The Love Curse of Melody McIntyre

by Robin Talley

  “Sorry.” Alejandra looks as though she wants to melt into her shoes.

  “No worries.”

  “Why are you telling us this?” Nick interjects. “Isn’t dealing with these a techie’s job?”

  The cords on Dom’s neck start to swell, so I jump in. He only offered to help with mics today because Kevin is out with the stomach flu, but the rest of the cast doesn’t need to know that. We don’t need yet more rumors spreading about communicable diseases, especially since Fatima’s injury is still fresh in everyone’s minds.

  Besides, it’s not as if it’s beneath an actor to help with mics, for God’s sake.

  And I’ll never forgive Nick for that whole scene yesterday in the black box. Okay, so maybe I did trigger the curse, but that didn’t give him the right to act as if I’d done it on purpose. As if I wanted to hurt my friends. To hear Nick talk, I might as well have made some sort of demonic pact, and only he could save the show from destruction. As though he’s ever actually cared about anything but himself.

  “The crew will help you attach the mics during tech and shows, but keep in mind you’re literally going to have a microphone taped to your face for most of the next two weeks.” I’m talking to the whole group, but I keep my gaze focused squarely on Nick. “So it’s to your benefit to know how to switch it on and off. Unless you want everyone in the auditorium to hear you pee.”

  There are a few giggles, but most of the actors don’t seem to know if it’s okay to laugh. Since yesterday, the tension’s been overwhelming. After I ran to the scene shop to make sure Fatima was all right, I had no choice but to go back to rehearsal and avoid looking at anyone—most of all Odile, but also Gabby and the rest of the crew. And since we still had to slog through another three hours of rehearsal, that added up to a lot of staring down at my binder.

  “What are these things covered in, anyway?” Leah holds up her plastic-wrapped battery pack, wrinkling her nose.

  “Condoms, obviously,” Malik says, which is cheating since he was a featured soloist last spring and thus already knew that. Most of the other principals haven’t used the wireless mics before, though, and they all laugh harder than really seems necessary when they realize each of them is holding a battery pack carefully wrapped in an unlubricated Trojan. Nena, the assistant sound head, bought a bunch of them at Target last night and carefully slipped them into place during the break before third period.

  “See?” I say, patting Julio on the back, since he’s doubled over laughing. “Everyone thinks I keep condoms in my kit as a joke, but they have a practical application.”

  “Yeah, that’s totally why we thought you had them.” Nick tilts his head. “A joke.”

  I wait to see if everyone will leap to my defense like they did when he slut-shamed me yesterday, but only Dom shakes his head this time. “Leave her alone, man.”

  Nick scoffs, and an awkward silence hovers until the cheerleaders practicing on the opposite side of the gym shout, “Go! Bulldogs! Go!”

  “Do we have enough mics, or should I get some from the black box?” Gabby asks as I sink back into my seat beside her on the bleachers. She doesn’t meet my gaze.

  “We should be all right.”

  “Could we get away with not using them at all?” Tyler mutters on my other side as we watch Nick breathe heavily into his mic. Dom catches Nick’s eye and makes a slashing motion across his neck. “What if something goes wrong with the gym’s sound equipment?”

  “We have to use mics in here.” I gesture to the wide-open gym. “The acoustics are crap. None of the soloists could project without amplification.”

  “Odile could.” Tyler drums his fingers on his chin. “Maybe we could add Fantine to ‘One Day More.’ They did that at the Oscars.”

  “There’s no time,” I say quickly, before he can start running with that idea. “We’re strictly cut off at three minutes.”

  Tyler grumbles about how the baseball team could probably run around the pep rally for three hours if they wanted to, but I don’t join in. I’m just relieved he’s not talking about Odile anymore.

  No one knows what happened between us in the dance studio. Yet.

