Act 2 (Jack & Louisa) (14 page)

I took a swig from my water bottle and hurried toward the stage, going over my lines in my head.

I thought Scene 6 was pretty funny—it’s when Nathan Detroit has rounded up all of the gangsters for his crap game but has to explain to a snooping Detective Brannigan what they’re all doing together, and why they’re all wearing carnations. One of the gangsters spies Adelaide approaching and comes up with a quick lie: They’re there to throw Nathan a bachelor party. When she hears this, Adelaide squeals with delight. She thinks Nathan has decided to surprise her with a wedding. Waiting for the bus that morning, Jack and I had worked out a new bit that cracked us up. There’s a line where Adelaide almost gives the
gangsters away, saying to Nathan, “
But when I saw you standing here with all these fine gentlemen, I never dreamed it was a bachelor dinner. I thought it was a—”
and Nathan cuts her off by saying, “
Oh, it’s a bachelor dinner. Yes, sir! A bachelor dinner
.” Jack suggested that he cut off my line by picking me up and squeezing me really tight so that I couldn’t get the rest of my sentence out, which inspired me to make a sound like a mouse getting stepped on.

Once everyone was onstage, Belinda hopped down into the audience and sat in the front row, grabbing her clipboard off the floor.

“Let’s take it from the top!” she shouted.

The boys spread themselves out across the stage as Grady Ayers, playing Benny Southstreet, began the scene: “
You all got your carnations?”

I stood in the wings, waiting not only for my cue but for Belinda to say something snarky to Jack. Jenny and the rest of the Hot Box Girls were backstage, too, having designated stage right as their card-playing spot. As the scene went on, it seemed like Belinda was leaving Jack alone. She even snickered a couple times. By the time I heard my cue line, I was feeling more relaxed and cautiously optimistic that Jack would get through
an entire scene without a Belinda intervention.

“
Good-bye, girls, see you tomorrow
,” I said as nasally as possible, entering backward and waving at the Hot Box Girls. (Jenny looked up from her card game to stick her tongue out at me.) The moment for the new bit arrived just a few lines later, and Jack’s timing could not have been more perfect. My mouse squeak pierced the air, making all of the other boys crack up. Even Tanner guffawed. But the moment was short-lived.

“
QUIET.”

Belinda’s voice, stern and steely, put an abrupt end to the laughter. Jack set me down, and we both turned to look at her.
Please
, I thought,
whatever it is you’re about to say—say it to me, too.

“Jack—is that what I directed you to do?”

Maybe because he and I had talked, or maybe because he was just exhausted, Jack didn’t look at the floor. He didn’t bite the inside of his lip or do any of the things he normally did when he was uncomfortable or embarrassed. He just looked straight at Belinda, waiting for the critique.

“No,” he said simply.

“Then . . .
why
did you do it?” she asked, trying to stare him down.

I blurted out, “Belinda, we both—”

“Lou, am I speaking to you?”

“No, but—”

“But nothing, then. Please stay out of this.”

I looked at Jack, helpless, but he just kept looking at Belinda.

“Jack,” Belinda continued, “I thought I made it clear that I was the director of this show, not you. Yet somehow you feel that rules don’t apply to you.”

My hands and feet started to tingle; everything was going numb and my ears started to hum. The other boys were shifting their feet from side to side as the air in the room grew thicker and hotter with awkwardness. I wondered if any of them knew that what was happening was wrong, or worse, if they thought it was amusing. I caught Jenny standing in the wings with the other Hot Box Girls, their card game abandoned as they watched Jack and Belinda with apprehension. But Jack didn’t say a word, and Belinda seemed to become even more fueled by his silence.

“It’s interesting,” she went on, “I mean, if you’re supposedly—what did Lou call you? Oh, right—‘the Best of Broadway,’ I can’t even begin to imagine what the
worst
might be.”

That was it. I felt something pop in my brain, like a firecracker. Even though Jack had assured me that Belinda was his problem, not mine, even though I had promised him that I’d ignore her, I couldn’t keep the scream from exploding out of me:
“STOP
IT!”

-JACK-

Lou’s voice blared through the auditorium like a tornado siren. Every muscle in my body seized up as a silence swept the room. My eyes darted to Belinda, then to Lou, then back to Belinda, who stood in the front row, speechless, her spider lashes blinking madly.

“Ex-
cuse
me?” she growled.

Lou’s face looked as red as ketchup. Her hands began trembling at her sides.

“What did you just say?!” Belinda’s voice grew louder.

I looked over at Lou, shaking my head with pleading eyes. This was never going to end well.
Even though Lou was one of the bravest people I knew (she’d once brought Tanner to his knees for making fun of me), this was different. Belinda was a grown-up. Even more than that, she was a teacher, and when you were a kid, talking back to a teacher just wasn’t something you did.

