The Reckless Club

by Beth Vrabel

  Lilith shifts. “What I did was nothing like what you guys did. It was justified.”

  “Really?” Rex crosses her arms and stares at Lilith. “That’s not what I heard.”

  “Oh, God.” Lilith moans. “Even you heard about it?”

  Rex smirks. “Yeah, finding out someone might have as short a fuse as me is kind of comforting.”

  “Yeah, I heard about this, too,” Ally says. “You freaked out on the Wizard of Oz set?”

  “You don’t know the whole story,” Lilith says primly.

  Jason leans forward. “So fill us in.”

  2:46 p.m.

  LILITH “The Drama Queen”

  “It wasn’t a big deal.” Lilith straightens her dress in front of her. “Really, it’s not even worth talking about.”

  The four of them groan.

  “Come on,” Wes says. “Just spill already.” He crosses his hands behind his head. “It’ll make you feel better.”

  “Yeah,” Ally agrees. “I don’t know why, but I do feel better.” Lilith glares at her. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m…”

  “Ashamed? Horrified? Regretful?”

  Ally snorts. “Yeah. All of those. But also? I… I’m going to call Amelia tonight when we get home.” She nods to herself and then smiles at Lilith.

  Lilith raises an eyebrow, smiling at Jason. “Okay. Your turn.”

  “No, no, no, no!” Wes says.

  “I don’t think so,” Jason adds.

  “Not even close.” Rex laughs.

  “Fine! I got angry. Really angry.” Lilith pulls in a deep breath. “Look, we had been working on The Wizard of Oz for months. You know Mr. Ackins, the drama teacher, right?”

  “Yeah,” Wes says. “He’s awesome. I had him for study hall. He’d let me and the guys sit in the back and talk the whole time.”

  “He’s not a nice guy,” Jason says.

  Lilith stares at Jason for a moment. Then she nods. “He’s the kind of not-nice guy who seems like a nice guy for a long time. So when Pedro put on the Cowardly Lion costume and couldn’t get it to zip, he told him it was all right, that they’d figure out a way to cover the zipper. But when Pedro walked away and someone joked that Pedro could be the Cowardly Lardy instead, Mr. Ackins just laughed. Pedro didn’t hear it, so I guess he thought it was all right, but he…”

  “Isn’t a nice guy,” Jason finished. “He did a lot of that kind of stuff, to a lot of people.”

  Lilith looks down at her lap. “I thought at first that it sort of made him cool, like you didn’t have to censor what you said around him. He was, like, one of us. A kid, too, you know? But then he stopped being cool. At the beginning of the year, when we first started doing theater, I was, like, his person. It was the first year the middle school offered drama as an elective, and his first year as a teacher, and I think he was still figuring stuff out. I… I felt like his assistant or something. But then—”

  “You stopped being in his little club.” Jason twirls his pencil through his fingers. “I noticed that about him. He had little clusters of kids he thought were cool. In study hall, it was you.” Jason nods toward Wes. “I had him for social studies, and he always called on the same four kids, even though they didn’t take anything seriously. But they joked around with him as if he were their buddy. Meanwhile, kids like Barry O’Neal—you know…”

  “Nerds?” Rex says.

  Jason nods. “He’d go from being all smiling and fun to one of those kids and you could just see on his face the, I don’t know, frustration, maybe? His face would go hard. As if he thought it was such a drag that he had to teach those kids, too.”

  Wes leans forward. “Did you guys know he was a Northbrook High quarterback? There’s a trophy case outside the high school gym with his name on it. I saw it when we went for that tour of the high school.”

  “Yeah,” Lilith says. “I think he still thinks he’s a super cool guy at school. Like he’s still in high school instead of a middle school social studies teacher.”

  “He was my homeroom teacher. Me and Jason,” Rex says. “I don’t know how to even say it. It was like he didn’t see me. His eyes just would glide right past me.” She shrugs. “The only time he ever talked to me was when the nurse was doing lice checks. It was the beginning of homeroom, after everyone had settled, and he said, ‘Rex Gallagher, you made it to the nurse for a check, right?’ He said it like he was being helpful, but I was the only one he asked. Everyone laughed. Not a big deal, but still.”

  “I didn’t laugh,” Jason says.

  Ally snorts.

  “What?” Rex says.

