Encore Edie (14 page)

She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and a light jacket. I have my green hoodie for her to put on later.

“Did you solve for
x
, Edie?” Ms. Cray, my math teacher, says, looking over my shoulder.

I tell her not yet.

“Nervous?” she says.

I say, “Yup.”

She smiles. “We’re all looking forward to this afternoon. All the teachers were talking about you in the staff room this morning.”

I say, “Ack.”

She looks a little closer at my work and the smile fades. She squints a bit. “Oh, dear,” she says. “Do you maybe want to finish this later?”

“Is it wrong?”

“Sometimes when we’re nervous, it affects our concentration.”

And sometimes when there’s only one of us, I feel like saying, we talk as though there are three of us. But I know she’s trying to be nice, like Dex, and I should just shut up and let her.

My next class is French.
“Est-ce que tu t’inquiètes, Edie?”
M. Belliveau asks.

I say,
“Pourquoi tout le monde me demande ça?”

“T’es pâle,”
M. Belliveau says matter-of-factly. “Are you going to throw up? Do you want to go to the washroom?”

“No, but yes,” I say. He lets me go. I spend the rest of the period in a washroom cubicle, reviewing my lists.

My last class of the morning is biology. We’re doing the parts of the cell. I quite like the parts of the cell. I like looking through the big microscopes at orange segments
and paper and my own hair. For today’s lab, we’re supposed to look at saliva. The boys lick the slides; the girls gob onto them. Sam, my partner, makes a neat drawing while I look over her shoulder. “We should do mucus,” I say. “To be different.” I clear my throat a few times.

“No mucus!” Mr. Dhalliwal, our teacher, calls.

Around the room, guys look disappointed and say, “Aw.”

“You’re weird, you know that?” Sam says. “You think like a guy. What are you going to wear tomorrow?”

“What am I what?”

“Don’t we all have to go up onstage to take a bow?”

“No!” I say. It hadn’t even occurred to me.

“I’ll help you pick something out. Come to my house tonight—I can loan you something.”

“I have clothes!”

“You have T-shirts,” Sam corrects me. “Here, copy this quick. There’s only five minutes left and you haven’t filled in your sheet at all.”

I copy her drawing and label it and then it’s time for lunch.

“Coming?” Sam says, but I tell her I have to go do something.

I find Merry eating her lunch with her friends in the special class. “I’m ready,” she says, standing up as soon as she sees me.

We go backstage, just her and me. The scenery is already up, but no one’s here yet; they’re all still eating lunch. “Put
this on,” I tell her, giving her my hoodie. I have to help her with the zipper. “No makeup, okay?” I say. “I don’t know how, and we don’t want to ask for help because we want it to be a surprise.”

She says, “I’m a good surprise.”

“You sure are.”

I get her to sit in her usual spot, by the CD player in the wings, and watch people start to trickle in. Regan appears, breathless, with great armfuls of garment bags, and we start herding our performers into a room where she can help them with their costumes. Raj shows up in jeans and a hoodie, looking glum. “Perfect,” Regan says.

“Can I talk to you a sec?” I say to him when Regan is out of earshot.

We go into the props closet and I explain my idea.

“Edie, no,” he says.

“No, but listen.” I tell him again, explain my research, explain why it’s perfect. “You keep saying you don’t want to do it. I wouldn’t take it away from you if—”

He’s shaking his head. “Did you talk to her mom?”

“It’s going to be a surprise.”

“Did you talk to Mr. Harris?”

“Surprise,” I say again, rolling my hand in the air like a policeman conducting traffic
. Can we please move this conversation forward a little faster?
“She won’t mess up. She knows every word of every part. She could do the whole play on her own if she had to.”

Raj keeps shaking his head as if he doesn’t want to hear what I’m saying. “Does she understand what she’ll be doing?”

“Edie!” Regan’s voice calls. “Anybody seen Edie?”

“She’s going to be in a show,” I say. “It’s her dream come true.”

There’s a knock at the door.