  But I can’t focus on that now. Our pep rally flash mob is in two hours, and we’ve got it planned down to the microsecond. At the beginning, the cast will be scattered throughout the bleachers, and just as the vice principal starts to launch into a fake speech about school spirit, Nena will start piping in the music to “One Day More.” The soloists will stand up one at a time to sing their parts, and as the song builds, the ensemble will start streaming down the aisles in their official Les Mis T-shirts until they’re all gathered in the middle of the floor, marching in unison, with Lauren perched on Adam’s shoulders waving the school flag.

  It’ll be our first time performing in front of a real audience, which is equal parts exciting and stressful. Either way, it’s a welcome distraction from all the curse talk. We might even be allowed into the auditorium tomorrow, too.

  Something needs to start being normal again.

  “Soloists!” Ms. Marcus calls from the middle of the gym floor. “Places, please.”

  Nick taps his microphone again as he sprints up the bleachers. Feedback whines out, and I fantasize about running up after him and snatching the mic pack out of his hand.

  But when Ms. Marcus gestures for Nena to start the music, the entire atmosphere in the gym turns upside down. The song’s opening notes are light, quick, and so pretty they’re almost magical. The cheerleaders pause on their way to the locker room, their pom-poms dropping to their hips.

  “One Day More” is the biggest, most exciting group number in Les Mis. Most of the principals have solos in it, but Nick’s the one who kicks it off. And when he starts singing into his mic in the pompous, overly dramatic way he always does (which, to be fair, is also how every Valjean in human history has always sung this song), I have to admit he sounds good as he slowly climbs down the bleachers, lifting his chin to sing up into the beams that crisscross the gym ceiling.

  The cheerleaders gasp. Even the other actors, all of whom have heard Nick sing this song approximately fifty million times, look impressed. His last traces of laryngitis finally seem to have subsided, and having an audience clearly adds something to his voice, too, or maybe just to his ego. A few of the cheerleaders look ready to swoon.

  I’ve never understood why audiences fall all over themselves around guys who are halfway decent singers. Women can perform astonishing vocal feats and no one blinks an eye, but when guys do it, people act like they just cured cancer.

  When Nick wraps up, Malik and Alejandra stroll out from opposite ends of the gym floor, singing their duet. They’ve struggled with this harmony for weeks, but I guess the presence of the cheerleaders is good for them, too, because they sound fantastic right now.

  Maybe the curse is subsiding. Maybe Odile and me breaking up really did fix everything. Maybe all I had to do was rip my heart out of my chest and stomp on it to get the success I’ve always dreamed of.

  Leah climbs down the bleachers next, singing her solo under Malik and Alejandra’s harmony. The sound fills up the gym. I decide it’s the harmony, rather than my own personal romantic devastation, that’s making me totally teary-eyed just as Alejandra trips over an empty McDonald’s cup in the middle of the gym floor and comes down hard on her hands and knees.

  “Hold!” I shout, grabbing my kit. Ms. Marcus signals for Nena to pause the music.

  I run straight up to where Alejandra’s sprawled out on the floor, trying to get a look at her wrists and ankles to make sure she didn’t twist anything.

  This is my fault. I should’ve checked the floor for trip hazards as soon as I got to the gym.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, carefully scanning her limbs.

  “Did I mess up the whole song?” Alejandra sits up, her eyes darting around the gym. “We don’t have to stop. I can keep going.”

  “It’s fine, don’t worry. Can you move all your finger
s and toes?”

  She wiggles her appendages, still casting anxious glances over my shoulder. The ensemble members on the bleachers are watching us and talking behind their hands. Someone stage-whispers, “It’s the curse!”

  “Everything all right, Mel?” Ms. Marcus calls.

  I glance at Alejandra, who nods quickly. I give Ms. Marcus a thumbs-up.

  “All right, from the top!” she calls, clapping her hands. “Places!”

  The music starts again, and Nick climbs back up to the top of the bleachers. This time, though, when he goes to sing, his voice croaks on the third note, the way it did in those earliest rehearsals.

  Shit. Is this the curse, too?

  He sings another line and croaks again. The cheerleaders watching from the floor start to giggle. Anyone else would be embarrassed, but Nick just looks pissed.

