by Meg Cabot
But it turns out the director tells them exactly where to move, and even on which word in which line to do it. And how fast. And in which direction.
At least, if that director is Grandmère.
Not that she’s the director, of course. Or so she keeps assuring us. Señor Eduardo, propped up in a corner with a blanket covering him to his chin, is REALLY directing this play. I mean, musical.
But since he can barely stay awake long enough to say, “And… scene!” Grandmère has generously come forward to take over.
I’m not saying this wasn’t her plan all along. But she sure isn’t admitting it if it was.
Anyway, in addition to all of our lines, we also have to remember our blocking.
Blocking isn’t choreography, though. Choreography is the dancing you do while you’re singing the songs.
For this, Grandmère hired a professional choreographer. Her name is Feather. Feather is apparently very famous for choreographing several hit Broadway shows. She also must be pretty hard up for cash if she’d agree to choreograph a snoozer like Braid! But whatever.
Feather is nothing like the choreographers I’ve seen in dancing movies like Honey or Center Stage. She doesn’t wear any makeup, says her leotard was made from hemp, and she keeps asking us to find our centers and focus on our chi.
When Feather says things like this, Grandmère looks annoyed. But I know she doesn’t want to yell at Feather since she’d be hard-pressed to find a new choreographer at such short notice if Feather quits in a fit of pique, as dancers are apparently prone to do.
But Feather isn’t as bad as the vocal coach, Madame Puissant, who normally works with opera singers at the Met and who made us all stand there and do vocal exercises, or vocalastics, as she called it, which involved singing the words Me, May, Ma, Mo, Moooo-oooo-oooo-ooo over and over again in ever-ascending pitches until we could “feel the tingle in the bridge of our nose.”
Madame Puissant clearly doesn’t care about the state of our chis because she noticed Lilly wasn’t wearing any fingernail polish and almost sent her home because “a diva never goes anywhere with bare nails.”
I noticed Grandmère seems to approve VERY highly of Madame Puissant. At least, she doesn’t interrupt her at all, the way she does Feather.
As if all of this were not enough, there was also costume measurements to endure and, in my case anyway, wig fittings as well. Because, of course, the character of Rosagunde has to have this enormously long braid, since that is, after all, the title of the play.
I mean, musical.
I’m just saying, everyone was worried about getting their LINES memorized in time, but it turns out there is WAY more involved in putting on a play—I mean, musical—than just memorizing your lines. You have to know your blocking and choreography as well, not to mention all the songs and how not to trip over your braid, which, since we don’t have a braid yet, in my case means not tripping over one of those velvet ropes they used to drape outside the Palm Court to keep people from storming it before it opened for afternoon tea, and which Grandmère has wrapped around my head.
I guess it isn’t any wonder I have a little headache. Although it’s not any worse than the ones I get every time they cram me into a tiara.
Right now J.P. and I have a little break because Feather is going over the choreography for the chorus of the song Genovia!, which everyone but he and I sing. It turns out that Kenny, in addition to not being able to sing or act, can’t dance either, so it is taking a really long time.
That’s okay, though, because I’m using the time to plot tonight’s Party Strategy and talk to J.P., who really turns out to know a LOT about the theater. That’s on account of his father being a famous producer. J.P. has been hanging around the stage since he was a little kid, and he’s met tons of celebrities because of it.
“John Travolta, Antonio Banderas, Bruce Willis, Renée Zellweger, Julia Roberts… pretty much everybody there is to meet,” is how J.P. replied, when I asked him who all he meant by celebrities.
Wow. I bet Tina would change places with J.P. in a New York minute, even if it meant, you know. Becoming a boy.
I asked J.P. if there was any celebrity he HADN’T met, that he wanted to, and he said just one: David Mamet, the famous playwright.
“You know,” he said, “Glengarry Glen Ross. Sexual Perversity in Chicago. Oleanna.”
“Oh, sure,” I said, like I knew what he was talking about.
I told him that was still pretty impressive—I mean, that he’d met almost everybody else in Hollywood.
