“No talking!” Nevin commanded. Who knew my tormentor would become my savior? Because listening to Drew talk on top of this physical punishment was cruel and unusual. And apparently I already had a misaligned body to deal with, which was difficult enough.
“Fifty sit-ups!” Nevin barked once the push-ups were complete.
Groaning again, we rolled onto our backs. Would this never stop? When they called it Bard Boot Camp, I didn’t really expect Boot Camp! Luckily, the Push-Up King declined to comment on my sit-up form. I looked over to see Amy hastily wipe away an errant bead of sweat from her brow. Rhys’s bangs were flopping so madly they were almost creating a breeze. At this point, I would readily have welcomed an actual breeze.
“And now, we stretch,” Nevin announced, to great relief from the group. “I will guide you through your first sun salutation.”
Okay, now I could really relax. Because my mom’s a yoga teacher, I was practically doing Warrior One before I could walk. She runs her own studio in Weehawken, called Yogabooty, of all the embarrassing horrible things to call a yoga studio. But at least it meant I could let my mind wander as we went through the poses. I looked across the circle and Heidi was beaming so brightly there was practically light emanating from her grin. At least someone was happy. Unlike Drew next to her, who was having so much trouble maintaining the poses he was sweating, wobbling, and cursing under his breath. Tsk tsk. Not very yogi-esque.
As we moved into Downward Dog, I looked through my legs to see a group of guys about our age in Town Square staring at us. Hmm.
“Amy.” I transferred my weight to my right foot and kicked her gently with my left. “Amy,” I whispered again. She turned her head to look at me. “Look through your legs,” I whispered, darting glances at Nevin to make sure he didn’t hear us. Luckily, he seemed particularly absorbed in his Downward Dog.
“Ooo.” She looked behind us. “Who are they?”
“No idea,” I answered.
“They look cute upside down though!” she whispered enthusiastically. “What are they holding? Are those … skateboards?”
“Hey! Hey you!” Nevin shouted suddenly. I zipped my lips, bracing myself for a telling off. But the telling off wasn’t for me. “You guys get out of here! This isn’t a free show! This is our rehearsal space! OURS!”
“Hey, bra, relax!” one of the guys behind us called out. “Just enjoying the sick view!”
“Now, see here—”
“Of the lake, man, of the lake!” the guy yelled back as his friends laughed. “Lake belongs to everyone, yeah?”
“If we have even so much of a hint of trouble from you skate camp hooligans this year,” Nevin threatened, “don’t think I won’t hesitate to—”
“Dag, bra, easy!” the guy called back. “We’re on our way out, donut shop. No sweat.”
In one fluid motion, they hopped on their boards and skated away. I realized suddenly that I was the only person left in Downward Dog and hastily scrambled to a sitting position. Rhys was leaning forward eagerly as if he were watching a play, while Amy was posing, trying to show her most advantageous angle. Noah leaned back, his face tilted up toward the sun, as if he hadn’t really paid attention to any of that. Heidi sat in lotus position, lips pursed, while Drew kept mumbling something that sounded like “donut shop.”
“All right,” Nevin sighed heavily. “Let’s form a circle onstage. And let’s hope that’s the last we see of those skaters,” he added in an undertone, as all of us, including Langley, sat in a circle. Everyone was misted with a light coat of sweat except for Nevin and Langley, who was smirking in a self-satisfied manner.
“Who were they?” I asked curiously.
“Who cares?” Drew said.
“Woe to us all, there’s a Skate Camp at Lake Dunmore every summer.” Nevin shook his head. “Little snots shipping up for the summer to wreak havoc on the Skate Park at Camp Dunmore, under the asinine tutelage of, quote-professional-unquote skaters. They are a plague as deadly as the locusts and boils of Egypt.”
Wow. That seemed a little harsh.
“But forget them,” Nevin began again. “Now that we’ve exhausted our bodies, our minds are clear. Welcome to Circle Time.” He tried to smile, but it looked more like a grimace.
“Like in preschool?” Drew asked, aghast.
