Snark and Stage Fright (25 page)

I made myself inhale, then exhale, then inhale again and held out an end of the straw wrapper with the knot in the middle to him and said, “Grab the other end.”

“What?”

He looked confused but grasped the wrapper so that the knot was held between us.

“Now make a wish and pull,” I instructed. “Whoever gets the knot on their half wins—their wish comes true.”

He laughed and tightened his grip.

“Vegans don’t have wishbones,” I explained, and he grinned and pulled. The paper ripped in half with the knot on his end. “You win. Hope it was a good wish.”

“It was,” he said with great assurance. “It may need to wait a bit before it comes true, though.”

“Really? Do tell.”

“Nope. This is my first vegan wishbone. I am not going to jinx it by telling what it was.”

We sat for a long moment, just looking at each other, as Cameron chewed his fifth slice of pizza and Todd dared Tatum to sprinkle the dried peppers from the jar on the table onto his tongue. Moments later, Spencer and Leigh appeared beside us, thanking the cross-country team for saving the show by populating it with able-bodied males, and Cameron promised that the entire track team would be there in the audience tomorrow.

“And thank
you
,” Leigh said, hugging me with both her arms around my neck, “for saving the day.”

“I told you you’d be awesome,” Spencer said, kissing my cheek and I swear I saw Michael’s face flush for an instant. “The cast party is at my house tomorrow night after the show. Be there or be square, both of you. It is going to be … epic.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Michael promised, then turned to me as Spencer and Leigh made their way to other tables like newlyweds at the wedding reception. “After all, this may be my only cast party ever, right?”

“I don’t know, Michael,” I teased. “I think you have a real future on the stage as a silent, menacing Nazi. Maybe you could even branch out into film work, in parts like Well-Groomed Partygoer Number Three.”

His teammates laughed at that and he shook his head, saying, “This is the thanks I get for joining the show just to save it for you.”

“For me? Come on. You did it when Diana gave you those big, sad, helpless kitten eyes.” I laughed.

“No. I did not,” he declared with such ferocity everyone stopped laughing. We eye danced for a few seconds and it suddenly seemed very hot in there, like all the pizza ovens had been set to a zillion degrees at once. I looked up to see Diana watching us from the next booth where she sat with Leila on her lap. She gave me a goofy smile and a thumbs-up, which totally confused Leila. Clearly she has even more to learn about the vagaries of romance than I did. “But, speaking of kittens or pets … ” Michael said as he rose and crumpled up his napkin. “My parents are out late tonight and I have to take Harry for a walk before I pass out from nervous exhaustion over
my
stage debut.”

“Oh, well … give him a scratch for me, please,” I said, wondering if he could hear my disappointment.

“You can do that yourself. Anytime.” He pulled on his black pea coat and held up a hand. “‘So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye.’ I will see you all tomorrow night.”

“Later, Michael,” Cameron called and everyone waved as he went out the door.

I watched him walk out to the parking lot and made myself just sit there instead of running after him. I remembered the day last spring, when I had finally admitted to myself that I was pretty much in love with him and had searched the jogging trails behind his house to find him and kiss him. My vegan wishbone wish had been that he would kiss me, but since I didn’t win the tug, it would have to wait until tomorrow. But if I survived another night onstage, I might just chase him again.

***

I don’t know what came over me onstage the next night. Maybe it was a sense of hope or redemption, or maybe my nervous exhaustion had led to temporary insanity characterized by an unusual lessening of self-consciousness. But that night I said my lines and belted out those songs like I was Idina Freakin’ Menzel. I was off-key at a few points, but I plowed ahead, and Spencer even grinned at me, out of character, as I sang my swan song:

As long as I’m living

Just as long as I’m living,

There’ll be nothing else as wonderful as

I!

I sang it like I meant it, and when Elsa had to say goodbye to the captain and the von Trapp kids because she was going off to cooperate with the Nazis, I felt a lump rise in my throat because I was saying goodbye to the whole experience. I’d only been an actress for two weeks, but I felt different, stronger, and more alive somehow. And when I curtsied for my curtain call, I was crying as much as I was smiling, and I didn’t care who saw me or if my eye makeup ran all over my face. After the curtain came down and everyone had hugged, I rushed off the stage and out of my Elsa gear, and I raced to the cast party like the zombie apocalypse had come and I’d been given a ten-minute head start. I had a wish to fulfill, whether I had received the “wishbone” knot or not.

