The Juliet Spell (8 page)

“You know,” I said, “I could stay home today. I mean, I could help you two get to know each other better.”

“Then you would not be able to go to tryouts this after.noon,” Mom said.

“Oh. You could lie for me. Just call the office and tell them I’m sick.”

“No. I could not. Eat. Get going. Edmund and I will be fine. I’ll bring him to school on my way to work so he can go to tryouts with you.”

I would have given my right arm to stay home that morn.ing. If I hadn’t needed it to play Juliet. I didn’t hear a word that was said in any of my classes between homeroom bell and AP English, last period. All I kept thinking about was Mom and Edmund. How were they getting along? What were they talking about? And, more than once, what had it been like for him holding my hand last night? I had hardly any time left over to obsess about being Juliet.

I saw Drew in English. It was the only class he and I had together. Drew was in AP everything, and was taking classes at Guadalupe Community College on Tuesdays and Thurs.days.

“Enjoyed meeting your cousin last night,” he said. “Neat guy.”

“He liked you, too.”

“Is he really coming to tryouts?” Drew asked.

“Mom’s bringing him,” I said.

“Cool. Where in England is he from, exactly?”

“Oh, Warwickshire. But he lives in London now.”

“I was wondering about his accent,” Drew said. “Didn’t sound very contemporary.”

“Well, that’s just the way that branch of the family talks. They’re a little old-fashioned.”

“Warwickshire… Shakespeare’s neck of the woods. Is he from around Stratford?”

“Matter of fact, he is,” I said. “How did you know?”

“Well,” Drew said. “It’s just that my mom and I went

there a few years ago, and I didn’t hear anybody with an ac.cent quite like that. Of course we were only there a couple of days.”

“I guess it’s some kind of family tradition to talk like that,” I said quickly. “Most people don’t.”

“Really neat.”

“So are you really coming to tryouts?” I said to change the subject.

“I said I was,” Drew said, as if that settled it.

“What part are you reading for?”

“I’m going to try for Mercutio,” Drew said. “Edmund said he could see me as either him or Friar Lawrence, and I don’t like Friar Lawrence. But I’d better not get it. Not if Gillinger knows what’s good for his show.”

“Why are you reading for it if you don’t want it?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want it. It’s my favorite part. I just don’t think I’d be very good.”

Then the bell rang and we all settled down to another forty-five minutes on the burning issue of symbolism in The Great Gatsby.

When the bell rang again, I practically flew out of my seat.

Tryouts! Yes! Edmund! Yes! Yes! Now!

“See you!” I said to Drew over my shoulder, and ran out to look for Edmund.

Mom was waiting with him in front of the school. She smiled and waved.

“We have had a most excellent day, cuz,” Edmund shouted as I skipped toward them. “We have talked of a world of things. She knows so much.”

“It’s been enchanting,” Mom said. “Of course it started with your enchantment, so that’s only logical. But get this— the hospital called and offered me the day shift. Just like that. No more swing or graveyard after today. I think maybe this guy is good luck.”

“We mended the table together,” Edmund said. “She showed me the manage of the lawn mower, as well. I am to stay and become son and brother to ye.” And he slung arms around Mom and me. “’Tis hard to credit, to lose one fam.ily yesterday and gain a new one in a day. But this place is magical.”

Ah. “Brother.” Not good. On the other hand, Edmund stays. Very good, I thought.

“I knew you’d like him, Mom.”

“Like him? Yeah, I like him,” she said, giving him a hug back. “It’ll be nice to have a little testosterone around the place again.”

“Well, we’d better get to tryouts,” I said.

“We read lines together this afternoon,” Edmund said. “I was Romeo, she was Juliet, and Lady Montague and even Mercutio to me. I was wrong. Women can act. I’d be proud to be on any stage with ye, Ms. Hoberman.”

“Ms.?” I said. “You learn fast.”

“He does. He’s already not the same boy he was this morning.”