“I have to tell Mr. Harris,” Raj says. “I’m sorry, Edie, but it’s not right.”

He opens the door. It’s Merry.

“Regan calling you,” she tells me. Her face lights up when she sees Raj. “What are you doing?” she asks us.

We step into the hall. “I was telling Raj my idea about having you in the show,” I say.

She laughs and claps her hands. Raj looks at the floor.

“Edie!” Down the hall, Mr. Harris is waving me over, frowning.

Raj looks from Mr. Harris to Merry to me. “Damn it, Edie,” he says, and walks away.

“Where’s he going?” Mr. Harris asks. “He’s in the first act.”

“Bathroom,” I say. “Uh, Mr. Harris—”

Around us, the actors are appearing in full costume and makeup. People gasp as Nathalie, as Cordelia, walks by. Even Mr. Harris smiles.

“You’ve pulled it off, Edie,” he says. “I didn’t think you would. Today I’m going to sit in the audience. You don’t need me anymore.”

I say, “Uh—”

“Go send one of the guys to haul Raj out of the bathroom so we can get started.” He taps his watch. “It’s time.” And he’s gone, behind the curtain and down into the audience, where he can’t help me or stop me either.

Regan’s idea for the costumes was that all the characters should be enormous Elizabethan insects. The girls wear great panniered gowns and ruffs; the guys wear doublets and hose; everyone has wings and a mask. King Lear is a stag beetle, black, with black wings and antlers. Goneril and Regan are flies, a bluebottle and greenbottle respectively, because, Regan says, they buzz around Lear as if he’s already dead. They have bulbous eyes made of tiny mirrors and dresses in hard metallic colours. Cordelia is a dragonfly, a banded demoiselle with a soft green dress and enormous see-through double wings made from iridescent cellophane and silver wire for the frame and veins. Regan told me those wings took her longer than any other costume she’s ever made, they were a complete waste of time, and she would never make anything so fussy and detailed and difficult ever again. Funny how she smiles every time she looks at them.

Only the Fool doesn’t get a costume. In this glittery, fantastical world, where everything everyone does and says is lies and make-believe, only the Fool wears street clothes—jeans and a hoodie. He’s the only human being in the play.

“Thirty seconds,” I call. We bring the house lights down and the roar of the audience behind the curtain disappears.
Silence. “Fifteen seconds,” I mouth. “Ten, nine, eight—” I see Sam signalling the band teacher. The saxophones and trumpets, on the far side of the stage, lift their instruments for the first jazzy sting of music. The cast, in their places onstage, are waiting. No one misses Raj yet. Merry stands beside me, her hood drawn up, hiding her face, so that at first the cast won’t even know there’s been a switch.

The curtain rises. Applause. Gasps (Regan’s costumes again, I’m sure). Silence. We all wait for Lear’s first line.

“Listen up, everybody,” King Lear says, and we’re off.

The Fool doesn’t go on until near the end of the first act. At the last second, I pull down Merry’s hood and say, “Now.”

She walks out onstage and says her first line. She says it really well, too, nice and clear and loud, so no one could miss it: “Who called for a fool?”

Our school principal’s name is Mrs. Porter. She’s older than my mom, and wears dark suits and heels. Her hair is short and grey. On the walls in her office are her degrees, including two Ph.D.s, and photos of her kids, two tall, grinning boys in their university graduation gowns with their arms around her shoulders. On her desk are more framed pictures, an electric pencil sharpener, a laptop, a phone, some closed files, and a mug that says
Because I Said So
. I have time to notice all this because she’s been on the phone with my mom for the last ten minutes.

“Thank you, Mrs. Snow,” she says. “No, I think it’s best dealt with immediately. Edie can wait with me until you get here.” She hangs up and says, “Your mother says she’ll pick up Merry’s mother on the way.”

I shrug. I’m trying not to cry.

“You may wait outside until they get here.”

“Where’s Merry?”

