.”

I study the sight: the lines of my daughter’s face painted a harsh white by the stage light. “Thank you, sweetheart,” I say mechanically. I turn back to Natalya. “No,” I say. “I can’t go with you.”

“But—”

“I won’t go,” I say, defeat filling the words. After a long second, I follow my daughter off left. Natalya stares after us.

“And lights down,” García calls. “Great. Everyone, onstage.”

We sit on the edge of the stage, the rest of the cast talking and joking. The guy who plays my husband flirts with Emily, who doesn’t seem to realize it. I sit off to the side, as far as possible from the girls I yelled at. I shouldn’t have snapped—I know it’s García’s job, telling them to be quiet—but it maddens me, people not having the basic decency to shut up during rehearsals.

García runs over his notes from the scenes we worked today. “Kat,” he says finally, “what do you think the play’s ending means?”