Circle the Soul Softly (2 page)

It's always the same. I'm in the hallway and the Monster appears. I start
to run, knowing if I can reach the door, I'll be safe, but the walls close
in and the hallway stretches, like in a cartoon, and the more I run, the
bigger the Monster gets. I can't see its face but I hear it breathing, sucking
up the air, and I want to scream but I can't catch my breath and now
the hallway's forever and the door has disappeared and I feel claws picking
me up and I know the minute I see the Monster's face I'll die—and
then there's a flash, like sunlight, and it's Minnie Mouse in her yellow
polka dot dress, and . . .

I wake up.

THREE

“Acting is something you do for an audience,” Tess explains, “which is why my auditions are never private.”

Tess is the incredibly awesome drama teacher who's way older than my mom, dresses like one of the kids, and gets absolute respect from everybody. She has long, dark hair with gray strands throughout and today is wearing tight black jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She looks pointedly at Laughing Butthead Boy, who immediately bows his head, no doubt to hide a grin. Layla pokes him and Stacey shows us the other side of her perfect face. In Santa Rosa, theater kids are the ones who don't fit anyplace else. Here in LA, everyone's an actor, unless they're a director. And everyone is beautiful. For my third strike, I expect I'll find out they're also talented.

Tess is collecting audition cards; she smiles and holds out her hand for mine.“How am I going to know how you carry yourself in front of people if you audition just for me?” she asks, and even though I know she's not really talking to me, I nod.

Butthead Boy is staring. We've been in the room twenty minutes and he is just now noticing me.“Who's that?” he whispers, and the
Vogue
Twins peek over. If my heart pounds any harder, the girl sitting next to me will hear it.

“Who cares?” Stacey answers, dismissing me with a shrug. I can't remember one line of my audition monologue.

“I think she's hot,” he says. Sweat is flowing down the insides of my arms.

Layla pokes his shoulder.“She's twelve, you moron. Leave her alone.” I don't know if she meant me to hear that, but it's obvious I did from the color flushing into my cheeks. Not one of them recognizes me from yesterday.

“Okay, babies, here we go.” Tess looks down at our index cards. “The order's by chance—I shuffled everybody, and there you are.” She reads the first one.“Kaitlyn O'Connor.”

My hands start to shake.

“You want someone to work with?” Tess asks, smiling, but all business now. I stare a second, process what she's asked me, then nod.“Boy or girl?”

“Boy, please.”

“Jake, onstage.” Butthead Boy stands up.

This is a bad movie and cannot be happening in real life. There are at least a dozen other boys in the room and none of them have the
Vogue
Twins attached. I can see Jake trying to pretend he wants to do this. I pray for an earthquake.

“Name of the play?”Tess asks.

I make myself speak. “
Echoes
. By Richard Nash. Where Tilda tells Sam about The Person.”

I start to prepare. Jake rolls his eyes. He tries to hide it, but I always see what I'm not supposed to—like Stacey-Layla studiously
not
reacting. And the girl who was sitting next to me, giving them a dirty look, confirming their importance. Stupid Kate appears, but I have no time for her.

“Now listen to me, Sammy. Don't you see what the technique is?”

Jake blinks twice, fast. Everyone else slips out of my head. There's only Tilda now, and she has something to tell Sam. He doesn't want to hear it; I have to find a way to make him listen. Jake's face changes as I pull him in. But
I don't care anymore what “Jake” thinks—he's merely Sam, reacting to my words. The monologue zooms by.

“ …and don't you tell me how Goddamn beautiful life is until you tell me why we die! And if you say everything has a purpose in the world—
what is the use of pain
?!”

Jake morphs back to Butthead Boy. I blink and slip back to Katie. Tess is smiling. The other kids are looking and for the first time it feels like they're actually
seeing
me. They clap their hands. All of them, even Jake. Only Stacey ignores me. She's busy in her backpack.

