My Most Excellent Year (8 page)

ALÉ PEREZ NOTES ON PRODUCTION MEETING

Posters will have glittery gold top hats on them.

The overture will consist of two verses of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” provided that Mr. Disharoon has the sheet music. Otherwise there won’t be an overture. And we’re not using cymbals on the opening chord, no matter
how
good it sounds on the album.

Auditions will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday from 3:30 to 5:00.

Augie is falling in love with Andy Wexler.

Andy Wexler is falling in love with Augie.

Augie doesn’t know that Andy is gay.

Andy doesn’t know that Augie is gay. (Hello?)

I’m glad I’m a girl.

Dear Jacqueline,

Lee Meyerhoff is the most popular girl in the ninth grade. She wears her hair in an early Beatles cut (almost always a fatal mistake, but somehow she makes it work), her face is so Becky Thatcher wholesome that she really ought to draw freckles on her nose to complete the picture, her I.Q. is somewhere around the temperature of water when it begins to boil (in degrees Fahrenheit), and her parents have a swimming pool in their backyard. Naturally, the boys can’t take their eyes off of her and the girls have booked all of her available sleepovers three months in advance.

She also sits next to me for seven hours a day, so she seemed the likeliest prospect for trying out what was destined to become the least credible experiment of my life—and which hatched itself spontaneously as we were passing our English tests to the front of the room.

“Lee?” I mumbled under my breath, leaning in to her through an improvised mask of pure panic.
Why is my voice shaking??
To say she was startled is a matter of understatement; she later told me she never suspected for a minute that I even knew her name.

“I didn’t understand question four,” I lied, looking for all the world as if I were about to cry. “Why couldn’t Hermia love Demetrius?” Lee glanced around the room furtively, then propped up her notebook in front of her so that Mrs. Norwood wouldn’t notice that we were having an illegal conversation behind it.

“Because she fell for Lysander first,” she whispered back, “who sounds like he had better legs anyway.” Oh, wrong, wrong, wrong. Hermia couldn’t love Demetrius because he was a vain and shallow schmuck who needed a codependent neurotic like Helena to make him
feel like he had balls—though he certainly wasn’t going to be much of a support system when she wound up in AA because of him. But I didn’t tell that to Lee. Instead, I clapped a fraudulent hand over my mouth and blurted, “Boy, did I screw
that
one up.” As I was soon to discover, one of the most annoyingly natural things about Lee is that she loves being a big sister—so of course she was now in her element.

“Don’t worry about it,” she assured me confidently, wrinkling her freckle-free nose like she was flipping off both Shakespeare
and
the entire seventeenth century. “It was only worth five points anyway.”

“Lee and Alejandra,” barked Mrs. Norwood from the front of the room as she slid our papers into a manila folder. “If it’s not something you can share with the rest of the class, button it up.” Lee grinned sheepishly and seemed to take it in stride, but now I really
was
ready to cry.
A reprimand?? ME??
My face turned scarlet and I heard not one more word for the rest of the lesson. Eight years of perfect behavior down the drain because of that idiot Demetrius. What were my parents going to say?

“Alejandra forgot that she was a lady.”

“Again?”

However, my shame lasted only another fifteen minutes—or roughly until I discovered between third and fourth periods that being publicly busted with Lee Meyerhoff is apparently the gateway to the Social Register.

“Alé, where do you get your hair cut?” asked Renee Panitz in front of the mirror in the girls’ room.

“Alé, settle an argument,” begged Soupy Pondfield, almost closing her locker door on Beth Birnbaum. “Doesn’t J Lo look like she’s had liposuction?”

“Love that shirt, girl,” observed Quita Tapper as she snapped an approving finger in my general direction.

Jacqueline, you were the most admired woman in the world. Please tell me that it’s not always so complicated.

Over today’s indigestible cafeteria lunch of corn fritters doled out by an understandably dour Mrs. Dowdy, we continued our
examination of boys from every conceivable angle and so lost track of time that we were yelled at by Mrs. Carsiotis for being late to geography class. Big deal.

Fondly,

Alejandra

H
IGH
P
OINT
:
“Casey at the Bat.” (And who ever would have suspected it?) Gridley Tarbell plays Casey, Andy Wexler and John Siniff act out the other parts, and Anthony narrates. They don’t know it yet, but Lee gave them their first ad quote: “Utterly charming.”

M
OST
E
FFECTIVE
M
OMENT
:
“A straggling few got up to go in deep
despair”—which Anthony pronounces “despay-ah.” For some reason he reminded me of Gary Cooper in
Sergeant York
, and I have no earthly idea why. Lee says it’s because I recognize a certain honest nobility in both performances. No, I don’t. Do I?

M
OST
E
NTERTAINING
C
OMEDY
R
OUTINE:
Watching Augie and Andy not watching each other.

M
OST
O
BVIOUS
Q
UESTION
:
Why do guys insist on wearing those odious jeans with the rear ends hanging down around their ankles? Do they really think it’s hot? Lee is grateful that Anthony, Gridley, and Andrew wear the regular kind. “See what I mean?” she whispered, staring shamelessly across nine rows of seats. “T.C.’s had a cute butt ever since third grade. It’d be a waste to hide it.”

M
OST
U
NEXPECTED
S
URPRISES
:
Ricky Offitt on alto sax, Ruthie Andress on piano, Robin Potts in taps, and Bruce Daniels doing stand-up. (You can always count on the quietest kids to be the funniest. Brucie hasn’t said two words all year, yet halfway through his riff on having to go to the bathroom in the middle of a history test, Lee and I dissolved into clinical hysteria. Especially when he crossed his legs so he wouldn’t pee until he could remember what year the Battle of Saratoga was fought.)

L
OW
P
OINT
:
Stu Merliss on electric guitar singing his own composition: “I Feel Like a Dick.” Augie rejected him on the basis of the title. Stu claimed censorship. Lee suggested “I Feel Like a Dork” instead. All agreed. Now we’re stuck with Stu Merliss on electric guitar.

But most important, Augie seemed back to normal again. Or at least as normal as you can be when you’re Augie, when your life has turned upside down practically overnight, and when you’re not confident enough to share the news with anyone else yet—not even the people who love you most.

“We’ll work out the running order as we go along,” he informed his eager young cast as we sat in a circle onstage. “But I’ll start the ball rolling myself with ‘Maybe This Time,’ we’ll use Tick and the kids to close the first act with ‘Casey,’ Brucie can bring up the second act curtain with his monologue, and all we need is a kick-ass finish. So let’s keep our eyes open, people. I want one more number with the kind of razzle-dazzle that’ll send us to Broadway and West Forty-fourth Street.”

Augie’s going to be fine. And it doesn’t take much brainpower to figure out who’s steering him in the right direction.

Anthony must have gotten him to watch
Casablanca
again. And he
is
handling this better as Ingrid Bergman.