Lou swallowed hard and looked Belinda straight in the eye.

“I said
stop it
,” Lou replied quietly. “Stop yelling at Jack like that.”

Belinda’s body recoiled in shock, like she’d been slapped in the face.

Lou’s breathing quickened as she took a step downstage. “He’s been working his butt off, and all you do is pick on him,” she said, confidence growing. “Since the first day of auditions all he’s done is try to be helpful and make this show better. You’re supposed to be our leader,” Lou shouted, her voice straining. “But you’re just being a bully!”

That was it. It was all over now. What was Lou thinking? No excuses or apologies could get us out of this one. Even though I willed myself to look at Belinda, I couldn’t do it. A wave of nausea rushed to my stomach as I shifted my gaze to the wood grain beneath my feet.

“Well, I’m
sorry,
” Belinda’s voice called. Her voice sounded scratchy, like someone waking up after a long night of sleep.

“I’m
so sorry
that I was trying to do my job.” She punctuated her words dramatically. “See, Louisa,
honey
, I was under the impression that it was my job to make sure everyone said the right lines and did the right blocking.” A strand of red hair had fallen from her bun, plunging down the center of her face like an angry scar. “So if you don’t like the way I’m running this room”—she raised her voice—“I suggest you either
shut your mouth
or get out!”

A series of gasps emerged from the students behind us and from the girls crowded in the wings. I tried lifting my head, but it felt like a hundred pounds. I wanted to speak up and tell Belinda that Lou was just being overly protective, that we should get back to work and talk about this later, like next year or when we graduated from high school. But I did nothing. I just stood there.

“Humph,” Belinda grunted, crossing her arms. “That’s what I thought.” She smiled smugly as she fixed Lou with her fiery stare.

My head began to throb. I closed my eyes
tightly, wishing for a way to undo the last minute and a half. After all, no scolding, no criticizing, no
bullying
could be worse than this. Just as I was about to open my eyes I heard the shuffling of shoes, a pair of Converses to be exact. They thumped down the stairs and past the front row of seats. I looked up to see Lou storming up the aisle like a soldier in combat. She snatched her coat off a chair and slammed her hands against the double doors, pushing through the exit without looking back.

“Well,” Belinda said, straightening her sweatshirt. “Anyone
else
have a problem with how I’m directing this show?”

The cast stood frozen. No one made a sound.

“Sayonara,” a girl’s voice trumpeted from the wings. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Jenny brushed past the Hot Box Girls and onto the stage. She pranced down the stairs, breaking into an
across-the-floor
of ballet leaps and turns as she made her way up the aisle. Even though it was priceless, no one dared to laugh. She grabbed her dance bag and Lou’s backpack from the seats and shoved her way through the heavy auditorium doors.

Belinda’s face clouded over with anger. A thick vein pulsed in her forehead. She brushed back that same persistent strand of hair and crammed it behind her ear.

“Doesn’t matter,” she huffed. “If there’s one thing we have too many of in this show,
it’s girls
.”

A grunt sounded from the gangsters clumped around me. One of them marched across the stage, stomping down the stairs and joining Lou and Jenny in a dramatic exit. To my astonishment, it was Tanner Falzone.

“Well, here goes one of your guys,” he called out as the doors slammed behind him.

Then something even crazier happened. Sebastian Maroney jogged to the stairs, turning to look back at his castmates before charging up the aisle. Then Adam Hull. Then Grady Ayers. Then Martin Howe. In less than a minute the entire soccer team had defected. Bridget Livak was the next of the girls, emerging from the wings, the black binder containing her script smacking the stage as she marched toward the exit. The rest of the cast followed suit, tossing their scripts on the floor before sweeping out of the auditorium. The only person left was me.

The final door slam ricocheted through my body. My feet felt like cinder blocks. I looked up slowly, finding myself face-to-face with my tormentor, the top hat and cane on her chest rising and falling as she took in one panicked breath after another. Her eyes darted frantically around the empty hall, searching for anything to land upon besides the last kid standing in front of her. But as the angry footsteps faded, it became clear that she’d have to face me alone, no audience to listen as she spewed another villainous rant.

“Well,” she said after what felt like minutes of silence. “Bet that never happened to Mrs. Wagner.”

She gave a dismissive laugh and looked around the room, as if expecting at any moment the cast would reappear and apologize for their hasty exit. I lifted my tongue to speak, but the words felt stuck in my throat.

“Oh, come on, Jack,” she said. “I wasn’t serious about you being
the worst of Broadway.
We both know Lou can be a little dramatic.”

I just stood there, my feet refusing to move. My body felt numb, like I’d just been shot with one of those poison darts. Belinda crossed her arms as if to contain her agitation.

“Why are you still here?” she asked.

