by Ron C. Nieto
“Wait, wait, wait! What am I supposed to do now?”
“Do?” She shrugged and her wicked smile belied the innocent expression she tried to present. “Nothing! You hadn’t even realized you’d turned him down. Act as if you hadn’t been enlightened yet.” And she sauntered off, waving.
“Rayyy!” She barreled into her boyfriend with as much force as she had barreled into me that morning, but he didn’t wince. He wrapped an arm around her waist and guided her into a mock dip before swirling her around.
The pair of them was obnoxious, but kind of cute together and the rest of the gang “awwed” and cooed at their antics.
Then, before Anna completed her twirl, I saw it coming and called out, “Watch it!”
Of course, too late.
Anna’s head collided against the tray of our resident freak and all hell broke loose.
The tray went flying one way. The dishes went in the opposite direction. And the contents splattered about like a hand grenade. Girls squealed and ducked for cover, trying to avoid the rain of soup and vegetables of the day’s menu.
I could afford to be classier and just take a step back, without the screaming. I wasn’t in the disaster zone.
The guy just stood there, frozen, his hands still holding air where his tray had been, his front soaked with soup and his eyes fixed on his feet. Ray, in contrast, became a blur of motion.
“Damn it, idiot! Can’t you look where you’re going?” He turned to Anna, still glaring daggers at the culprit. “Hey, babe, you alright?”
She looked dazed. Reaching up, she checked her head for bumps and her clothes for stains. Then, she shrugged and went back to normal.
“I’m fine,” she said.
Ray delivered her to Dave for safekeeping and turned back to the immobile guy like a predator on a rabbit. I took the chance to rush to Anna’s side and see with my own eyes that she was okay. Lena already hovered over her and kept throwing nasty glances at the two guys.
“I get that you’re worthless,” Ray snarled, “but at least you could try not to be a bother!”
His words were too soft for what I had expected. It hadn’t been any random guy messing up our area and his girlfriend, but him. Keith. You know the saying about the black sheep? Keith wasn’t ours. He wasn’t even part of the herd.
“Did you hear me?”
“I’m sorry,” the weirdo replied after a moment of silence.
His voice came out raspy, probably from disuse, but still it surprised me. It was deep, and he was a wisp of a kid. I mean, he was on the average-height side, but so skinny that I expected him to sound like a child or something. Not like that. Not more manly than the huge bulk of Ray bearing down on him, anyway.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, finally lifting his eyes from the floor and darting his gaze from Ray to Anna. I didn’t know how he could see anything past that curtain of hair in his face, but he seemed relieved at her neutral expression. “I didn’t see you.”
“It’s okay. I’m fine.” Anna dismissed his apology with a flicker of her hand and smiled a little, though she didn’t aim it at him.
“I’m glad. I’m going to pick up this mess now,” he said, looking back to Ray, as if he had to justify his movements or else be jumped by a wild beast.
“You do that.” Without a backward glance, Ray came back to the table and claimed his spot by Anna’s side, hugging her protectively.
Keith reappeared a moment later with a bucket and a handful of paper towels, but we didn’t deign to give him a glance. He knelt at our feet and fixed the disaster in silence, his expression hidden by that black curtain with silver streaks. We ate and chatted about the upcoming party, the best new movies, how our football team would sail through the next match and what this year’s theatre project would be.
We chatted and laughed, and I was very careful not to look at him, not to stare at his black-nailed fingers, and definitely most careful not to wonder about what those fingers were capable of at night, dancing along the neck of a guitar.
We just ate and ignored him and during the meal, no one mentioned that Ray had swirled Anna way too fast for Keith to react in time or that the soup soaking up his awful black tee must have burnt him.