I was out of breath when Spencer handed me a glass of champagne at his front door after introducing me to his boyfriend, Haruki, a super cute boy who went to Boston College.

“You were
fab
ulous, darling,” Spencer said and we executed a perfect Hollywood air kiss on both cheeks.

“As were you,” I said. “Who doesn’t love a man in an Austrian navy uniform?” I asked and he and Haruki exchanged a look of pure mutual adulation.

“Especially a hot Nazi,” Spencer teased whoever had come up behind me.

It was Michael, out of uniform for good and wearing a collared sweater the color of oatmeal under his black wool jacket. Spencer grabbed Haruki’s arm and stepped outside to greet some newcomers.

“I’m a hot Nazi?” Michael asked with evident glee.

“The hottest fascist I know,” I assured him, gasping as he took my hair in both of his hands and shook it out to let it fall. I was surprised his fingers didn’t get stuck because I’d pumped so much hairspray on it to keep it from springing my wig pins.

“You were hot, too,” he said after a few deliciously agonizing seconds. “But I don’t like you as a blond. Georgia Barrett is a brunette, and that is a good thing.” Then he took my hand and we walked into the huge rec room where the rest of the party had assembled, listening to an album by the original Broadway cast of
The Sound of Music,
and singing along with it. Dave and Gary were already there, playing quarters with Gary’s girlfriend, Megan, and her friend Brittany. They applauded when we approached them.

“Best Performance as Mid-Century Eurotrash goes to … Georgia Barrett!” Gary yelled and hugged me like I had just won a real award, adding, “And Best Jackbooted-Thug-Slash-Partygoer goes to Mr. Michael Endicott!”

Michael bowed but refused to give a speech despite Megan’s urging. As the quarters game broke up and people started dancing, Michael and I sat on a long sectional leather couch and watched. I was so glad to see Leigh on the dance floor with Alistair, looking so beautiful and happy, and then Brittany coaxed Dave to join Megan and Gary, and they started pogoing and things got really crazy. But Michael and I stayed in our corner of the couch, perfectly content. I felt like I had champagne bubbles in my veins.

“So what role do you want to take on next?” Michael asked as he ran the back of his hand against my cheekbone. “Something dramatic, like an Ibsen play? Or maybe play Ophelia, since you love her, as I recall.”

I did recall—I recalled our impromptu debate about
Hamlet
in English class last year. It probably marked the moment when we had both stopped “squabbling” so much, as Tori had put it, and really started to listen to—and respect—each other. The first moment, maybe, when we really understood each other.

“Shut up. I was a last-minute replacement and I looked like it. But it was fun. It was really … I don’t know. It was good to be outside of myself for a while, to force myself to open up some more.” I bit my lip and looked him in the eyes that were so close to me right now. I wanted to speak carefully for once; I wanted him to understand. “Tori says I spend too much time assuming what people think of me and then making a defensive joke that only ensures that they
will
think the worst of me. And she’s right.” I hoped he couldn’t tell that my hand, lying next to his, was shaking like the rest of me; it occurred to me that the shaking might be internal, though, and not visible to the naked eye. I wanted so much to say everything right, but, knowing that was impossible, I surrendered with, “I’m so sorry I messed everything up between us. If I could do it over again, all of it, but especially that last night—”

“Shhhh,” he said softly. “You don’t have to say that. And you don’t have to be sorry.”

“But I have to stop protecting myself, like I’m some fortress to be defended at all costs, especially against the things I want. The people I want … you … ”

His forehead bent to mine, his lips so close I could tell he had recently had an Altoid mint, and asked, “What did you wish for last night, on the vegan wishbone?”

“It doesn’t matter.” I sighed, “I didn’t win.”

“Maybe you did,” he said, cupping my chin with three fingers, “if we both wished for the same thing.”

