The Fall Musical

by Peter Lerangis

  “Lori was in tears,” Harrison said. “She could barely speak. She kept defending them, telling me not to be mad, saying it was all her fault for leaving the script around.”

  “I say we march over there and pull her away,” Brianna said. “Bring a TV news crew if we have to. Make them look like Neanderthals in public. They don’t own her. She’s a senior! She’s eighteen!”

  “Sixteen,” Charles corrected her. “She skipped fourth grade, and her birthday is in November.”

  Mr. Levin was pacing back and forth. “We’re not going to win this battle,” he said. “Look, people have different religious beliefs. This is America. If the parents say no, and the child obeys their wishes, there’s not much we can do. And I know those parents. They do not yield.”

  “Oh, please . . . ” Reese murmured.

  “It’s the biggest female part in the show!” Casey piped up. “We can’t go on without her.”

  Mr. Levin exhaled heavily. Harrison couldn’t see the expression behind the glasses. “Yes, Casey. You’re right. We can’t.”

  Harrison’s cell phone was still in his right hand. He only now realized how tight his fingers had closed around it. His knuckles were white. He had the urge to throw it, to smash it against the wall, then grind the pieces to silicone dust beneath his shoes. This was beyond belief. All the hours, the days of preparation, the songs and lines and comic bits practiced to perfection, the friendships cemented and nearly lost, the gleaming Cyclone fence and hand-sewn vests—wasted!

  He looked up into a circle of pallid, stunned faces. Charles had one arm around Brianna and the other around Dashiell, whose glasses were starting to fog up. Casey had begun to cry, and Kyle was pounding his right fist into his left hand.

  “I—I was really looking forward to this,” Harrison said.

  “I’ll make a cancellation announcement for whoever is still in school,” Mr. Levin said. “Casey, can you get out an e-mail blast to the parent list, with a high-priority flag?”

  Casey nodded. Wiping her eyes, she turned toward her laptop.

  “Maybe when Lori’s parents see that,” Charles said, “they’ll come to their senses.”

  But Casey’s fingers hovered motionlessly over the keyboard. Slowly she shut the top. “I’m not going to send an e-mail.”

  Harrison looked at her blankly. “You think we should do a phone tree?”

  “We can’t do a phone tree,” Mr. Levin said wearily. “There’s simply not enough time and too many families.”

  “I think we should go on,” Casey said simply.

  The place fell silent.

  “Um, Casey?” Harrison said with a weary sigh. “Let’s be real.”

  “Brianna knows the part,” Casey declared.

  Brianna’s face drained of color. She stared at Casey, stunned.

  “Brianna has never done the part,” Harrison said.

  “She’s been watching every rehearsal,” Casey said. “She has a photographic memory. She’s been singing these songs since she was a little girl, and she’s seen the movie . . . how many times, Bri?”

  “Seventeen,” Brianna said softly.

  “What do you say, then?” Casey asked.

  Everyone stared at Brianna, who swallowed hard. “I—well, yeah. I mean, I do know the lines, I think . . . ”

  “Yyyyes!” Kyle shouted, pumping the air with his fist.

  “Wait a minute!” Mr. Levin said, shaking his head. “We rehearsed Lori for weeks—blocking, lines, songs. Curtain is at seven-thirty. It’s four-thirty now. We would have three hours to do what we did in all those weeks. The idea is noble but impractical. Brianna, you are supremely talented, but—”

  “Three hours.” Casey held up her clipboard and began writing. “The lines and blocking in the spoken scenes are most important. We’ll run them first. I can skip chunks of dialogue where Lori has no lines, and we’ll cut to cues. Songs are not as important because Brianna knows them cold. We’ll call the orchestra in after the dialogue and run Brianna’s solo, then a cue-to-cue only on all the other songs, to save time. I figure if we can stay on task and stagger the dinner break, we’ll be done before half hour at seven.”

  Reese’s jaw dropped. “Wow. Did you just think of that?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Harrison said.

  “If Brianna says she can do the role, she can,” Dashiell said.

