Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have

by Allen Zadoff

  “Can I ask you a serious question?” she says.

  I nod.

  “Did you notice me back then?”

  “When?” I say.

  “You know. Last year. The beginning of school. Whenever.”

  “Honestly?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You were kind of invisible to me.”

  She bites down hard. I think she’s going to tell me she doesn’t want to go on a date, but she just nods her head slowly.

  “I didn’t think so,” she says.

  “But I see you now,” I say.

  We look into each other’s eyes, and I feel that feeling again. It’s a little tough to breathe. Not like when I’m having an asthma attack, but something different.

  A second bell rings. That’s the warning bell. Caroline Whitney-Smith loves a good warning bell.

  “That pizza-bagel thing sounds good,” Nancy says. “I’ll see you after school, okay?”

  “Great,” I say.

  We both stand up, and Nancy grabs her sketchbook. The music stops playing in the background. I don’t hear the song anymore, but I can still hear the beat.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  At least I think it’s the beat. It could be my heart. It’s going pretty hard right now. Hearts do that sometimes, all on their own, and they don’t even bother to ask your permission.

  acknowledgments

  To my high-school posse from so long ago: Josh, Darrin, Ethan, Peter, Jon, Paul, and our other friends from Brighton High School in Rochester, New York. Though the story is fictional, the feelings are not. Thank you for the inspiration.

  I’m so grateful to Stuart Krichevsky, Kathryne Wick, and Shana Cohen at SK. Your support and encouragement means the world to me.

  Much thanks to Doug Pocock and Elizabeth Law, who brought me in and gave my work a home. Thanks, too, to the great team at Egmont. You really know how to make an author feel welcome.

  Thanks to Lucy Stille and Zadoc Angell at Paradigm for taking things to the next level.

  Thanks to Aaron Lee, Adam Silberstein, and Doug Hill, amazing men who point the way every day.

  Thanks to the sweet and brilliant Kauser for keeping me sane after the fact.

  Finally, a very special thanks to Stephanie Hubbard, writer and friend, who helped me so much while I was creating this book.

  Allen Zadoff was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and went on to live in upstate New York, Manhattan, Tokyo, and Los Angeles. A former stage director, he is a graduate of Cornell University and the Harvard University Institute for Advanced Theater Training. His memoir for adults is called Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin. He currently teaches writing in Los Angeles. Visit Allen at www.allenzadoff.com.

  MY LIFE, THE THEATER,

  AND OTHER TRAGEDIES

  Allen Zadoff’s next book,

  coming from Egmont USA in May 2011.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek!

  SINCE NIGHT

  YOU LEFT ME.

  I dream of my father.

  It sneaks up on me in my sleep, this dream I have from time to time.

  Maybe more than time to time. I think I have it every night, but most nights I sleep through and wake up in the morning having forgotten.

  Some nights I’m not so lucky.

  Tonight for instance.

  My father is there with me one minute, the next minute gone, disappeared into the darkness. He’s never dead in the dream. He’s missing, which is much worse. At least with dead, you know what you’re getting. But what is missing? Missing means he could be lost and need help. He could be hurt. He might have run away, abandoned me, Mom, and Josh. He might have been taken against his will.

  If he’s missing, he can still be found.

  That’s what’s so painful about the dream. When I’m awake, I know my father is dead. He died in a car accident two years ago. A little less than two years. But in the dream I don’t know that. In the dream he’s alive and I’m looking for him, searching everywhere with this giant wave of fear expanding in my chest.

  Some nights I sleep through until morning, but not tonight. Tonight I’m in the middle of the dream when my eyes pop open. I reach for the big Maglite flashlight I keep in bed with me, but it’s rolled away onto the floor somewhere. There’s nothing to do but lie here with the covers pulled up high, remembering everything.

  I don’t know when I go back to sleep, or if I do. I spend the rest of the night in that place between sleep and dreams and waking, my room barely illuminated by my night-light, lying in bed with my eyes open, staring at nothing at all.

  Not true. Staring at the rest of my life.

  How does it help to think about your entire life when it’s three in the morning? What are you supposed to figure out at a time like that? And when you’re sixteen like me, the rest of your life is a long, long time.

  Or a very short one.

  You never know. Which is just something else to think about.

  “Adam!” my mother shouts.

  My mother is not a dream. That much I’m sure about.

  “You’re going to be late for school!” she says from the foot of the stairs.

  It’s morning already. My mother is extremely nervous in the morning. She’s super nervous at night. In between she’s only relatively nervous.

  “Are you awake?” she says more quietly from the other side of my door.

  “For a long time,” I say through the closed door.

  “I had trouble sleeping, too,” she says.

  “Why you?”

  “Bad dreams,” she says.

  I don’t respond. I wait until I hear her footsteps moving away down the hall, and then I drag myself out of bed.

  I turn off my night-light and crack open the shades. The sun is harsh, tinged with yellow, hinting at the summer to come.

  That’s when I remember. It’s the first day of tech. We move into the theater this afternoon. Our spring production opens in four days. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  I should be excited. I search my mind, trying to find some angle that equals excited.

  “Adam!” my mother calls, now down in the kitchen. “Look at the time!”

