Snark and Stage Fright (24 page)

“Whoa!” he exclaimed, and he did not sound unappreciative.

Because Cameron had stopped so abruptly Michael almost bumped into him. He just stared for a few seconds as I felt my insides squirm like worms in a can waiting to be impaled on a fishhook.

Finally, he said, “Wow—you don’t look like you,” giving Cameron a little shove as they walked past.

Spencer reassured me when I joined him in the wings, “You look like Tippi Hedren. Or Janet Leigh. You know—Alfred Hitchcock-movie blond gorgeousness? Your ex was just slain by your fabulousness.” He, Dave, Gary, and Leigh were more appreciative than Michael, and Diana snapped another picture.

Diana had been right. My total transformation helped onstage; I looked so much like someone else that I couldn’t be myself. It didn’t make me dance any better, but that blond wig made me feel a little more powerful somehow, like there really was “no one quite as wonderful as I,” as I had to sing in my last big scene.

Still, when I was alone in my room at night with all the makeup removed and my own brown hair on my head, I was too nervous to sleep. And I knew that if I tried to draw now after I had sent in my application to the Rhode Island School of Design, anything I put on paper would only make me think that I had no business picking up a pastel crayon, let alone applying to art school. So I dug in my closet and found some knitting needles and yarn from last Christmas when my grandmother had tried to teach me how to knit. I couldn’t remember how to even get the yarn onto the needle to start, but I desperately wanted something to do with my hands so I looked up knitting videos on YouTube and spent a few nights working on the world’s longest and ugliest scarf, with Teeny pulling it apart from the other end as I worked.

As I knit, I kept replaying the sight of Michael gaping at me in my Elsa, Baroness Schraeder costume. He’d said I didn’t look like me. And I couldn’t tell if he had thought that was a good or bad thing. I realized that as happy as I had been to look like someone different, and to pretend to be someone different for a while, I still wanted Michael to like the real me.

***

It turns out that one of the most chaotic spots on earth is backstage at any production on an opening night. My castmates were frantic, running around half-costumed, relieving their nervous energy—apparently as colossal as my own—in quick movements and shrieks and laughs. The only ones who weren’t hysterical were the younger kids who may have been more used to playing make-believe and looked really adorable in their little navy uniforms for the first scenes, especially Andy, who had just lost both front teeth the night before and lisped a bit when he spoke now. I hung out with them until I had to go report to Violet and Brad and Rhonda and get my wig done and face put on.

Ten minutes and a whole lot of spackling and shellacking later, I left the little makeshift hair and makeup studio, transformed into Elsa the Baroness once again. In the hallway, I saw Michael and the guys in their tuxes for the first time and sucked in my breath at the sight. Michael looked distressingly handsome, as if he had been born to wear a tux, as impractical as it would be in everyday life to walk the halls of the school in formalwear. I felt tears threaten my makeup when I realized how beautiful he would have looked if we had gone to prom together last spring—though even now, I was so much happier with what we had done instead of the prom. He had invited me to his house, where he had decorated the pool area with floating candles and water lilies and he had told me that he liked me more than any girl he had ever known before and we had kissed all night long and everything had changed for the better that night. Or so I’d thought. Spencer must have noticed me watching Michael, who was now bowing to and laughing with Diana, because he came up behind me, put a hand on my shoulder, and warned, “Honey, don’t ruin your makeup. You look too good.”

I patted his hand, took a deep breath, raised the hem of my blush-colored satin skirt to keep from tripping, and approached Michael just as he was being pulled into another room by Cameron. Diana was left standing there, looking bereft.

I knew the feeling.

I turned crimson from the tops of my ears to my cheeks as I recalled how stupidly I had stumbled after him that day last spring when he was running in the woods; I’d planted a kiss on him and run away because I had thought then that he was going out with someone else. At least Diana was a good person. She and Michael would make each other happy.

I told her, “You look beautiful. And don’t worry—I’m sure he noticed.”

“Sure who noticed?” she asked as she smoothed out the white Peter Pan collar on her dress.

“Michael. You know,” I said through only slightly gritted teeth, “your
boyfriend
.”

