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Authors: Andrew Keenan-bolger,Kate Wetherhead

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BOOK: Act 2 (Jack & Louisa)
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“Fan kick, three, four, fan kick, seven, eight,” Belinda called out, her leg swinging past her ears like windshield wipers.


Chaînés
, two, three, four, pivot step, seven, pose!”

The majority of the girls struggled, looking like marionettes with their strings tangled, jerking their limbs seemingly at random. Lou, who I’d never seen dance before, looked somewhat shell-shocked. It was impossible not to notice that she was hitting many of the poses on the wrong counts. The only person who seemed to be keeping up was Jenny, the trained ballerina.

“All right, now that we’ve all learned the steps,” Belinda said abruptly, not even the slightest bit out of breath, “let’s take a quick five. Afterward I’ll be breaking you up into smaller groups to audition for me.”

The girls slogged to the wings, grasping for water bottles and towels. Lou, desperate for help, ran up to Jenny, who was still onstage stretching. I watched as they began marking through the movement, Lou trying to keep up, obviously still confused.

“Lou, your feet should be
ouverte
to start. And the balance is
devant
. You’re doing it
derrière
.”

“Ooo-what?”

Lou tried to take her corrections, but I could see
Jenny’s dance expertise was only making things more complicated. Sometimes the best dancers are the worst teachers. As Jenny continued to talk about her
port de bras
and
aplomb
, Lou stood, flustered, rubbing the back of her head with her hand. I could tell she wasn’t getting it.

“Excuse me,” I said, leaping to my feet and scooting past Travis in my row.


Lou
,” I whispered, charging down the aisle.

She looked up, her eyes filled with panic. I flicked my head to the right, signaling to a corner free of girls and dance bags. She looked back at Jenny, who shrugged and gestured for her to join me.

“I know. I’m a mess,” Lou huffed anxiously as she clopped down the stairs. “Adelaide’s supposed to dance front and center. There’s no way she’s going to cast me if I can’t even remember the steps.”

“You’re fine,” I said, placing my hand on her shoulder. “Just breathe. You look great. I just think Belinda’s counts are confusing you.”

“Is the first arm throw on the four or the five?” Lou asked hurriedly.

“It’s on the five, but maybe try not to think of it like that,” I said calmly. “Mr. Hennessy is playing
the accompaniment to the song, right? I know you know all the words, so if you sing along quietly, the dance steps will make way more sense.”

“Okay,” Lou said, nodding quickly.


Take back your MINK
,” I said, cycling through the first phrase. “The arm throw is actually on the word
mink
, which makes total sense if you think about it, like she’s throwing off her coat.”

Lou mouthed the words and walked through the movement, this time throwing her arm in the right place.

“And I think you’ve been putting that shimmy on the wrong count,” I said, moving on to another section. “Lyrically it lines up with, ‘
It all seems a HORRIBLE dream.’”

“You’re right!” Lou exclaimed.

After giving her a few more pointers, I said, “Even if you mess up, it’s just an audition. Belinda knows you’ll have weeks to perfect it. Just show her that you can make some bold choices.”

“And we’re back,” Belinda’s voice blared through the auditorium.

I looked over to find her staring directly as us. I don’t know why, but something in her eyes made me think we’d been caught doing
something we weren’t supposed to.

“Thanks, Jack,” Lou whispered. I could tell she was still nervous.

I gave her shoulder a final squeeze. “You got this.”

I watched nervously as Belinda broke up the girls into groups of four. The first few were shaky, mistaking right arms for left and pivots for ball changes, but as the numbers grew higher, the groups seemed to improve. The girls began hitting the right marks and looking more confident. By the time she reached Jenny’s group, they were not only dancing cleanly but infusing the movement with character.

“Numbers twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, and twenty-four,” Belinda called out.

Twenty-three was Lou’s number. She made her way to the downstage right position, hands on her hips and a saccharine smile pinned across her face. As Mr. Hennessy began the intro, Jenny threw her a final thumbs-up from the sidelines. Once the combination began it was as though a spotlight had beamed down from the rafters, shining
directly on Lou. The girls lining the wings halted their nervous fidgeting to watch as she danced. She made hilarious faces and accented beats with
Ooh
s and
Woo
s like we’d seen the speakeasy girls do in
Let’s Make a Toast!
While her kicks weren’t as high and her short frame perhaps not as “dancer-like” as some of the other girls, she more than made up for it with her plucky charm. As the final count of eight began, Lou jumped a step, mistaking a
chassé
for a turn. Belinda winced, yet Lou seemed to act as if it were nothing, instead replacing the missed counts with a spontaneous ad-lib.