  But the music doesn’t stop, and he finishes his lines, sounding relatively decent by the end. When Malik and Alejandra come in, they’re even better than they were before, and this time, to my immense relief, no one trips over anything. Leah joins in, and all three of them hit every note perfectly.

  Dom’s big entrance is next. It’s his most dramatic moment in the whole show, aside from his death scene, and before he’s sung a note, it’s clear he’s already relishing it. He runs out to the top of the bleachers on the far side of the gym, singing at the top of his voice and waving a purple foam finger over his head. The foam finger was my idea—he’s supposed to wave a musket during this bit in the show, but there was no way we’d have been allowed to use even an obviously fake musket in the gym, and besides, the foam finger is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

  But his singing is even more striking. Dom’s never sounded better. For a second, I’m so happy for him I almost forget how stressed I am about everything else. He and Malik trade solo lines after that, but the glory is all Dom’s, and his voice rings out as he storms down the steps, waving that foam finger over his head.

  The cheerleaders’ gaping expressions are fixed squarely on Dom now, and half of them are already whooping and waving their pom-poms. When he realizes what’s happening, Dom’s eyes widen for a fraction of a second—he isn’t exactly used to this, since working in the tech booth and drumming in a not particularly successful band called the Honey Badger Liberation League don’t tend to generate pom-pom waving—but he disappears back into his character just as quickly, and soon he’s passionately calling his troops into battle.

  By the time he reaches the gym floor and the ensemble has joined in, all the cheerleaders are clapping, even the guys. A moment later, as David climbs to his feet on his new set of crutches and joins in for his solo, his voice is exactly as dark and scary and startling as it’s supposed to be, and this feels less like a rehearsal and more like a performance. Our first real one, with a real audience. It’s very, very cool. When we reach the finale, with Lauren riding on Adam’s shoulders and waving the flag as the whole cast sings the last few lines, all the cheerleaders are roaring, and I can’t resist clapping along.

  Ms. Marcus calls a three-minute break, and we all troop out into the hall, still reeling from the performance high. Dom bounds over and hugs Gabby and then me. “That was good, right?” he says into my ear, breathless.

  “It was great,” I tell him.

  Two of the cheerleaders glance back at us on their way to the locker room. Dom blushes. Gabby pokes his arm, and he blushes harder.

  “Hey, listen . . .” He lowers his voice and turns back to me. “I tried to find you yesterday after rehearsal, but . . .”

  “Yeah, sorry. I was in a rush to get home.”

  “I just wanted to tell you, I heard about what happened from a bunch of different people, and it doesn’t sound like most of them really believed Nick. He was so over the top, trying to get people to think you wanted to cause problems on the show. Like a successful run of Les Mis hasn’t been your lifelong dream.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

  “No one who actually knows you wanted to buy what he was selling. The problem was, you let him get to you. From the way you were acting, people thought you were saying he was right, and that confused some—”

  “What are you talking to her for?” We all turn at the sound of Nick’s voice. He’s walking past us with Christina and a couple of the ensemble girls. There aren’t any gym classes scheduled during lunch and the cheerleaders have finally vanished back into the locker rooms, so we have the hallway to ourselves. “Didn’t you get the memo? Even the techies don’t like her anymore. Keep it up with the singing, though. Maybe your little band’s next video’ll get twenty whole views.”

  Dom turns sheet white. I’m so stunned that for once, I can’t think of a single thing to say. Only Gabby seems to have maintained her composure.

  “Yeah, Nick?” She stands up, squares her hips, and lifts her chin, exactly the way Nick does when he solos. He’s probably a foot taller than Gabby, but she’s looking up at him coolly, as though they’re on exactly the same level. “You might want to try chugging some more of that honey water next time, because my neighbor’s cat sounds better than you just did. Or you could go back to sitting on the bench for Coach Polakowski instead of getting mad at everybody else for being better than you.”

  Whoa.

  “Go, Gabby,” I mutter, but if she heard me, she doesn’t turn around.