Diana looked startled for a second, then smiled like a jack-o’-lantern. “You think I’m going out with Michael?” She laughed. “We did go out. Twice. But I
told
you that he missed you. But you never did anything about it.” She stopped laughing and paused for a second before saying, as she dipped her head slightly to make her beribboned pigtails bob, “Besides, I have a crush on someone else.”

“Oh
, really
?” I yelped. “Who?”

She rolled her eyes and looked up at me from under her heavily mascaraed lashes. “Your sister.”

“Oh? Ohhhh … Oh. Well, I hate to say it, but Leigh … ”

Diana laughed again, ruefully this time.

“No, not Leigh. Cassie. She’s in my French class.” Diana blushed. “I can’t believe I have a crush on a cheerleader. That’s the oldest cliché in the book, right?”“Yeah,” I blurted out, “if you’re a linebacker,” and immediately I wanted to slap myself. But Diana burst into laughter and soon we were both laughing so hard we bent over and everyone was looking at us, including Michael, who had emerged from wherever Cameron had taken him. He was staring at us both without even trying to conceal it. I felt a pang of pity for him when I wondered if he was missing Diana as much as I missed him. Dave was right. This liking people thing did not make sense. The heart is not a sensible organ.

“Oh my God.” Diana gasped for breath. “I’m going to ruin my makeup.”

“I’ve got eyeliner on my elbow glove now!” I moaned, “Violet will kill me!” And then we started laughing again and people looked at us like we were mad.

Diana noticed Michael looking at us and nudged me with her elbow and whispered, “He looks dashing, doesn’t he? And you still love him, don’t you?”

I looked back at Michael and blurted out, “He’s going to look killer in that Nazi uniform, too. And I never thought that I would, ever, ever, ever want to kiss a Nazi.”

“You two need to talk at the cast party tonight. No,” she amended with the kind of sly look that Liesl von Trapp would never give. “No, you need to
jump
him at the cast party tonight and make him yours again.”

I looked at her and realized that she wasn’t feeling as relieved as I was. I felt like all my emotions of the past few months had been put into a can and were being shaken up like paint at the hardware store. I didn’t know if I was going to laugh or begin projectile vomiting. But I knew Diana was probably feeling more like I had been just a few short minutes ago—hopelessly in love with someone who didn’t want her.

“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing I needed to let her down gently. “But Cassie has been pretty Y-chromosome obsessed since she was in diapers. I wish I could say ‘it could happen,’ but I can’t.”

“Oh, I know,” Diana assured me with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Spencer told me.” She shrugged and flounced out her dirndl skirt. “And maybe that’s the attraction. Maybe right now I just want to crush on someone even if it’s never gonna happen, to just enjoy the fantasy of it. I’m not sure with everything going on with my family and my life right now that I could handle anything else.” She smiled and squeezed my arm. “Unrequited love can be kind of fun, actually. But you need to get yours requited again. Officially. I know for a fact he’s still interested in you.”

I looked back at Michael, but his back was turned to me as he was taking off his suit coat and shaking out his arms, one of those charmingly boyish gestures of his that always hits me in the pit of my stomach.

“What makes you say that?”

“Why do you think I’ve been taking all of those pictures of you in your hot blond wig?” She laughed. “I’ve sent them all to Michael, and he has been appreciative of every one. I’ve been trying to convince him for over a month now to fish or cut bait, as my dad would say.”

“Ten minutes to curtain!” someone yelled.

Maybe I had reached a state of emotional entropy and no other feeling could be added to it without the system imploding. Or maybe talking to Michael seemed comparatively easy compared to what I was about to do in less than ten minutes: go out onstage and sing and dance in front of a whole bunch of people—family, friends, and a whole lot of others who didn’t give a crap about me and might laugh themselves sick at my incompetence.

Either way, I didn’t begin shaking or screaming—or vomiting. I told myself as I walked backstage to wait for my cue that if I could get through this, telling Michael one more time how I feel about him would be a piece of cake. With vegan buttercream frosting.

20 
How Can Love Survive?

Two and a half hours later, I could say that I had gotten through my first onstage performance since I had played an esophagus in an anti-smoking play in third grade. And it felt good.

