Playing Juliet Read online

  “Not exactly,” I started to protest.

  But Zandy went right on. “She gets an unknown ‘potion’ that will knock her out so badly everyone will believe she’s dead. Sounds like a drug to me. And does it occur to her that maybe her parents would rather hear she’s married than find her dead? No, she never thinks ahead.”

  “She does.” I’d read that play so many times, I could argue any point about Juliet’s actions. “She’s afraid that she’ll wake up in her family tomb all alone with her rotting ancestors before Romeo gets there.” I really liked the lines about being stifled in the family vault. “And she does wonder if maybe the potion in the vial is really poison . . .”

  “And then she just swallows it down, not knowing what’s in it.” Zandy raised her glass of milk and looked at it in disgust. “That is really stupid.”

  “She got the potion from a priest.”

  “Would you trust a priest who secretly married a thirteen-year-old to her family’s arch enemy?”

  “I was trying to make Juliet look thirteen,” I said.

  Zandy looked a little startled. She took a sip of the milk.

  “That must be why I like the way you play her. She’s a dumb kid,” she said finally. “She acts like we do.”

  This time I was a little startled. I’d tried to make Juliet act impulsively, like I saw some of the kids in my class act, but I thought Zandy and I were much more mature.

  “Neither of us have snuck off to be married yet,” I finally said.

  “We snuck off to the theater in the middle of the night,” said Zandy.

  “That’s different.”

  “Think that’s not stupid? It was dangerous. We snatched at what we wanted without thinking, just like Juliet. And we lost the theater anyway.”

  Zandy paused and ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “I’m still trying to figure out how we can get Mrs. Fredericks to give it back to us.”

  Mrs. Fredericks’s words started running through my head: A children’s theater isn’t good enough. Not for him.

  I rinsed out my glass and put it in the sink. I wasn’t hungry anymore.

  Zandy put her glass in the sink next to mine. “I think our only chance to save the theater is to show Mrs. Fredericks what a great job we’re doing with Romeo and Juliet.”

  For a moment I felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe miracles could happen. This production was certainly turning into something very special.

  Chuck Peterson had designed some incredible sets. The walls of Juliet’s house looked like they were made of real stone. So did the family mausoleum with its line of stone tombs stretched across the stage. On top of each tomb, an actor playing a dead Capulet lay under a dusty gray veil. When the fog machine started and clouds of soft white smoke went billowing across the floor, the stage turned into a really scary place, full of death and sadness.

  Mrs. Lester had pulled almost all the costumes from stock, and she’d found some magnificent ones—lots of velvets and brocades, slashed and laced like the portrait of the first Queen Elizabeth in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. The lighting and music were just beginning to add their magic. And you could see the actors grow better from day to day. Everyone was working with a single purpose: to make this play the best one ever done at our theater. It looked like they were succeeding.

  But it was still a children’s production, still not good enough.

  I sighed. “Mrs. Fredericks lives in New York. Do you think she’ll even see it?”

  Zandy grinned at me. “Mrs. Mac sent her two seats—fourth row center—and invited her to come on opening night.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “She accepted.”

  I walked over to the old photograph hanging on the back wall of the lobby and glanced around casually to make sure no one else was nearby.

  The teenage couple was still gazing into each other’s eyes. I touched the last word of the first line on the brass plaque softly.

  “Today,” I said under my breath and headed for the dressing room.

  I was playing Juliet.

  Only once, only at an understudy rehearsal with no audience, but today the part was mine.

  Understudy rehearsals are always disasters. Maybe because they’re held at the end of the rehearsal period when everyone’s tired and stressed. Maybe because everyone acting in them has never walked through the part before. Someone’s always breaking up and laughing or drying up and forgetting their lines.

  I wasn’t worried. I was line perfect. I’d wanted to play Juliet for so long, I was going to make the most of my first chance with the role.

  My mother once told me that “may you get what you wish” is an old Chinese curse. That never made sense to me before that rehearsal.

