Playing Juliet Read online

  But Mrs. Mac spoke first. “Beth, everyone here owes you our deepest thanks for discovering the theater was flooding. Because of you, I was able to get a team in to pump out the water before it caused any damage.”

  I was so surprised I just stood there, mouth open, trying to grasp what was happening.

  “The last time the basement flooded, we had to close the theater for three months. We lost half the costume collection and most of our props. You saved us from another disaster.”

  But I knew I had not played the heroine in this story. I took a breath and said, “I need to apologize for breaking in to the theater.”

  “Of course you do,” Mrs. Mac agreed. “While your father assured me you did it with the best of intentions, it was wrong, and I want you to tell me you’ll never do it again.”

  I shook my head back and forth. “I’ll never do it again.”

  “Good.” She paused as if searching for the best way to phrase her next comment. “How have your parents handled this?”

  “I’m grounded for two weeks, but it won’t start until after Cinderella! closes.”

  She smiled. “You have very considerate parents. It’s good of them to think of everyone who are depending on you in this play.”

  I don’t know if she meant for me to think about how close I’d come to letting everyone down, but if she did, it worked. I felt selfish.

  “One more question,” she said. “How did you get the door open?”

  “I had to open the padlock once when I was working in the shop and I remembered the combination.” It was so close to the truth. I couldn’t mention Austin.

  Mrs. Mac picked up a pencil and jotted a note on her desk. “Time to change the locks on that door,” she muttered. “I doubt you’re the only one who’s memorized the combination.” Then she looked up and pointed her pencil at me. “You’re forgiven. I’ll see you Thursday at the performance.”

  I ran into Austin as I entered the lobby.

  “Chuck Peterson asked me to come in to help dry up the damp places in the basement,” he said. “I hear you were the one who caught the flooding.”

  “Don’t tell anyone, but I rode over here by myself late at night and got into the theater.”

  “How did you do that?’

  “I remembered the combination to the padlock. I just told Mrs. Mac. She’s going to change the locks.”

  “Thank you,” said Austin as he walked away toward the basement door.

  Seeing Mrs. Mac wasn’t so hard, I thought as I rode home. I bet the two weeks I’m grounded will just fly by. Zandy was right. I was pretty lucky when my parents decided how to punish me.

  It wasn’t until Saturday, the last night of the play, that I realized just how badly my punishment was going to hurt.

  I always wear my grubbiest clothes to the final performance because we strike the set right after each play ends. We bow, the curtain comes down, the costumes and makeup come off, we get into our grubbies, and we start to work.

  Our first job is to return our costumes to Mrs. Lester. She was stationed in the lobby, checking off each piece and putting them in the big cardboard boxes that go to the cleaners.

  I was standing in line behind one of the Duchesses, holding my Cat’s head, suit, and mittens, when I remembered the blue gown with the dripping pearls I’d worn for that one fateful performance.

  “I already turned in the Duchess costume,” I told her. “I left it to be mended the night I wore it.”

  Mrs. Lester looked down at her list. “Popped that in the dry cleaning box as soon as it was fixed. Now, off you go.” She reached past me for the Frog’s flippers another kid was holding.

  I headed to the stage to tear down the tree outside Prince Charming’s castle. We build new trees for almost every show because trees take so much room to store and are really easy to make. I’d taken off all the branches and was just starting to unwrap the burlap on the trunk when Mrs. Mac walked into the house and went straight to the seat she sits in when she’s directing. We rarely see her during strike. Chuck Peterson is in charge then. But Mrs. Mac stood there, eighth row center, until she had our attention.

  Almost everyone was onstage taking something apart. I don’t think Mrs. Mac’s ever made an announcement during strike before. That should have tipped us off that this was going to be serious, but we were all laughing and kidding around with that happy/sad feeling everyone gets at the end of a successful run.

  She cleared her throat and we slowly stopped everything we were doing to listen to her.

  “I’m very sorry to tell you that we will be losing the lease to this theater in a few months,” Mrs. Mac said rather matter-of-factly.

  Her announcement came as a shock to most of the kids.

  “What? Why?” A few kids called out, but Mrs. Mac raised her hand and, in a few seconds, the silence in the theater was total. You probably could have heard a pin drop, if anyone had a pin, and if they could have relaxed their hands enough to let anything fall. One of the smallest Mice moved closer to Emily, who put an arm around her shoulder.

  “Mrs. Marguerite Fredericks, who came to the opening night of your play, is the new owner of this building, and she has decided to use this space for an adult theater company. Our lease will expire in about five months.”

  “Did she ever find her bracelet?” Kwame Prentice, who played the King, called out.

  “Not to my knowledge,” said Mrs. Mac and went right back to the main point. “It will take us at least three months to move out of the theater.”

  I could feel drops of sweat tickling their way down the middle of my spine. I bit my lip and listened with everyone else.

  “For that reason, we will not be able to schedule any plays during the summer. We are investigating whether we can find a stage to rent for an occasional production down the road. I hope the Oakfield Children’s Theater will go on in some form, even without this building.”