  Nick just stares at her in stunned silence. Then his gaze shifts to me, his eyes narrowing.

  “I can’t believe you still have the nerve to act like you’re our boss.” He raises his voice again. “Bad shit’s still happening, and everyone knows you’re the reason why.”

  I toss my head to the side, like he couldn’t possibly be getting to me. “I know you want everyone to think your vocal problems are happening because of me, but this cast isn’t stupid.”

  “Well, from where I’m sitting, it looks like another one of our stars just almost broke a bone on your watch.” Christina’s raising her voice, too. “While you’re still screwing us over for her.”

  “You lied to us all for weeks and you’re not even sorry.” Nick curls his lip up in what I think might actually qualify as a genuine snarl.

  “What did I do, Nick, poison your puppy in a past life?” I ask him. No one laughs.

  He takes a step forward. I move back, turning to face the rest of the crowd, but my vision’s getting blurry. All I can see is an ocean full of cold, silent faces.

  “Look, I shouldn’t have lied.” I swallow. “That’s true. I’m sorry.”

  “They should both be kicked off the show,” one of the other actors mutters behind me. I don’t know which one, and I’m starting to panic a little.

  “There’s no reason to be mad at Odile.” I gulp in a thick breath. “She didn’t know anything about the curse.”

  “Well, she’s got to now,” Christina snaps. “Which means you’re both to blame.”

  “Well, we broke up, okay? So, can everybody please just shut up?”

  I practically shout the words.

  No one says anything, but Nick’s eyes widen. Even Christina seems to be at a loss for words.

  That’s when my timer goes off.

  “And we’re back!” I yell at the top of my lungs. I’m trying to sound commanding, in control, but I’m not fooling anyone. “We need to run this song at least three more times if we’re going to be ready for this afternoon.”

  The actors filter back toward the door, but I can feel their eyes on me. There are murmurs, too, but I try not to listen.

  “Um, Mel . . .” Naturally, Gabby’s the only one who’ll actually speak to me instead of about me.

  I turn to her with a grateful smile. “Hey. What’s up? We need to get back inside.”

  “I . . . I’m not going back in.”

  My smile falters. “What?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it—a lot, actually, ever since that night at your house when David, um—and . . . I think I need to qui
t.”

  I blink at her. I can’t find any other words. “What?”

  “I can’t keep working with you.” There are tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  I swallow, but I know I have to speak. I have to find a way to talk her out of this. “If this is about the curse, we don’t even know if that’s—”

  “It’s not the curse. It’s the way you lied to us.” She bites her lip and looks down. “To me. You need an ASM who’ll do what you say without questioning it, and I . . . can’t be that anymore.”

  “Gabby, please, let’s talk about this. It’s okay if you need to—”

  “Goodbye.” She turns and walks, then runs, down the hall toward the cafeteria.

  What the hell is happening? I’m not even with Odile anymore, but my life just keeps getting worse.

  I never should’ve been with her in the first place. I ruined everything.

  My show really is falling apart, and it’s all been for nothing.

  Attention, Beaconville Middle School Students

  Welcome to the invited dress rehearsal for Les Misérables at Beaconville High School!

  A word of warning: an IDR is not necessarily a completed show. By the time our spring musical officially opens tomorrow night, things will be running perfectly (we hope). This rehearsal is our last chance to work out any kinks, which means you may witness a few minor hiccups during the performance this afternoon. We request that you bear with us.

  Now—to the barricades!

  —Sign displayed in BHS Theater lobby.

  Photo taken by Melody McIntyre and stored on BHS

  performing arts department shared drive.

  Viewable to: All cast, crew, and directors

  Editable by: Current SM ONLY

  Scene 7—Tech Booth, Beaconville High School Theater

  HOURS UNTIL SPRING MUSICAL OPENS: 28

  “HOLD!” I shout the word into my headset, then lunge for the God Mic.

  When I press the button my voice echoes out from the booth into the entire auditorium. Hundreds of middle schoolers all look up at once, astonished.