Jack & Louisa: Act 1 Read online

  I hesitated for a moment, considering what he’d just said, then jogged back with him to the group. “Even with your fall,” he said, looking back at me, “that was the fastest time today.

  “All right.” Coach Wilson clapped as he neared the bleachers. “The last thing we’re doing is a scrimmage. Bowen through Jasperson, red team. Johnson through Trumble, you guys are blue. Grab a pinnie,” he said, pointing to an overflowing laundry bag. I joined the huddle of boys reaching into the heap and pulling out a blue or red mesh jersey, Coach’s words still ringing in my head.

  “Mr. Wilson?” I asked, glancing over at our green minivan. “Can I run to my car? I think I left my water bottle in there.”

  –LOUISA–

  There it was—that twisted-mop feeling in my gut. I had never felt it quite as strongly as I did upon entering the lobby of Shaker Heights High on Friday afternoon, where it seemed like the entire town had come to audition for the Players’ production of Into the Woods. It was a madhouse—grown-ups, children . . . even a dog was there (though I didn’t exactly know why—maybe that Labrador was auditioning for the Wolf?). There were pairs of people reading scenes by the vending machines, people signing in at a table by the trophy cases, people windmilling their arms and rolling their heads from side to side by the main office. I didn’t remember the auditions for The Music Man being this crazy.

  “Were the auditions for The Music Man this crazy?” asked a familiar voice behind me, clearly reading my mind. I turned to see the closest thing to a celebrity the Players had: Denise Zook. Tall and imposing, she wore an eggplant-colored wrap dress and dark-chocolate knee-high boots. She scanned the room with her ice-blue eyes like she owned the place.

  “Hi, Denise,” I murmured, feeling very small. Even though we had acted opposite each other only a year ago, I was still totally intimidated by her.

  “Do you know if the girls’ locker room is open?” she asked.

  “I don’t, sorry.”

  “I like to do my vocal warm-up in one of the shower stalls. Good acoustics, you know?”

  “Sure.”

  I got the sense she was talking at me, not to me.

  “I’ll check with Barry,” she said assertively. “He’ll let me in even if they’re off-limits to everybody else.”

  I had no idea who Barry was, but that hardly mattered. She would find him and get what she wanted; that’s what it meant to be Denise Zook.

  “Bet you’re glad they decided not to do Chess” were Denise’s parting words as she strode off, confident, beautiful, and terrifying. At this point, auditioning for the Players was just a formality for her. Everyone knew she’d be cast as the Witch in Into the Woods, just like everyone had known she’d be cast as Marion in The Music Man, Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, Sally Bowles in Cabaret . . . She was really good, and no one believed that more than she did.

  I found myself wishing for an ounce of that trademark Zook confidence as I spotted a girl about my age, her face framed by golden ringlets. She was arranging a red-and-white-checkered napkin across a perfect-looking wicker basket, making it clear she was a contender for Little Red Riding Hood. Props—why hadn’t I thought of that? I nervously touched the ends of my French braids, which Mom had crisscrossed with precision then sprayed solidly into place.

  On the ride here, I had felt buzzy with excitement. Now I just felt overwhelmed.

  It didn’t matter that my audition sides were in perfect order or that my lines were highlighted in green (green for trees, trees are in the woods). It didn’t matter that I knew Little Red’s song, “I Know Things Now,” backward and forward, that I’d practically been singing it in my sleep for the last week. It didn’t matter that Jenny had read my scenes with me so many times that she almost knew the lines better than I did. And it certainly didn’t matter that I wanted the part more than anything I’d ever wanted in my life—because there was a chance that’s how all of the other girls felt, too. The only thing that mattered was the audition itself. All the dreaming and preparation wouldn’t mean much if I didn’t succeed when it counted.

  “Lou?” My dad’s voice surprised me. I’d forgotten that he’d been parking the car. My parents and I had agreed that it was better for Dad to accompany me to the auditions, even if it meant him having to leave work early. Mom tended to get as nervous in these kinds of situations as I did, while Dad managed to remain cool.

