“Speaking of dreamy,” said Morgan, “How about our Prince Albrecht? I could just eat him up with a spoon. Spoon optional.”
Heidi nudged Morgan, indicating Giselle with her eyes.
Morgan changed the topic quickly. “What are willis anyway?” she asked.
“Some form of siren, right?” said Heidi.
Glancing to make sure Bogdana was out of hearing, Morgan leaned in. “I should have said, ‘vat are veelis?’”
Heidi glared at her.
“They’re similar to sirens,” said Katya, “And ‘veelis’ is quite correct, as far as the pronunciation goes. The ‘willis’ are from the same folktales as the ‘veela’ in the Harry Potter books. Just pronounced with a double-u instead of a vee.”
“Oh, I see. The willis are beautiful and dangerous just like the veela,” said Heidi, nodding. “Although the ones in Giselle aren’t nearly as nice as the veela in Harry Potter.”
“Hmm,” intoned Morgan. “Yeah. The luring of inconstant men to their deaths and all—you wouldn’t get that reading about Fleur Delacour in Harry Potter. Although I guess the veela dance, don’t they?”
“Right,” said Heidi. “And they enchant men. They just don’t make them dance to their deaths and drown them.”
Giselle pushed a bite of piroshki around on her plate. She couldn’t imagine the weeping creature she’d met doing anything so … vengeful. But there were those images of the bodies, bloated and bloodied. A shudder ran through her.
“Impressive research, Kat, one way or the other,” said Morgan, reaching across Heidi to dip her last bite of salad in the dressing.
Katya flushed. “Mostly it was Babushka. Miss Chekhov, I mean. We were watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire together and she pointed out that ‘veela’ and ‘willi’ were the same word.”
Morgan’s cell phone chimed. “Time to go, bal-yerinas,” she said, rising.
The girls dropped hasty tips on the table and dashed back to school, Giselle telling herself over and over again that she didn’t care about it. Any of it. Not anymore. The hollow ache in her chest whispered, liar, liar, liar.
10
NORMAL PEOPLE DON’T SAY MERDE
The remainder of Giselle’s day fluttered past in falling leaves and falling drizzle and another shift in the sky till it resembled a bruise. Katya met her by the lockers and the girls walked rapidly, hoping to beat the coming downpour.
“Oh, derrmo,” muttered Giselle. “I forgot something.”
Katya glanced over to her sister.
“I have to go check the audition requirements,” explained Giselle. “At the auditorium.”
It was the same auditorium where Studio Bolshoi held dress rehearsals and performed its ballets. Giselle felt her stomach beginning to knot. No wonder she’d “forgotten.”
“No need to check the requirements,” said Katya. “I know them. Three minute monologue. Anything Shakespeare. Friday 3:20 till 7:00.”
Giselle let the relief wash through her. She didn’t have to face the auditorium today. Eventually, well, on Friday she would have to visit the stage where she had danced as the principal ballerina in the studio’s last four ballets.
“There will be sign-up sheets,” Katya continued. “You can’t just show up. You have to put your name down ahead of time.”
Giselle examined the clouds overhead. Sagging. Dark. Sure to dump rain.
“But, hang on,” said Katya, consulting her cell phone. “The deadline for signing up isn’t until tomorrow morning.”
“I just want to go home,” murmured Giselle.
“Sounds good to me,” replied Katya. “You can sign up tomorrow.”
The sisters scurried along the sidewalk, cracked and raised by a row of hundred year old cedars.
“You should do Hermione for your audition,” said Katya.
“Hermione Granger? That’s not Shakespeare.”
“No, Queen Hermione, from The Winter’s Tale,” explained Katya. “I’ll email you a link.” She thumbed through screens, avoiding sidewalk dips and bumps with an expertise born of repetition.
“Thanks,” murmured Giselle. At least she would have something to do this afternoon, once Katya left for the studio. But instead of improving Giselle’s outlook, the thought made things appear bleaker.
The pregnant clouds overhead, in an unusual show of fickle beneficence, waited until the girls could see their house before drenching Foulweather.