“Mr. Harris and Mr. Dick are taking care of Merry. We will discuss this further once your mother gets here. You’ll sit and wait here, please.”

Here
is a chair just outside her office. I sit and listen to her fingers tapping on her laptop while we wait for the Furies to arrive.

What happened was a complete disaster. Merry had hardly begun when the audience began to boo. Merry burst into tears. Mr. Harris stormed up onto the stage, ordered the curtains closed, and stopped the show. When I tried to say something, he swore at me. Everyone heard. Then Merry ran over, still crying. While I hugged her and rubbed her back, Mr. Harris tried to explain that they were booing me, not her. I’m not sure she understood. Mr. Dick appeared and led Merry away, while Mr. Harris told everyone to take off their costumes and go home. Then Mrs. Porter came and led me from the theatre to her office. That was the longest walk of my life. Everyone who had been in the audience was in the halls now, milling around, not sure what they were supposed to do for the rest of the
afternoon. Everyone glared at me and muttered behind my back.

I realize—now—what it must have looked like: everyone thinks I was making fun of Merry. I realized the moment they started to boo. They thought I was trying to get everyone to laugh at her, putting her onstage and making her be the Fool. They didn’t realize that she could actually do the part, that it wasn’t just a grotesque practical joke. That, I realize, is what I have to explain: that if we all just give her a chance, she can
actually do the part
.

I knock on Mrs. Porter’s door and ask if I can run to my locker if I promise to come right back.

She looks at me, a long, cool, assessing look, and then says, “All right, Edie.”

In my locker I have the binder with all my research.

As I get back to the office, I walk slower and slower because I can hear voices: Mom, Aunt Ellie, Mr. Harris, Mr. Dick, Mrs. Porter, Merry.

It’s Aunt Ellie who speaks first. “Oh, honey,” she says, and pulls me in for a hug.

“Sorry,” I say, and then I’m crying for real.

We all talk for a long time. Mrs. Porter tells Mom she’s thinking I deserve a suspension but she’d like to hear my side first. I explain about my trip to the university library, and show them my binder. I explain about Regan’s costumes, the insects and the single human person. I tell them about the night I spent at Merry’s, when she knew all the words to
Guys and Dolls
. I talk and talk and talk, until Mom says, “It’s okay, Edie. It’s okay. I think we all understand now.”

“I owe your daughter an apology,” Mr. Harris says, and tells Mom about swearing at me, and then there’s a round of everyone saying they understand that too.

“I’m tired,” Merry says. “Mom, I’m tired. We go home.”

“Sure we will, baby,” Aunt Ellie says.

Then we’re all in the hall, getting ready to go. “Can I take a look at that binder?” Mr. Harris asks.

I give it to him and follow Mom and Merry and Aunt Ellie to the parking lot. Merry and Aunt Ellie get into the back seat. Merry leans her head on Aunt Ellie’s shoulder while Aunt Ellie strokes her hair. I hesitate, and Mom, seeing me, does too.

“I need to talk to Merry,” I say. “I need her to understand.”

Mom looks back toward the school.

“Except she won’t, will she?” I continue.

“You’re a bright girl, Edie,” she says.

We get into the car and drive home. Mom invites Merry and Aunt Ellie to stay for supper since they’re already with us, and Aunt Ellie says that would be great. I tell Merry she can nap in my room if she wants, and she does. I sit in the den pretending to do homework, waiting for Dad to get home, when I’ll have to explain all over again.

The phone rings. “Edie,” Mom calls.

It’s Mr. Harris. “I can’t get a hold of Raj. I tried phoning him to let him know he’s got his part back, but he’s
probably pretty angry. Assume he won’t be there tomorrow night.”

“What’s tomorrow night?” I say.

“Our first performance,” Mr. Harris says. “You think we’re cancelling the show? The tickets have been sold. We’re not doing refunds. The school needs the money. The show goes on, and you find a Fool between tonight and tomorrow. And you let me know who it is this time. Got it?”

“Not a problem,” I say. “I know someone who’ll be perfect for the part.”