Edmund beamed. “If there’s one thing being a player will teach ye, it is how to acquire new knowledge swiftly. Come, sister. Let me show ye what I’ve kenned today.”

“Sister.” Oh, no, no, no, no. Got to do something about that.

“Follow me unto the waiting stage,” I said. “But don’t call me sister. People around here know I’m an only child.”

“Ah, ye’re right,” Edmund said. “I must call ye cuz, then.”

Better than sister at least.

The walk across campus amazed him. He stared at the

thousand students coming and going, laughing and shouting, heading for cars or buses, heading home on foot.

“There are so many of ye, boys and girls together, and so many different kinds and colors. ’Tis as if all Europe, Africa and the Indies have congregated here. There’s been nothing like it since the world began, I vow.”

“That’s basically what’s happened,” I said. “Plus, we’ve got a few other kinds you haven’t heard of yet.”

“And the girls are so lovely. Ye all have all your teeth.”

I laughed because what he said surprised me. But I had no.ticed that Edmund was missing a tooth or two. Fortunately, they were not involved in his smile.

“Lovely,” he said. “Ye are all lovely.”

“Careful, Edmund. Or you’ll have half the school hitting on you. Some of the guys, too.”

“Hitting me? For praising their beauty?” Edmund said.

“Hitting on you. You know—trying to get to know you way better. As in, carnally.”

“It is like London, then,” Edmund said. He smiled, and I wished for a second that his smile did have a few teeth miss.ing where they showed.

We crossed the lobby and entered the sweet darkness of the theater. I saw Drew and Bobby down front, and a couple of other guys that I didn’t already know. There were some new girls there, too. I hoped they were not there to read for Juliet, or that if they were, that at least they couldn’t speak English. Anyway, we had some new blood for Gillinger to shed.

Tanya Blair, the plump blonde senior who was Gillinger’s assistant director, came toward us with her clipboard. “Here. Fill this out quick,” she said, handing Edmund a tryout sheet. Then she leaned her face into mine. “Gorgeous. If he tries to leave, tackle him.”

“Right,” I said.

I handed Edmund my pen and showed him how to click the little button to make the point appear.

He gasped when he touched the pen to the paper and the ink flowed. “If Will had had one of these he’d likely have written six folios.”

But even if Edmund’s pen was modern, his writing was as old-school as it gets. I watched as he filled out the form in a style that went back more than four hundred years.

NAME: Edmund Shakeshaft.

AGE: Sixteen, near seventeen.

EDUCATION: I did attend the grammar school at Strat.

ford.

HEIGHT: near six feet.

WEIGHT: Ten stone and two pound.

HAIR: Yes.

“They mean, ‘What color?’” I whispered.

Edmund added, “Of a reddish hue.”

SKIN:

“What should I put down here?” he asked me.

“Say, ‘Ruddy’,” I told him.

PREVIOUS CREDITS:

“And what does that mean?”

“What other parts have you played?”

So, next to PREVIOUS CREDITS, Edmund wrote “I did enact the part of Wagner in a Doctor Faustus which the Lord Admiral’s Men did present privily to divers gentlemen of worship Martinmas last. I did perform also First Citizen, a Welsh Lord and Second Assassin in Ye Tragedy of Caratacys. Not long ago, I perform’d Doctor Pinch in Ye Comedy of Errors, and smaller parts, as well.” He went on and listed about fifty plays. Toward the end he put “The Tragedy of Ro.meo and Juliet, in which I did enact Juliet. That is all I can recall now, but there have been more.”

“You know Gillinger is never going to believe you,” I said. “No one would believe you.”

“And what is a Gillinger?”

“The director.”

“The what?”

“The guy who controls the whole production,” I said. “He casts it, and tells everyone else what to do. How to act, costumes, lighting, sound. Everything.”

“Mayhap he will not, but I will not put down nothing,” Edmund said. “And your Gillinger can credit it or not. I ask but the chance to read Romeo this day.”