At home, Giselle began to memorize her audition piece, “Queen Hermione’s Courtroom Defense,” while the heavens unburdened themselves. Her grandmother agreed to be Giselle’s audience, smiling and saying she had always liked The Winter’s Tale.
“The school’s not actually doing The Winter’s Tale,” explained Giselle. “Katya said I should pick a monologue from a different play than the one I’m auditioning for.”
“What is play you are presenting?” asked her grandmother.
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Giselle’s grandmother paled and began to speak in rapid-fire Russian. The parts Giselle could understand were about evil rusalki, who would be lured by the prospect of a play and a ballet featuring the fey ones.
Foulweather was in deep trouble, Babushka warned, and Giselle Petrovna Chekhov was in worse.
~ ~ ~
Friday arrived following the correct succession of ballet classes Giselle no longer attended and drama classes she did attend, of restless nights and ill dreams, of Babushka muttering darkly by the heater vent and Mamulya snapping hush! The Sirens of Foulweather, meanwhile, were demoted from top of the hour coverage at 5:00 to a hasty exchange or two on the 11:00 news, and that not on every channel.
Auditions would be held at 3:20 after school ended. At 3:05, Katya found her sister and gave her a hug, whispering, “Break a leg!”
Giselle pulled out of the hug with a confused expression. “Did you just say what I think you said?”
Katya giggled. “You know: break a leg, like ‘good luck’ for actors.”
Giselle recollected she’d heard this before. Perhaps in a movie. She shook her head and murmured to her sister, “I don’t know why actors don’t just say merde like normal.”
“Normal people don’t say merde,” said Katya. “Merde is only for ballet.”
Giselle’s eyebrows rose in an implied, really?
“Really,” replied Katya.
A gaggle of drama students flew past, all talking at the same time.
Katya wriggled the tips of her fingers as she walked away. “You can tell me all about it tonight,” she called over her shoulder.
Giselle squared her shoulders and turned to face the theatre, painfully aware of how little she knew of the world of drama students and plays. No one had spoken to her in the two days she’d attended drama. Even her instructor had yet to meet her eye. As she approached the heavy glass doors used by the chattering drama students, she felt as though she ought to hold out a passport for someone to inspect and stamp. She could hear another swarm of students approaching. A quick glance informed her she would be subsumed into their midst if she didn’t pass through the doors at once, although she supposed they would probably part around her, like the river rounding past a boulder.
Giselle frowned and pushed forward ahead of the crowd. She would never manage to simply blend in. Still, she could work at not standing out quite so painfully. Drama students slouched and shuffled and hurled playful insults at one another. Giselle thought she could manage two out of the three. Folding her shoulders forward and dropping her chin, she pushed through the glass door trying to slide her feet without actually lifting them as she moved forward. It was like a new variation at the barre. A new demand made on a body accustomed to demanding postures.
She shuffled forward. Shuffling took all her concentration, mercifully distracting her from her surroundings. But once she’d passed through the foyer and into the auditorium, the smell brought back a thousand memories all clamoring for notice. It was a combination of
musty smells combining prehistoric carpet with library and locker room. The last scent was the odor of nervous. It calmed her. It was familiar from other auditions, auditions where she knew what to expect and what to do.
As she followed a group down one of the aisles, Giselle ran through her Queen Hermione speech one more time. She’d been worried that her memorization “muscles” might not be up to the task. She had only memorized lines one other time—an hour’s worth of poetry when her mother had danced to an evening of spoken Yeats’s poems. Apparently, that practice had counted for something; she had her Shakespeare piece down cold.
Slipping into an upholstered maroon chair in a middle row, Giselle prepared to be inoculated with theatre. She wondered if it would sting.
11
UNDERWEAR ADS
After preliminary words from Mr. Kinsler about every role being important, (familiar this,) the teacher added that the tech-crew was the most important of all because they had the power to turn the lights off. Once the laughter died down, the auditions began.
First onto the stage from a seat in the front row leapt a boy with luminous eyes and dark hair.
“Hello, my name is Deepak Chandavarkar, and this is Ariel from The Tempest.”