  “You having thought flurries?” he asked, tucking his keys into his pocket.

  “Yeah,” I admitted, allowing myself to smile at his observation.

  Dad had coined that phrase a few years back, in response to the way I froze at the entrance of Cedar Point, this huge amusement park on Lake Erie. I was so overwhelmed by the number of roller coasters and other rides that I couldn’t speak. That’s when Dad said it looked like my brain was caught in a little storm—“thought flurries”—and it seemed like such a perfect description that the phrase had stuck.

  “What’s going on?” Dad asked, placing a reassuring hand on top of my head.

  “I’m wondering if I should have brought a picnic basket,” I said, eyeing Miss Props-i-Locks with concern.

  “Do you want one? I can run home and grab ours from the basement,” Dad offered.

  I considered taking him up on it when I suddenly flashed back to camp, where Avery, my favorite acting instructor, had stressed the importance of “trusting your preparation.”

  “It’s natural to doubt yourself in an audition environment,” she’d said. “You enter a waiting room and immediately see people who are like you, but maybe a little bit taller, maybe a little prettier, a little younger. But none of them are you. And if you’re the one who’s supposed to get the part, then why sabotage yourself by changing something at the last minute? Trust the work you’ve done, and your talent—and most of all, your uniqueness—will shine through.”

  Thank you, Avery, I thought, silently dismissing Props-i-Locks.

  “No, it’s okay, Dad,” I said decisively, “it would only distract me.”

  “All right, then,” he said. “Why don’t we get you signed in?”

  We crossed the lobby to the table by the trophy cases, where an overly friendly woman wearing a name tag announcing “Hello My Name Is GINA!” asked me for my name. As I spelled Benning, I glanced up to see a huge trophy in the case behind her boasting a Shaker Heights High Soccer Champions label. And of course I pictured Jack, who must have been at this very moment running back and forth on our school’s playing field, burying the memories of his theater life with each kick, each . . . shuffle? (Listen, if I knew proper soccer terminology, I probably wouldn’t have been handing my head shot and résumé to “Hello My Name Is GINA!”)

  I uttered a small sigh as I thought of my failed attempts at convincing Jack to audition with me. At least he’d had a sense of humor about my antics. While he might not have become my new best friend, he hadn’t become my new worst enemy, either. Still, I wished he were there. As I left GINA! to fill out a personal-information form, I saw only a handful of boys who looked like they were there to audition for the role of Jack. A couple of them looked downright miserable—one had clearly been dragged there by his mother, who if I were to guess by her excessive makeup, costume jewelry, and hoop skirt, was there to audition for Cinderella’s Stepmother. Another boy couldn’t stop hiccuping.

  “Lou? Did you grab a pen?” Dad asked, leading the way toward a bench.

  “Uh, I forgot,” I said, my eyes darting back and forth across the lobby. It seemed like the number of people had doubled since our arrival. My breathing became shallow as my twisted mop got—twistier.

  “You okay there, Lou?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “I’m wondering if your thought flurries might have just become a blizzard.” Dad chuckled, reaching for a pen from his inside jacket pocket.

  “It’s just . . . ,” I began, taking a s
eat on the bench, “this is intense.”

  Dad smiled.

  “And exciting.”

  He sat next to me while I filled out my form.

  “How long till you’re up?” he asked casually.

  “They’re seeing Little Reds at five forty-five,” I said, looking at the clock above the lobby doors. “So in, like, fifteen minutes.”

  I had already warmed up at home, but the thought of just sitting still for fifteen minutes in the middle of this chaos, where you could practically smell the desperation, made me extra tense. Dad, sensing my agitation, made a suggestion.

  “Why don’t you take a walk? Don’t worry about me. I can watch the Reds game,” he said, holding up his phone, “or should I say the Little Reds game?” He winked at me, proud of his joke.

  “Yeah, okay.” I laughed and got up from our bench.