CHAPTER 3
After the lunch break, Ray unglued himself from Anna and headed off for football practice. Lena also hung back for a while, exchanging smiles with him and, more importantly, with some of his buddies. A new school year required hunting for new prey, I guessed. It would make her late for her own extracurricular activity, but hey, if those were her priorities…
I turned back to mind my business and leave her to hers and was startled at the proximity of a smiling Dave. Call me coward, but as Anna had suggested, I acted as if nothing at all had happened between us.
“Which play do you think we’ll pick for this semester?” he asked.
“I hope it’s not another Shakespeare. I like the guy, but there’s just so many times I can recite his lines before it gets old. What about you?”
“Don’t worry. I think Mr. Hedford is done with that Elizabethan frenzy he caught in seventh grade.”
“About time!” Anna chimed in. “Took him what, five years?”
“So what’s the new fancy?” I asked.
“No idea.” Dave opened the door for us girls and then followed to our usual place. “I heard he wanted to do something more… modern.”
“Cats!”
Dave and I, no, the whole classroom, turned to look at Anna.
“No. Way.” I enunciated slowly to make sure she understood what I felt about her suggestion.
She poked me as soon as everybody’s attention slipped back to their own conversations. “You’d be cute with whiskers,” she said. “Don’t you think, Dave?”
He ducked his head and smiled, poor thing. “Alice’s cute in anything she wears.”
“What if she doesn’t wear anything, then?” She wiggled her eyebrows.
“Guys,” I said, a bit more forcefully than I wanted to. “Stop talking like I’m not here.”
Both of them said they were sorry. Only one of them looked repentant.
I aimed a kick at Anna’s shin under the table and she just giggled.
“Oscar Wilde,” a booming voice claimed without preambles, and we turned to see the rest of the theater club members in silence and Mr. Hedford brandishing an old, musty copy of… something.
“What about him?” mumbled Anna.
The professor—doubling as director—sent her a warning glance that somehow managed to catch me as well, even though I had done nothing wrong at all, and then waved his book. Booklet. Whatever.
“This year, the St. Francis theater group will represent one of the most significant works of the acclaimed genius that is Oscar Wilde.”
Dave leaned a bit to the side and whispered, “He makes us sound like big shots.”
I gave him a mock haughty look. “We are big shots.” That got me a smile and damn it, but the guy was considered handsome for a reason. With some effort, I brought myself back to the discussion and forgot about his dimples and pretty, laughing eyes.
“It is the third of his great opuses, but the first for which he gained recognition. Imagine it—he earned more than seven thousand sterling pounds during the first year on stage through royalties! This play, ladies and gentlemen, was a riot. Of course, I know that you would expect any work by Wilde to be ground shaking. I dare say you will not be disappointed.” He grabbed a stack of booklets, in way better condition than his own, and handed them over to Lena. “Ms. Brighton, please give a copy to each of your classmates.”
She did, taking her sweet time. When it was our turn, I leafed through, hoping that the title would ring a bell.
Lady Windermere’s Fan.
It didn’t.
Glancing around, I saw Anna’s deep frown and Dave’s quizzical expression and breathed a sigh of relief. At least I wasn’t alone in my ignorance.
“Professor,” said a nice enough g
irl who always spoke with a dreamy voice impossible to hear from the last row of seats in class, whose name I never could remember. “I’m familiar with this play. Will it be okay for the board’s standards?”
The board, or the school council, or whatever name you wanted to give them, called the shots on what could or couldn’t go on stage. They did it because they had the stage and the money to buy the stage props. They didn’t like scandals. They didn’t like original takes on anything. They didn’t like much emotion, either.
I suspected they were behind our continual rehearsals of Romeo and Juliet during our director’s “Elizabethan frenzy.” The play is famous and all, but after four times in five years, I could recite the lines of Juliet in my sleep and that’s too much—no matter how you look at it.
Mr. Hedford looked like he’d been anticipating the question and his eyes gleamed in pure, unadulterated and wicked pleasure.
“Ah, no, it is not merely ‘okay.’ It is ‘a superb choice,’ as per their own words, and we do have all the permissions needed to bring this drama about infidelity, lies and betrayal under the limelight!”