Giselle understood now why students didn’t need a number pinned to their clothing. Auditioners were expected to announce their names. Her stomach twisted. The last thing she wanted to do was to speak her name from stage, to hear the titters of amusement from persons darkly anonymous.
Onstage, the student dashed around, thoroughly inhabiting his character. The movement surprised Giselle even more than the lack of pinned audition numbers. She had assumed standing still and making it through the lines was all that would be required. Russian curse words paraded themselves through her mind and she felt a strong desire to flee the building and tell her mother, “I’ll take the role of Berthe, please; I made a mistake.”
But Giselle knew good and well who’d made the mistake and it wasn’t her. She wouldn’t run back to her mother for comfort. Her mother had about as much comfort to offer as a bug zapper had to offer a moth.
Deepak finished and everyone clapped, which struck Giselle as slightly indecent. Ballet students might sometimes applaud a visiting artist, like Irena Lyubov, but never auditioning students. And certainly you would never hear wolf-whistles or shouted approval. Quiet and formal, these auditions were not.
Welcome to The Drama.
A girl hopped onstage. Short and thin with voluptuous breasts. Not ballet material. She smiled nervously into the bright stage lights, standing and not speaking. Had she forgotten her speech?
“Okay, Kim, whenever you’re ready,” called Mr. Kinsler from somewhere eight or ten rows forward.
Giselle made a mental note: wait for the director’s okay before beginning.
“Hi everyone. I’m Kimberly Ogawa and this is Sylvia from The Two Gentlemen of Verona.”
From just behind, Giselle heard something. Whispering. Someone was whispering to her from the row behind.
“Is this seat taken?”
The someone’s breath was warm. And smelled good. Like coffee beans and dark chocolate and some spice brought out for holidays. Nutmeg? Cardamom? Giselle turned and met the eyes of the whisperer. He was beautiful. Well, thought Giselle, if you liked angular-cheeked blond boys with hazel eyes that turned down at the corners. As apparently she did. And then she recognized him as the boy from the first day of school. One of the Mercedes-admiring crowd. The one who’d stood out. Why had he looked familiar that day?
He smiled, exposing a flash of straight white teeth. Then he repeated the question.
“This seat? Is it taken?”
Giselle pointed right and left with her forefinger murmuring, “All the seats back here are free.”
“I was only interested in this one,” said the boy, jumping over the seat back and settling noisily beside Giselle.
Right. A hot boy—no, make that a very hot boy—had just seated himself next to her.
A student sitting beside Mr. Kinsler turned in her seat and shushed Giselle and the hot boy. Giselle sank down in her seat, a very non-ballet sort of sinking. Also, a very self-preserving sort of sinking. She couldn’t afford to get kicked out of drama for being disruptive.
Giselle returned her attention to the stage where Kimberly was wrapping her arms around herself.
“She’s got the whole I’m freezing thing down,” whispered the hot boy.
At the Studio Bolshoi, talking during auditions was grounds for guillotining. Well, metaphorical guillotining. Giselle nodded, hoping to silence the boy.
Onstage, everything in the girl’s movement felt planned, necessary, choreographed. Katya hadn’t said anything about choreography. Giselle had no idea what her character might do onstage. Queen Hermione was supposed to be standing in a courtroom. Did that mean standing in one place would be acceptable?
“What’s your monologue?” asked the boy, violating the silence again.
The audience broke into applause for Kimberly.
Under cover of clapping and whistling, Giselle whispered her reply. “Queen Hermione from The Winter’s Tale.”
“I’m James,” said the boy, extending a hand. “Weinhard.”
His hand was warm against Giselle’s icy palm. He definitely smelled like coffee. Giselle was a tea girl, but if James Weinhard had been a drink in a coffee bar, she would have ordered some.
A skinny student jumped onstage and James shouted to him.
“Go big Gee!”
Big Gee raised a fisted hand in the air, the quintessence of cool.
“He hates Shakespeare,” murmured James. “He’s happiest onstage with a Strat and an amp. This whole thing makes him … not comfortable.”
