Six Angry Girls

by Adrienne Kisner

  I saw Claire glancing over at me, unsure of what to do with this way too honest information.

  “Uh. Yeah. Anyway. Is CMU still your first choice?” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said automatically, gracefully ignoring my overshare. “It’s close to home. It’s so good. I love Pittsburgh. It’s just the right fit. New York seems too big. I guess you go there eventually, to act. Or LA. And that seems even more overwhelming. It might be super competitive, but at least I’d still feel like I had some kind of home-stage advantage here, you know?”

  “I do,” I said. Those were all the same reasons I had wanted to go to Carnegie Mellon. Since when had Claire and I had so much in common? Had we always?

  We fell into silence again.

  “I think it’s cool you’ve branched out. You might as well do your best at your audition. It’s good to have options.”

  “Oh man, my mother says that to me all the time,” I said.

  “Mine too. I just channeled her right there.”

  We both laughed.

  Another thing we had in common. If these kept coming, I’d have to rethink yet another motivating factor for my theater career.

  Eventually we made it into the city, driving along the Allegheny River. It never got old, leaving the winding brown and gray hillsides behind for the towering steel and glass skyline. Most people probably thought Pittsburgh was pretty dinky for a city. It wasn’t New York or Los Angeles. But it was my first taste of professional theater, with lights and sets and costumes worthy of Broadway. CMU had a beautiful campus, with a wide, snow-covered lawn and tall buildings with windows sticking out in places I didn’t expect.

  “This is the business school,” I said. “Do we know where we’re going?”

  “No,” said Claire. “But those people look like they do. Let’s follow them.”

  “How do we know they aren’t business students?” I said.

  “All five of them are in all black. That one’s wearing a beret. And that dude”—she lowered her voice—“is wearing an ascot. These are our people. Follow them.”

  I couldn’t argue with her logic.

  We crossed a good portion of the campus. I shivered, wondering why Claire hadn’t parked closer to our actual destination, but I realized she’d probably just gone into the first lot she’d seen. Hopefully we were allowed to be there and wouldn’t be towed or something. We followed Ascot and Beret into the most impressive walkway I’ve ever seen. I heard Claire gasp as we entered. The white stone columns and walls rose up to a vaulted ceiling painted as a tribute to a multitude of artistic expression.

  Inside, we found more actors clad in black, along with the more colorful types with the dyed hair and multiple piercings. My stomach kept doing little flips. But it wasn’t the kind of nervous I expected to feel before an audition. The audition of my life. Instead, I looked around and wondered if I belonged there. Sure, I practiced. Sure, I loved the craft. But why did I love it? Did I want this for me? Or did a version of myself I’d molded after someone else want this? Was I that girl anymore?

  After Claire and I checked in, things passed in a blur. I went to the bathroom, but despite the fact that CMU’s facilities were a lot nicer than Steelton High’s, I couldn’t hide there, because rows of girls applied makeup, brayed vocal warm-ups, and tamed their hair. Outside, people clung nervously to the people they brought with them or stood in corners practicing. I spotted Claire behind a pillar, reaching up to the sky in her preshow warm-up.

  I just scrolled through my phone.

  Eventually, it was my turn. I entered the room where a lady I recognized from the website sat at a table with two others. I ran her face through my mind and realized that she was the head of the whole program.

  “Welcome, Ms. Petree,” she said.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  I never called anyone “ma’am.” Would theater people hate that? Oh God …

  “What have you prepared for your classical and contemporary piece?”

  “Um. Twelfth Night?” I should have warmed up. I should have practiced more. I shouldn’t have just thrown this whole thing away to pretend to be a witness. “And Arsenic and Old Lace.”

  “When you’re ready.”

  I cleared my throat (which is terrible for the vocal cords). I remembered the time I played Viola, and after Brandon had kissed me in the gazebo in Stackhouse Park.

  “I left no ring with her. What means this lady?

  Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her.

  She made good view of me; indeed, so much…”

  Somehow the asshole hadn’t ruined Viola, at least.

  I tried to give Arsenic all that I could as well. When I was done, the three people watched me. I looked at my feet.

  Maybe I should have bowed? It was probably too late.

  “Interesting choices,” said the program director.

  They weren’t. They were probably what the least original candidates did.

  “Why did you pick them?” she asked.

  “They were only ones my mom ever wanted to hear again,” I said. “She loves both plays. She works night shifts and often falls asleep during my shows. Sometimes to escape, if it involves miming. These kept her awake through the show. I figured if I could do that, it must be worth doing.”

  The people behind the table chuckled.

  “What would you say about mixing this up a little bit. I read in the supplementary materials you recently submitted that you also like Mock Trial. What would these look like if Viola was a witness?”

  I blinked.

  “What?” I said.

  “I want you to imagine that this speech is taking place in a contemporary courtroom. You are arguing here.”

  I tried to channel Millie in her opening statement.

  “Now I want you to do your second monologue again, only gobble this time,” a man behind the table said.