“Well,”Tess says, “that worked. Let me see your hair pulled back. Okay, good, that makes you look much older. I want you to read for Maggie and Agnes. Sides are on the table in the greenroom. Callbacks are next week.” She winks at me then looks back down at her cards. “All right. Next victim . . .”

FOUR

I couldn't have been much more than two. I don't know where exactly
we were, how we got there, or who else was with us. I do remember the
sand. I'd never seen so much of it, and I loved how my bare feet slapped
down as we walked toward the water. I turned my head from side to side
to catch the icy drops of fog in the air.

I remember holding his hand—reaching straight up to grab it. The
low roar of the waves and the salty spray on my face were simply glorious;
I delighted in the way my laughter disappeared into the sky without
even being heard. The gray of the sky melted into the horizon and
the fog closed off the land behind us, so the whole world was only me
and my daddy and the ocean crashing toward us. The pit of my stomach
churned and my skin tingled with anticipation. He had to yell to be
heard over the water. “Hold on, Kates, here it comes!”

The wave must have broken yards in front of us because the water
barely covered my ankles. I gasped at the cold then laughed out loud
again, clinging even tighter to my daddy's hand. He was laughing too, I
remember the tone of it—low and full and mine.

But as the ocean retreated and stole the sand from under my feet, it
grabbed me, too—dragging me out to sea! Total terror—I screamed.
Strong arms snatched me back, hauled me up into a warm broad chest,
and held me close until I stopped whimpering and could relax. That's
what daddies do.

I sigh as I walk, wanting more. I have only these snapshots: the beach, going fishing once when I was five and crying when I realized “the fishies” died, and the times he came home from work with little packages of gummy worms for me and my friends. Nothing else is clear. I wish I could remember him in everyday memories, like Michael does.

I know he worked for Hewlett-Packard and didn't much like his job, because that's what my mom has told me. I vaguely remember when he got laid off and how weird it was having him home. I know sometimes he drank, and I remember how my brother got up and walked out of the room when Mom told us he was sick. I was thirteen, and it was summer. She said, “Cancer,” her face broke into pieces, and my brain swirled out of control—I couldn't slow it down enough to catch details.

We changed the living room into his bedroom because it was bigger and the hospital bed would fit. Hospice nurses came and went. Michael spent lots of time with his best friend, Steve. My eighth-grade year started. I got my very first-ever period and told my best friend, Ginny. I remember not telling my mom because it didn't seem very important.

He died a few weeks later, at night. I was sleeping. Michael was at Steve's.

Mom called the funeral home and waited by herself until they came, then took one of his sleeping pills and crawled into bed in their old room. When I got up for school and tiptoed down the hall like I always did, her door was shut and the air was perfectly still. Before I realized the living room was empty, before I even turned on the light to see for sure, I knew.

The bed had been stripped and pushed to the side. His robe was folded on top. The table where his meds had sat was empty—the prescription bottles and other paraphernalia swept off into a plastic bag tied with a knot and dropped on the floor. I felt like something had sucked my insides out; I remember wondering how I could be so completely empty and still able to stand up. I stood paralyzed—my brain registering details as my thoughts rolled themselves out in slow motion:

My father is dead.

I will never see my father again.

This couldn't have happened.

It's happened.

I won't ever hear his voice.

I'll never touch him.

My father is dead….

I will never see my father….

…and endlessly on.

I knew right then there was no way in the entire world I could live through this. No way at all.

Except, I did.

One hour after the next, and then a day and a week, a month, a year, and now—just about exactly two.

FIVE

I'm cast.

I'm Maggie.

I'm in the play.

The list is posted in the hallway of the theater. I cannot believe I am actually seeing my name—I check it five times. Nine parts, nine actors, one A.D.—and
one of them is me
. First rehearsal is this afternoon.