  “Charles, what about the costumes?” Casey asked.

  Charles eyed Brianna carefully. “Here a dart, there a dart, everywhere a dart, dart. Easy enough.”

  “Please?” Reese said. “Please please please please please please?”

  “What do you say, Greg?” Ms. Gunderson asked.

  Mr. Levin took off his glasses and mopped his brow. With a grim expression, he looked at the wall clock.

  “I say, skip dinner and start from the top.”

  Never say never . . . . If at first you don’t succeed, you weren’t trying hard enough. . . . A baseball player who fails to get on base seven times out of ten is still a star. . . . Brianna had lived by those rules all her life.

  She was an idiot.

  “Hold still!” Charles said, his teeth clamped around pins as he hemmed a pair of jeans she was wearing.

  Vijay was fiddling with her hair. “Lori had the ponytail. But it’s the wrong hair color now.”

  “Screw the ponytail!”

  “But the people from the shop will be in the audience, and they’ll expect to see it,” Vijay said. “They didn’t charge us for it.”

  “Then you wear it!” Charles snapped.

  “Brianna? You have a line here!” Casey said.

  If Charles hadn’t put a tight flannel shirt on her, Brianna’s heart might have burst from her chest. How could she recite lines with the Charlettes pinching and pulling and touching, Casey watching her like a horse trainer with a stopwatch, and the cast members speeding through lines as if on fast-forward?

  “LINE!” she screamed. “Give me the line!”

  She thought she knew them. She could picture Lori saying something. But it was as if Lori had stolen the words and taken them home with her. Photographic memory? Forget it.

  Mr. Levin jogged onstage and gave the script to her. “You don’t need a prompter, Brianna, you need this. Look, even if you have to hold it during the performance, it’s okay. I’ve seen professional actors do it in last-minute emergencies like this. Audiences are very forgiving. They root for the underdog. You’ll probably get a standing ovation.”

  Oh, right, Brianna thought. She can’t do the job, so we bank on the sympathy vote. Using a script in a performance was pathetic. Like doing the whole show with a rip up the back of your costume. “Thanks but no thanks,” she said.

  Casey raced to her side and took her by the arm. “Take the script,” she said firmly. “It will calm you down. You know more than you think.”

  “This was your idea, Casey—”

  “And it’s a good one. You’re going to save the day.” As Casey headed back into the wings, she shouted to the other actors: “Say the lines at the normal speed, guys. Act like it’s a performance and take it from the top!”

  Brianna obeyed. She read directly from the page. Her eyes would instinctively dart ahead, over the familiar dialogue. Somehow, seeing the lines made a huge difference. It was like digging them out of a deep hiding place. By the end of the dialogue run-through she was maybe 70 percent off-book. Which may have been great for a baseball player, but it still sucked for an actor.

  “We have to move on,” Casey said. “We’re running ahead of schedule, though, so I’ll run lines with you after we do the songs. Dashiell, are you set with the lights?”

  “Roger,” came Dashiell’s voice from the booth.

  “Musicians, take it from the top!” Casey commanded. “ ‘Day by Day’!”

  As the five-piece band started, Brianna cleared her throat. This was the biggest and most famous number in the show. Lori always nailed it each time.

  “ ‘Day by daa
aay . . . ’ ” Brianna began.

  She sounded like Prince in his squeaky phase. She could barely get above a whisper, no matter how hard she tried. Her long extended “daaaaay” sounded like “deh.” “Death” without the “th.”

  “It’s too low!” she finally shouted in the middle of the song.

  “You sound fine,” Kyle said.

  “That’s because you’re right in front of me!” Brianna said.

  “Dashielllll!” Casey shouted. “Turn up the body mike!”

  “It’s as high as it’ll go!” he replied. “We’ll blow out the system.”

  “Let’s just try it again,” Ms. Gunderson said. “Band? One-two-three, one-two three . . . ”

  The music began. Brianna wanted to explode. This wasn’t going to work.

  “Stop!” she shouted. “STOP! This was the worst idea ever.”