  Mrs. Mac paused and looked at our despondent faces. Then she raised her voice. “But I’m mounting another play in this theater no matter what.”

  I think Emily started to clap first.

  In a second, everyone was applauding. Cast and crew, we all gave Mrs. Mac a standing ovation from the stage, to thank her for that play and for all the plays she’d directed. Somehow, our clapping turned into a chant: “What-play-what-play-what-play.”

  She laughed and held up her hand. “I want to end our productions in this theater with the same play the theater opened with fifty years ago—Romeo and Juliet.”

  Romeo and Juliet!

  There was a buzz of excitement, especially among the high school kids. They always get all the parts in Shakespearian plays.

  But anyone can audition. And for the few minutes that I would be standing onstage and reading Juliet’s lines during that audition, I’d be playing Juliet.

  “As you know, the theater is always dark for two weeks between each play,” Mrs. Mac continued.

  I grinned. I wouldn’t miss the auditions. I was only grounded for two weeks after today.

  I sent up a quick private prayer: “Please, God, let this not be our last play. Help us save the theater.” I was praying with such concentration, I almost missed what Mrs. Mac said next.

  “But because we have so little time, I’m scheduling auditions for this Tuesday.”

  I don’t cry very much and never in public. There was no way I was going to start now. Just to make sure, I walked off the stage, into the wings, and started to climb. Zandy found me about ten minutes later, curled up in one corner of the catwalk.

  She sat down next to me and wrapped her arms around her knees.

  “The high school kids get almost all the Shakespearian parts,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I’m not auditioning for this play,” said Zandy. “I’m just signing up for crew.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not that good of an actress.”

  “You get better parts than I do.”

&nbs
p; “Only in musicals. I’ve always gotten small roles when I’m not singing. Maybe we can crew together this time,” she said. She looked down on the stage, where the strike continued in a buzz of despair and excitement. “How about volunteering for props with me, E-lizzy-beth? Props always needs at least two people. And we’d get to see the play every night.”

  “You really don’t want to audition?”

  “If I got a part, I’d have to spend hours and hours memorizing Shakespeare,” she said with a mock shudder.

  How could someone as smart as Zandy feel that way? Shakespeare’s writing was so beautiful—how could she not want the chance to work with it?

  I know I did, more than I’ve wanted anything else in my life.

  But how would I persuade my parents to let me audition?

  That evening, it was R. J.’s turn to clear the table after dinner, and when he took the last of the plates into the kitchen, I told my parents that Mrs. Fredericks was closing the Children’s Theater for good.

  “What a shame,” said my mother. She reached over and took my hand. “It was such a special place for you. For all of us—the audience, too.”

  My dad reacted like a lawyer. “What’s the City Council’s reaction to this? That theater’s right in the middle of a public park. What else could it possibly be used for?”

  “An adult theater.”

  My mother squeezed my hand.

  My dad looked grave.

  It was the perfect moment.

  “Romeo and Juliet will be our last play,” I said quietly. “Is there any way I could have just one day off my grounding to go to auditions on Tuesday?”

  My parents looked at each other.

  I held my breath.

  And R. J. came in and asked if we had any more dishwasher soap.

  By the time my mother came back from the kitchen, the mood was gone.

  “If you auditioned and got called back, wouldn’t you need to go to callbacks the next day?” asked my mother.

  I nodded, slowly. I’d sort of hoped they wouldn’t ask about the next step.

  My father looked over at my mom with approval and turned back to me. “So far you would need two days off from your grounding,” he said. “And when would rehearsals start?”

  “Next Saturday,” I said, even more quietly.

  “And they’d run about six weeks.”

  I nodded again.

  “So you’re asking for a six-week-and-two-day respite from a two-week grounding?” he asked.

  “You do realize that this punishment is for very serious misbehavior?” said my mother.

  I looked down at the table and nodded one last time. I knew what their answer was going to be:

  Straight home after school, no friends, no phone, no texting, no email, no exceptions.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Read on this book,

  That show of such an exercise may colour

  Your loneliness.

  Shakespeare’s Hamlet

  Two weeks is fourteen days—only 336 hours—but it seems like two years when you’re stuck in your bedroom every day after school. When you’re grounded by my parents, you go to your room and close the door. You don’t get to watch TV or listen to the radio or use the computer.

  School wasn’t much better.

  Everyone kept talking about the theater closing and the last play. All my friends asked me about it, until I told them I couldn’t go to the auditions because I was grounded. Then no one talked about it in front of me. But whenever I walked up to a group of my friends, their conversation suddenly stopped and they all looked uncomfortable.

  I wasn’t a part of anything anymore.

  Tuesday afternoon was the worst.

  I came home from school and went straight to my room. My clock radio read 3:45 p.m.

  Auditions started in fifteen minutes.

  I felt very sorry for myself sitting there on my bed. I tried to hate my parents, but I couldn’t. It was my fault I was grounded, and I knew it.