And next to PART(S) FOR WHICH YOU ARE READ.ING he wrote “Romeo.”

He carried the sheet to Tanya.

“Why do ye need such a one as this Gillinger?” Edmund asked, when he came back to me. “In London, we–”

But Gillinger’s voice came booming through the shadowy theater. “May we have quiet please? I want to begin.”

And suddenly a wall came down in front of Edmund’s face. It was like I wasn’t there anymore. He stared toward the stage, alert and tense, like a dog hoping to be taken on a walk.

“I will begin with the new people,” Gillinger said. “Drew Jenkins and—Edmund Shakeshaft—read act two scene four with Bobby Ruspoli. Jenkins, read Mercutio, Bobby read Romeo. Shakeshaft, read Benvolio.”

There was practically nothing for Edmund to do. This bit is all Mercutio’s. Benvolio has three short lines, great stuff like “Here comes Romeo. Here comes Romeo.” And his first line, “Why what is this Tybalt?”

Drew answered:

“More than Prince of Cats, I can tell you. Oh, he is

The courageous captain of compliments. He fights

As you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and

Proportion; he rests his minim rests, one, two, and the

Third in your bosom: the very butcher of a silk button,

A duelist; a duelist, a gentleman of the very first

House, of the first and the second cause. Ah, the

Immortal passado, the punto reverso, the hay–”

Drew was really laying it down. Tybalt is a guy who’ll pick a fight for anything, which was apparently a compliment of some sort. And he’s really good at three things you can do with a sword—the passado, the punto reverso and the hay— all the better to skewer you. The Prince of Cats thing is a joke, the kind Mercutio is always making. In Shakespeare’s time there was supposed to be a Prince of Cats and his name was Tybalt.

I could tell he knew every word of what he was saying, and he was speaking crisply, clearly and unlike a lot of new actors, he wasn’t going too fast.

Good job, dude, I thought. You get it.

But Edmund—Benvolio—was something none of us had seen before in that theater. Something I’d never seen before anywhere. From the time he asked “What is this Tybalt?” it was like Drew and Bobby were ghosts.

I mean, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. None of us could. He almost danced on the balls of his feet. He threw back his head when he spoke. His voice was like a bell ringing against the ceiling and flying out into the darkness. He was smooth as satin and dangerous as a panther. I felt a sneaky damn glow coming into my heart.

They ran the scene up to the place where Juliet’s nurse enters. Today, Gillinger didn’t read her in. He didn’t say “Thank you,” either, the way he always did when actors came to the end of their scenes. Instead, he made Edmund, Bobby, and Drew stand there while he rustled some papers.

Finally, out of the dark came a single barking “Hah!” and he said, “Same scene. Jenkins, read Mercutio again. Ruspoli, read Benvolio. Shakeshaft, read Romeo.”

And they did. And when they were done, Edmund was Romeo and Bobby wasn’t. Everybody in the theater knew it.

The tryouts went on. Gillinger paired different actors, had them swap parts, just like he’d done with Edmund, Bobby and Drew. It was all just the way any tryout is supposed to go. But there was something different in the way Gillinger was acting now. He was interested in what he was doing.

Last of all, he put Edmund together with the potential Juliets, doing the balcony scene. And every one of us was thinking, “O, that I were a glove upon that hand that I might touch thy cheek,” or words to that effect.

Gillinger read all of us, then five of us, then three, then two. And those two were Vivian Brandstedt and me.

I have to say, Vivian put everything she had into it, or ev.erything she could with her clothes on. But Edmund threw her off. She was used to being the one giving the hots, not the one getting them. She even blew some lines. It gave me hope.

When I got up on stage with Edmund, I felt like I was

stepping into an enchanted place. What was real, what was pretend? I was falling for Edmund. Was he falling for me? Then I realized what the enchantment was made of. There was no real, no pretend at this moment. It was all one thing. One thing I could inhabit with everything I was right at that moment.