by Daryl Banner
And it was at that totally normal small-town Texas college that I met him, the muscular, tatted bad-boy who would soon become my obsession.
His eyes smoldered me with just one look. His touch awakened the woman inside me. His breath drew out the inspiration deep in my soul that I did not know was there.
And through his lips, his perfect, plush, kissable lips, I would find my voice at last … the voice that would someday fill a New York City stage, the voice that would set me apart from my tragically perfect family, the voice that would finally break me free …
If only he could hear a word of it.
CHAPTER 1
DESSIE
“I can’t hear you!”
The noise that fills the courtyard of the Quad is deafening. Families bustle about carrying belongings to the dorms. A group of frat boys play Frisbee, their shirtless torsos sweaty and lean. A guy shouts orders from a window up above to his parents below, who can’t make out what he’s saying. A circle of girls chant some sorority thing over and over nearby. Two dudes who look like they haven’t bathed since Daylight Savings began stand on the rim of a fountain with guitars as they serenade the masses, their lyrics lost in the cacophony of shouting and laughter.
And standing before all that mess is little excited me, a heavy bag hanging at my side, a massive case of luggage-on-wheels by my feet, and a phone pressed to my fast-reddening ear.
“What? I can’t hear you!” I shout again. “Mother?”
The call cuts off. I stow my phone away in a pocket. Besides, the whole reason I’m here is to get away from my nauseatingly arty, weird, fame-whoring family. “Please,” I begged my mother two months ago when she was between photo shoots. “All I want is a normal college experience. I don’t want the expensive schools and the private lessons and the pretentious crap.” To that, she hiccupped, raised her martini glass, and sweetly replied, “Doll, the Theatre world is pretention.” It was my father who caved and said he knew a person down in Texas who could pull a string or two to get me into a school this late in the summer.
And here I am—and excitedly so. This is it! I only have a battlefield of frat boys and Frisbees to wade through before I’m safe in the comfortable confines of my very own dorm room.
“What do you mean I don’t get my very own dorm room?” I ask half an hour later when I’ve finally made it to the front of the line at the reception desk.
The woman stares at me over the thick rims of her glasses. She’s clearly had a day.
“I’m supposed to have my own place,” I explain, all too aware of the line of anxiously waiting people behind me. “A condo, some upperclassmen suite, or … or my own dorm room at the very least. I spoke with a Betsy … or Bettie? Bridget? And she said I would get my own room. I’m sure it’s just a mistake.”
“Priority living arrangements are reserved for upperclassmen. Not for incoming freshmen.”
“But I’m not an incoming freshman, Donna,” I explain, trying my best to lean over the counter so that I don’t have to shout. These people should have offices; the whole line can hear every word of our little chat, I’m sure. “I’m a transferring sophomore.”
“It’s Diana. Are you new to Klangburg University? Then you’re a freshman in our eyes. Current students get priority. If you wanted solitude, you should have rented an apartment on Periwinkle Avenue.”
“In this neighborhood??” I hiss back. My bag has become so heavy, I let it drop to the germ-infested floor. “Listen, I … I really don’t mean to cause a big scene, but—”
“Of course you do. You’re an actress.” She slides a key and a slip of paper across the counter. “Theatre major, right? I could smell the drama a mile away. You’re in West Hall, room 202. Your roommate’s a Music major. Name, Samantha Hart. Go make yourself a best friend.”
A Music major? Great. I’ll have to contend with a roommate who gives blowjobs to an oboe all day long. Is the AC in here broken? I pull my hair over a shoulder and off of my neck as beads of sweat populate my forehead. First lesson: Texas weather is Hell’s weather. “She sounds lovely. Listen, Diana, I—”
“Oh! ‘Listen,’ you say. What a novel concept.” Diana the Desk Demon snorts. “You keep telling me to listen, but it’s you who doesn’t hear a damn thing I say. The rooms were assigned months ago. You even got your room assignment in the mail.”
