It turns out that one of the most chaotic spots on earth is backstage at any production on an opening night. My castmates were frantic, running around half-costumed, relieving their nervous energy—apparently as colossal as my own—in quick movements and shrieks and laughs. The only ones who weren’t hysterical were the younger kids who may have been more used to playing make-believe and looked really adorable in their little navy uniforms for the first scenes, especially Andy, who had just lost both front teeth the night before and lisped a bit when he spoke now. I hung out with them until I had to go report to Violet and Brad and Rhonda and get my wig done and face put on.
Ten minutes and a whole lot of spackling and shellacking later, I left the little makeshift hair and makeup studio, transformed into Elsa the Baroness once again. In the hallway, I saw Michael and the guys in their tuxes for the first time and sucked in my breath at the sight. Michael looked distressingly handsome, as if he had been born to wear a tux, as impractical as it would be in everyday life to walk the halls of the school in formalwear. I felt tears threaten my makeup when I realized how beautiful he would have looked if we had gone to prom together last spring—though even now, I was so much happier with what we had done instead of the prom. He had invited me to his house, where he had decorated the pool area with floating candles and water lilies and he had told me that he liked me more than any girl he had ever known before and we had kissed all night long and everything had changed for the better that night. Or so I’d thought. Spencer must have noticed me watching Michael, who was now bowing to and laughing with Diana, because he came up behind me, put a hand on my shoulder, and warned, “Honey, don’t ruin your makeup. You look too good.”
I patted his hand, took a deep breath, raised the hem of my blush-colored satin skirt to keep from tripping, and approached Michael just as he was being pulled into another room by Cameron. Diana was left standing there, looking bereft.
I knew the feeling.
I turned crimson from the tops of my ears to my cheeks as I recalled how stupidly I had stumbled after him that day last spring when he was running in the woods; I’d planted a kiss on him and run away because I had thought then that he was going out with someone else. At least Diana was a good person. She and Michael would make each other happy.
I told her, “You look beautiful. And don’t worry—I’m sure he noticed.”
“Sure who noticed?” she asked as she smoothed out the white Peter Pan collar on her dress.
“Michael. You know,” I said through only slightly gritted teeth, “your boyfriend.”
Diana looked startled for a second, then smiled like a jack-o’-lantern. “You think I’m going out with Michael?” She laughed. “We did go out. Twice. But I told you that he missed you. But you never did anything about it.” She stopped laughing and paused for a second before saying, as she dipped her head slightly to make her beribboned pigtails bob, “Besides, I have a crush on someone else.”
“Oh, really?” I yelped. “Who?”
She rolled her eyes and looked up at me from under her heavily mascaraed lashes. “Your sister.”
“Oh? Ohhhh … Oh. Well, I hate to say it, but Leigh … ”
Diana laughed again, ruefully this time.
“No, not Leigh. Cassie. She’s in my French class.” Diana blushed. “I can’t believe I have a crush on a cheerleader. That’s the oldest cliché in the book, right?”“Yeah,” I blurted out, “if you’re a linebacker,” and immediately I wanted to slap myself. But Diana burst into laughter and soon we were both laughing so hard we bent over and everyone was looking at us, including Michael, who had emerged from wherever Cameron had taken him. He was staring at us both without even trying to conceal it. I felt a pang of pity for him when I wondered if he was missing Diana as much as I missed him. Dave was right. This liking people thing did not make sense. The heart is not a sensible organ.
“Oh my God.” Diana gasped for breath. “I’m going to ruin my makeup.”
“I’ve got eyeliner on my elbow glove now!” I moaned, “Violet will kill me!” And then we started laughing again and people looked at us like we were mad.
Diana noticed Michael looking at us and nudged me with her elbow and whispered, “He looks dashing, doesn’t he? And you still love him, don’t you?”
I looked back at Michael and blurted out, “He’s going to look killer in that Nazi uniform, too. And I never thought that I would, ever, ever, ever want to kiss a Nazi.”