“Like in Vermont’s only professional outdoor summer Shakespeare Theater that you should be honored to be part of!” Nevin bellowed. Drew looked down, slightly chastened. Although, again, that was an awful lot of qualifiers. “Each morning,” Nevin continued in a much gentler tone, “we shall begin rehearsal with Circle Time and an emotional check-in, where you will be free to air your thoughts and concerns, and to check in with yourselves and the group.”
More psychobabble. When were we ever going to start rehearsing?
“I have a question,” Amy raised her hand. “I don’t know if it’s emotional, but it’s a concern, I guess.”
“Speak your mind,” Nevin instructed her.
“The, um, Internet doesn’t work in the house? And there’s no cell service here? And I kind of feel like I should call my parents?” Despite Nevin’s best efforts to seem gentle, Amy practically cowered under his goateed grimace.
Oh, right. Parents. Well, my mom was more of the forge-your-own-destiny school of thought, so unless I called to say I’d lost a limb, I knew she’d assume I was fine. And I didn’t think dear old Dad, over in Pleasant Hills with Steak House Heather, either needed or particularly wanted an update. Quite frankly, I had no desire to contact either one of them. And now I didn’t have to worry about them attempting to contact me. Beautiful. Out of sight, out of mind. Just like I’d wanted. I’d have a blissful summer of Green Mountain solitude, then make my official escape to Rutgers in the fall. Which would technically send me right back to New Jersey, but there would be a crucial forty minutes between me and the parental units.
“The Internet will work if you sit on top of the freezer in the kitchen,” Nevin replied.
“That’s the only place?” Amy asked.
“The only place,” Langley confirmed, raising her eyebrow. “Let’s hope no one here has rich, fulfilling, MMORPG lives they’ll be suddenly and brutally forced to abandon.”
“Enough with the MMORPG, Langley.” Nevin sighed heavily. “A new router is not in the budget.”
“The MM-O-what?” I asked.
“Massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Obviously,” Drew explained, irritation evident in his voice. “I thought everyone knew that.”
My cheeks flushed. I didn’t know that. God! How was I expected to know all the acronyms? This was like that time I didn’t know how to pronounce meme, but worse. Because the way Drew explained things just made me feel like the dumbest idiot alive. I wished I could blend into the scenery like a chameleon. Or shoot spikes out of my body like a porcupine. Actually, that would be much better. Drew would probably benefit from a good porcupining.
“Anyone else?” Nevin asked.
Rhys raised his hand. “I’m really emotionally concerned about how sweaty I am.”
“Invalid,” Nevin dismissed him.
“You can’t invalidate someone’s emotional circle time!” Heidi gasped.
“Next!” Nevin prompted.
“I am extremely emotionally concerned about the invalidation of someone’s emotional concern!” Heidi’s hand shot back up in the air defiantly, her gray eyes flashing with indignation. “You can’t set up an emotional safe space and then construct parameters about which feelings are valid and which aren’t. Doing so destroys the safe space!”
“No insubordination during Circle Time!” Nevin yelled.
Drew slumped over with his hand on his mouth, like he was trying to suppress something. Amy sat silent and tense, white-lipped.
“Now, now, now,” Noah drawled, placing a soothing hand on Heidi’s back and rubbing it slowly. I could see her visibly relax as he touched her, her breathing coming smooth and even. Then again, I c
an’t imagine how anything with a pulse wouldn’t relax when getting a back rub from Noah. He had the kind of hands that made me think he played guitar. Very, very well. “Why don’t we all just center, focus, and see if there’s anything we really want to talk about.”
“I have a problem with my room,” Drew broke in after a few moments of silence, un-slumping. “It doesn’t have a bed.”
“Bullshit,” I coughed.
Drew glared at me. I coughed a few more times for effect. You know, really selling that cough that just happened to sound like “bullshit.”
“I was promised a single bedroom,” he continued. “And it—”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Why do you get a single? That’s not fair.”
“Trust me, we don’t mind,” Rhys exaggeratedly stage-whispered to me behind his hand.
“I have very bad allergies!” Drew contested hotly.
“Sure you do,” I said dryly. “Allergies. Why exactly does that preclude you from sharing a room?”
