William's Midsummer Dreams Read online

  It was a memory that did conjure up a little bit of confidence. A hope that Puck might just do the same thing. He did have reason to think that might happen, because it already had now and then, when he had been saying his Midsummer Night’s lines for Aunt Fiona and the kids. He’d say a line like, “‘Thou speak’st aright. /I am that merry wanderer of the night,’” and the words seemed to say themselves, and come out in a cocky, self-confident way. In the way that a “hobgoblin” called Puck, or sometimes, Robin Goodfellow, would have said them.

  He was still concentrating on that memory when something told him to open his eyes, and when he did it was to see that Clarice had once again twisted around and was staring at him with her chin on the back of the seat. “Well, hi,” she said. “You were sleeping, weren’t you?” Her smile was teasing. “He was sleeping, Julia, like a baby. Isn’t that cute?”

  “No I wasn’t,” he told her indignantly. “I was just thinking.”

  She giggled. “Yes, he was. He was sleeping.”

  But then a slightly Puckish feeling oozed up, and William grinned and said, “Well, actually, what I was doing was acting. I was being Demetrius in act three. You know, where it says Demetrius ‘lies down and sleeps.’ Pretty good acting, don’t you think?”

  Miss Scott laughed and said, “Very convincing. I’m impressed.”

  Clarice stared at Miss Scott and then at William, frowned, flounced around, and stopped talking, at least for the time being.

  CHAPTER

  7

  As the trip went on, the time began to pass more quickly because … well, probably because Clarice had stopped talking and there was so much to think and wonder and worry about. And so it was, for William at least, something of a surprise when the Oldsmobile slowed down to turn off onto a tree-lined road. Pressing his nose to the window, William watched eagerly as some large buildings came into view. Big, important-looking stone buildings sitting on green lawns under tall, shady trees. Somehow it looked almost too perfect to be real. Just the right dramatic sort of place for a Shakespeare festival to be held.

  When the car came to a stop, it was in front of a large building where, above wide double doors, there was a permanent engraved sign that said edwin hall. And under that a smaller hand-printed one that said SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL CAST HOUSING. PLEASE REGISTER AT THE OFFICE ON YOUR RIGHT.

  Right at that moment all of it—all the memorizing and practicing and daydreaming—came down to an immediate, insistent reality. Came down to walking into a huge, official-looking building to register as a real actor who was here to audition for an important part in a Shakespeare play.

  “This is it,” Miss Scott was saying. “Here’s where you’ll be staying, William,” and he was getting out of the car and staring up at the big entryway and thinking … No, not thinking as much as feeling … Feeling like getting back in the car and telling Miss Scott that he—that both of them—had made a big mistake. That he didn’t know why they’d ever thought that a scrawny, undersized kid who’d been born into the good-for-nothing Baggett family could walk into a big, beautiful building with a bunch of people who really were experienced actors, and pretend he belonged there.

  But then Miss Scott was standing beside him with her hand on his shoulder and telling Clarice, “Wait here. I’ll be back as soon as William gets registered.” The rest turned out to be quick, if not easy. Walking into a large, nicely furnished lounge area, they approached a desk at which a receptionist, an official-looking gray-haired lady, was waiting to sign him in. After he’d answered a few questions and signed his name, he was given a key and told to take the stairs to his left and he would find his room—217—on the floor above.

  So that’s what he did. Acting—and it really was just acting—as if everything was okay, as if he knew exactly what he was doing and why, he listened while Miss Scott told him she’d be back to take him to dinner at six o’clock, told her good-bye, and started up the stairs. And when she called after him to ask if he needed help with his suitcase, he called back, “No, I’m fine. Everything’s fine,” and managed to sound like he meant it. But it was all an act, and he knew it.

  He had to keep acting when he got upstairs and passed someone in the hall. Walked right past a tall man with a handsome movie-star-type face. Obviously an actor—a real one. A man who nodded and said hello. And William nodded back and went on down the hall until he came to room 217, where he unlocked the door, went in, put down his suitcase, sat down on it, and stared into space.

  Right at first he was barely aware of his surroundings. He was so busy thinking about the mess he was in that he noticed only slowly that the room was furnished in a comfortable businesslike way with a bed, a dresser with a big mirror, a desk with nothing on it except a dictionary and a book of photographs of Mannsville College, and some pictures on the walls. When he’d talked to the woman at the desk and then again, when he’d met the tall actor in the hall, what he had been doing, of course, was playing a part. The part of an experienced actor who was there because he was going to have a role in Mannsville College’s Shakespeare festival production. He must have done it well enough, he decided, to have fooled the woman at the desk, as well as the guy in the second-floor hall. Had fooled them into thinking that the person they were speaking to was someone who had the right to be there. Had they really been fooled? he wondered. Or had they seen right through him and were just being polite until he was out of sight, when they would start laughing, or even call the police to come throw him out?