“I wished—” I began, as Todd, who’d played Max, suddenly collapsed onto the couch, laughing about something, and Tatum from the cross-country team grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back up, and then they were both laughing. I felt really disoriented all of a sudden, like I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and no longer knew where I was.

Michael’s face darkened for a second, then he took both of my hands and asked, “Do you want to dance?”

I just nodded and let him lead me away.

Spencer put on a slow song, Paramore’s
The Only Exception
, just as we made our way to the dance area, so we got to hold each other and sway and it felt as good as it did at his cousin’s wedding and better than the first time we’d ever danced, at the Harvest Ball almost exactly a year ago. It got even better when he started humming into my hair.

“You should go out for the spring musical,” I said, resting my head on his shoulder.

“I think my time on stage is done for a while.”

We danced until he started kissing my neck and my heart beat faster and I stopped him and stepped back.

I knew this risked breaking the spell, but I had to ask, “Does this mean we’re okay?”

“Let’s talk,” he said, and he took my hand and started for the front door and my heart was pounding even harder because what if we weren’t okay and for some reason he just thought it would be nice to make out at Spencer’s party for a while. In the front room, he helped me into my coat, then stopped and said something to Leigh, and she nodded vigorously and grinned at me as she waved goodbye. He led me to his car, opened the passenger’s side door for me, and gestured for me to get in. He climbed in and turned on the heat because it was starting to snow a little. I remembered sitting in his car while the snow fell last New Year’s Eve, when he had saved me from a drunken hookup with Jeremy Wrentham. It was the beginning of our friendship—and everything after.

“I don’t think I could try to be just your friend again,” I admitted as I looked out through the windshield at the big fat flakes falling like frozen stars, leaving perfect little patterns on the glass. “I’ve tried really hard to be your friend,” I said, “to work on that project together and to be chill when I thought you and Diana were such a happy couple. Because she seemed to make you happy. She didn’t complicate your life like I did.”

He took both of my hands between his. He said, “Georgie, you didn’t complicate my life. You opened it up. Without you pushing me gently to do stuff like walk onstage in a tuxedo or eat seemingly inedible things or wage war against our oppressors—” He paused and smiled for a second. “I would never do any of those things. You open me up. You make me better, more adventurous. We do work together, better than we do apart. And as for Diana and me—we went out twice. I did it mostly because I wanted to feel like I was moving on. Like I was getting past us.”

“You needed to get past us?” I marveled, and I started crying; he pulled me into his arms and held me, stroking my hair.

He said, “I wanted us to leave the party because I need to apologize,” he said, “and I want to be sure I do it right, so I thought we should be alone.”

“What are you apologizing for?”

He frowned and I could tell he was forcing himself to speak carefully by the way his eyebrows formed a little V of concentration as he said, “That night we … broke up, I was really hurt. Hurt and humiliated and angry.”

“I know, I know!” I started to wail, but he put a hand on my lips, very gently.

“But it was my fault, too. I should have known you weren’t a hundred percent ready. And that that stuff with Catalina was making you anxious, even if she didn’t matter at all. But when things … fizzled out, I was angry, so I said I wanted to take a break.”

I nodded, rubbing my thumb over the black buttons on his coat. I said, “I understood why you needed a break. Really. After all the stupid things I did, all the ways I embarrassed you in front of your family. Geez, I wish I could take a break from myself sometimes, too.”

He stopped my hand and squeezed my fingers slightly.

“I was never embarrassed by you. And after we were back in Longbourne, when I was kind of over the initial shock,” he began with a rueful grin, then a pause. “ I … God, I hate to admit this. It’s pretty awful.” He slumped forward as if he had been punched in the spine, so I reached out a hand and rubbed his back a little until he sat upright again. “I was still angry enough, I guess, to want to punish you for making me feel bad. So when you came to me at Cameron’s party and said you were sorry and you missed me, I just turned off every feeling I had for you. It was mean, I know, and it wasn’t the truth of how I felt, but I did it. And when Diana’s mom kind of pushed us into a date, I went, because she’s been a friend and I thought it would be good for me to move on. And by the time I was finally over myself,” he said with a smirk at his own expense for once, “it was too late. You were going out with Dave. So I just suggested we work on the history project so we could at least work together again.”