“Nathan, look whatcha made me do!” she whined in her best, most nasally Adelaide voice. Everyone, including Belinda, burst into laughter. I was so proud.

“Thank you, ladies,” she said as the final group buttoned the number. “You may take your seats.”

As the girls trotted down the stairs, Belinda walked center stage and placed her hands over her eyes like a visor, scanning the audience. I reached my hand out and gave a high five to Lou, who was now squeezing into my row. A surge of excitement shot through my body. I knew I was up next.

“Hmm,” Belinda muttered from downstage.
“I really thought there’d be more boys.”

“We tried to warn her,” Lou whispered, her wooden chair creaking as she plopped down next to me.

“I might have to rethink . . . ,” Belinda mumbled, beginning to pace across the stage. “Gosh, I’m not sure . . . I don’t know if it’s worth . . .” She checked the silver watch on her wrist and crossed over to Mr. Hennessy at the piano.

I sat up straight in my chair, craning to overhear their conversation. A whisper of panic began spreading through the room.

“She might have to rethink what?” I looked over at Lou.

“I don’t know,” Lou whispered back.

Belinda’s beehive of hair quivered behind the piano as fragments of conversation drifted up and into the room.

“I mean, I can’t have girls play every part.”

“Do you think we should just . . .”

“The whole thing?”

“Oh no.” Lou turned to me with concern. “What’s going on?”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Belinda bellowed as she chugged back down to the front of the
stage, her face twisted into a frown. “It pains me to announce that the boys’ dance call has been canceled.”

A flurry of whispers swept through the auditorium.

“And because we only have four boys,” she said, speaking over the tumult, “I think we’re going to have to—”

But her words were cut short as a screech of steel rang through the back of the auditorium. Thirty heads turned in unison. The big set of doors swung open and twenty pairs of dirty sneakers clomped into the room.

“Did we miss the audition?” a voice called out. I traced my eyes up the aisle to the sight of Tanner Falzone and Sebastian Maroney, standing with their arms crossed in the doorway. Behind them stood the entire boys’ soccer
team.

-LOUISA-

There are things you never expect to see: a whale riding a bicycle, for example, or rain shooting up into the sky instead of pouring down to the ground. But seeing twenty boys from the Shaker Heights Middle School soccer team arrive en masse at an audition for
Guys and Dolls
suddenly made bicycle-riding whales seem like an actual possibility, as their appearance was as unlikely as anything I could have imagined. Yet here they were; I was staring at them with my own eyes—and what made the whole situation even crazier was that they seemed to be
staying.
I didn’t need to look at Jack to know that he was equally
shocked, but nevertheless, I turned to find him blinking rapidly, as if the image of Tanner and the rest of the boys would disappear after one of those blinks. I noticed that everyone else in the auditorium was staring in disbelief, too. Everyone, that is, except for one very excited redhead.

“Hallelujah!” cried Belinda, throwing her arms in the air and launching into a box step. “My prayers have been answered!” She thrust out her arms and motioned the boys toward the stage.

“Come up, come up, come up!” she called out to them. “All boys onstage now, and start stretching! The dance call is
back on
!”

The soccer boys hesitated, uncertain. But then a familiar voice called out from behind them: ”You heard her, guys, up and at ’em.”

As the boys obeyed the order and started down the aisle toward the stage, I saw Coach Wilson standing under the Exit sign, arms crossed, smiling broadly.


Thank you
, Mike! Oops! I mean,
Coach
!” Belinda shouted from the stage, clasping her hands together and shaking them with gratitude. I looked back at Coach Wilson, who held out his
hands toward the soccer boys, palms up, as if to say, “They’re all yours.”

As shocked as I’d felt seconds earlier at their arrival, I now saw how inevitable all of it was, given Coach and Belinda’s shared theatrical history. Of course she would take advantage of their friendship to recruit his players for the school musical; in her shoes, I would have done the same. Still, their presence dramatically changed the energy in the room, making it a little more dangerous and unpredictable.

Coach Wilson gave a slight nod toward Belinda, then exited into the lobby. Belinda called from the stage: “I still see some ‘
Guys
’ out there! Get your heinies up here!”

“You better get going,” I urged Jack gently. He exhaled loudly.

“This is going to be interesting,” he said, and as he scooted past me to get to the aisle, I grabbed his wrist.

“Hey—they’re on
your
turf; just remember that.”

“Yeah, I don’t know if that’s a good thing,” he said, tugging nervously at his shirt as he made his way toward the stage. Jenny was now climbing out
of her seat and scurrying to join me in my row, her face contorted in a grimace.