“Yeah,” he said. “But you know, when it comes down to it, celebrities are just people, like you and me. Well, I mean, like me, anyway. You—well, you’re a celebrity. You must get that a lot. You know, people thinking you’re—I don’t know. This one thing. When really, you’re not. That’s just the public’s perception of you. That must be really hard.”
Were truer words ever spoken? I mean, look at what I’m dealing with right now: this perception that I’m not a party girl. When I most certainly AM. I mean, I’m going to a party tonight, right?
And okay, I’m totally dreading it and had to ask advice about it from the meanest girl in my whole school.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not a party girl.
Anyway, in addition to having met every single celebrity in the world except David Mamet, J.P. has been to every single play ever put on, including—and I couldn’t believe this—Beauty and the Beast.
And get this: It’s one of his all-time favorites, too.
I can’t believe that for all this time, I’ve been seeing him as the Guy Who Hates It When They Put Corn in the Chili—you know, just this freak in the cafeteria—when underneath he’s, like, this really cool, funny guy who writes poems about Principal Gupta and likes Beauty and the Beast and would like to meet David Mamet (whoever that is).
But I guess that’s just a reflection of how the educational system today, being so overcrowded and impersonal, makes it so hard for adolescents to break through our preconceived notions of one another, and get to know the real person underneath the label they’re given, be it Princess, Brainiac, Drama Geek, Jock, Cheerleader, or Guy Who Hates It When They Put Corn in the Chili.
Oops. Chorus rehearsal is over. Grandmère’s calling for the principal characters now.
Which means J.P and me. We sure have a lot of scenes together. Especially seeing as how up until I read Braid!, I never even knew my ancestress Rosagunde HAD a boyfriend.
Saturday, March 6, 6 p.m., limo on the way home from the Plaza
Oh my God, I’m soooo tired, I can barely keep my eyes open. Acting is SO HARD. Who knew? I mean, those kids on Degrassi make it look so easy. But they’re going to school and everything the whole time they’re filming that show. How do they DO it?
Of course, they don’t have to sing, except for those episodes where there’s like a band audition or whatever. Singing is even harder than ACTING, it turns out. And I thought that was the thing I’d have the least trouble with, because of my intensive self-training in the event I have to perform karaoke on a road trip to make food money like Britney in Crossroads.
Well, let me just say that I have a newfound respect for Kelis because to get that one perfect version of “Milkshake” on her album, she had to have rehearsed it five thousand times. Madame Puissant made me rehearse “Rosagunde’s Song” at LEAST that many times.
And when my voice started to get scratchy and I couldn’t hit the high notes, she made me grab the bottom of the baby grand piano Phil was accompanying me on, and LIFT!
“Sing from the diaphragm, Princess,” was what Madame Puissant kept yelling. “No breathing from the chest. From the DIAPHRAGM! No chest voice! SING FROM THE DIAPHRAGM! LIFT!!! LIFT!!!!”
I was just glad I’d put clear polish on all my nails the other day (so I’d be less tempted to bite them). At least she couldn’t yell at me about THAT.
And choreography? Forget about it. Some people look down on cheerleaders (okay, me included,
except for Shameeka—up until now), but that stuff is HARD!!! Remembering all those steps??? Oh my God! It’s like, “Take my chi already, Feather! I can’t step-ball-change anymore!”
But Feather didn’t have the least bit of sympathy for me—and she had even LESS for Kenny, who can’t step-ball-change to save his life.
And guess what? We’re all expected to show up at ten tomorrow morning for more of the same.
Boris said tonight, as we were all leaving, “This is the hardest I have ever had to work for a hundred extra credit points.”
Which is a totally good point. But, as Ling Su mentioned to him, it beats selling candles door-to-door.
After which I had to shush her, because Amber Cheeseman had been standing nearby!
Except of course J.P. overheard me shushing Ling Su, and was like, “What? What’s the big secret? What are you guys talking about? You can tell me, I swear I’ll take it to the grave.”