  The auditions were being held in the auditorium to the left of the lobby, so I walked to the right, toward the gymnasium, where it was quieter. I turned down an empty hallway, where rows of lockers and a humming water fountain greeted me with complete disinterest. I felt better immediately. I could hear my own breathing begin to slow and deepen. Props-i-Locks, Denise, GINA!, and the Labrador all melted away as I closed my eyes and summoned the lyrics of the opening number of Into the Woods. They expressed perfectly what I was feeling:

  “I wish

  More than anything

  More than life

  More than jewels

  I wish . . .”

  They reminded me why I was here and what I wanted to do when it was finally my turn.

  After about ten minutes of focused concentration, I was ready to reenter the fray. As I headed back toward the lobby, I stopped in front of the water fountain for a quick drink. Bending down to take a sip, I heard strange-sounding footsteps turning the corner down the hallway: clack, clack, clack. And in an instant I knew it was him, even before I stood up and saw with my own eyes that I was right.

  He was still in his soccer clothes, still out of breath, holding black dress shoes with a pair of gray pants and a button-down shirt draped over his bare arm. Grass and mud stains blotched his knees, and his soccer cleats made him appear wobbly on the concrete floors. In his other hand he held the sides I’d printed out for him, highlighted in green.

  “Hey,” Jack said, panting.

  (The last thing I wanted was to ruin this movie-perfect moment by saying something that would scare him away, so I just said “Hey” back.)

  “Have you auditioned yet?” he asked, half gasping. I wondered whether he had run directly from our soccer field to the high school.

  “I’m about to,” I said, “in just a few minutes.”

  Jack nodded but didn’t speak. I touched the ends of my braids.

  “I was about to make the team, I think,” he finally said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. But then . . .” He paused. Even though I was more than twenty feet away from him, I could tell he was unsure about the choice he’d just made. He looked like he might bolt at any second, so I needed to proceed with caution.

  “Listen,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “You’ve got as good a shot as anyone here, Jack. And no matter what happens, I promise I won’t tell anyone. Only if you want me to.”

  I could see Jack absorbing what I’d just said, his shoulders lowering slightly.

  “Okay,” he said, nodding tentatively. “Cool.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand that held the audition sides, and I noticed he’d scribbled some notes in the margins. Like someone who cares would do.

  “Do you know where the boys’ room is? I need to clean myself up.”

  I pointed behind me.

  “Keep walking; it’s on your left.”

  Jack walked toward me and stopped when we were shoulder to shoulder.

  “Thanks, Lou,” he said. It was barely a whisper, but I still felt my cheeks get hot because he’d finally called me Lou.

  “You’re welcome. You’re gonna be great.”

  I hesitated for a second, then squeezed his elbow and resumed my walk back to the lobby.

  As I got closer, I could hear GINA! announcing, “If you are here to audition for Little Red Riding Hood, please line up to the left of the auditorium doors. I will be collecting your information sheets before you go in. Thank you!”

  Suddenly Jack’s voice bounced off the metal lockers with a zing.

  “Wait! Lou!”

  I turned around.

  “Break a leg, okay?” Jack was smiling, and I realized I’d never seen him do that before. It was sort of dazzling, and I saw instantly the Broadway star he was meant to be.

  “Thanks!” I called back, grinning like an idiot. “I will.”

  • • •

  I hadn’t had that many auditions in my life—a handful, really—but I’d had enough to know what a good one felt like. As soon as I set foot on the stage inside the auditorium, it was like something magical happened to me. The twisted mop untwisted. I felt lighter and stronger. I felt like a track runner who knows that no one is going to pass her on the last stretch before the finish line. And I felt like everyone in the auditorium leaned toward me, and I leaned toward them, and then everything that I wanted to say and sing burst out of me like a summer storm.

  –JACK–

  The voice hit me like a warm wave. Chills ran up and down my arms as I peeked around the corner in the back of the auditorium.

