The Fall Musical

by Peter Lerangis

  Yo, Stavros,

  Hey, cuz. Sup in NYC? Stuyvesant High School sounds cool. Dad is still calling your dad O Adelphos Mou o Leventis. My brother the hero. Sixteen years ragging on each other, and now that he opened a restaurant in Brooklyn Heights he’s a saint. Now Dad points to the $10.95 pot roast special in the diner and tells everyone his brother can get $24 for the same thing . . . “a la carte!” Hey, are your shows as good as ours? Right. Maybe the kids are smarter. Smarter than me, anyway. I screwed up big time at auditions today. I think I nuked a possible perfect stage manager. You’re right, I have a big mouth and I’m a friggin know-it-all. I can tell you that now because I don’t have to see your ugly face laughing at me.

  Oh, by the way, we’re doing Godspell. Can’t wait to get my halo. This will look good on my resume.

  Later,

  Harrison

  6

  CASEY SLAMMED THE DOOR BEHIND HER. THE living room windows shook, but it didn’t matter. No one was home. Her mom was working, and Casey herself didn’t count anyway. She was a nobody, a no-talent.

  What did she expect—just because she had moved away, just because she had changed her name, things would be different? Somehow she’d magically know how to do things right for a change? She would somehow become another person? She was still the same klutz. A bad-luck magnet by any name.

  She stomped upstairs, hoping her heavy footfalls would break through the stairs and she’d go tumbling, tumbling, down into a dark and bottomless rabbit hole like Alice in Wonderland and find a world where everything was turned upside down and inside out. Where the unexpected was expected. The fantasy world she deserved, not the fantasy world of Casey Chang, Normal Girl, which she would never, ever see.

  The headache had started on the way home, in the back of her head. Running upstairs made her temples throb. She flopped onto her mattress and closed her eyes. The bed frame thumped hollowly against the wood paneling, which had been painted white but still made her new room look like a set from The Brady Bunch.

  No matter how hard she tried to block it out, the audition ran like a loop in her head. How could everything have gone so wrong? How could her voice have acted like that, like a wounded bird never quite finding its flight path? And then backstage, where she let herself be used like that! Cleaning up like Cinderella while they laughed behind her back.

  Casey the dud.

  They didn’t know her. They didn’t know what she could do—what she used to be able to do back when she was Kara the class officer, the yearbook editor . . . Kara the Unafraid.

  She groaned. The train of thoughts made her head hurt even more. And now her cell phone was beeping.

  She reached over and pulled it out of her shoulder bag.

  hey everything ok? kc harrison didnt mean it. hes ok, really, just talks tough sometimes . . . txt me, ok?

  It was from Brianna.

  The possible replies ran through Casey’s mind: Leave me alone. I’m pissed at you (true but harsh). Thanks (strong and silent but too cold and mysterious). No problem, it wasn’t your fault, I’m okay (why not just walk all over me?).

  She turned the phone off.

  Dropping it back into her bag, she noticed her laptop glowing dully on her desk. She sat up and reached for the mouse, jiggling it so the screen would come to life. Not one IM. Which shouldn’t have been surprising, considering that she had deleted her old friends from her buddy list the day she arrived here. At the time it had made sense, a part of her master plan to erase the past, but now the deletion seemed like a colossally dumb idea. It would be nice to talk to someone old and familiar. There was only one thing from her past she hadn’t let go of.

  Tentatively she opened a desk drawer. Reaching under a pile of papers, she pulled out a frayed envelope. Her hands shook as she removed a photograph from inside. It was thin and yellowing, cut from a newspaper, and it showed a young, handsome dad and two adorable, smiling kids—a blond, floppy-haired, gap-toothed boy of about seven and a shy-looking girl maybe two years younger. Beneath the photo was a caption that began “Kirk Hammond and Family.”

  As tears filled Casey’s eyes, the photo went blurry. She wondered what would happen if she just disappeared, just wandered into the ocean with rocks in her pocket, or flung herself from the Empire State Building. Would anyone care?

  Her mom would. Really, that was the only reason Casey kept herself from doing anything stupid. Mom cared.