All day long, I'm new. Nothing can bother me. I don't care if people talk to me or if I have a place to sit at snack. I kinda like that I get a dirty look from two older girls walking by, because I remember them from the audition. At snack Layla says, “Congratulations.” My hippie-biker science teacher pats me on the shoulder and tells me he heard I got into the play. I go to the theater at lunch to pick up my script. Tess gives me a huge hug. I manage the entire day without running into anything. At three fifteen, I'm sitting in a circle with six other kids I don't know, and the Hollywood Three.

“Keep it simple and keep it true, ”Tess warns. She twists her long hair into a knot in the back of her head and sticks a pencil through.“This play cannot be melodramatic. Find the humor.”

“Right, that should be easy,” says David, the guy playing my husband.

I don't know the play, but I laugh with everyone else.We read. I am taken into the story so completely it's hard to believe almost two hours go by before we close our scripts.

“Damn,Tess,” Jake says.“We're doing a play on death.”

“I don't think so,” David argues.

“Everybody's dying, dawg, what do
you
think it's about?” Jake challenges him.

“Life, basically.”

I don't say anything, but I agree with David.

Rehearsal's over, and I have time to be amazed at how good all the actors are. I can't help but smile at them as we pack up. Everybody but Stacey smiles back. She obviously doesn't like that I got into the play, and right now I don't particularly care. The girl playing Layla's mother introduces herself—her name is Frazier. David tells me I'm an amazing actor and offers me a ride home. He figures we should get to know each other since we're going to be husband and wife. The assistant director hands us each a rehearsal schedule, and Tess gives me a hug as we leave.

In the car David explains he's been at this school for three years and that he had mono in tenth grade, which is why he's in eleventh grade now instead of twelfth. I tell him my life story, at least the part about my mom getting remarried to a Beverly Hills accountant and us moving into a huge house in Brentwood. He asks if I miss all my friends from Santa Rosa. I lie and tell him yes, and then I make him laugh by describing my asshole brother. I figure talking about my dad can wait
until I know him better. He offers me a ride to school in the morning, since he only lives four blocks away. I say sure and we pull up in front of my house.

I have to blink a couple times before I go into the house and realize this is, indeed, major. I have gotten a lead in the play. A boy has driven me home. My smile is
so
connected, I think I must have discovered my real self.

SIX

Michael's pissed. My way-cool, nothing-ever-bothers-me jock of a brother is stomping around like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum. I hear him slam the front door and pound up the stairs to his room, across from mine. He slams that door too, then turns on the awful hard rock noise he calls music. I go back to my laptop, adding screen names to my “buddy list” from the e-mail addresses the A.D. typed up so the cast can get in touch with each other.

Mom and Robert come in about twenty minutes later, and Mrs. Hoyt, the housekeeper (we have a housekeeper!) calls us for dinner. It's the first time in a week we've eaten together. Mom is beaming, and she and Robert are acting like they always do—giddy. He's got to be twenty years older than her and I can't imagine him running anything, let alone his own million-dollar accounting firm. Of course, I only see him around my mom, and I seriously doubt he's ever had a girlfriend as pretty as her. She's certainly never had a guy as rich as him, at least that she's told
us
about. It's disgusting when your mother acts like she's in eighth grade.

Michael comes late to the table, and for some reason I get a flash of our dad, even though I don't think Michael particularly looks like him. Whatever's going on, being around Robert doesn't help. Michael's face is closed and stormy. He's scary when he's like this because you can't tell what he's thinking and he won't admit to anything. I decide to hold on to my casting news until later.

Mrs. Hoyt brings food. Mom and Robert chatter about going to Cabo for their honeymoon. Michael eats quietly and quickly, mumbles “Excuse me,” and pushes back from the table.

“Why don't you wait until we're all finished, son?” Robert asks.

Michael mumbles rather than speaks, staring down at the floor.“Well, for one thing, I'm not your son.”

It's silent at the table. Mom sighs and picks at her plate. Robert does the please-remember-this-is-my-house transformation and glares meaningfully at my brother.