  I only had seven lines in my first scene, but I knew it went well. You can feel it when you’re doing a good job acting—your movement onstage flows naturally out of what you’re saying; the other actors react to your cues better; you can hear the audience respond, even if it’s just the director and a few curious cast members.

  My second scene was the banquet where Romeo and Juliet meet and exchange their first kiss.

  I considered myself an old hand at stage kisses. Jeffie Peabody and I kissed at the end of Snow White and Rose Red and had to hold it till the curtain fell. Jeffie and I were both nine at the time and dressed in bear suits. Last year, I’d kissed Graham Stewart repeatedly, and always on the correct beat of the music, when we were dancing jitterbugs in The Wizard of Oz.

  But the understudy for Romeo was Christopher D’Angelo.

  Christopher was a senior in high school. I’d never been in a play with him before, but I saw him play the lead in High School Musical. Half the high school girls had crushes on him.

  Christopher did not kiss like Jeffie Peabody.

  The first time Christopher kissed me, I blushed beet red and forgot my next line. Austin gave me the first word and I remembered the rest of the speech.

  But I forgot my next line.

  And the next.

  I studied my lines furiously every minute I was offstage, but I kept drying up. And every time he had to feed me another line, Austin looked out from the wings as if he couldn’t believe it was me. I even needed prompting in the famous balcony scene. The only line I managed to get through on my own was, “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?”

  You can feel it when you’re doing a bad job acting—your movement onstage is awkward; the other actors don’t react to your cues; and you can hear the audience twitching, even if it’s just the director. I knew I was botching up the role, but I couldn’t get it right.

  We finally reached the last scene. I woke from my drugged coma, found Romeo dead, and managed to kiss him, stab myself, and still remember my lines. I felt the most enormous relief as I fell to the floor. I couldn’t mess up anything else now.

  I lay motionless, half-sprawled over Romeo’s dead body, desperate for the play to end. I could feel the warmth of the spotlight that shone on us. Zandy was at the other end of it.

  She must hate this part of the play, I thought. I could just hear her saying, “Romeo kills himself because he thinks Juliet’s dead. He couldn’t get a doctor to make sure? And then when Juliet wakes up and finds his body, she kills herself, too. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

  I wanted to giggle.

  I tried to control it, laughing through my nose in a series of whimpers, my stomach heaving up and down, my eyes scrunched tightly together. Finally I stopped.

  I opened my eyes a sliver to see if anyone had noticed and saw Christopher’s eyes about eight inches away from mine, crinkling in silent laughter.

  A large snort burst from my nose.

  All the Capulets and Montagues gathered to mourn us, and all the dead Capulets lying veiled on their tombs broke up. Gales of laughter rang through the theater at the tragic end of Juliet and her Romeo.

  If Mrs. Fredericks had seen this production, she’d have given the theater to the first flea circus
that came along. And I wouldn’t have blamed her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  But when her lips were ready for his pay,

  He winks, and turns his lips another way.

  Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis”

  I watched the last dress rehearsal from the audience. Emily was so good as Juliet. My eyes began to fill as she pleaded with her father not to make her marry someone else. I was crying as the scene ended with her passionate whisper: “If all else fail, myself have power to die.”

  The lights went out and I brushed the tears away, sniffing. Then from out of the darkness came a shout and a thud.

  The lights came up immediately. Emily lay in a heap on the stage. The theater was silent except for an anguished “No!” from someone in a rear seat. It would have been me, if I’d been able to speak.

  Everyone—Mrs. Mac, the closest crew members, the cast standing in the wings—rushed to her. I couldn’t see anything through the crowd.

  Was Emily hurt so badly I would have to take over her part?

  I crossed all my fingers, pressing them together so hard it hurt, breathing, “No, no, no,” under my breath. The future of our theater rested on Emily getting right back up.

  And she tried.