  She tucked the photo into the envelope and shoved it back in the drawer. Falling onto her bed, she began to sob quietly, closing her eyes. No matter how hard you tried, some things never went away. The thought led her into a dream, a dream that was a scattered collage of the day . . . the collision with Dashiell, the awful audition, the tidying up backstage, the insult . . . dud . . .

  Dud-dud-da-DUD-dud-dud . . .

  She was hearing music now, a rhythm. It filtered into her brain and became words, lyrics to a familiar song. “Day by Day,” from Godspell.

  Casey’s eyes blinked open.

  The song wafted in through her window, from outside. The voices were too clear, too raw-sounding to be a recording—soft voices without instruments, a cappella. Real voices. Coming nearer. Breaking into harmony. Clapping rhythmically. A gospel solo broke out over the chorus.

  “What the—?” She sat up and wiped her face with a tissue. Trudging to the window, she flung it open.

  The view was so incongruous, she thought she was in one of those strange states in which you were half awake but still smack in the middle of some whacked-out dream. Below her, dancing on her lawn, were Brianna, Harrison, Dashiell, Charles, and Reese. Dashiell was singing the solo. She knew why he was a tech guy. They all smiled up at her, raising their arms. They looked like a rescue squad, a curiously happy and welcoming rescue squad beckoning her to jump.

  “We’re so sorry, Casey Chang . . . ” sang Dashiell to the tune.

  Casey scraped her fingernail on the windowpane. It hurt. That meant this was real. Didn’t it?

  Harrison, like a fussy orchestra conductor, waved his arms, stopped everyone from singing, and counted off: “One, two, ready, go!”

  “For she’s a jolly good fellow, okay, not really a fellow, but we can’t rhyme too well, oh! Do we have some news for her!”

  Casey winced. Charles was grinning proudly—the bad lyric had to be his idea.

  Charles stepped forward with what looked like a scroll. He unraveled it to the ground, a ridiculous number of loose-leaf pages stapled end to end. “Whereas,” he announced, “we the Drama Club have put our feet in mouth one too many times without watching where we’ve stepped—”

  “Charles, that’s nauseating,” Reese said.

  “Nobody edited this!” Brianna called out.

  “And whereas,” Charles continued, “we have managed, without meaning to, to chase away one of the nicest, most talented, and clear-thinking human beings in our school . . . and whereas, she has, in world-record time, proven said talent beyond a doubt and better than anyone ever seen by the gathered members hereto—”

  “Herewith,” Harrison corrected him.

  “Herewhatever,” Charles said. “We do hereby offer outright, without competition and by acclamation, to Casey Chang the position of Stage Manager of the Drama Club of Ridgeport High.”

  They fell silent and looked up at her with wide, tentative eyes.

  One by one they dropped to their knees. “Please?” Harrison asked.

  “It’s the most important job in the club,” Charles said. “It’s the person who runs everything.”

  Begging. They were begging her to take this job with no experience. At Ridgeport. She wanted to put them on pause for a moment and think. She knew she had to say something. But to say something she had to feel something. Ecstasy, fury, amusement, something. She wasn’t there yet. All of the thoughts raging around in her head and colliding, had somehow managed to cancel one another out.

  “Thanks, guys,” she said, gripping the window sash. “I’ll thin
k about it.”

  7

  “Voilà!”

  Dashiell pointed a remote at the projection booth.

  The stage, which had been bathed in white light, was now still bathed in white light.

  “Okay . . . ” Brianna said tentatively. “And?”

  “Wait.” Dashiell frowned. He took a step closer to the booth and pointed again. “Voilà!”

  “What’s supposed to happen?” Harrison asked.

  “A highly dramatic lighting change,” Dashiell said.

  “Maybe the computer doesn’t understand French,” Charles remarked.

  “Of course it does,” Dashiell muttered. “I thought I’d conquered the learning curve on this new console. Oh well, give me a second. I will return triumphant.”

  “Wait—why do you need a remote?” Brianna called out. “During the show, you stay up in the booth the whole time!”

  “What if there’s a fire, or a gas leak, or some other emergency?” Dashiell called over his shoulder.

  “But—if there’s a fire—” Brianna sputtered.