  He’d been sitting there for several minutes before it occurred to him that there might be another way to look at the problem. The other way might be that it didn’t matter if down underneath he was still an undersized, thirteen-year-old ex-Baggett. What mattered right now was how quickly he could learn to play the all-day, every-day role of William S. Hardison, self-confident, sophisticated guy, who was there at the Mannsville Shakespeare Festival for the very good reason that he was an experienced actor who would be playing the important role of Puck.

  He looked at his watch. Four thirty, which meant that he had about an hour and a half before Miss Scott came back to take him to dinner. Not much time. He stood up, squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and got to work playing the part of a self-confident, experienced actor, busily and efficiently unpacking his suitcase, and feeling right at home in a huge fancy building where only actors were going to be allowed to live.

  As usual, making up a role and acting it out came naturally to William. As he unpacked, he was doing a relaxed, almost bored, character. Maybe that of a well-known actor arriving from a stint on the Broadway stage, unpacking his fancy suits and expensive tuxedo, and getting ready to go out on the town.

  Actually, it didn’t take all that long to get his meager wardrobe unpacked: one extra pair of pants, three short-sleeved shirts, and some socks and underpants. And at five minutes to six, still hanging on to his cool, sophisticated role, he nodded calmly to the receptionist on his way out to sit on the front steps of Edwin Hall and wait for Miss Scott to arrive.

  CHAPTER

  8

  That night at dinner William pretty much managed to hold on to his cool, sophisticated role, while discussing the Mannsville campus with Miss Scott and Clarice. At times he almost convinced himself. But not completely. Now and then he was uneasily aware of the fact that, down underneath the calm and collected role he was playing, the same old natural-born Willy Baggett was lying in wait for a chance to take over and trip him up.

  The restaurant was an Italian one in downtown Mannsville, and the food was great, but William was almost too busy staying in character to notice. They were eating there, Miss Scott explained, because the Shakespeare festival cafeteria hadn’t opened yet. “But starting tomorrow,” she told William, “you’ll eat your meals there.”

  She got out a map of the campus, gave it to William, and pointed out Edwin Hall and the path that led to the cafeteria. “It’s not far,” she said, “so you can run down there and have somethin
g to eat whenever it fits into your schedule. You’ll just have to show your cast member card as you go in, at least at first, until they get to know you. Oh yes, and tomorrow morning the auditions will start at nine, and yours isn’t scheduled until quite a bit later, so you won’t need to have an early breakfast. But just to be sure, be here, at the auditorium”—she pointed out an impressively large square on the map—“by a little before ten.”

  As he opened his mouth to say he’d be there it hit him again. The feeling that this whole talented-actor thing was some kind of crazy daydream, and that any moment he was going to stop dreaming and be so terrified he couldn’t even breathe, let alone recite a whole bunch of Shakespeare. No telling what he might have said or done, except right at that moment Clarice pushed her face, with its shiny red lips and stylish hairdo, close to his and asked, “Do you think you can find your way to the auditorium? I could come over tomorrow morning and show you the way.”

  Somehow the way she said it got to him. Gulping down the rising tide of panic, William pulled himself back into his act and said, with a calm smile, “Thanks, but no thanks.” And then, even more coolly, “I’m pretty good at reading maps.”

  It wasn’t until later that night, when he was back in his room in Edwin Hall, that William had enough time and privacy to really examine what had happened, and almost happened, to him since he arrived at Mannsville. The first thing he did was open the window and lean out, thinking that maybe the cool, quiet evening air would help him to feel more calm and confident. But leaning out and looking at the beautifully landscaped grounds with all the towering trees and smooth sweeps of lawn only seemed to emphasize how hard it was for a Baggett, even an ex-Baggett, to feel at home in such a place. It wasn’t until then that it occurred to him that, once again, it might help to understand how he was feeling if he put some of his thoughts and emotions down in pen and ink.

  Getting out the alligator binder and flipping to the first blank page, he sat down at the desk, just sat there for a while running his fingers over the little leathery ridges and breathing in the expensive leathery smell.

  Which, of course, brought back the things Clarice had said in the car that made it impossible for him to go on pretending that he didn’t know who had sent it to him. It had been Clarice, he knew that now, even though he still wasn’t sure why. Or why she now wanted to be certain that he knew she was the one who’d done it. Why was that? There was, of course, the unlikely possibility that Jancy had known what she was talking about when she brought up that being-in-love stuff. That the journal was some kind of a very personal gift, like flowers or even maybe a ring. But on the other hand, it might just be that Clarice wanted him to know that he owed her one.

  That, he decided, was more likely. He had no idea just exactly how she would want him to pay her back, but he had a feeling it wouldn’t be long until he found out.

  He sighed, shook his head, and turned his attention back to the more urgent problem—the one that he had really meant to write about. Fishing his pen out of his pocket, he stared at the blank page for a long time before he began to write.

  Well, here he is. Here’s the skinny little guy who used to be the Baggett gang’s favorite punching bag, and now he’s actually writing this in a big ancient Greek-style building called Edwin Hall, surrounded by acres of green lawns and lots of huge trees, where he’s supposed to live all summer. In the same building where a bunch of honest-to-God stage actors from places like Broadway or Hollywood are going to be moving in tomorrow morning.