  I had been in the hallway, nervously trying to block out the waiting-room chatter when I heard it. It was the faint hum of something extraordinary. The voice was unmistakable; even through twelve inches of concrete and the solid fact that I’d never heard her sing, I knew it was Lou. I broke away from my crouched huddle by the trophy case and peeked my head stealthily through a door in the back of the theater.

  Her tiny frame looked even tinier on the empty stage, but her voice filled the entire theater. She negotiated the tricky octave leaps and crunchy melodies as if they had lived in her bones for years. During her acting scenes the creative team howled with laughter, particularly her deadpan delivery of the line to Cinderella, “. . . You talk to birds?”

  Everything began to make sense: her crazed knowledge of theater, her obsession with auditioning, her need to connect with me about all things New York. She wasn’t just someone who loved Broadway. She was a girl designed to be a part of it. Okay, I thought, now I really need to be in this show.

  “Jack Goodrich,” a woman’s voice called from the hallway. “You’re on deck.”

  She led me through a door that opened to the wings of a backstage. My heart began to race as reality set in. I was about to do the one thing I’d promised to never do again. I was about to gamble with the last bit of confidence I had left, knowing full well that the sting of rejection might be waiting on the other side.

  “Hello, Jack,” a soothing voice said from the row of tables assembled in the audience. “I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Renee Florkowski, the director of Into the Woods.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said warmly, stuffing my hands in my pockets to hide their slight tremble.

  “So, you’re auditioning for Jack, I presume?”

  “Yeah.” I smiled. “I heard I already missed the time slot for Cinderella’s mother, so I figured this would be the next best thing.”

  Everyone behind the table began to chuckle, putting me, at least momentarily, at ease.

  “So, let’s start with the scene and then we can go straight into ‘Giants in the Sky,’” Renee said. “Maddy is going to be reading with you.” She gestured toward the woman walking up the stairs to the stage.

  “Sounds great,” I replied, looking to Maddy.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Renee said.

  I took a deep breath and gave Maddy a little nod. I gazed at her
face trying to imagine that this adult woman was in fact a twelve-year-old with a red cape. She looked down at her script and then back to me, eyebrows slightly raised. I waited for my cue line, an awkward silence growing between us. A thought suddenly jolted in my head: You have the first line, Jack!

  “WHAT A BEAUTIFUL CAPE!” I spit out quickly, not at all like I’d practiced.

  I could tell I was rushing through the scene, apparently thrown by my false start, but when the intro to the song kicked in, I fell into my groove. I knew exactly how I wanted to perform it. I let my voice soar on the first chorus and nailed the bit where I sang “big tall terrible lady giant,” tilting my head on the word lady in bewilderment. Halfway through the song something strange happened. I began to stop thinking about what to do next. As I sang these lyrics about adventure in a strange place, they began taking on a new meaning. I’d seen a lot of crazy things in the past few months, and while most were far less remarkable than beanstalks and castles, some felt no less terrifying. I began throwing away my planned acting beats, allowing my brain and heart to run free. I almost didn’t want it to end. I took in a deep breath to prepare for the last note, the highest in the song, when my throat suddenly seized up.

  “In the skyyyyyy-YYYY-yyy.”

  My voice cracked worse than anything I’d ever heard! I tried to stay in the moment through the remainder of the accompaniment, but I knew it was impossible to hide the embarrassed look on my face. I wanted to run offstage and down the high-school halls, through the parking lot and down the expressway past our house in Sussex Meadows. I wanted to keep running, all along the Ohio turnpike and up to 86th Street and into my old apartment in New York. I wanted to bury my face in my old bedroom pillow, praying that if I squeezed my eyes tight enough I’d wake up back in New York, realizing this whole Shaker Heights disaster was just a nightmare.

  “Thanks for coming in, Jack,” Renee said.

  • • •

  The next morning my brain felt like a melted ice-cream sundae. I sat in the living room crafting a barricade of textbooks, homework, my laptop, and breakfast around me, preparing for the fateful phone call.