“I didn’t. I haven’t gotten any…” But even as I say the words, I picture my controlling mother pulling the mail from the box and not giving a care in the world about anything addressed to me. I bet it’s even my mom’s email that’s in the school database, not mine, because she controls everything about my life. “I understand your desire to run away to a faraway ‘normal’ college,” mother told me this morning over cups of peppermint tea, just before I left for the airport. “You’re scared of New York, doll. You’re a guppy in a world full of sharks. Your sister—now she’s a shark.”
If there’s anything worse than being called a guppy, it’s being compared to my insufferably perfect sister Celia—or Cece, as she insists on being called. She gets cast in leading roles. She’s as beautiful as a princess and annoyingly well-read. She always has handsome, adorable, sexy boyfriends at her side. It’s not that I’m jealous; I love my sister. But sometimes I wish I was the one who scored a leading role now and then. I wish I was the one with a hot guy hooked to my arm at some gala my parents drag me to.
I’m not the one guys stare at. It’s always her.
Surprisingly, my sister has nothing to do with my current predicament. Maybe my roommate will turn out to be cool, or have parents who bring us home-cooked delicacies, sparing us the frights from the campus kitchens. What do normal college kids eat? Maybe we’ll have lots of Easy Mac and Ramen. On second thought, that sounds like a carb nightmare.
“Thank you,” I murmur to my new best friend, Diana the Desk Demon, and take the key.
“It’s been a pleasure,” she mutters back, sounding like it’s been anything but. “There’s a freshman mixer in the courtyard at seven. Good day.”
I’m not a freshman! But I keep the words to myself and lift my bag once again, heading for the door. The second I’m outside, three shirtless boys nearly topple me over in their effort to claim a rogue Frisbee, which I end up catching midair to prevent it from giving me an unintended nose job. I hand the disc to the nearest one, trying not to stare at his lean, sweaty torso. Pulling my luggage along, I cut through the noise to the West Hall, a slate-grey building in the shape of an L that forms one of the four corners of the Quad and seems to be the liveliest of them all. Its heavy door bursts open the moment I approach, releasing four loud freshmen and a worried set of parents. I wonder if they’re taking bets on which of their children will contract dorm room herpes first.
I step inside only to mourn an onslaught of stairs before me. Enlisting the strength and dexterity from my basic combat training in New York (or rather, stage combat training), I choreograph and execute a one-woman routine of dragging my suitcase up five steps, sliding it across the narrow landing, then up eleven more. Arriving at the second floor, I squeeze past a crowd of guys guffawing at a spilled box of soda cans two paces from my room, 202. They’re daring each other to open a can when I make it to my door, ready to reveal my college dorm room to my eager eyes.
The door swings open, revealing two beds, two dressers, and two desks. The smell is hundred-year-old musk and even older mildew. The bare walls, pocked with scratches and holes, are the color of a rash my sister got once that she made me swear never to tell anyone about. How adorable. The bathroom appears to be a small chamber of doom that connects to the neighboring dorm, suite-style.
I smile. No one in the world would recognize it as one, but it’s there. My college experience is going to have to include sharing a bathroom with three other girls I’ve never met. In a bleak room that’s just short of padded walls.
I fight a rare urge to call my mother and demand that she give me a bigger allowance and allow me the mer
cy of getting an apartment like any other twenty-two year old adult. Then, I gently remind myself that this is what I wanted. No privilege. No personal chefs. No driver who takes me around town. No ritz and glitz. No fancy cocktails. Just a fixed allowance and meal plan like every other student.
For once, a normal life among normal people doing normal, college-y things.
I have a sudden craving for this gourmet lobster bisque that only my mother’s chef Julian makes.
Focus, Dessie! Piece by piece, I unpack my suitcase and hang each article of clothing in the tiny closet, which is a quarter the size of mine at home, leaving one half of it empty for my mystery roommate. Then, I sit on the bed I’ve made up with my new sheets and feather pillow I brought from home. It creaks happily under my weight. I listen to the noise in the hallway of families moving their kids into their dorms, the sound of laughter and banter and shuffling furniture and boxes reaching my ears and vibrating the walls.