The thing is, when you are thrown together for so many hours, the way we’ve all been since rehearsals started, you sort of… bond. I mean, you can’t help it. You’re just in each other’s company SO MUCH. Even Lilly, who has markedly antisocial tendencies, yelled, as we were all putting on our coats, “Hey, you guys, I almost forgot! Party tonight at my place! You should totally come, my parents are out of town!”
Which I thought was kind of bold of her—it’s Michael’s party, really, not hers, and I don’t know how thrilled he’ll be if a bunch of high school kids show up (besides me, of course).
But, you know. It’s an example of how close we all feel to one another.
And also why I felt forced to tell J.P. the truth—that the student government had run a little short on cash to pay for the seniors’ commencement ceremony, and that was why we were putting on Braid! in the first place.
J.P. seemed surprised to hear this—but not, as I first thought, because he was shocked to learn I’d messed up the budget.
“Really?” he said. “And here I was thinking that this whole thing was just an elaborate ruse by your grandmother to sucker my dad into giving up his bid on the faux island of Genovia.”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I just stared at him with my mouth hanging open until he laughed and said, “Mia, don’t worry. I won’t tell. About the money for commencement OR your grandmother’s scheme.”
But then I got all curious, and was like, “Why does your dad want to buy the faux island of Genovia, anyway, J.P.?”
“Because he can,” J.P. said, not looking jokey at all—which, for him, was a first. He almost never seems to look upset or worried about anything—except corn, of course.
I could see right away that John Paul Reynolds-Abernathy the Third was a sore subject to John Paul Reynolds-Abernathy the Fourth. So I dropped it. That’s the kind of thing you learn when you’re training to be a princess. How to drop subjects that suddenly seem to turn uncomfortable.
“Well, see you tomorrow,” I said to J.P..
“Are you going to Lilly’s party?” he wanted to know.
“Oh,” I said. “Yes.”
“Maybe I’ll see you there, then,” J.P. said.
Which is sweet. You know, that J.P. feels comfortable enough with us to want to come to Lilly’s party. Even if he doesn’t know it’s Michael’s party and not Lilly’s.
Anyway, I’ve got more important things to worry about right now than J.P. and Lilly and Grandmère and her diabolical schemes for faux island domination.
Because I’ve got a scheme of my own to put into action….
Sunday, March 7, 1 a.m., the loft
I’m so embarrassed. Seriously. I’m MORTIFIED. This is probably the most embarrassed I have ever been in my entire life.
And I know I’ve said that before, but this time, I really mean it.
I really thought, for a while there, that it might have been working. My plan to prove to Michael that I really am a party girl, I mean.
I don’t understand exactly what went wrong. I had it ALL planned out. I did EXACTLY what Lana said. As soon as I got to Lilly and Michael’s apartment, I changed out of my rehearsal clothes into my party clothes:
—Black tights
—My black velvet skirt (transformed into a mini—the edges were kind of raggedy because Fat Louie kept batting at the scissors as I was cutting, but whatever, it still looked okay)
—My black Docs
—A black leotard left over from that Halloween I dressed as a cat, and Ronnie from next door said I looked like a flat-chested Playboy bunny so I never wore it again
—A black beret my mom used to wear when she was performing acts of civil disobedience with her fellow Guerrilla Girls
—And the water bra. Which I didn’t even fill up all that much, because, you know, I was scared of leaks.
Plus I put on red lipstick and tousled my hair all sexily, like Lindsay Lohan’s when she’s coming out of New York clubs like Butter after just narrowly having missed running into her ex, Wilmer.
But instead of being all, “That’s hot,” about my new look, Michael—who was answering the door as the first of his guests began to arrive, just raised his eyebrows at me like he was kind of alarmed about something.
And Lars actually looked up from his Sidekick as I walked by and started to say something, but then apparently thought better of it, since he went back to leaning against the wall and looking up stuff on the Web.
And then Lilly, who was busy getting her camera ready to film the festivities for a piece she’s doing for Lilly Tells It Like It Is on male-female dynamics in a modern urban setting, was like, “What are you supposed to be? A mime?”