I searched my brain for a reason. I thought of my friends, huddled in the cold parking lot wondering if I would join them. I thought of the moment when Belinda first showed her ugliness to me, that day in the music room after the dance call when I’d dared to speak up. I thought of every insult she’d hurled at me, always making sure to highlight the fact that as a Broadway actor, I really should have known better.

“I don’t know,” I responded.

“Why don’t you follow your classmates?” she said, pointing to the door. “There’s obviously nothing left to do here. You got all your friends to leave, so why don’t you just go? You don’t have to rub it in.”

“I’m not rubbing it in,” I said, my throat becoming tight.

Whatever you do
, I told myself,
do not let yourself cry in front of this woman.

And then something strange happened. Belinda began shaking her head. She slumped into a seat. Her shoulders rose and fell as she sighed heavily.

“I know,” she said after a moment. “I know you’re not the kind of person who’d do that.”

Her words startled me. I wasn’t sure what to say. I wondered if maybe this was my chance. Whatever angry thoughts I was feeling, perhaps now was the time to say them. But she was right. I wasn’t the kind of person who’d do that. I couldn’t explain why, but I knew that whatever happened next wasn’t going to be bad.

“It’s because . . . you’re strong,” she continued. “Stronger than me.”

She turned away, fixing her gaze on the pile of black binders left on the stage like old bonfire logs on a beach.

“Is that why you keep picking on me?” I asked.

This question seemed to knock the wind out of her. She raised her eyebrows and peered down at the floor.

“No,” she muttered. “That’s not why, Jack. That’s not why.”

From the hallway, I could hear the thrum of the janitor emptying a garbage can as a wordless tension hung in the air. Belinda gave a little laugh. “It’s funny. Mike . . . I mean Coach Wilson,” she corrected herself. “He asked why I was so hard on you. Thought I might be a little
out-of-bounds.
  I gave him the same answer I kept giving you.
But he wondered if it might be because I felt . . .” She trailed off. I watched her take in a deep breath, her lips forming carefully like they were searching for the right words.

“The truth is, Jack”—she shook out her hands—“working with you . . . has been hard for me.”

I scrunched my forehead in confusion.
Hard for you?

“Something I should have told you, when the show I was in,
Top Heavy
, closed out of town, it was really . . .” She hesitated. “Difficult. Everyone had been telling me I was going to be a big deal, and when that didn’t happen, well . . .”

I stood there, silent. I knew I could just let her struggle, watching her untangle the mess she’d created, but deep down I knew exactly how she felt.

“I understand,” I said, almost not recognizing the sound of my own voice.

“What?” She looked up, surprised.

“People said the same things to me when I got cast in
The Big Apple.
I know what that’s like.”

“But look at how you bounced back,” she replied.

“I don’t know. When I saw
The Big Apple
, I was really . . .” A warning flashed in my brain,
Maybe
choose a different word than
jealous
.
“It was really hard to watch.”

She leaned in, clasping her hands between her knees. “To see something that was supposed to be yours?”

I nodded.

“Yeah. It’s so tough. I spent twenty years trying to get back to a place where people thought I was a big deal, and when that didn’t happen, I felt like a failure.”

“When I saw
The Big Apple
I couldn’t say anything to the kid who replaced me,” I admitted. “I didn’t even tell him
congratulations.
”

“I bet you were still a lot nicer to him than I was to you,” Belinda said, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, I didn’t tell him that
he was the worst of Broadway
.”

Belinda winced at the memory of her own words.

“Of course you didn’t. I’m sure that boy looks up to you, just like how everyone looks up to you. I mean the way you got those soccer boys to dance.”

“I thought you said that was bad.”

She laughed to herself. “I said that because I wanted all the attention. It’s silly, I know,” she said,
shaking her head. “But I thought coming home, I’d at least have that much. So when the first person I met had not only been on Broadway but had done more in a few years than I did in twenty . . .” She smiled. “Grown-ups don’t know everything, Jack.”

It was strange talking to an adult like this, hearing her be so honest and unguarded. It was like seeing your teacher at the grocery store, or watching your parent get a speeding ticket. You realize they’re human, after all. Just because someone was a grown-up didn’t mean they’d finished growing up.

“Well, you’ve got quite a friend in Louisa Benning, haven’t you?” Belinda said with a smile. “Not many people would do something like that.”

“Yeah, not gonna lie, even I was shocked,” I confessed. “I’ve never seen her do anything that crazy before.”

Belinda looked at me with the most genuine expression I’d seen since she’d first appeared in our classroom.

“I’m really sorry for how I treated you, Jack.”

I gave my shoulders a little shrug, hardly a twitch, but enough to let her know that at least part of me understood.

“Thanks,” I said quietly.

Her eyes began gleaming under the auditorium lights, but she jerked her head away and looked around the empty theater.

“So,” she said. “What should I do? How do I get everybody
back?”