  Barely holding back tears, she stormed off the stage.

  23

  “BRIANNA!” CASEY CALLED OUT, HER VOICE dying in the dry autumn night air. “Brianna, stop!”

  She was out of breath when she caught up to her on Porterfield Avenue. “Are you okay?”

  “Did you e-mail the parents?” Brianna snapped, not breaking stride.

  “No,” Casey said as she tried to keep pace.

  “Then it seems you have a job to do.”

  “Come on, Brianna. Look, you were good. So good. I know you can do it. You’re a total pro.”

  “A professional moron.”

  “What is it? Are you comparing your voice to Lori’s? It’s different. Yours is just as fun to listen to. I thought the rehearsal was going well.”

  “Well, I think I suck,” Brianna said. “This wasn’t my idea, it was yours, Casey. You got us into this mess, and if I were you, I would not want to be responsible for an audience full of parents showing up when there’s no show on account of religious reasons!”

  “Brianna, I don’t think you can do a great job, I know it. Okay, so maybe you won’t be one hundred and two percent perfect, but who is? Kyle is still figuring out his right foot from his left. Do you think anyone cares? This is such an opportunity, Brianna. You thought you couldn’t act because you were student directing. And now? You can save the show. You can prevent everyone’s work from being wasted. Your picture will be on the Wall. No one will ever forget this, Brianna. Especially me.”

  Brianna stopped and looked right into Casey’s eyes. “I live for this club. I have since long before you got here. When it looked like we had to fold, and you suggested I do the role, I agreed for the sake of the group. I tried to pull this show out of a hat. I put my ass on the line, and I have every right to take it back. I know when I can or can’t handle something, Casey. I know who I am. And if you know who you are, you’ll get out of my face and be a responsible stage manager.”

  Casey wasn’t expecting that. She felt suddenly short of breath. “Well, I guess we’re very different people,” was all she could think to say.

  “We are different, Casey.” Brianna’s face was fiery red. “I like things out in the open. I like it when my friends know everything about me. I don’t like it when they do things behind my back.”

  “Behind your . . . ?” Casey had to reach deep inside for this one, to switch gears from the play. This was about Kyle. The play was on the line, and they were out here arguing about Kyle! “Um, Brianna, do you think I tried to steal Kyle from you? Do you think Kyle cares about you anyway? Or me? No offense, Brianna, but he doesn’t. Not either of us. Just Reese.”

  “Duh. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though, was it?”

  “Do you really want to know what happened between Kyle and me? Because I’ll tell you right now—”

  “Spare me the details. This is more than just about Kyle, Casey. It’s about hiding things. And keeping secrets. About not letting in the people who care about you. It’s always been about that, Casey.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me, Casey. I’m not stupid and I’m not blind. What are you hiding?”

  Casey took a deep breath. She looked up the long expanse of Porterfield Avenue toward the front of the school, an absurdly grand columned entrance to a boxy building that looked empty and desolate.

  She looked at her watch. Six thirty-five. Her cell phone was vibrating. This was pushing it.

  “Okay,” Casey said. “You’re right. I do have a few things to tell you.”

  “Make it fast. It’s cold out here.”

  “First of all, I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Casey said. “Second of all, my name isn’t Casey . . .”

  Harrison watched Kyle lope around the stage, making ape noises, then drop to the floor and do thirty push-ups at breakneck speed, then leap as high as his ankle allowed a few times. This was followed by a repeated nasal “Meow meow meow meow . . . ” starting in a falsetto and traveling down the scale into the lowest bass range of his voice. Harrison had taught him all these exercises during the rehearsal process, but he’d never once seen Kyle doing them.

  The truth was, Kyle didn’t need the exercises. He was doing them because he was nervous. He didn’t need that either. His life was about to change, big-time, and he wouldn’t know what hit him.

  Harrison brushed some lint off his costume and adjusted the suspenders. Everyone else was running around like crazy, crying and jabbering and shaking and whispering into one another’s ears. Reese had pulled her top down over her right shoulder so Charles could smear it with Tiger Balm, nearly exposing her breast and angling herself for the maximum attention to that detail. The ointment made the whole place smell like a locker room.