  After reading over what he’d written, he shook his head again, started to cross it all out, and decided it wasn’t worth the effort. But when he started a new paragraph, it was back in first person.

  And also tomorrow morning (TOMORROW as in the very next day of my life) I’m going to have to audition for the part of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And the problem is, most of the time I’m scared to death.

  The only time that I’m not is when I’m doing such a good job of acting cool and collected that for a minute or two I almost convince myself.

  He stopped writing, read over what he’d written, and decided that pretty much said it. But what good did that do? What good was being able to describe the problem, when describing it didn’t necessarily solve anything? According to Miss Scott’s theory, once you’d organized a problem well enough to be able to write about it, the solution was supposed to pop up like a jack-in-the-box. In this case, the solution to the terrifying fact that when he allowed himself to think about what was going to happen tomorrow morning, he could barely remember his own name, let alone all the things Puck was supposed to say and do.

  Puck’s speeches—but which ones? Miss Scott had told him that at the audition, she and probably two other casting people, including Mr. Andre, the executive director, would ask him to present a Puck speech of his own choosing. And after that he would be expected to respond to a reader who would read a cue to any one of Puck’s scenes, and he’d have to take it from there.

  A speech of his own choosing, he thought. That ought to be easy. Like maybe … Without even opening The Complete Works, he picked up his pen and began to write.

  “Through the forest have I gone,”

  He went on writing clear down to:

  “For I must now to Oberon.”

  So he hadn’t forgotten. Not any of the words he had to say in that scene. And he also remembered a lot of what actors called “business.” Things he’d thought up to do while he was saying the words, and then practiced over and over again in front of Jancy and sometimes the kids and Aunt Fiona. How he’d stomped and strutted around, pretending to be looking for someone, before he stopped and started the speech. And how surprised he’d acted when he found Lysander and then Hermia, and the big deal he’d made of sprinkling the juice from the magic flower on Lysander’s eyes.

  It’s all still there in my head, he wrote. And then underlined the words, pressing down so hard that the line was deep and dark. It’s all still there. So what am I afraid of?

  Several minutes later, after starting to write, and then stopping, and then starting again, he finally scribbled …

  I keep telling myself to remember that back at Crownfield High, I was scared every time before I went onstage . But then Ariel would just sort of take over, and it was easy, and even fun. So why can’t I believe that the same thing will happen when I go out on this stage?

  Right then, when he wrote the word stage, he began to remember something. What he suddenly knew was how and when he’d started to lose it. It all began when Miss Scott had been describing Mannsville College and had mentioned the huge theater and its especially grand proscenium stage. “Proscenium” was not a word that William had heard before, so of course he began to imagine what it might mean. Almost immediately, what he’d started picturing was something strange and foreign-looking—a vast, barren expanse, floating above a sea of frowning faces and staring eyes.

  “Proscenium,” he said, and then, questioningly, “Proscenium?” Putting down his pen, he closed his journal and reached for the Webster’s Dictionary. And a half minute later he knew that a proscenium was simply the part of the stage between the curtain and the audience. And a proscenium stage was one that had a rounded or arched front to it. Pretty much like the one at Crownfield High School, only bigger, he supposed. No big deal.

  He didn’t know why it helped to know what the word meant, but it seemed to. Perhaps it was just because “proscenium” was obviously a word that a person who was planning on an acting career ought to know—and now he knew it. Or else it was because he knew now that he’d already been on a proscenium stage, and he’d done okay.

  Not just okay, actually. Reminding himself of the article in the Crownfield Daily that said that the kid who played Ariel had been the hit of the show helped a little more. As he put his pen and journal away and crawled into bed, William was beginning to feel a little less terrified. He even slept—a little.

  CHAPTER

  9
/>   Morning finally came, and William was able to get dressed calmly enough, locate the map Miss Scott had given him, and find his way to the cafeteria, by not allowing his mind to go any further ahead than the next few seconds. Afterward he seemed to remember some scrambled eggs, but not much else. But whatever he’d eaten, when it was gone he only let his thinking move far enough along to get the map out of his pocket and use it to find the path that led to the auditorium.

  On the way he forced himself to keep busy noticing things like the weather—warm and clear, but not really hot—and how the path cut across green lawns and passed groves of trees too perfect to be real. But then the narrow sidewalk came to an end at a wide street, and there, right up ahead, was a huge building with windowless walls, and at the end of a broad flight of stairs, a row of arched entryways.

  Taking a deep breath and making a desperate try for a feeling of cool self-confidence, William started to climb up toward a small group of people who were standing near the entrance. All of them were strangers, except for one whom he recognized as the good-looking guy he’d seen in Edwin Hall. A man who, when he noticed William, said with a sarcastic grin, “Well, hello again, fellow thespian. You ready to face the Inquisition?”