  “It’s just, whenever we say ‘it’s not a big deal,’ it’s a big deal. A really big deal. We should stop saying that.”

  Rex smiles. “Anyway, Lilith, keep going.”

  “Well, at some point during that year, I guess he realized that I’m not one of the cool kids. He stopped listening to my ideas. And he scraped all of these plans for making a bunch of little plays and decided we’d only do one: The Wizard of Oz.

  “He made reading the book, researching the original cast, the filmography, the set design, all of it, the whole focus for the second half of the year. It wasn’t until two months before school ended that we began actually rehearsing the play.”

  “Right,” Wes says, “with the actual show supposed to happen the day after the dance.”

  Lilith nods. “The last day of school. From the very beginning, I was Dorothy, of course. It was my role. I was the lead of production the semester before.” Lilith’s eyes narrow and her nostrils flare. “And then in comes Veronica Watkins. Seven weeks before production, she moves in, blabbing on and on about her experience—she was in a ringworm medicine commercial. Ringworm! I was the one who had studied every bit of that play. It was my part. Mine.”

  Rex’s eyes widen as Lilith’s hands curl into fists.

  Lilith takes another deep breath, letting it out super slowly. “She was jealous of me. She turned Mr. Ackins against me.” Lilith brushes some imaginary dust off her shoulder. “I got angry.”

  “That’s not exactly what happened, though, is it?” Wes says.

  Lilith glares at him.

  Jason leans forward. “You said you’d share the whole story.”

  Actors and directors are supposed to be in sync with each other. Directors are supposed to have darlings with whom they love to work—actors that they’ll insist on casting in a starring role if they’re going to take on a particular production.

  Mr. Ackins could’ve been David O. Russell to Lilith’s Jennifer Lawrence. He, along with her therapist, could’ve been the ones thanked during her first Academy Award acceptance speech (her second speech would be just to point upward and mouth thank you, and the third and all subsequent wins would be dedicated to furthering awareness of whichever social or environmental issue was trending). But now? She’d never, ever thank Mr. Ackins, onstage or anywhere. Ever.

  Lilith had worked for weeks to nail “Over the Rainbow,” practicing it and feeling it so deeply that when Dorothy asks “why, oh, why” couldn’t she go over the rainbow, Lilith wasn’t pretending to hold back tears. She was holding them back. She lived and breathed Dorothy for months, even catching herself skipping down the hall on the way to class like she was following the yellow brick road.

  Two months before production—just around when the art team began setting up designs—Lilith practiced the signature song onstage. Mr. Ackins was sitting in the front row, making notes about the set design and laughing once in a while at what the student council kids (who were there to check out the set, too) behind him said. But when Lilith began belting out the song, Mr. Ackins made a phone call. A phone call!

  At the end of rehearsal that day, Mr. Ackins thanked each and every one of the students by name, saying what they had contributed. When it came to the end, Lilith already was beaming, knowing he kept the star for last. But instead, all he added was, “And then, of course, there was Lilith.” He said it like she was a big joke
. Some people laughed while others applauded.

  In the conference room all these months later, Lilith’s heart hammers. She scrunches shut her eyes.

  “I don’t care if people don’t like me. I mean, I’m used to people not liking me. That’s okay. Mr. Ackins didn’t have to like me. But he did have to appreciate what I did—and I was amazing as Dorothy! I was. And he didn’t appreciate it. Not even a little.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” Wes says. “I mean, maybe he let you be Dorothy.”

  “Until Veronica Watkins showed up. And, honestly?” Lilith leans against the wall. “Who moves in mid-March? We had, like, seven weeks of school left! Seven weeks of middle school! Who does that?” Lilith’s jaw grinds. “Veronica Watkins. That’s who.”

  “The cute little blonde girl?” Rex’s forehead wrinkles. “Twinkle Toots?”

  “That’s what you call her?” Jason laughs. “She does look a lot like a fairy, I guess. Like Tinker Bell.”

  “Yes!” Lilith shouts. “She’s tiny and has a sweet little voice, and is so bouncy and bright. You know what? I don’t hate her. I really don’t. In fact, when I saw her, I was excited. She was a perfect Glinda.”

  “Glinda?” Rex asks.

  “The good witch!” Lilith says. “The one who directs Dorothy”—she points to herself—“down the yellow brick road.”