My parents told me to call them when I was all moved in. I prefer that they presume I’m lost or dead. So caught up in mother’s performance in London next month, I doubt they’ll even give me a thought until well into my father’s fourth glass of chardonnay when he finally looks up from his lighting design charts to ask, “Did we hear from Dessie yet?”
It’s already almost seven, so I push myself off the bed, freshen up in the bathroom mirror, and spritz myself with a light scent. I pray there’s more than just freshmen at this courtyard mixer. When I open my door, I’m greeted with the sight of the room across the hall, its door propped open. Scarves of varying shades of purple adorn the ceiling in bilious clouds of silk, giving the room the look of a 16th century gypsy’s tent. A lamp burns orange on the desk within my view, which is littered in glass trinkets that pick up the light. It is night and day from the starkness of my room to the glamour of hers. Beads line the closet door, and they rattle when the room’s occupant moves through them carrying a thin book pinched open in one hand and a bottle of lemon vitamin water in the other.
She turns, spotting me. “Hi,” all eighty-nothing pounds of her says lamely, her tight braids dancing with her every step as her needle eyes focus on me. She stands at her doorway. “You’re living in 202?”
“It seems to be my tragic situation,” I admit. She’s reading a play, I realize with a closer look. She’s a Theatre major, too. Befriend her, damn it! I give a subtle nod to her décor. “I like what you’ve done with your—”
“I have a lot of reading to do, if you don’t mind.” She gives me a curt nod, then taps the rim of her playbook with the closed end of her vitamin water.
“As Bees In Honey Drown?” I note, catching the title off of the cover. “I played Alexa in Brendan Iron’s production in New York last spring.”
“New York, you say?” A light flashes in her eyes. “You don’t look like a freshman. Are you a transfer? New York? Where in New York?”
Now I’m suddenly worth her time. It’s amazing, the power of a simple name-drop. I discreetly leave out the fact that it was less of a production in New York and more of a botched audition. “I’m a transfer from Rigby & Claudio’s Acting, Dan—”
“Acting, Dancing, and Musical Academy,” she finishes for me. The whites of her eyes are ablaze, deepening the rich color of her smooth, mahogany skin. “And … you transferred here? What brought you from there to … to here?”
A fierce vision comes forth of my former director, Claudio Vergas himself, as he hollers at my indignant face, flecks of his morning coffee dusting the stage floor between us. It was the first time he’d ever lost his temper enough to throw his favorite mug. I can still hear the porcelain as it shattered against the lip of the stage. I didn’t even flinch. I lifted my chin and called him a stiff-necked, pretentious, know-it-all panty-wad. It was not my best moment.
“Artistic differences,” I answer vaguely.
“New York,” she moans, all her childhood dreams of being in the limelight painted across her glassy eyes. “I’m Victoria,” my new best friend says, shoving the script under an arm and extending her hand. “Victoria Li. Third year Theatre major. Don’t call me Vicki. I have violent reactions to being called Vicki. I’ll cut a bitch. But not you. Unless you call me Vicki.”
My phone in one hand, I accept her handshake with my free one. It’s cold as ice. “I’m Dessie.”
“Great name. I love Desiree Peters. Her portrayal of Elphaba on the last national tour of Wicked had me in tears. I have her autograph on my CD soundtrack and the playbill which I, of course, framed. I had to stand by the stage door afterwards for forty-eight minutes in ten degree weather. Worth it.”
“It’s not short for Desiree,” I clarify. “It’s short for … for Desdemona.”
Victoria stares at me. “As in Othello’s Desdemona?”
Hurray for having Theatre parents. “That would be the one. Anyway, it’s almost seven already, so I was going to head to the mixer. Are you going?”
“It’s not until eight,” she tells me, leaning on her doorframe and taking a sip of her lemon water. She’s suddenly so much friendlier than she was a second ago. “How’d you hear about it?”
“I was told it’s at seven. Well, according to Diane the Desk Demon,” I add with a roll of my eyes.
“No, no. Eight o’clock at the theater.”
I lift a brow. “There’s a Theatre one?”