“Because … because of allergies!” he insisted. “I’m allergic to feathers. And dust. Dust mites. Dust motes.”
Well, that didn’t answer my question. At all. I still wasn’t buying it. I opened my mouth to respond, and—
“A mote it is, to trouble the mind’s eye,” Langley declaimed before I could say anything.
“You have your single.” Nevin held up his hand for silence, completely ignoring Langley. “What’s the issue?”
“It’s not a bed. I was promised a bedroom. Emphasis on bed. I have a cot. A rollaway cot.”
“Are you joking?” My jaw dropped. “What do you think the rest of us are sleeping on? Bald Mountain Boat House isn’t exactly the Four Seasons.”
“No. Invalid,” Nevin shook his head.
“Wait a minute—”
“You can’t just invalidate—”
As Drew and Heidi started talking at the same time, Nevin picked up his bugle and played a single earsplitting blast.
“Can we start rehearsing this damn thing now?” Nevin asked, lowering the bugle.
“Finally,” I sighed.
“Preach it, sister,” Langley agreed.
“Everyone! On your feet for vocal warmups!” Nevin ordered.
As we worked our way through various exercises, hitting the consonants with explosive precision on the tongue twisters, filling our diaphragms with air to exhale on vowels, long and loud and clear, I could feel myself start to come alive as my voice did, rich and round and strong.
Now, time for my favorite one. Shaking out the jaw! I clasped my hands together in front of me and shook, keeping my jaw loose, as my teeth chattered in my head.
“Actually, Nevin?”
“Yes, Drew?” Nevin sighed. I could tell his patience was wearing thin.
“That’s not the optimal way to loosen your jaw. You’re all doing it wrong.” Oh were we now? Were we all doing it wrong? It was only day two, and I was already so tired of being corrected by this smug know-it-all. “If you grasp the bottom of your chin, it’s much more effective. Like this.”
He demonstrated. He looked insane, but it’s impossible to look sane and shake out your jaw.
“Thanks, Drew,” Nevin said flatly. Wrong. Hmph. I’d shake out my jaw however I damn well pleased.
“Uh, Heidi,” Drew interrupted again.
“Mmm?” She paused mid-shake.
“That’s still wrong. You’re not letting your jaw relax enough to really keep it loose.”
“I’ll keep working on it. Thanks.” She smiled wanly. Whoa! That was as close to frosty as I could possibly imagine Heidi being. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one Drew was getting to with his know-it-all ways. Even the supremely serene Heidi was having her patience tested. God, if Heidi was having problems working with Drew, then there was no hope for me. No one had ever called me serene. Or patient.
Once our voices were limber and warm, Nevin instructed us to sit again. “Now, this is the point where we’d have a read-through of the script in a normal rehearsal process,” he began, “but since you all came to Dunmore off-book—as you better have done, or woe to you”—he glared at each of us in turn—“we shan’t be simply reading today.”
“If you’re not off-book, we’re not opposed to corporal punishment,” Langley piped up cheerily.
“Well put.” I had the feeling that although Langley was kidding, Nevin wasn’t. “So we’re having a script-less read-through. A non-read-through.”
“A line-through?” Amy asked.
“NOT A LINE-THROUGH!” Nevin thundered as Amy quailed in fear. “What I mean by that”—he cleared his throat—“is don’t just recite the lines by rote. Explore them. Enjoy them. Start testing the theatrical waters. Understood? Begin.”
Heidi closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She began, her voice ringing out over the valley:
“Gentlemen, importune me no farther,
For how I firmly am resolved you know;
That is, not bestow my youngest daughter
Before I have a husband for the elder.”
Before I knew it, Rhys was delivering my cue line, as one of the suitors imploring Baptista (a.k.a. Heidi) to marry my sister Bianca (a.k.a. Amy) despite Baptista’s best efforts to get someone to marry Kate (a.k.a. me). I took a breath, and with as much sass as I could muster, I said:
“I pray you, sir, is it your will
To make a stale of me amongst these mates?”