  “Pardon me?” I said.

  “Do it again, only as a turkey.”

  I stood there for a good thirty seconds, wondering if they were mocking me.

  I didn’t know if these people were out of their minds or geniuses. Maybe both.

  Maybe they just really hated Joseph Kesselring.

  When it was all over, I went back to the quieter bathroom and threw up.

  I found Claire next to the same pillar as before, almost hyperventilating.

  “You okay?” I said.

  “I’m trying to do Millie’s affirmations, but they aren’t working. They were really kind people, but the program director kept trying to direct me. Everywhere else they just said, ‘Thanks, bye.’ No, that woman wanted me to embody the piece. I had to use the space. Lord.” She looked at me. “You okay? You look a little green.”

  “I had to gobble.”

  “What?”

  “I had to do my contemp piece as fowl.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I am not.” I leaned my back against the pillar and sunk to the ground. “That must mean they hated me so much they needed something to liven it up.”

  Claire sat down next to me.

  “No,” she said. “They made some dude in front of me be a robot. Another kid had to do it while making snow angels. I think it’s just their thing.”

  I glanced over at her. “Really?”

  “Totally.”

  So often I was hyped up after a performance, but today exhaustion oozed from every pore. I should love this. Why didn’t I love this?

  “You ready to go?” said Claire

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Want to go Eat’n Park? There are two on the way home. Three if I take the creative route,” she said.

  “Always,” I said. I was as hungry as I was tired. “Hey, Claire?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Really.”

  “Welcome.” She smiled at me.

  Maybe I’d blown my chance at my dream. But maybe I hadn’t. Because I had a lot of different dreams now. And I realize
d I’d had more fun at that audition than I’d had in so long.

  Besides, any life path worth choosing veered next to a place selling smiley cookies.

  MARCH 2: RESPONSES TO PLANTIFFS’ INTERROGATORIES

  “We should roll on the Ides of March,” a newcomer to the circle said to Carla.

  “This is wonderful pound cake, dear,” said Gretta.

  “Thank you. It’s the ex’s favorite. He’ll never eat it again,” she said.

  “His loss,” said Megan. We hadn’t had a chance to hang out in a while, so I’d dragged her to knitting.

  The woman’s husband had left her for his personal assistant two weeks prior. Two Hearts had apparently started emailing the newly dumped who wrote in to give out the addresses to their LYS. You got 50 percent off your first purchase if you brought in the email. A lot of burned women were making scarves these days.

  “Anyway, I’m invested in this. I used to embroider with my grandma. Got pretty good at it. Gave it up in med school. Just seemed like there was no time. That’s when I met him. Only had time to jog and geocache because that’s what he liked. No more! No, I’m going to clothe elephants!” she said.

  “What?” said Beatrice.

  “I read an article that they knit massive sweaters for elephants to keep them warm. That’s my goal. Make something grand. Only for the female elephants, though.”

  “You do that, dear.”

  “March fifteenth is the Meet the Officials town meeting. We need to go and meet this Wise guy and his other minions and give them the what-for.”

  “They haven’t had a town meeting in years,” said Alex. “Maybe this Judge Wise will try to be better.”

  “Yes, maybe,” said Carla. “But this is the same as helping the kids out with their Mock Trial. Maybe you are a decent human being, but behind closed doors you do harm on a policy level.”

  “Aren’t trials usually public?” said Grace.

  “Criminal trials are,” I said.

  “You know what I’m saying. It’s about his underlying beliefs,” said Carla.

  “People can be more than one thing,” said Alex. “You can have some misogyny floating around in there with your faithful civil service. It’s almost like people are complicated.”

  Carla glared at her. “Maybe he’s a great guy. It doesn’t matter in this case. We are acting against what he does. Not who he is. Because if we can change what he does, we might make lives better.”

  Alex crossed her needles in front of her chest in what seemed to be a sign of yarning acquiescence.

  “What exactly are we doing when we roll later this month?” asked Beatrice.

  “I haven’t figured that out quite yet,” said Carla. “Since this is the first I’m learning about this Meet the Officials town hall. But I’ll let you know.”

  “You going to go up against your friend?” Carla looked at Grace and me.

  “I don’t know him!” I said. “It was one extracurricular activity!”

  “Good. I’ll expect to see you there.”

  Knew that drill. I made a note in my phone to keep the evening of March fifteenth open. Maybe Millie could be on a need-to-know basis about my Judge Wise interactions. Hopefully, we wouldn’t meet him again for Mock Trial and it wouldn’t matter.

  After knitting, Grace, Megan, and I got wings. “Ready for the second trial? This Saturday, right?” said Megan.

  “Yeah. First one was okay. But Aunt Kay helped me with my close for prosecution for the one this week,” said Grace.

  “What do you mean?” said Megan.

  “She gave me a two-paged typed list of pointers for the closing and for your questioning. She either wants to win, or she’s just pissed at not lawyering anymore.”