“Why do I feel like this is going to be painful to watch?” she asked, taking Jack’s now-vacated seat. She had practically read my mind. As soon as Jack arrived onstage, Tanner turned to his teammates.

“Oh shoot, guys, I forgot my tights at home—Jack, do you have an extra pair I could borrow?” His crack was greeted by a round of snorts and snickers from the boys around him. My cheeks burned as I willed Jack to make a snappy comeback, but all he did was head toward the back row of boys.

He must have known that such a plan was never going to work, though, not after Belinda had referred to us as her “minions” just days earlier. Sure enough, as soon as all the boys were assembled on the stage, Belinda barked, “Jack! Where’d you go?”

There was a pause, and then a barely audible “Here” rose from behind the clump of tall soccer players.

Belinda, seemingly clueless about the vast differences between jocks and theater nerds, had no patience for Jack’s shyness.

“What are you doing
back there
?” she
demanded. “Come up to the front, since you’ve done this kind of thing
professionally
.”

“What is she trying to do?” Jenny whispered. “Guarantee that Jack have no friends for the rest of his life?”

“He’ll be okay,” I whispered back, though I wasn’t entirely convinced he would be. I could see Tanner elbowing Martin Howe and stifling a laugh as Jack walked downstage toward Belinda. Jack kept his eyes down, doing his best to attract as little attention as possible. As he settled on a spot just left of center stage, Belinda turned to face all the girls still sitting in the audience.

“Ladies,” she began, “thank you so much for your time today. Come back tomorrow, same time, for the acting and singing call.” Jenny and I exchanged a look as the rest of the girls gathered their coats and bags.

“We’re staying, aren’t we?” she asked, already knowing that I wasn’t going to abandon my friend.

“I have to stay—after he saved me in my dance call, the least I can do is be here for him. But you can go,” I said. Jenny narrowed her eyes at me.

“Oh, no, I can’t. Jack may need you, but you need
me
. Just don’t get mad if I have to cover my eyes.”

Belinda was already busy assigning numbers to the boys. Upon receiving the number eighteen, Tanner called out happily, “Hey, that’s my jersey number! Sweet!”

“It’s the little things,” deadpanned Jenny, which made me giggle even though I was feeling anxious. Thank goodness she was staying.

“Okay, this is going to be
fun
! I
looove
being back on this stage!” Belinda cheered once she’d made it through all the boys. She rolled her shoulders back and shook out her horselike legs.

“Frank, give me a little ‘Luck Be a Lady,’ would you?”

Mr. Hennessy, now fully resigned to being called Frank, began to plunk out the melody on the piano. Belinda bounced on the balls of her feet.

“I’ll dance through it once, then I’ll break it down into sections. Once we’ve learned each section, we’ll put the whole thing together, and then split you up into groups, okay? Okay!
Five, six, seven, eight!

As Mr. Hennessy started the song from the beginning, Belinda launched into the dance combination, once again calling out dance terms as she moved: “
Chassé
,
chassé
,
chassé
, jump! Pivot
turn, pivot turn.
Chassé
,
chassé
,
chassé
, jump! Pivot turn, pivot turn.
Jeté
left,
jeté
right. Step-touch, step-touch,
chaînés
,
chaînés
,
chaînés
,
chaînés . . .”

Behind her, the soccer boys watched in horrified fascination, their faces a perfect blend of confusion, disbelief, and fear. What made Belinda think that any of them would be able to learn this, especially when she was using French ballet terms that none of them had ever heard before? I had barely made it through my own dance combination, and I’d taken a lot of dance classes in my life! If it hadn’t been for Jack’s help, who knows what would have happened.

Oblivious to the baffled boys behind her, Belinda outdid herself with the last eight counts of the routine: ”Kick ball change, kick ball change, jump and lunge, REACH!” On the last note of the music, Belinda, in a deep forward lunge, thrust her right hand toward the floor as if she was throwing a pair of dice. I had to admit, the combination was pretty great. But great for, like, actual dancers.

“Okay, let’s take it from the top—the first eight counts!” Belinda shouted, slightly out of
breath. “A five, six, seven, eight!”

Only Jack started to follow along. None of the other boys moved. Belinda, already halfway across the stage, stopped and turned around, bewildered by their stillness.

“C’mon, boys,” she said, “don’t be shy. Five, six, seven—”

“Ahem . . . ?”

Tanner cleared his throat, interrupting Belinda’s count off.

“Yes, what is it, Number Eighteen?” asked Belinda. She looked genuinely surprised that someone might have a question.

“Miss, uh . . . ?”

“Belinda. Call me Belinda.”

“Belinda . . . We can’t do this.”

“You can’t? Why not?”