“You two need to talk at the cast party tonight. No,” she amended with the kind of sly look that Liesl von Trapp would never give. “No, you need to jump him at the cast party tonight and make him yours again.”
I looked at her and realized that she wasn’t feeling as relieved as I was. I felt like all my emotions of the past few months had been put into a can and were being shaken up like paint at the hardware store. I didn’t know if I was going to laugh or begin projectile vomiting. But I knew Diana was probably feeling more like I had been just a few short minutes ago—hopelessly in love with someone who didn’t want her.
“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing I needed to let her down gently. “But Cassie has been pretty Y-chromosome obsessed since she was in diapers. I wish I could say ‘it could happen,’ but I can’t.”
“Oh, I know,” Diana assured me with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Spencer told me.” She shrugged and flounced out her dirndl skirt. “And maybe that’s the attraction. Maybe right now I just want to crush on someone even if it’s never gonna happen, to just enjoy the fantasy of it. I’m not sure with everything going on with my family and my life right now that I could handle anything else.” She smiled and squeezed my arm. “Unrequited love can be kind of fun, actually. But you need to get yours requited again. Officially. I know for a fact he’s still interested in you.”
I looked back at Michael, but his back was turned to me as he was taking off his suit coat and shaking out his arms, one of those charmingly boyish gestures of his that always hits me in the pit of my stomach.
“What makes you say that?”
“Why do you think I’ve been taking all of those pictures of you in your hot blond wig?” She laughed. “I’ve sent them all to Michael, and he has been appreciative of every one. I’ve been trying to convince him for over a month now to fish or cut bait, as my dad would say.”
“Ten minutes to curtain!” someone yelled.
Maybe I had reached a state of emotional entropy and no other feeling could be added to it without the system imploding. Or maybe talking to Michael seemed comparatively easy compared to what I was about to do in less than ten minutes: go out onstage and sing and dance in front of a whole bunch of people—family, friends, and a whole lot of others who didn’t give a crap about me and might laugh themselves sick at my incompetence.
Either way, I didn’t begin shaking or screaming—or vomiting. I told myself as I walked backstage to wait for my cue that if I could get through this, telling Michael one more time how I feel about him would be a piece of cake. With vegan buttercream frosting.
20 How Can Love Survive?
Two and a half hours later, I could say that I had gotten through my first onstage performance since I had played an esophagus in an anti-smoking play in third grade. And it felt good.
At curtain call, the lights were blinding, so I couldn’t really make out my parents, or Shondra and Los, or Leigh’s boyfriend Alistair and his parents, or anyone else in the audience, even if I had wanted to. But when it was time for me to take my bow, there was a lot of clapping, and I could hear my dad and mom and Trey and Tori and Shondra and Los and Dave and Gary cheering and whooping. I was so relieved I felt my nerves unwind inside me like a spool of ribbon.
We still had one more performance to go the next day, so the big cast party was to be held the following night, but Spencer organized everybody to meet at Lorenzo’s in town for pizza. I wanted to make sure that Michael and the boys knew about it, so I hurried off the stage and ran to find him before takin
g off my Elsa gear.
I knocked on the door of their changing room—a cleared janitor’s closet—and called out, “Are you Nazis decent in there?”
Michael answered the door, laughing, wearing jeans now beneath his SS jacket with the swastika and lightning bolts; it was a little unnervingly attractive. And maybe he felt the same way about me, because he stopped laughing and just stared at me, then reached out a hand and touched my wig like it might bite him.
“You look great, Georgia,” he said at last. “But you don’t look like you.”
Ugh, that again. But, remembering Diana’s words, I announced with a dramatic sweep of my hand, “Um, that was the whole idea behind the costume. I’m not Georgiana Barrett, erstwhile activist and vegan avenger. I am Baroness Elsa Schrader, Teutonic goddess,” but my knees were shaking again beneath my ball gown. Now that the small matter of my theatrical debut had been taken care of, I had another challenge before me: getting Michael back.