  “This works out for you,” I said.

  “Yeah.” She chewed for a while. “How did your audition go?”

  “Eh,” I said. “I guess it could have gone worse.”

  “Do you always say that? So you don’t jinx it?” said Grace.

  “No. I would tell you if I were God’s gift to Shakespeare. Because sometimes I am.”

  “Believe her. She’d tell you if it went well,” said Megan.

  “Okay then.” Grace laughed. “Well, I hope you get in.”

  “Where are you going to school?” I asked.

  “Ohio State. Early action, right there. Three generations of the fam went there, and I will be continuing the proud tradition. I signed on the dotted line and at least don’t have to think about it until August.”

  “Cool. For what?” I said.

  “Not sure. Maybe political science. Maybe English. Undeclared.”

  * * *

  Megan drove me home after that. Mom wasn’t there, so I just curled into bed. I wished I had a life plan. Surely somewhere would take me for theater. I’d done my audition clips for the virtual portfolios before I’d lost track of my lifelong goals. What could I see myself doing for the rest of my life? Knitting. I wanted to knit. There might be room for two Steelton yarn stores, the way people got dumped in this town. I also liked being in the courtroom. Listening to each side build a case, trying to come to the truth. But I couldn’t do what Millie or Grace or Veronica did. I never thought of myself as much of a writer. Though I did like to argue. And if I was being honest with myself, a small part of me still hoped that maybe the past two months had been a bad dream. That I might wake up at any moment with ten texts from Brandon telling me he missed me and couldn’t live without me. We’d both end up in Pittsburgh somehow and be those high school sweethearts who beat the odds and end up together. But then again, I wouldn’t want to give up Mock Trial, since I had a feeling Brandon wouldn’t want me to compete with him. Going back to him would be comfortable, but maybe being too comfortable held you back from something better. Now that I’d glimpsed that possibility, I wanted to find out what that something better was more than I had ever wanted Brandon.

  I drifted off to sleep fantasizing about watching Millie convict Brandon of crimes against humanity, sentencing him to a solitary prison camp far, far away. It was the most peaceful I’d felt in ages.

  12

  EMILIA GOODWIN,

  :

  SUPREME(LY PISSED

  :

  OFF) COURT OF

  Plaintiff,

  :

  CAMBRIA COUNTY

  :

  v.

  :

  :

  EMILIA GOODWIN,

  :

  Case No. WWRBGD2025

  :

  :

  Defendant

  :

  MARCH 8: DEFENDANT’S PRETRIAL PRELIMINARY STATEMENT

  Several things about the Mock Trial team concerned the heck out of me.

  We did well in the scrimmage against the boys. Then we won our first trial, mostly because I think the judge was impressed by the acting on our team. I was pretty sure we won the second trial two days ago because the other team didn’t know what it was doing and seemed to have forgotten which side they were assigned.

  For the district meet this coming weekend, we were the prosecution again, which wasn’t great. But we were up against the school that had won states last year, which was bad. The team would get to practice more, which was good. But Nikita kept having to leave for dance practice, Veronica had to keep putting out fires at the lit magazine, and Grace …

  Grace was walking up to me that very second.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “I was just thinking about you,” I said. Blood rushed to my head when I realized how that sounded.

  “Oh?” she said.

  “Yeah. Mock Trial. You were really good. Kay’s notes helped.”

  “Agreed. Listen—question: I know that districts are this week. And we all need to concentrate. But I was wondering if you wanted to do something on Thursday. Get your mind off it. Unwind. But still let you obsess about it the night before. I’m all about balance.”

  Wait. Grace was asking me out?

  On a date.


  With her.

  Which should be good. I liked Grace. I really liked Grace. Her hair and eyes and clothes and her weird hobby of knitting body parts with Raina for social-activist reasons I didn’t quite understand. But college was coming up. I had to make a decision, and whatever that was, it would surely lead to heartbreak. People didn’t stay together when they went to college. Those were just the facts. People barely even stayed married, obviously. And what if things went wrong before states? Or nationals?

  It made focusing on the “now” difficult.

  Especially because Grace’s confidence matched her persistence.

  Focus, Millie. You steer the ship in the river of dreams.

  “What do you think?” said Grace.

  “Yes,” I said, suddenly very warm.

  “Yes, you want to do something?”

  “I don’t like sex,” I said.

  I tried to suck in more oxygen to my brain because clearly it wasn’t getting enough to properly communicate as people did.

  Grace laughed. “Listen, I feel you there. I really do. But all I wanted to do was go to a movie. Do you eat popcorn?”

  “Um,” I said. “I do.”

  “Candy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Soda?”

  “That stuff is terrible for you.”

  “Noted. Do you want to make out if the movie is boring? Making out is not sex. It’s fine if you don’t want to, but I can get a ballpark of what you’d enjoy.”

  Actually, I felt kind of cold. Clammy. Some sort of stasis should soon start to spread over me due to the obviously extreme temperature swings I currently experienced.