  “Yeah,” Jason says. “The part was open. Since none of the other girls in the production wanted to sing next to Lilith, we were going to have to get a guy to do the part and call him Glen the Good Witch.”

  “Oh!” Lilith says. “You heard about that?”

  “Yeah,” Jason says. He sort of huffs. “I was around.”

  “Oh.” Lilith’s mouth puckers. “I didn’t see you…”

  “I know,” Jason says.

  “Anyway,” Ally prompts. “Then what?”

  “Veronica and I became friends. I took her under my wing, showed her around the school.” Lilith rolls her eyes. “But that didn’t work out.”

  “Why not?” Wes asks.

  “I kept going over the Glinda parts with her, but every time I left the music room, she’d be practicing ‘Over the Rainbow’! I finally just told her, ‘That’s my part. Mr. Ackins told me.’ And then Veronica says”—Lilith’s voice goes super high and syrupy—“‘Mr. Ackins told me auditions were in two weeks and that all parts are open.’”

  “What’d you do?” Ally asks.

  “Well, I went straight to Mr. Ackins, of course. I told him he had to let the rest of the class know that the lead was taken but that auditions would be open for the other parts. He told me I’d audition like everyone else.”

  “That kind of sounds fair,” Rex says.

  Lilith holds her head high. “Yes and I signed up to audition. Like everyone else. The only other person trying out for Dorothy was, of course, pretty, perfect Veronica.” Lilith thinks about how Veronica came in with a cluster of giggling girls and goofing-off boys to cheer her on.

  Lilith’s chin pops up a little higher. “I worked so hard. I was good, like really good.” She swallows. “I nailed the song. For a minute after I sang, no one said anything. Then everyone—everyone—applauded. Even the stupid girls who came in with Veronica clapped. But Mr. Ackins? He didn’t even look up. Not once, during the whole performance did he even look at me.”

  “You were amazing,” Jason says.

  “You were—”

  “Yeah,” Jason cuts her off. “I was there.”

  Lilith mouths thank you to Jason. “Anyway, Veronica was next. She walked onto the stage, and the spotlight did look good on her. I’ll admit it. And she sang. She had to hold the script to get the words right, and she still flubbed a couple lines—like she said dumdrops instead of gumdrops. Little stuff like that.”

  Jason nods. “Yeah, she was okay.”

  “Right!” Lilith slaps her knee. “She was okay. But she wasn’t me. I was better than she was. I’m not trying to be a snob or a jerk. I was better than her because I had worked harder. I knew the part. I went to voice lessons. I earned it.

  “From the side of the stage, I had a perfect vantage point to watch both Veronica and Mr. Ackins. He put down the notebook when she took the stage. He crossed his hands behind his head and watched her with a big stupid smile on his face. When she finished, he turned to the group of kids she had arrived with—the cool kids—and gave them a thumbs-up. But I thought, again, that he was just being nice. There was no way I wasn’t going to get the part.”

  Lilith swallows. “The next day, the list was posted outside the auditorium. I didn’t even have to walk up to it. As soon as I came close, everyone stopped talking. They parted for me like it was a red carpet event or something. And there next to Dorothy’s name was Veronica’s. I ran my finger down the list, seeing where I’d be. I think I was sort of numb. I started thinking about Glinda, about how she’s really the catalyst for the play. She even costars in Wicked, right? And at least I’d still having a singing role. But I never made it down the list to Glinda’s name because I saw it: I was Auntie Em. Auntie Em.”

  “That’s cold, man,” Wes says.

  Lilith swipes at a tear on her cheek. “I’m not crying because I’m sad. I’m crying because I’m angry. Just so you know.”

  Ally’s hand darts out and closes over Lilith’s hand. Lilith sighs and shakes off Ally’s hand.

  “I went to Mr. Ackins right away. I said it wasn’t fair—that I deserved a bigger role. He said it was time to give someone else a shot—that I took up too much space onstage.”

  “Too much space?” Ally asks. “Like metaphorically or something?”

  Lilith rolls her eyes. She shifts a little. “That’s what I thought. But then he, like, looked at me. At my… middle.”

  “But you’re not…” Ally stops.

  Lilith sighs. “I’m soft figured. That’s how I like to think of it. I have, like, hips and stuff. And I like how I look. But if I were bigger, who cares? Who freaking cares? My teacher certainly shouldn’t.”