“Teutonic goddess.” He laughed. Then he bowed, took my hand, and kissed it, saying, “Madam.”
My heart stopped for a second and I started backing away, having forgotten what I had come to say when his lips had made contact with my skin. Fortunately, I remembered right before Cameron came to shut the door.
“Oh, hey, uh, everyone’s going to Lorenzo’s now to celebrate opening night!” I called. “You guys should come.”
“Cool,” Cameron said, and Michael nodded as he shut the door.
I got to Lorenzo’s after Michael because it took a maddeningly long time to get my wig unpinned from my head and to remove the makeup. I don’t know how Lady Gaga does it every day. When I walked in, I was wishing I had worn something nicer than my black turtleneck and skinny jeans tonight. I felt so drab all of a sudden, out of my Baroness bling, but Michael slid down on the bench right away to make room for me.
“Sorry—no vegan cheese here, Georgia,” he said with his crooked smile. “I asked.”
I felt a smile form so big it threatened to break my face, but I replied, “Not a speck of vegan cheese in this whole one-horse town.”
“The town my forefathers founded!” he responded in mock objection. “The town voted one of the most livable in the U.S.—according to a poll sponsored by the local paper.”
“A town your forefathers stole from the natives for a few guns and some milled flour,” I shot back. We kept grinning at each other like idiots while everyone else kind of stared at us like we were on an ill-advised pass from the asylum. But I was too happy to care. I felt like I was floating a little, levitating just above the hard red pizza shop bench. “I can’t eat anyway,” I admitted. “I feel even more nervous in some ways now that it’s over. I guess part of me never really believed I could actually be onstage. But now, in the aftermath—I feel kind of like I’ve been hit by a truck and then electrocuted.”
“You were great,” Michael said quietly, handing me an unclaimed cup of soda. “I was really surprised.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence!” I trilled, and he had the grace to blush a little.
“You know what I mean. I wanted to say something to you earlier at rehearsals about how good you were, but I knew you were nervous and I didn’t want to make you more self-conscious.”
I frowned a little and tied a knot in the middle of my straw wrapper. “Some actress I am! How did you know I was nervous?”
“I knew you were nervous,” he said, “because I know you.”
He smiled and touched the side of my face lightly with one hand. I wanted to grab it and hold it there forever, even if some of my little von Trapps who had come with their parents were watching us. Leila had probably announced to them that I was in the process of stealing Diana’s man, and apparently they all found this wildly entertaining because they were hanging over the back of a couple of booths, staring in anticipation. Leila ran over to Diana’s table for a ringside seat.
I made myself inhale, then exhale, then inhale again and held out an end of the straw wrapper with the knot in the middle to him and said, “Grab the other end.”
“What?”
He looked confused but grasped the wrapper so that the knot was held between us.
“Now make a wish and pull,” I instructed. “Whoever gets the knot on their half wins—their wish comes true.”
He laughed and tightened his grip.
“Vegans don’t have wishbones,” I explained, and he grinned and pulled. The paper ripped in half with the knot on his end. “You win. Hope it was a good wish.”
“It was,” he said with great assurance. “It may need to wait a bit before it comes true, though.”
“Really? Do tell.”
“Nope. This is my first vegan wishbone. I am not going to jinx it by telling what it was.”
We sat for a long moment, just looking at each other, as Cameron chewed his fifth slice of pizza and Todd dared Tatum to sprinkle the dried peppers from the jar on the table onto his tongue. Moments later, Spencer and Leigh appeared beside us, thanking the cross-country team for saving the show by populating it with able-bodied males, and Cameron promised that the entire track team would be there in the audience tomorrow.
“And thank you,” Leigh said, hugging me with both her arms around my neck, “for saving the day.”
“I told you you’d be awesome,” Spencer said, kissing my cheek and I swear I saw Michael’s face flush for an instant. “The cast party is at my house tomorrow night after the show. Be there or be square, both of you. It is going to be … epic.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Michael promised, then turned to me as Spencer and Leigh made their way to other tables like newlyweds at the wedding reception. “After all, this may be my only cast party ever, right?”