But instead of getting mad at her, I tossed my head, the way Lana does, and was like, “Aren’t you funny?”
Because I was trying to act mature in front of Michael’s friends, who were coming in just then.
And I guess I succeeded, because Trevor and Felix were like, “Mia?” as if they didn’t recognize me. Even Paul was all, “Nice sticks,” which I guess was a compliment about my legs, which look quite long when I wear a short skirt.
Even Doo Pak went, “Oh, Princess Mia, you are looking very nice without your overalls.”
And J.P.—who showed up a little while later, at the same time as Tina and Boris—said, “‘Your beauty would put even the loveliest Mediterranean sunset to shame, my lady,’” which is one of his lines from the play, but whatever, it was still nice.
And he accompanied it with the same courtly bow from the play, too. I mean, musical.
Michael was the only one who didn’t say anything. But I figured it was because he was too busy putting on the music and making everyone feel at home. Also, he wasn’t too thrilled Lilly had invited Boris and those guys without asking him first.
So I tried to help him out. You know, make things go smoother. I went up to some girls from his dorm who had come in—none of whom was wearing a beret or even a particularly sexy outfit. Unless you consider Tevas with socks sexy—and was like, “Hi, I’m Michael’s girlfriend, Mia. Would you like some dip?”
I didn’t mention that I’d made the dip myself, because I didn’t think a true party girl would really make her own dip. Like, I doubt Lana’s ever made dip. Making dip was a bad miscalculation on my part, but not one that was impossible to overcome, because I didn’t have to tell people I’d made the dip.
The college girls said they didn’t want any dip, even when I assured them I had made it with low-fat mayonnaise and sour cream. Because I know college girls are always watching their weight in order to avoid gaining that Freshman Fifteen. Although I didn’t SAY this to them, of course.
But I wasn’t going to let their refusal of dip get me down. I mean, that had really just been an opening to start a conversation with them.
Only they didn’t seem to really want to talk to me very much. And Boris and Tina were making out on the couch, and Lilly was showing J.P. how her camera worked. So I didn’t have anyone to talk to.
So I sort o
f drifted over to the kitchen and got a beer. I figured this is what a party girl would do. Because Lana had told me so. I took the cap off with the bottle opener that was lying there, and since I saw that everyone else was drinking their beer straight out of the bottle, I did the same.
And nearly gagged. Because beer tasted even worse than I remembered. Like worse than that skunk Papaw ran over smelled.
But since no one else was making a face every time they drank from their beer bottle, I tried to control myself, and settled for taking very small sips. That made it a little more bearable. Maybe that’s how beer drinkers stand it. By taking in very small amounts of it at a time. I kept on taking small sips until I noticed J.P. had Lilly’s camera, and was pointing it right at me. At which point I hid the beer behind my back.
J.P. lowered the camera. He said, “Sorry,” and looked really uncomfortable.
But not as uncomfortable as I felt, when Lilly, who was standing next to him, went, “Mia. What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” I said to her in an annoyed voice. Because that is how I imagined a party girl would feel about her friend asking her what she was doing. Unless she was one of those party girls from Girls Gone Wild, in which case she’d just have lifted up her shirt for the camera.
But I decided I wasn’t that kind of party girl.
“You’re drinking?” Lilly looked sort of shocked. Well, maybe more amused than shocked, actually. “Beer?”
“I’m just trying to have a good time,” I said. I was excruciatingly aware of J.P.’s gaze on me. Why that should have made me feel so uncomfortable, I don’t know. It just did. “It’s not like I don’t drink all the time in Genovia.”
“Sure,” Lilly said. “Champagne toasts with foreign dignitaries. Wine with dinner. Not beer.”
“Whatever,” I said again. And moved away from her—
—and smacked right into Michael, who was like, “Oh, hey, there you are.”
And then he looked down at the beer in my hand and went, “What are you doing?”
“Oh, you know,” I said, tossing my head again, all casually and party-girl-like. “Just having a good time.”