  But Dashiell was already heading up the aisle, mumbling technical details to himself.

  “Let him be,” Mr. Levin said. “We were lucky to get funding for this new console. Even luckier, they allowed overnight shipping. It’s state-of-the-art. Only Broadway theaters have it better. You know Dashiell. He has to work out every last detail.”

  Brianna nodded, tapping her pencil on her evaluation sheets. The wall clock read 4:08. Seven minutes till callbacks.

  Thirty-two kids were pacing the hallway, waiting, complaining, jabbering nervously. It’s okay, she wanted to tell them. Life will go on. She knew what it was like. In her first audition, freshman year, she had been a nervous wreck. Which was so not like her. Until then nothing had scared her—sports, spiders, the dark, homework, Dad’s brainy professor pals, Mom’s rich Wall Street coworkers with their fright-mask face-lifts. Theater hadn’t been on her radar screen, but Reese had been her best friend back then—and if you were Reese’s friend, you auditioned. For the first time in her life, Brianna was petrified, ill with fear, convinced the Drama Club would throw her off the stage. To her utter shock, they cast her as Chava in Fiddler on the Roof. She actually cried. She was happy in a way she’d never felt before. Her parents’ reaction was weird: You’re so much better than the lead girl, they’d said. That role was taken from you. It took her a long time to realize that they were thinking about “her future.” Lead roles meant something to colleges. “Bit parts” didn’t. You might as well do community service or tutoring or SAT practice—all better college strategies.

  Then came the New York Times article: “Long Island High School Breeds Broadway Babies,” front page of the Sunday Arts and Leisure section, complete with a photo of the RHS’s Fiddler on the Roof. It was instant national fame for the Drama Club—and that, in the eyes of the Glasers, was cool for colleges.

  But Brianna never forgot the feeling. Playing Chava had rocked her world. Everything else in life was about nailing the things that “mattered”—grades, social life, extracurrics. About being perfect. Which she’d learned how to do, with equal parts time, work, and caffeine. But the Drama Club was different. It was a place her parents couldn’t touch. It was hers.

  “Is Casey coming?” Harrison asked, dropping into the seat next to her.

  “She wasn’t at her locker this morning,” Brianna replied. “I waved to her three different times in the hallway later on but didn’t get a chance to talk to her. I wish I understood that girl. I mean, we handed that job to her on a plate. People would kill for that offer.”

  Harrison sighed. “It’s all my fault. Because of my big mouth.”

  “You can’t help it, you’re Greek. You come from a long line of people who shout in diners.”

  “I didn’t hear that ethnic slur,” Harrison said, raising an eyebrow. “Well, she’ll come around. Especially if she knows Kyle will be here.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Brianna asked.

  “You know. She’s a chick. Chicks like Kyle.”

  “Chicks,” Brianna said, restraining herself, “like corn. Chicks like the warmth of hens—”

  “Okay, okay,” Harrison said with exasperation. “Girls.”

  “Now, girls? They like to go to Greek diners, check out the owner’s son, and order the specialty of the house . . . ” A sly grin grew across her face as she balanced her clipboard shoulder height, like a waiter holding a tray.

  At the sight of this transformation, Harrison bolted out of his seat. “Don’t, Brianna. You know I hate that . . . ”

  Brianna puffed out her chest and let out a nasal taunt that had driven him crazy since age nine. “Tseeseborgertseeseborger-tseeseborger-tseeseborger!” she brayed, in the style of an old Saturday Night Live skit about Greek diners.

  There was nothing Harrison hated more than being teased about his dad’s diner. He was in the aisle now, backing away. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I admit, I’m sexist, okay?”

  “Did somebody say sex?” Reese’s voice, from the doorway, made them both turn.

  Harrison whirled around. His mouth hung open.

  “Oh. My. God,” Brianna muttered.

  Reese sauntered in, swaying on high-heeled dance shoes and wearing an outfit that wasted very little fabric. Her hair, brushed to a mirror sheen, hung down to her shoulders. She tossed it back, surveying the auditorium. As she moved, her cleavage took on a life of its own, the main goal of which seemed to be escaping the confines of her formfitting push-up Danskin top. “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.”