  She stood, took a wobbly step, then another, and looked down, a little bewildered. “I think I ripped my hem.”

  Mrs. Mac was watching Emily carefully. “Are you up to taking it to the costume shop to be fixed?”

  We were all watching her.

  Then Emily laughed and bounced up and down on her toes twice. “Don’t worry. I’m fine.” She kicked at the bottom of her gown, which was trailing on the floor. “Except for a droopy hem.” She picked up the skirt in both hands. “I couldn’t see the tape. I missed the bottom step and tripped on my dress.”

  Mrs. Mac continued to study Emily for a long moment, then smiled and nodded her head. Everyone went right back to work. The crew re-taped the step. Mrs. Mac talked to Chuck about putting someone backstage with a flashlight to illuminate the stairs. Emily headed to the costume shop.

  And almost before I knew what I was doing, I slipped out of my seat and headed after her.

  Holding up her skirts made Emily walk slower, and I’d almost caught up to her by the time she reached the door of the costume shop.

  “You’re really okay?” I called.

  She turned and frowned at me. “Sorry to disappoint you,” she said coolly. “I’m supposed to actually break my leg before you get my role.”

  She reached for the doorknob but I stuck my arm out and held the door shut, forcing her to look at me.

  “You just scared me to death,” I blurted out. “I had to be sure you’re okay.” My hand fell from the door. “You’re doing such a great job as Juliet, you just had me in tears. The last thing I want is to go on in your place.”

  I didn’t say, “Because we’re all counting on your performance to persuade Mrs. Fredericks to give us back our theater and everyone will hate me if I blow it,” but I’m pretty sure we both knew what I meant.

  I bit my lip and looked down at the painted concrete floor. When I looked back up, Emily was smiling at me. She started to say something, but a guy doing props rushed by with a “Good luck tomorrow on the math test” as he passed.

  Emily made a face and called after him. “Don’t jinx it. We’re in a theater here. How about ‘break a leg’?”

  He raised a hand in dismissal as he turned the corner.

  “You’ve got a math test tomorrow?” Poor Emily. The same day as opening night.

  She nodded. “Rotten timing, isn’t it?” she said, as she opened the door to the shop. “At least it’s in the morning. And I’m good at math.”

  School was a blur the next day. The only thing I remember was Ms. Davis calling my name at the start of creative writing.

  “Elizabeth!”

  When I got to her desk, she handed me a slip of green paper, obviously from the office. I opened it and found a message from my mother:

  Mrs. Macintosh called. She wants you to go to the theater right after school. It’s okay with me but be home for dinner.

  I spent the whole period trying to figure out why Mrs. Mac wanted me.

  By the time I had gotten my bike and was pumping my way down the street, I had narrowed it down to three possibilities. Best case: Mrs. Mac had found the bracelet. She wanted me to give it to Mrs. Fredericks so Mrs. Fredericks would remember my tour of the theater and decide to give the theater to us.

  Okay, the logic was a little shaky on that one. That was the tour where Mrs. Fredericks found out I had been using a New York accent just like hers for its comic effect. The tour with that truly memorable cream cheese sandwich.

  Next case: there was some extra work that Mrs. Mac needed help with, ironing some costumes or stapling some programs, and she knew she could depend on me. Good chance it’s that one.

  I turned onto the bike path through the park. There was a third case scenario: Emily was sick and I had to step in as understudy. I steered around a pothole and grinned. No worries there. Emily would crawl to the theater through a snowstorm even if she came down with the black plague.

  I was still thinking about horrendous diseases that wouldn’t faze Emily the least bit as I locked my wheel to the bike rack outside the theater. Maybe that’s why I didn’t come up with a fourth possibility.

  After all, Emily’s the one who’s good at math.

  Very, very good.

  “Emily’s in LA?”

  I was standing in front of Mrs. Mac’s desk, trying to make sense of what she had just told me.