“You thought I meant the fishbowl? No, honey. You’re coming with me,” she states. “You’re new here, and you don’t want to get lost on this big ol’ campus after dark, end up somewhere on fraternity row, and get robbed … or worse. Can’t trust a frat boy for anything. It would not be a lovely way to spend your first evening here.”
“It’s really that bad here?”
“This campus is the pillow on the bed between two bitchy ex-lovers: the rich neighborhood full of snobs to the north, and the have-nots and gunshots to the south. Campus security is a joke, but it does exist. Remember, safety in numbers! So, we’ll leave in thirty. Hey, where’s your roomie?” she asks suddenly, craning her neck to get a look.
“Not here yet, I guess.” What the hell kind of crime-ridden so-called normal college did my father send me to down here in Texas? “School starts the day after tomorrow, so she might come in tonight, or—”
“Or not at all,” she points out. “Sometimes, there’s a last minute transfer or change of plans. My friend Lena had a room all to herself last semester.”
“Don’t get my hopes up.”
My phone buzzes. I look down to see my mother’s headshot staring up at me, all glamorous and ready to blink at the flashing cameras. I slap the screen to my chest, unwilling to chance whether or not Victoria knows who she is. I’m not ready for a firestorm to be caused by anyone figuring out whose daughter I am.
“Mommy and Daddy?”
“Something like that,” I admit, still chokeholding my phone into submission.
“You were spared the company of my parents by about five minutes. No one wants to see a black woman and a tiny Chinese man arguing.”
“Oh, you’re half-Chinese?”
The phone keeps vibrating against my chest. I continue to politely suffocate it.
“He’s my stepdad, but I call him Dad since they married when I was two. My bio dad took off.” The phone stops buzzing. She notices and offers me a wistful smile. “Looks like you’re safe for now. See you in thirty, Des.”
She disappears into her room. A green voicemail notification pops up on the screen of my phone. I swipe it out of existence and, inspired suddenly, I text Randy, my one and only friend that I kept in touch with from that creatively stifling elitist academy. He’s a deliriously gay playwright my age, who I desperately wish I could’ve brought to Texas with me. He might be the only regret I have about leaving that cruel, snobby school. I text him, asking how he’s doing and why I haven’t heard from him. Then, I stare at the screen and excitedly wait for him to answer.
I’m still waiting half an hour later when Vict
oria knocks on my door to go.
The walk is far less scary than she made it out to be. From the dorms, the School of Theatre is just a stroll past a large courtyard and fountain, through a tunnel over which the Art building squats, beside the University Center itself, and around the tall, glass-windowed School of Music where I imagine the corpse of my mystery roommate to be buried.
The School of Theatre is a giant red block of a building with a three-story tower jutting out from its rear like the tail of a threatened scorpion. The front is a row of glass teeth, punctuated at either end by double doors that read: Theatre, Dancing, Excellence.
As we approach the doors, for some reason I can hear the bottles of my parents’ champagne popping off at some ritzy cast party in my mind, mocking me. I hear mother’s cold words to me all over again, the ones she said when I first came home after quitting Rigby & Claudio’s: “You’re simply not ready for the stage, doll. You’ll find your spotlight someday.” I hear my father’s: “A good actor listens before she speaks. A better actor only listens.” Whatever the hell that means.
When Victoria doesn’t lead us through the front glass doors, I make an observation. “The lights are all out. Do we have to wait for a member of faculty?”
“Oh. No, honey. This isn’t a faculty-organized thing. The seniors do it at the start of every year. There will be booze. I’m fairly sure that some faculty know about it, but they pretend not to. Only certain underclassmen are allowed to attend.”
“Which underclassmen?”
She gives me a knowing smirk. “The ones that matter.”
The side door is propped open, a pool of light touching it from the parking lot. There’s a guy leaning against the wall amidst a cloud of smoke generated from that cancer stick in his fingers. Shaggy haired, skeletal, and looking like he lives under a sheet of cardboard on Bleecker street, he regards me with heavy-lidded eyes and a nod. I’m about to greet him when Victoria steers me into the side door and whispers, “That’s Arnie. He’s a prop rat, hates life, and I’m pretty sure he’s stoned out of his mind twenty-five hours a day.”