  Excited doesn’t come. I’ll have to settle for awake.

  UP AND DOWN,

  UP AND DOWN.

  By afternoon I’ve put the dream out of my head, and I’m back in my element. In the theater.

  More specifically, above the theater.

  I’m on a catwalk high above the theater floor, surrounded by lighting instruments and cable, watching the actors get a tour of the set down below. I look down through layers of wire and pipe at the long line of actors snaking around the stage. The actors shouldn’t be in here at all, not during load-in when we’re working on lights and set, but Derek loves to break the rules almost as much as he loves to make them. Derek Dunkirk, student production designer. Man of many gifts, lover of many women, and wearer of many keys on his belt.

  And my nemesis.

  Maybe nemesis is too strong of a word. For someone to be a proper nemesis, they at least have to know you exist. But I’m no more than an annoyance to Derek, a techie flea in his royal fur.

  Derek is the first student ever invited to design a production in our high-school theater. He’s doing set, lights, and costumes. That’s not just impressive; it’s legendary. Usually the director designs the show at our school. There are kids who do little stuff in a classroom—an improv performance or a workshop without any tech or something—but at Montclair High, the nine-hundred-seat auditorium is as close as we get to the big time. And Derek is definitely big time.

  “By way of inspiration, a bit of Tennyson,” Derek says with his less-than-perfect British accent. A stir passes through the actors as he clears his throat:

  DEREK

  ’Tis better to have loved and lost

  Than never to have loved at all.

  “That’s so sad,” Johanna says and flits her eyelids at him.

  Her ac
tor boyfriend, Wesley, pinches her to get her attention, and she punches him on the arm. The two of them hit each other so much, I’m not sure if it’s love or boxing.

  “Sad but true,” Derek says. He lowers his head, as if in mourning.

  What would you know about it? I think.

  But the female actors love it. They make that aaaaaawwwwh sound that girls make when they see a baby or a puppy. Even Tom, the six foot six actor with a shaved head who is playing Theseus, gets a sad look in his eye.

  Derek soaks it all in.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Derek says down below, “would you be so kind as to follow me?” He walks off, clapping his hands like he’s herding sheep.

  I look at the female actors crossing the stage, their bare legs going from white to black as they pass through pools of light. They say theater is democratic, but it’s not true. There’s a pecking order here just like everywhere else in high school. The leads walk in the front of the line, followed by the bit players, followed by the extras. They’re the actors without lines, sometimes even without character names.

  In the front of the pack are Johanna and Miranda, who are playing Hermia and Helena, the battling heroines of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Next to them is Jazmin Cole, the gorgeous Latina actor who plays Titania. The three of them are the female leads of our school, the “it” actors, The Posse. Miranda is more athletic than Johanna with short black hair and enormous boobs. From up here, her cleavage looks like a mini Grand Canyon. I know I shouldn’t be looking down girls’ shirts, especially girls I don’t like, but cleavage is confusing like that. You can hate a girl but love her cleavage. That’s how powerful it is.

  The closest I’ve come to Miranda was during last year’s production of Spring Awakening. I wasn’t on lights then. My job was to hold a flat backstage while she changed clothes behind it. I would stand there listening to the sound of her clothing coming off an inch away on the other side of the wall. She never said a word to me until one night in the middle of the run when she said, “I can hear you breathing on the other side of that thing, and it creeps me out.”

  Anyway, actors and techies don’t mix at Montclair. We don’t even talk to each other unless it’s absolutely necessary. It’s like the Hundred Years’ War, only it’s a hundred years of silent treatment. Nobody knows why, but it’s a rule. One of about a thousand in our school. Unspoken rules. Spoken rules. Codes of conduct. Determiners of status.

  I know all of these actors by name, but none of them knows me. That’s because I’m a guy who works behind the scenes. Some people call us stagehands, some say crew, and some say techies. Usually there’s a dismissive tone in their voice when they say it. “He’s just a techie.” But when we say it, it’s with pride.

  I am Adam Ziegler, Techie. Capital T.

  My best friend Reach calls us Crewus technicalis. Like we’re some rare species.

  But to the actors we’re just techies, kids in black who hand them a prop or hold a penlight to guide them offstage. We’re invisible, filling the cracks around them like grout between beautiful bathroom tiles.

  There’s a click on my headset.

  “I think Derek’s accent changed from British to Scottish,” Reach says.

  I free one hand, key the microphone.

  “And there’s some stiffness in his pantaloons,” I say. “What do you think it means?”

  “It means there are females in the vicinity.”

  “Females? I had no idea.”

  “Of course not. You’re having a love affair with light.”

  “You got light, what else do you need?”

  “Human beings,” Reach says.

  “Overrated,” I say.

  “Let’s respect protocol on the radio,” a voice says in my ear. It’s our stage manager, Ignacio. You’re supposed to announce yourself when you get on headset, but Ignacio loves to creep on without anyone knowing. He’s sneaky like that.

  Reach says. “Are you off your meds, Ignacio?” Ignacio has ADHD, which makes it tough to have a conversation with him, but makes him a great stage manager. I guess split focus is helpful in a job where you deal with a thousand things at once.