“How?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it… much less after hearing the succinct pitch line the professor had thrown in.
“Sponsors, my dear Ms. Thorne, sponsors,” he replied with an air of mystery about him. The fact that he didn’t scold me for blurting out my thoughts and that he acknowledged my question at all, spoke volumes of his good spirits.
The class fell into a sudden flurry of activity as soon as the words left the professor’s mouth. People were excited. Folks started arguing about which roles they wanted to play. The sound of leafing pages drowned out the usual chatter.
This year’s project had turned cool.
“Quiet!” Mr. Hedford called out, clapping his hands. “Silence! We must discuss the essence of the play before rushing into pointless details such as who is who.”
Collective groan. Only a Lit professor could decide that waxing poetic about the whys and hows of a play was somehow more important than landing the leading roles.
The shy girl raised her hand again and asked without waiting for a prompt, “Professor? Who are the sponsors?”
And how did we get them?
Mr. Hedford sighed and let his booklet flop onto the table. He smiled, a fake façade of resignation when he burned with the need to tell us the one thing we wanted to hear.
Gossip.
“Private funding from an outstanding family of our community,” he started, looking smug. “A representative of Mr. Nightray’s approached me regarding the possibility of having this very play produced. At first, of course, I was reticent. Such sponsorship was unheard of, and we are a proud theater group that has never allowed anyone to choose our representations before.” No one except the school board, he meant. “But I’ll admit that the idea of Lady Windermere’s Fan resonated with me, and as I gave it more thought in the following days, I decided to contact our benefactor again about his support. This play offers some risqué ideas mixed with the comedy and drama, as you’ll find out when you read your booklets, and its potential was huge… More so”—and this, I realized, was exactly what he’d wanted to say from the beginning—“when the creative freedom knows no bounds!”
“So… the council won’t ban us, no matter what?” said someone in the front of the class.
“They most certainly won’t. When Lady Windermere takes the stage, there will be a generous donation toward the improvement of the school grounds.”
“Shouldn’t that money be for us, for the play?” said Anna, always pragmatic.
“What would we want it for?” Here it was—Mr. Hedford’s coup de grace…
“I don’t know. Stage props? Costumes? The kind of things the council usually holds over our head?”
“We shall not be needing props this time. No decor, no fake furniture…” the professor said with a smile.
“Are we turning to modernism?” My voice rang with skepticism.
“No, we are using real decorations. Real clothing with all due arrangements. Real Victorian ambiance.”
If you’d dropped a pin in the room, you’d have heard it. Mr. Hedford looked pleased and smug. “All of it, genuine from Mr. Nightray’s own mansion.”
The idea quickly caught on. This could be the best play in our history! Judging by the excitement running amok in the room, and by the way people tried to read their booklets with renewed interest, everyone was already thinking of how to make it unique.
“There’s a ball!” shouted Jack, the only other senior guy besides Dave. “Will we have to learn the waltz?”
Lena, who sat by his side, smacked his head with the booklet. “Of course you’ll have to dance, idiot! Everybody could dance in Victorian society!” Then she gave a small squeak. “Dance! Ball! Music!”
She sounded breathless, and we all turned to look at her, professor included.
“Yes, Miss Brighton? Excellent proof of ‘association of ideas’ and ‘stream of consciousness,’ but did you have a point?”
“Yes, I did! We could have our own original, live music written for the play! It’d be the thing! What other theater group could say that?”
There was whispering in the class. Lots of it. I clasped Anna’s hand and grinned so wide that my face was about to split. That would be the epitome of cool!
“I wasn’t aware of your musical talent, Miss Brighton.”
Lena waved her hand. “Not me. None of us can really play or anything here. But there’s someone in school who can!”
That got Mr. Hedford’s attention. “Who, if I might ask?”