And we were off. Everyone knew their lines perfectly, and as we progressed, the show got better and better as everyone relaxed. The only surprises came when we discovered that in addition to company managing, Langley was playing a few of the minor roles, including Bianca’s suitor Gremio. Hmm. I wondered what the hell they were going to do with that hair. That definitely wasn’t a hue they’d had in Shakespeare’s day. And the biggest surprise of all came in Act One, Scene Two, with the introduction of Drew as Petruchio. And as much as it pained me, I had to grudgingly admit that he was good. Really, really good. Dammit.
Although, the only thing worse than him actually being good would have been if he was insufferable and sucked. I could put up with insufferable if it meant I got some quality acting in exchange.
We flew through the script. I was enjoying myself so much that I was almost surprised when we reached the end and Noah said wryly, “’Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tamed so.”
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
CHAPTER 6
Well done.” Nevin stood up and finished his slow clap.
“Oh, well done,” Langley echoed. “I commend your pains, and everyone shall share in the gains!”
“The gains she speaks of are lunch,” Nevin added. “We’re taking an hour. Langley will point you in the direction of feed, and I expect you back promptly in sixty minutes for Bard Boot Camp: the Text Session!” Fire blazed in his eyes. “Dismissed!”
Nevin turned and went out the way he came in, through the arch. Maybe he lived back there. Like a troll under a bridge.
“Come on, peeps.” Langley stood up. “I’ll show you to the Bait ’n’ Bite. There’s a deli inside.”
“What else is there?” Drew asked.
“You know, regular grocery stuff, pretty decent ice cream … there’s a pizza parlor annex….” Langley started walking, and we followed.
“No, I mean, what other options are there?”
“That’s pretty much it.” She shrugged.
“Our only option is the Bait ’n’ Bite?” He sneered, like the words tasted bad in his mouth.
“You’re no longer in the big city of … Rye,” I said dryly. Was he too good for sandwiches? Who didn’t like sandwiches? What a prima donna.
“It’s still New York,” he muttered mulishly as we followed Langley down the road.
When we approached the Bait ’n’ Bite, a couple of familiar-looking figures were draped over the porch in front of it.
“Amy.” I sidestepped over t
o poke her. “Are those—”
“The skater guys.” Her eyes grew round.
“Biblical plague,” Drew sniffed.
“Where you’re concerned, a few boils might improve things,” I said sweetly.
“This is ridiculous. You can barely make it up the stairs,” Drew grumbled, pushing his way through the skaters and marching up to the Bait ’n’ Bite.
“Hey, easy, homes!” one of the skaters called as the rest laughed. I was pretty sure it was the same one who had talked back to Nevin.
Langley, Rhys, Noah, and Heidi followed in Drew’s wake. Amy and I hung back slightly, slowly approaching the stairs. Clearly, we were both thinking the exact same thing: it was time to make contact.
“So, what are you?” the same skater addressed me, eyes raking over my Camo T-shirt. “You Girl Scouts, or something? Cuz I’d take some cookies.”
“We’re a little old for Girl Scouts, don’t you think?” I said tartly.
“Duuuude, watch out.” Another one with enormous, lengthy dreads leaned forward. “This one’ll schralp you!”
“Oh my God, is that a rat?” Amy squeaked, pointing to dreads-guy’s shoulder. Sure enough, there was a furry little creature perched on his shoulder.
“Easy, Betty, it’s a ferret,” he explained, as the ferret dove into his dreads. Gross.
“Oh, uh, it’s Amy, actually,” she corrected him.
“Well, Amy, I’m Taylor.” The first guy who spoke tipped his hat up farther as he introduced himself. “This is Ferret. Behind me are Skittles, Thiago, JJ, and Ragner.”
Each waved in turn. They were an interesting bunch. Skittles was swallowed up by an enormous splatter-paint hoodie, Thiago’s hand-knitted cap was pulled so low you could barely see his eyes, JJ was shirtless, and Ragner was blonder than Amy.
“Hei hei.” Ragner smiled. “Meget hyggelig.”
“See this guy, Betty?” Taylor slung his arm around Ragner’s shoulder. “He’s, like, the Prince of Norway.”
The Taming of the Drew Page 5