  I started to pace back and forth between my bookcase and my closet. I wanted to be onstage reading those lines so bad!

  And then I started wondering what lines they would be.

  I have a whole shelf of plays in my bookcase, mostly ones I’ve been in, but there’s also The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. My mom used it when she was in college. The book moved into my room after Mom and I saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I loved the play so much I asked her where I could find a copy. She dug out the Complete Works so I could read it for myself.

  I’ve read a couple of the plays. It’s always easier to read one of them after you’ve seen it performed. I’ve even memorized some of my favorite lines.

  My pacing slowed as I reached the bookcase again. I stopped, pulled the Complete Works from the shelf, and turned to Romeo and Juliet. As I read, I tried to figure out which scenes Mrs. Mac would choose for the audition.

  Romeo and Juliet has a really clear plot. Romeo crashes Juliet’s party where they meet and fall in love. The problem is their families hate each other. That’s why she says, “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” in the famous scene on the balcony. She’s not looking for him, like a lot of people think when they hear it; she’s complaining about who he’s related to.

  I leaned what it meant in my drama class last year. Our teacher, Mr. Shelton, asked us to accent different words in that line to see how many different meanings we could get from it. We tried saying the words every which way, and almost all of us were convinced Juliet was searching for Romeo. Then Mr. Shelton passed out the rest of Juliet’s speech. All we had to do was read the next line—“Deny thy father and refuse thy name,” followed closely by “’Tis but thy name that is my enemy”—and it became pretty obvious that the question was who he was, not where he was. It was also pretty obvious that you need to read the whole speech before you can figure out how to say each line.

  If I were directing, I’d probably have my final candidates for Romeo and Juliet read that scene during the auditions. It’s one of the few times they talk to each other. But first, I’d have the girls read a scene with all the dialogue between women. Maybe the scene where the Nurse tells Juliet that Friar Lawrence will marry her and Romeo in secret.

  I was so absorbed in reading the scenes that I was shocked when R. J. knocked on my door. The time had gone by so fast, I had no idea it was dinner time already. Maybe being grounded wouldn’t be that hard.

  That evening, I tried to figure out the scene the boys would be reading. It was harder to decide. By the time I turned off my light, I had read the play twice.

  I was wrong. Being grounded got harder every day. I kept going back to Romeo and Juliet. There wasn’t much else to do and it helped me imagine what was happening at the theater.

  I would have gone crazy if Zandy hadn’t filled me in at school on what was happening with the play. I was right about what scenes the girls were reading. But not the boys.

  By the end of the first week, I had read the play through five times and memorized most of Juliet’s part. It was easy; she kept talking about being locked up.

  Boy, could I relate to that.

  I quoted a couple of her lines with great emotion every time I went back to my room. The first night I got up from the table, gripped the back of my chair, bowed my head, and said with great sadness:

  O, shut the door, and when thou hast done so,

  Come weep with me; past hope, past cure, past help!

  My parents just rolled their eyes when they heard me. R. J. stuck his fingers in his ears. I didn’t get any sympathy.

  And neither did Juliet. Thirteen was old enough to get married back then, and her father decided to marry her off. He didn’t know she was already married to Romeo. She begged her parents not to make her do it, but they wouldn’t listen.

  To escape, Juliet was going to take a drug that would make her appear dead. After her funeral, Romeo was going to rescue her from her family’s mausoleum so they could run away together. When Julie
t talked about being locked up, it was in a windowless stone building with the rotting bodies of her ancestors.

  Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,

  To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in

  I quoted that at the end of dinner the next night, just before I returned to my room.

  R. J. looked at me like he thought I was nuts, and my parents just burst into laughter as I trudged down the hall.

  The next night, I stopped when I reached the hallway, turned back toward the table, and held out a melancholy arm toward my mother as I said:

  Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,

  That sees into the bottom of my grief?

  O, sweet my mother, cast me not away!

  That didn’t work the way I intended.

  My dad looked at my mom and said, “You know I wouldn’t want to push her, but don’t you think Beth’s a natural for law school? With her memory and her ability to speak in public, I can’t think of another career that would suit her better.”

  Great.

  From Juliet to Portia in just one quote.

  Two weeks is a long, long time.

  The second week I was grounded, Zandy tried to tell me the bad news in our regular spot under the pepper tree. “I signed us both up for crew,” she said.

  “At least we’ll get to work on Romeo and Juliet together,” I said. “It’s great. I’ve read it seven times now.”

  “Seven times!”

  “Reading it ‘hast comforted me marvelous much.’”

  “I’ll bet,” Zandy said. She was rolling peppercorns in her hand again and blowing away the pink shells. That usually means she’s worrying about something.

  I waited.

  “Austin’s going to be the stage manager. Scott Stirling’s going to be his assistant.”

  I knew Scott. He was a junior in high school. He’d been the stage manager for the Wizard of Oz and Oliver! He was as good as Austin, if not better. It would be super working backstage with the two of them.

  “Just another week and I’ll be over there crewing with you,” I said with a half smile.