“Keith Brannagh!” And with those words, all merriment flew from me. Confusion marked the faces around me.
“What? That freak?” a voice whispered to my right.
“He won a regional prize or something back in primary school, before he decided that he was too good to take classes,” she insisted. I was surprised she knew. “I’m sure he still plays or remembers how to do it.”
“Besides, he doesn’t need a wig! I’m sure we could talk him out of the crappy streaks and into bleaching his head. Isn’t white hair trendy in Victorian times?” said Jack, warming up to the idea.
“That’s the France of Louis XVI. Do you even listen in class?” Lena shut him down and turned to the professor again with a wide eager smile. “Can’t we ask him? If you do, Professor, I’m sure he’ll agree. And we’d have our own unique soundtrack, and it’d add a touch of originality to our version! A smidgen of the 21st century blending perfectly with the 19th!”
And that sold the idea. The words “original version.” Everyone wanted our play to stand out, and if having the resident freak, emo, goth, or whatever he was as part of the cast would help, then Keith would be received with open arms.
“I shall ask him tomorrow,” said Mr. Hedford, and the class cheered and prepared to go home.
I stole a couple furtive glances at Lena. She grinned and skipped around, sharing the general enthusiasm. I should be grateful for her idea, because it meant I’d get to listen to that beautiful music not only in my nightly marauding, but at school, but… I didn’t like it. There was something else to the whole project. Lena was hiding something.
I should know the symptoms. I had been hiding Keith for years, after all.
CHAPTER 4
Two exact weeks after that session, our interest had failed to die down and the class felt like a henhouse while Mr. Hedford called out the names of the cast.
I was Lady Windermere, which was not surprising. Dave would be my Lord, with Jack as his rival and Lena being my fictional mother. No idea why the professor thought she could pull off a scene where she took the fall for someone else, namely me, but I’d gotten the lead and that was what mattered. Mr. Hedford would hear no complaints from me.
I looked at Anna in between the rounds of cheering and “Silence! Silence!” that followed every new appointment. She had gotten a smaller role, which sucked. I’d have wanted her
to be Mrs. Erlynne instead of Lena, but she didn’t seem to be bothered by the cast. I got a super bright smile from her when I turned to her with concern. She started to mouth something, but then someone knocked on the door.
By some miracle, Professor Hedford heard it over the din and managed to quiet the unruly body of students before telling whomever it was to come in.
The door opened and Keith entered, lugging his guitar around. Combined with his longish, dyed hair and black painted nails, it made him look like a rock star wannabe. However, he hardly lifted his gaze from the floor, and his bony shoulders were too hunched to be the real thing.
“Professor Hedford,” he said, that gravelly voice sending the class into silence at last. “I have started working on the score and would like to hear your opinion before I go ahead to compose the full piece.”
He offered a few sheets of paper, with letters and lines and scratches, and the professor stared at them with a raised eyebrow.
“And… what might this be exactly, Mr. Brannagh?”
“A nocturne. Minuets were more common during the social soirées of Victorian society, but the rhythm marks them as being more upbeat than a nocturne. I believe we could use the contrast to highlight the tragedy in the making, even while the public is still lost in the comic relief of the situation. I’d also need three movements for the minuet, which would make it run over fifteen minutes, and the scene is not long enough to support the full performance.”
It was clear that Mr. Hedford was impressed. Just about as much as everyone else. Now they could believe Lena’s claim that he had studied music, in spite of his looks.
I had to smack down an inappropriate surge of pride for accomplishments that weren’t my own.
“Why not a sonata, then?” the professor asked, as if it was a surprise test in Lit class.
Keith’s head jerked up and he allowed himself a small smile, just an invisible curve of the corner of his lips. “No way, Professor. That is reserved for romance, and I think Lady Windermere’s Fan is about everything but that. Before you suggest it, sir,” he added, tongue in cheek, “Rondos are out of the question as well. Too much frivolity and good nature.”