  In a moment it all faded to nothing.

  Mr. Levin was in front of the curtain. Harrison could hear him tapping the mike and saying, “Testing, testing.”

  He felt a sharp pinch on his butt and didn’t have to turn around to know it was Reese. He slapped at her hand blindly, without looking, and made contact. Good reflexes.

  “Ow,” Reese said.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Levin announced, “I want to thank you for coming out on this cold night. I have an announcement to make. I wish we could have told you earlier, but we found out only this evening. Unfortunately, Lori Terrell cannot be with us tonight.”

  There must have been a lot of kids in the audience, because Kyle could hear them murmuring their disappointment.

  “Instead,” Mr. Levin went on, “her role will be played by Brianna Glaser.”

  A smattering of applause filtered in before Mr. Levin shouted, “So let’s give it up for Godspell!”

  For a moment Harrison felt as if something were completely wrong. Like he couldn’t breathe and his arms were numb. Like if he moved, he would crumple to the floor as if he’d been sacked by the entire defensive line of the RHS football team. “Breathe,” he heard Brianna whisper behind him. She emerged from the darkness, smiling, and squeezed his hand. At the opposite side of the stage, he could see Charles shooting everyone a thumbs-up with one hand and wiping his eyes with the other.

  They were feelings he had before every show. He smiled. It was right.

  The music began, and Harrison felt a palm clasping the back of his neck. “I kick left first?” a familiar voice asked. “In ‘All for the Best’?”

  “Right first,” Harrison whispered. “Right.”

  “Right,” Kyle said. “I’ll never remember it.”

  “Well, break a leg, brother,” Harrison said as he stepped forward onto the stage. He hit his mark, a blue masking-tape X on the floor, as the curtain opened and a spotlight set him ablaze.

  24

  HE WAS A PHENOMENON.

  Not just good. Not just talented.

  He seemed to suck energy from the walls and give it back a thousand times. The audience ate him up, cheering his every entrance.

  For all the impressive stuff Kyle had done in rehearsal, nothing had prepared Harrison for being onstage with someone like this. The pressure of performance did something
to him. It was hard to compete with, but God was it fun.

  “Places for ‘All for the Best,’ ” came Casey’s voice from backstage.

  Harrison braced himself. He had taped his shins in advance. Kyle’s eyes, crisp and confident until that moment, flickered with uncertainty.

  Harrison caught a glimpse of Charles and the Charlettes, all holding hands backstage as if in prayer.

  Sure. They didn’t have to worry about injury.

  The music began, and the two guys sang their verse. Kyle’s voice was robust and clear. Together they hopped onto the platform, and Kyle shot him a panicked glance.

  Great. Kyle was “up.” He had blanked out on what to do.

  Harrison panicked. He was singing—he couldn’t tell Kyle where to kick. Why couldn’t he remember this? Harrison would have to indicate some other way, with some other part of his body.

  Eyes. Wink with the eye on the side of the body where the leg should kick.

  In the middle of the verse, Harrison winked with one eye. Kyle nodded imperceptibly.

  And Harrison realized he had winked left.

  Out came the hats. And the canes. Harrison desperately tried to get Kyle to look at him again. He couldn’t fall in the middle of this number. Not on opening night.

  “And ... kickline ...” Reese mouthed from backstage.

  Harrison kicked right. He closed his eyes instinctively. Brace . . . just brace . . .

  Applause welled up from the audience. And Harrison noticed his shin felt fine.

  Kyle was doing it. Kicking right. Swinging his cane left and kicking like a friggin’ Rockette!

  They swung and kicked and sang like clockwork, and at the end of the number they fell into each other, arms around shoulders, tipping their hats in grand vaudeville style. The crowd roared and made them take two bows.

  “We did it!” Kyle said as they lowered their heads together. “Woo-HOO! Thanks for that wink.”

  Harrison smiled and kept his mouth shut.

  “ . . . the light of the world!”