“Because—” He started to laugh. “We can’t dance. Not like that.”

Belinda pursed her lips and inhaled loudly through her nose, a bloom of crimson spreading across her freckled cheeks.

“But you haven’t even tried,” she said carefully, her voice deepening, “so how do you know if you can or can’t?”

Oh no
, I thought,
this is where it all falls apart. If Tanner leaves, the rest will follow. That’s how it goes. Then Belinda will say she has no interest in doing “
Dolls
,” and we won’t have any show at all
. I turned to Jenny, who, sure enough, was now shielding her eyes with her hands. Then I turned to look at Jack, whose eyes were darting back and forth between Belinda and Tanner. I could tell he was thinking something—his face was tense, like he had something to say.

“Yeah, but . . .” Tanner sighed, looking at his teammates, all of them desperate to escape. “We just . . . can’t.”

As he took a step toward the edge of the stage, signaling to his friends that they should follow, Jack’s voice cut through the air: “
It’s like soccer
.”

The boys stopped and stared at Jack, who instantly froze under their gaze. Belinda’s head jerked in his direction.

“What are you talking about, Jack?” she asked, planting her hands on her hips.

“If you think of the moves like soccer moves,” Jack began hesitantly, “then it’s not that hard.”

“I think if you just watch it a few more times, you’ll get the hang of it,” Belinda interjected.
“I know I can teach you if you just show a little patien—”

Tanner didn’t let her finish.

“Like what kind of soccer moves?” he asked, stepping so close to Jack that Belinda was forced to take a step backward. Jenny peeled her fingers from her eyes.

“What is happening?” she whispered.

“Shh,” I said, patting her knee to be quiet. I sat up in my seat and leaned forward, riveted by the unfolding scene onstage. Jack shot me an uneasy glance, and in that split second I nodded back at him reassuringly. He turned to Tanner and began to explain.

“Well, like, a ‘fake’—that’s like a ‘pivot turn’ in dance. Think of faking out your opponent by changing directions—that’s basically what a pivot turn is.” He demonstrated. More boys moved closer to watch. Belinda cocked her head, eyeing Jack with curiosity.

“And, like, when you’re moving down the field but you need to keep your eye on the ball, so you’re basically, like, galloping sideways? That’s like a
chassé
.”

Again, Jack demonstrated by moving across the
floor. This time, a few boys followed along—and followed pretty well.

“Okay!” Belinda cheered. “See? It’s not that difficult, right? Want to try to put this all together now?”

“Wait,” said Tanner, not paying any attention to Belinda, “what about those crazy-fast moves at the end, Jack? How were those like soccer?”

“Oh, the kick ball changes?” said Jack. “Think of kicking the ball straight with your right leg but then having to run to the left.”

Tanner mimed kicking a ball and running to the left.

“Exactly! See?” Jack said, pointing to Tanner’s feet. “You naturally stepped back on your right foot first, then stepped with your left. Do it a little faster and closer to your body—and that’s a kick ball change.”

Jenny let out a small gasp. “This is sort of amazing.”

She was right—my friend Jack Goodrich, MTN extraordinaire, was teaching twenty soccer players how to dance. He was patient, clear, confident. And no one, not even Tanner Falzone, was laughing at him. No one was making fun of him, and no
one seemed to want to leave—they were totally focused.

“This is cool,” Martin conceded as he tried out a kick ball change with success.

“Yeah, Jack,” Sebastian chimed in, pivot-turning like a pro, “this makes it so much easier—thanks.”

I looked across to the other side of the stage, where Belinda now stood, curious to see what she thought of Jack’s dance miracle. Her hands were clasped tightly together and her eyes looked kind of wild as she broke into an enormous toothy grin.

“All right, Jack, it looks like they’re ready!” she barked, clapping her hands together aggressively. “Thanks for the great tips, kiddo—I’m gonna take it from here, okay?” She sidled up to Jack and gave his shoulder a squeeze. I watched in wonder as all of the boys moved through Belinda’s choreography with increasing ease. Jenny leaned in close to my ear.

“So—what are
you
gonna do to impress her now?” she asked quietly.

I was thrown by the question.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Like in my audition tomorrow?”

“Well, I just mean . . .” Jenny hesitated, then
pointed to Jack as all the soccer boys followed his every move.

“He’s pretty much gonna be Belinda’s favorite now, you know?”

I suddenly felt very uncomfortable.

“Not necessarily,” I said, shifting in my seat.

“I’m not trying to say, like, you should be jealous or anything,” Jenny rushed to clarify. “It’s just that I know you want Belinda to like you, so . . .”

BOOK: Act 2 (Jack & Louisa)
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