  “But Emily had a math test this morning. She couldn’t have flown anywhere.” I added the clincher, “She’s good at math.”

  Mrs. Mac leaned back in her chair and smiled wryly. “Very good. She’s been taking part in some math Olympics . . . Olympiad. Which I only learned about two hours ago, when she called and told me she’d taken a test this morning at UCLA and missed her flight home.”

  Mrs. Mac picked up a pencil and stuck it in her hair. There were at least three in there already. “You may need to play Juliet tonight.”

  I stopped breathing for a moment. Then shook my head. “Can’t she get another flight?” It came out too loud.

  Mrs. Mac flinched slightly. “It seems the Apple computer convention starts today, and all the flights between LA and San Francisco are sold out until nine o’clock tonight.” She reached into her hair, grabbed a pencil, jiggled it up and down for a minute, then stuck it back. “She’s on the wait list. She could still get back in time.”

  Yes! Of course she could. And there were other ways to get here.

  “She could drive,” I said. “She could rent a car.”

  “It would take at least eight hours to drive here.” I was frantically doing the math when she added, “And car companies don’t rent to teenagers.”

  Mrs. Mac pushed her chair back from her desk and stood up. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I really think Emily will get a flight in time, but until we know for sure, we need to assume you will have to step in.”

  Mrs. Mac would never have cast me as Emily’s understudy if she thought there was the slightest chance I’d go on. But she did and I took the role. Neither of us could quit now.

  “Of course,” I said, my face frozen. What I wanted to say was, I’m not good enough, I’ll mess up the whole production and everyone will blame me for losing our theater. Especially me.

  “I’ve called an emergency rehearsal,” said Mrs. Mac. “We’ll only run the scenes Juliet is in.” She looked at her watch. “Go get into her first costume. Zed should be here any minute.”

  I was extra careful as I stepped into Emily’s gown. After all, I was just borrowing it for the afternoon. I was borrowing Emily’s Romeo, too. In the understudy rehearsal, I’d been working with Christopher, along with the rest of the understudy cast, but now I needed to rehearse with the real Romeo, Zed Miller.

  Just as I got to the wings, I saw
him racing down the aisle. Zed’s tall, and kind of cute, with chestnut brown hair and the happiest smile. He waved to Mrs. Mac and ran up the steps to the stage.

  Zed and I have been in a lot of plays together. He’s a junior in high school, almost four years older than me, but he’s so funny and so nice to everyone that I’ve always felt he was one of my theater friends. I had to practice moving in Juliet’s costumes, but Zed didn’t need to change. He’d been rehearsing in his doublet and cloak for weeks.

  Zed was still breathing deeply when he joined me. He put his arm around my shoulders and led me farther back into the wings.

  “I saw the understudy rehearsal Tuesday,” he said softly. “And I think it would help if we kissed before we go on-stage.”

  I couldn’t meet his eyes. I looked down and nodded, embarrassed and ashamed.

  And Zed bent down, took my face in both hands, tilted it up, and solemnly kissed me on the tip of my nose.

  We went over our scenes together twice before the rest of the cast arrived, then we ran the other scenes I was in. My concentration was absolute. I did not forget one word. I did not laugh once.

  I was perfectly wooden in each and every line.

  Finally it was over. We all perched on the tombs in the Capulet’s mausoleum while we listened to Mrs. Mac give the briefest of notes, mostly on when I should enter the stage during the party scene and where I should be at curtain call. She was just finishing when Chuck Peterson came out of the shop.

  “Emily’s on the phone,” he said.

  Mrs. Mac was only gone about two minutes. When she came back in, the theater became so quiet that we could hear her footsteps as we watched her walk down the aisle to the stage.

  “Thank you all for coming to an extra rehearsal at the very last minute,” she said. “It was very important that we held it. Emily has not gotten a flight, so Beth will be playing Juliet tonight.” She paused for that to sink in before she added, “Hurry home for dinner. You’re due back here in about an hour.”