Giselle nodded. She understood not comfortable. Not comfortable and she were becoming very well acquainted.
The boy onstage spoke. “I’m Nathan. Guinness.”
“Nathan,” boomed Mr. Kinsler. “What will you be presenting?”
“Man, I don’t know,” said the boy. “Henry five or something. Some shit my mom got off the Internet.”
Giselle’s jaw dropped in shock. No dancer would ever speak that way to a dance instructor. Her mother would have kicked Nathan out the door so hard he’d be recovering pieces of himself outside the building for weeks.
Mr. Kinsler evidently didn’t mind.
“Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Guinness,” said the teacher.
Onstage, Nathan didn’t move a muscle other than the ones allowing him to open his mouth the size of a vending machine coin slot. The speech contained language obviously aimed at stirring a troop of soldiers to utterly destroy their enemy. He ought to be moving. Shaking a sword or raising his arms. By the time he had finished, Giselle realized she would look just as foolish if she remained fixed to one point on the stage, with only her mouth in motion.
Over the sound of weak applause, she heard something. Another whisper at her side.
“So, do I have to guess your name?” Several long strands of blonde hair fell over James’s eyes as he leaned in to ask the question. It gave him a decidedly rumpled and just out of bed look. “I’m thinking … exotic. Jasmine? Lorelei? Rhiannon?”
“Giselle,” she murmured in reply. She detected a flush of heat stealing up her neck and was glad the theatre was dark.
“Did you say Gazelle?” asked James. “Now that is different.” His full lips curved into a smile that hinted different was good.
“No,” Giselle replied. “Gee-zelle.” She was determined to head off any inquiries as to the origin of her name. “What speech are you reciting?”
“Sonnet Eighteen.” He said it as if Giselle must, of course, be familiar with Shakespeare’s sonnets and think the eighteenth the finest of them all.
Onstage, someone new was repeating lines Giselle recognized. Her monologue, in fact. The actress cradled her belly as if she were … pregnant? Queen Hermione was supposed to be pregnant?
Derrmo.
“That’s your piece, isn’t it?” asked James. “Don’t sweat it.”
Easy for James to say. The actress onstage was killing it with her elaborate choreography, her glistening eyes. Giselle was going to look like an idiot.
“It happens all the time,” whispered James. “Sixty-two people put their names down to audition—you’re going to see duplicates. The thing is to make it your own. Look at me: I went for the best known sonnet in the English language.” He flipped wandering hairs off his tanned forehead. “Kinsler just needs to see how you move, what your voice is like. How well you connect with the words.”
Giselle sank lower into her seat.
“You’re new to drama.” He uttered it as a statement. “Brave of you to start with Shakespeare.” The lovely smile again. The eyes stealing down at the corners. He was improbably beautiful. “Heck, even I was nervous about a monologue. When Mr. Kinsler mentioned we could choose a poem instead, I jumped at it.” James’s full lips parted into an easy grin.
“Oh,” replied Giselle, staring at his smile.
She didn’t mean to wonder, but she felt a curiosity steal over her: what would those full lips taste like? She had never tasted the lips of any boy at all. She was a dancer. Well, she had been a dancer, and dancers tended not to collect boy-kisses because dancers tended to have no lives outside their studios.
James shrugged. “It’s just a way to stand out from the crowd.” He leaned over and brushed a stray hair from Giselle’s cheek. He didn’t lean back away. “For those of us who don’t possess exotic …” He paused, lingering on the word exotic, and then completed the thought, whispering, “Names.”
Giselle felt the hairs along her arms and the back of her neck rise and returned her attention to the stage from where a second actress recited the Hermione speech.
“Don’t worry about it,” James said, off-handedly.
Why hadn’t Giselle thought to ask her sister for more information about auditions? Everyone was performing the Hermione monologue better than she could hope to do. No one stood still when they spoke it. Katya must have assumed Giselle would know to choreograph her movement. It wasn’t as if Giselle wanted a role in the production, but she didn’t think she could bear to look like a fool on a stage where she had danced as a soloist.
Siren Spell Page 8