At curtain call, the lights were blinding, so I couldn’t really make out my parents, or Shondra and Los, or Leigh’s boyfriend Alistair and his parents, or anyone else in the audience, even if I had wanted to. But when it was time for me to take my bow, there was a lot of clapping, and I could hear my dad and mom and Trey and Tori and Shondra and Los and Dave and Gary cheering and whooping. I was so relieved I felt my nerves unwind inside me like a spool of ribbon.

We still had one more performance to go the next day, so the big cast party was to be held the following night, but Spencer organized everybody to meet at Lorenzo’s in town for pizza. I wanted to make sure that Michael and the boys knew about it, so I hurried off the stage and ran to find him before taking off my Elsa gear.

I knocked on the door of their changing room—a cleared janitor’s closet—and called out, “Are you Nazis decent in there?”

Michael answered the door, laughing, wearing jeans now beneath his SS jacket with the swastika and lightning bolts; it was a little unnervingly attractive. And maybe he felt the same way about me, because he stopped laughing and just stared at me, then reached out a hand and touched my wig like it might bite him.

“You look great, Georgia,” he said at last. “But you don’t look like you.”

Ugh, that again. But, remembering Diana’s words, I announced with a dramatic sweep of my hand, “Um, that was the whole idea behind the costume. I’m not Georgiana Barrett, erstwhile activist and vegan avenger. I am Baroness Elsa Schrader, Teutonic goddess,” but my knees were shaking again beneath my ball gown. Now that the small matter of my theatrical debut had been taken care of, I had another challenge before me: getting Michael back.

“Teutonic goddess.” He laughed. Then he bowed, took my hand, and kissed it, saying, “Madam.”

My heart stopped for a second and I started backing away, having forgotten what I had come to say when his lips had made contact with my skin. Fortunately, I remembered right before Cameron came to shut the door.

“Oh, hey, uh, everyone’s going to Lorenzo’s now to celebrate opening night!” I called. “You guys should come.”

“Cool,” Cameron said, and Michael nodded as he shut the door.

I got to Lorenzo’s after Michael because it took a maddeningly long time to get my wig unpinned from my head and to remove the makeup. I don’t know how Lady Gaga does it every day. When I walked in, I was wishing I had worn something nicer than my black turtleneck and skinny jeans tonight. I felt so drab all of a sudden, out of my Baroness bling, but Michael slid down on the bench right away to make room for me.

“Sorry—no vegan cheese here, Georgia,” he said with his crooked smile. “I asked.”

I felt a smile form so big it threatened to break my face, but I replied, “Not a speck of vegan cheese in this whole one-horse town.”

“The town my forefathers founded!” he responded in mock objection. “The town voted one of the most livable in the U.S.—according to a poll sponsored by the local paper.”

“A town your forefathers stole from the natives for a few guns and some milled flour,” I shot back. We kept grinning at each other like idiots while everyone else kind of stared at us like we were on an ill-advised pass from the asylum. But I was too happy to care. I felt like I was floating a little, levitating just above the hard red pizza shop bench. “I can’t eat anyway,” I admitted. “I feel even more nervous in some ways now that it’s over. I guess part of me never really believed I could actually be onstage. But now, in the aftermath—I feel kind of like I’ve been hit by a truck and then electrocuted.”

“You were great,” Michael said quietly, handing me an unclaimed cup of soda. “I was really surprised.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence!” I trilled, and he had the grace to blush a little.

“You know what I mean. I wanted to say something to you earlier at rehearsals about how good you were, but I knew you were nervous and I didn’t want to make you more self-conscious.”

I frowned a little and tied a knot in the middle of my straw wrapper. “Some actress I am! How did you know I was nervous?”

“I knew you were nervous,” he said, “because I know you.”

He smiled and touched the side of my face lightly with one hand. I wanted to grab it and hold it there forever, even if some of my little von Trapps who had come with their parents were watching us. Leila had probably announced to them that I was in the process of stealing Diana’s man, and apparently they all found this wildly entertaining because they were hanging over the back of a couple of booths, staring in anticipation. Leila ran over to Diana’s table for a ringside seat.