  Dashiell was walking down the aisle now, from the booth. “Um, is that allowed?” he asked.

  “They allowed it on the cover of the July Maxim,” Harrison remarked.

  “On that model, the titties weren’t real,” Charles said.

  “Charles!” Brianna gasped.

  Ms. Gunderson was rushing up the aisle, holding out a white crocheted cardigan. “Darling, put this on, please.”

  “I don’t get it,” Brianna said as Ms. Gunderson led a sputtering Reese into the hallway. “That outfit—for Godspell?”

  “It ain’t for Godspell, darlin’,” Charles said.

  His eyes were fixed on the door. There was a twitter of conversation in the hallway, and then in walked Kyle, wearing a pair of denim overalls and a faded RHS football T-shirt. “Dudes,” he said in greeting.

  “My day has begun,” Brianna murmured.

  Harrison sighed. “Chicks . . . ”

  “Kyle, you’re number three,” Brianna called out.

  “Cool,” Kyle said, leaping over the back of a seat so that he landed perfectly on the cushion.

  “That’s an interesting exercise in mechanics,” Dashiell murmured.

  “Don’t try it,” Charles said. “We don’t have insurance.”

  By now, the other auditioners were entering. It felt different from the first day of auditions. Everyone was nervous, but the nervousness felt quieter, less deer-in the-headlights and more focused somehow.

  “People—sign in and take seats!” Charles shouted. “Step right up, don’t be shy! Remember, you’re at Ridgeport High—where just making it this far is winning! I am your temporary stage manager until we find another victim—volunteer!”

  Dashiell scurried back to the projection booth. Harrison checked his copy of the audition roster. Reese stomped back into the auditorium with a cardigan over her outfit, followed by a relieved-looking Ms. Gunderson.

  Brianna kept her eye on the door, hoping to see Casey.

  “‘Amaaazing grace, how sweeeeeet the sound . . . ’” sang Lori, her voice filling the auditorium with a sound that was glorious and huge and warm. And totally wrong for the show.

  “That sounded amazing, Lori,” Brianna said. “Now, please start from the beginning—only pretend that you’re speaking to me in a conversation. I mean, sing, but don’t think about singing. The notes will take care of themselves. Think of the words ins
tead. Like they just popped into your head for the first time. From the heart. So, tell me—what’s so amazing about grace?”

  Lori looked puzzled for a moment. “It’s a religious song. About, like, finding God and being saved? Isn’t Godspell religious?”

  “Right. So, tell me about that sweet sound! What did it do to you? Talk to me.”

  Lori swallowed. She looked a little scared. “It—it saved a wretch . . . like me,” she said, reciting the lyric. “Brianna, this is embarrassing.”

  “Go on . . . ”

  Lori closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Softly Ms. Gunderson started to play. Lori began to sing again, starting in a low, tentative voice full of wonder and tenderness. Her body tipped slightly forward as if in prayer, and her voice grew with emotion. Brianna listened, and this time, all she could think of was yes. She wasn’t hearing Big Voice. She was seeing a joyous girl saved from a life of suffering. The song wasn’t just words anymore. It was a story set to music.

  When it was over, Ms. Gunderson had to wipe a tear from her cheek.

  “Thank you, Lori,” Brianna said.

  She stole a glance at Harrison. He smiled.

  “Amazing,” Charles whispered. “Brianna Glaser. Actress. Singer. Inspiration to the Multitudes. Is there nothing she can’t do?”

  Okay, the technique didn’t always work. Jason Riddick had a sweet voice—but when Brianna asked him to “speak,” he spoke. And then he sang out of tune.

  Reese danced and sang like a star, which surprised no one. She also tore off her cardigan toward the end of her audition, which brought a huge round of applause. And also surprised no one.

  Corbin, who was one of the school’s best singers, looked scared and small onstage—until Harrison called up Ethan to join him. A double audition was completely against the rules, Brianna pointed out. But the two guys were incredible together, singing “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” while doing magic tricks onstage. One point for Harrison.

  When Kyle’s name was called, the auditorium fell dead silent. They all waited, but no one came through the door.