“I don’t know, Michael,” I teased. “I think you have a real future on the stage as a silent, menacing Nazi. Maybe you could even branch out into film work, in parts like Well-Groomed Partygoer Number Three.”
His teammates laughed at that and he shook his head, saying, “This is the thanks I get for joining the show just to save it for you.”
“For me? Come on. You did it when Diana gave you those big, sad, helpless kitten eyes.” I laughed.
“No. I did not,” he declared with such ferocity everyone stopped laughing. We eye danced for a few seconds and it suddenly seemed very hot in there, like all the pizza ovens had been set to a zillion degrees at once. I looked up to see Diana watching us from the next booth where she sat with Leila on her lap. She gave me a goofy smile and a thumbs-up, which totally confused Leila. Clearly she has even more to learn about the vagaries of romance than I did. “But, speaking of kittens or pets … ” Michael said as he rose and crumpled up his napkin. “My parents are out late tonight and I have to take Harry for a walk before I pass out from nervous exhaustion over my stage debut.”
“Oh, well … give him a scratch for me, please,” I said, wondering if he could hear my disappointment.
“You can do that yourself. Anytime.” He pulled on his black pea coat and held up a hand. “‘So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye.’ I will see you all tomorrow night.”
“Later, Michael,” Cameron called and everyone waved as he went out the door.
I watched him walk out to the parking lot and made myself just sit there instead of running after him. I remembered the day last spring, when I had finally admitted to myself that I was pretty much in love with him and had searched the jogging trails behind his house to find him and kiss him. My vegan wishbone wish had been that he would kiss me, but since I didn’t win the tug, it would have to wait until tomorrow. But if I survived another night onstage, I might just chase him again.
***
I don’t know what came over me onstage the next night. Maybe it was a sense of hope or redemption, or maybe my nervous exhaustion had led to temporary insanity characterized by an unusual lessening of self-consciousness. But that night I said my lines and belted out those songs like I was Idina Freakin’ Menzel. I was off-key
at a few points, but I plowed ahead, and Spencer even grinned at me, out of character, as I sang my swan song:
As long as I’m living
Just as long as I’m living,
There’ll be nothing else as wonderful as
I!
I sang it like I meant it, and when Elsa had to say goodbye to the captain and the von Trapp kids because she was going off to cooperate with the Nazis, I felt a lump rise in my throat because I was saying goodbye to the whole experience. I’d only been an actress for two weeks, but I felt different, stronger, and more alive somehow. And when I curtsied for my curtain call, I was crying as much as I was smiling, and I didn’t care who saw me or if my eye makeup ran all over my face. After the curtain came down and everyone had hugged, I rushed off the stage and out of my Elsa gear, and I raced to the cast party like the zombie apocalypse had come and I’d been given a ten-minute head start. I had a wish to fulfill, whether I had received the “wishbone” knot or not.
I was out of breath when Spencer handed me a glass of champagne at his front door after introducing me to his boyfriend, Haruki, a super cute boy who went to Boston College.
“You were fabulous, darling,” Spencer said and we executed a perfect Hollywood air kiss on both cheeks.
“As were you,” I said. “Who doesn’t love a man in an Austrian navy uniform?” I asked and he and Haruki exchanged a look of pure mutual adulation.
“Especially a hot Nazi,” Spencer teased whoever had come up behind me.
It was Michael, out of uniform for good and wearing a collared sweater the color of oatmeal under his black wool jacket. Spencer grabbed Haruki’s arm and stepped outside to greet some newcomers.
“I’m a hot Nazi?” Michael asked with evident glee.
“The hottest fascist I know,” I assured him, gasping as he took my hair in both of his hands and shook it out to let it fall. I was surprised his fingers didn’t get stuck because I’d pumped so much hairspray on it to keep it from springing my wig pins.
Snark and Stage Fright (Snark and Circumstance Book 5) Page 19