  “I took my pill this morning!” Ignacio says. “And I expect you both to act like professionals.”

  “We are professionals,” Reach says, “but it’s a load-in for God’s sake, not the Kennedy Center Honors.”

  “Chain of command,” Ignacio says.

  That’s his favorite phrase in the world. Probably because he’s very near the top of the chain.

  “You’re right,” I say. “Apologies, Ignacio. From both of us.”

  Reach coughs and says “suck-up” at the same time. You never cough into your mic. It’s rule one of headset etiquette. Reach knows the rules better than anyone. He loves rules, but he also loves to bust Ignacio’s balls.

  I’m not a suck-up. I’ve just got plans. Things I want to do.

  Shows I want to light.

  I want to be a lighting designer. Too bad Derek has that job on lockdown. He’s been working for two and a half years to design a big show, and our director, Mr. Apple, finally gave him the chance.

  Now that he’s ascended, there’s not much room for me.

  Derek was a legend long before I got to this school. His dad is Thomas Dunkirk, world-famous architect, on the boards of museums and arts organizations from New York to London. Derek keeps promising his dad will come to school to do a seminar or something, but so far, nobody has every met the guy. We’ve only seen him on TV.

  You’d expect a kid like Derek to be at private school. I mean, Montclair is an amazing place, but it’s still a public school. Someone once asked Derek why he was here, and he said his father wanted him to be a real American boy, fit in with the plebes, so to speak, so he refused to send him away.

  Lucky us.

  On top of that, Derek’s accent has a magical effect on women. When he speaks, they laugh at his jokes and their eyes widen. If I’d known an accent was so powerful, I might have worked on one while I was in eighth grade. I could have arrived at high school two years ago with a cool foreign identity. Instead I came in as The Guy Whose Dad Just Died. Some people could work the angles on that, get some pity love. Postmortem poon, as Reach calls it. But the idea makes me feel sick. Anyway, I couldn’t talk to girls before Dad died; I didn’t magically gain a new skill set after the funeral.

  “Stay focused,” Ignacio says as if he can read my mind. “Especially you, Z. Last I looked, you were twenty feet in the air.”

  More like twenty-five, but Ignacio’s right. You don’t want to be daydreaming when you’re up in the air straddling a pipe.

  “Will do,” I say. “Z out.”

  I take a final glance at the girls, then I crack my knuckles and get down to business.

  I shift my balance towards the pipe, pull a wrench from my belt, and lock down the C-clamp on the closest Leko. I attach a safety cable and double-check it.

  It’s not easy to do lights from the catwalk because I have to hang over the front in a scary way. But I’ve developed my own system. It saves a lot of time because I don’t have to bring in a lift or keep moving a ladder around.

  I finish the Leko and move down the line. Twenty-five lights down, fifteen to go.

  That’s the process. We load in the lights. Then we focus. Then we dry tech. Then the actors join us and it really gets interesting.

  I look across the grid at the instruments waiting to be hung. I think about the type of light each one throws. The soft fuzz of the Fresnel, the tight focus of the Leko, the bright wash of the PAR can. Then there are the gels—translucent colored sheets placed in front of the lights to change the color of the beam. I love setting up lights. Cold metal in the air is all potential, like stepping outside right before dawn when you know the world is about to change.

  Reach is right about one thing: I spend a lot of time thinking about light, and it’s not my job. As a techie, I don’t need to think about light in general. I need to
think about a light—the one I’m working on. I’m supposed to follow the lighting plot and mind my own business. A lighting plot is a map, shapes on a piece of paper telling me where to hang and how to focus and color each light, but when I look at the plot, it’s like the lights are already turned on in my head.

  As I glance at it now, it seems like Derek has made a design error. There’s a dead area just left of center, a wide swath of shadow. Derek thinks there’s plenty of light there because he’s hanging nearly everything that exists in the school. It’s his first show as a production designer, and he wants it to be the greatest debut in history. Even though the play is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he’s designed it like a stadium rock concert—crazy set pieces, wild costumes, and a ton of metal in the air.

  While it’s true that there will be plenty of light onstage, in this center left area at least you won’t be able to see the actors’ faces. And it’s strange thing about light in the theater—if you can’t see the actors’ faces, you can’t hear them very well. It’s like your ears need your eyes or they get confused.

  I should say something to Derek, but I won’t. Derek is the reigning king of theater, and you don’t get on the king’s good side by telling him how to do his job. In fact that’s a good way to end up teching the actors’ toilets.

  Just then Derek comes back onstage with the actors in tow. Wesley struts in front of the pack, trying to stay close to Derek.

  “Please mind the gap,” Derek says. “I don’t want any of you lovely ladies to hurt yourselves on my set.”

  “Be careful, ladies,” Wesley says, parroting him.

  There’s a female actor I don’t know at the very back of the pack, standing with the extras. She’s not looking at Derek. She’s looking up at the lights. Up towards me.

  That’s weird because actors rarely look up. Maybe the very first time they walk into the theater freshman year, but after that, the theater itself becomes invisible. And light? They don’t care where it’s coming from. They just want to make sure it’s on them.