  “What a jerk,” Rex mutters. She scoots a little closer to Lilith.

  “What did you do?” Wes asks.

  “What could I do? I became Auntie Em. And I was awesome at it.” Lilith looks away. “And, all right, maybe I did take a little pleasure in Veronica messing up her lines. She couldn’t figure out the skip at all. But I never said anything. She even asked me for help a couple of times. ‘Lily, my background is in television,’ she’d say. Seriously! And, being Auntie Em, I gave her tips. You know, stuff like how to breathe during the songs so she didn’t gasp for air in between stanzas.

  “The whole time, Mr. Ackins was so stinking… I don’t know, superior about the whole thing. ‘Oh, Veronica, you’re just a natural onstage!’ and ‘It’s so refreshing to hear a subtle take on these songs.’ It felt humiliating to me and how I’d been trying to perform.”

  “If it’s any consolation,” Jason says, “he also found ways to jab at Pedro and the kid playing the Scarecrow. Mr. Ackins told him to stop trying so hard to portray someone without a brain. I overhead him say, ‘Just be yourself.’”

  Rex winces. “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” Jason says. “Maybe Mrs. Wahlberg can find one of those private school gigs for him next year and trade places.”

  Wes rubs at the back of his head.

  “Anyway,” Lilith says, “a day before the show, we had dress rehearsal. And I think up until that moment, I hadn’t really felt sad about the whole thing. Just angry. Like I felt cheated out of the spot, but I wasn’t hurt all that much. Until that day.

  “I think it was the set. The beginning scenes—with Kansas—were all painted in black, whites, and grays. The cornfield was painted in a way that made it seem to go on forever. That doesn’t even really do it justice. It was sad. Like, the backdrop just had so much loneliness and sadness sketched into it.

  “And then, when the stage became Oz, the magic and wonder… it was just beautiful.” Lilith pauses, trying to thi
nk of the right way to describe what it had looked like. The yellow brick road stretched across the stage. Munchkinland was as bright and cheerful as her baby sister’s first laugh. The backdrop during the apple tree scene—where Dorothy realizes the trees are alive—featured hundreds of tiny glow-in-the-dark eyes that shimmered under the stage lights between long, stretching dark shadows. The Wicked Witch’s castle wasn’t just creepy; it was ominous.

  Lilith looks around the group. Rex, Wes, and Ally are watching her, waiting for her to go on. Jason listens, too, even though his head is ducked under his hand. “I can’t do it justice. Anyone could’ve been Dorothy on that set. I would’ve kicked butt on that stage. But Veronica? Ugh.” Lilith’s fingers curl into fists again. “She couldn’t get through one scene—one scene—without standing in front of someone, stealing their line, or forgetting her own. It was awful. Tickets were sold out, and she couldn’t even remember her lines!”

  “Sold out?” Ally says. “Weren’t tickets free?”

  Lilith ignores her. “Mr. Ackins asked her to practice more, to study the script. He had folks making little cue cards to hold up if she needed them. Totally amateur. Even he, I think, figured out by then that Veronica was more Glinda than main star material.”

  “Glen the Good Witch did a good job, though,” Jason says.

  Lilith shrugs. “He was okay. Anyway, that was Thursday. Our show was supposed to be Friday night. Friday morning, I was backstage helping the makeup crew figure out how to make Pedro a mustache that would match the lion’s mane. I heard Veronica come in, again surrounded by her crowd of friends.” Lilith crosses her arms. “Digression here, but how in the world did she get so many friends so quickly? She’d been there seven weeks!”

  Rex sighs. “Some people are like friend magnets.” Wes smiles full dimple and winks. Rex’s groan dissolves into a laugh.

  “Anyway, she and her friends go backstage, and I sneak away from the makeup crew to hear what’s going on. Veronica goes to Mr. Ackins and says she’s just ‘not feeling it.’ Mr. Ackins tells her she has to do the show; she’s the lead. Veronica tells him that her mom and dad are taking her to meet with a talent agent in Hollywood, and they’re leaving right after school. ‘My future is on the small screen,’ she says. And Mr. Ackins? He wishes her well. Honestly, he says it’s a shame she won’t be in the play, but he wishes her well.”