Encore Edie (15 page)

Thursday is one of those extra-warm early summer evenings where the air prickles with a golden haze, exactly like the prickle of nerves in the palms of my hands. I eat a quick grilled cheese at home and take the bus back to school; Mom and Dad and Dex and everyone will come by car, later, and drive me home after. The janitor has left the school doors unlocked, and I find him in the theatre, chatting with Mr. Harris. Mr. Harris hesitates when he sees me and then says, “That’s fair.”

I’m wearing jeans and a hoodie.

“Who’ll do your jobs backstage?”

“Sam,” I say. “I already asked her.”

“You sing?” he asks doubtfully, and I feel myself flush lobster red. I’ve been trying not to think about that part.

Soon the cast and crew start to arrive. Regan’s glance slides over my clothes, but she won’t quite meet my eye. She takes
her enormous garment bags into the change room and stays there. Sam is next, and she won’t quite look at me either. She takes my place in the wings and stands there examining her cuticles as if that’s the most urgent part of the job. The cast trickle in, and it’s the same again and again: as I greet them, they mumble at me, or slide past to find Regan without quite looking at me or saying anything.
Pariah:
that’s a word I know. I tick the names off my list until I’ve got all but two: Raj, as expected, and Nathalie. I brave the change room just in case she slipped in without me noticing.

I’m met by hostile glares all around. I realize not only Regan and the cast but the understudies and most of the crew are in here too, hiding from—I guess—me. “Anyone seen Nathalie?” I say.

Shrugs.

“Could someone try calling her house?” I say. “Does someone have her phone number?”

More shrugs. Nathalie is one of the most popular girls in the school, and I’d bet the complete works of Shakespeare she’s on the speed-dial of every girl cool enough to have her own cellphone. That’s probably twenty phones in this room alone.

“Is she sick?” I ask. “Does she have a migraine? Please, guys. Anyone know?”

“Can I borrow your phone?” Regan asks Mean Megan. Mean Megan hands it to her. Regan stares at me until I leave the room.

A couple of minutes later, Mean Megan finds me in the bathroom. I’ve been washing my hands for the last five minutes or so. “Nathalie has a migraine,” she says. “Her mom says she’s too sick to come tonight.”

“Mei will be happy,” I say. I’m kind of happy too; Mei deserves it.

“No one’s seen Mei either.”

I’m not worried. Mei is reliable; Mei will be here. Mean Megan asks if Dexter’s coming. “Later,” I say. “With my parents.”

“I don’t see her much anymore,” Mean Megan says. “Ever since—” Ever since Mean Megan got a part and she didn’t, I guess, but then she says, “Is she bringing her boyfriend?”

“She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” I say.

“You’re so weird,” Mean Megan says. “You’re so smart sometimes, and then you’re so stupid. Like what you did to Merry.”

“I didn’t do anything to Merry. I wasn’t trying to—”
Make a fool of her
, I was going to say. Except, of course, that was exactly what I was trying to do. “I wasn’t trying to make fun of her. I just wanted to make people think. She can do the part, but nobody gave her a chance.”

“Think about what?” Mean Megan says.

“About—” I look at myself in the mirror. “About laughing. About what laughing is and why we do it. About what’s funny, and what isn’t, and comedy, and tragedy, and how it’s all so confusing. Like how we all laugh at Raj all the time
when really he’s a sad person. And how Merry is so happy all the time and every time I think about her I feel sad. And how Dexter is so smart and pretty and perfect at everything and just because she doesn’t get a part she hardly speaks to me anymore. You think
you
hardly see her? She totally avoids me. I’ve hardly had a conversation with her in months.”

“She has a boyfriend, dummy,” Mean Megan says, but somehow in a patient way, not a mean way.

“You think I wouldn’t have noticed?”

“I told you.” Mean Megan taps her temple with her finger. “You’re weird, Edie. You see stuff most people don’t, like Merry knowing the play by heart. And then you miss stuff most people don’t, like your sister and—”

“Edie!” Regan barges into the bathroom. “Here you are. I just talked to Mei’s mom.” She waves Mean Megan’s purple cellphone as if it’s some kind of explanation. “She’s not coming.”

“That’s impossible. She’s never missed a rehearsal.”

“She has some kind of virus. They think she picked it up while she was volunteering at the hospital, because they’ve had an outbreak there too.”

“But we can’t do the play without Cordelia.”

“My wings,” Regan says. “No one will see my wings.” She looks as if she’s going to cry.

“Megan, you can do it,” I say quickly. “You can sing.”

Mean Megan’s already shaking her head. “I don’t know the lines,” she says. “That’s a huge part. I’ll go ask around,
but I doubt there’s anyone who can fill in at such short notice.” She runs out of the bathroom. Regan says she’ll get Mr. Harris.

Backstage, the cast stands around, half dressed, not sure if we’re going to have a performance. I stand where the curtain meets the wall, peeking through the slit, watching the audience filter in. With a start, I see Mom and Dad, Mom in a dress and Dad in a suit, as if they’re going to the theatre, which of course they are, even though it’s odd to think of it that way. I see Aunt Ellie and Daniel and Merry, who’s walking carefully down the steps, focused on not tripping over her feet. I see Dexter, and then I start again. She’s got two people with her, two people I know.
What boyfriend?
I think.
That’s just—

Regan comes back with Mr. Harris. He looks grim but puts a hand on my shoulder, surprising me. “This isn’t your fault, Edie,” he says. “You couldn’t have foreseen this. I’ll make an announcement.”

Mean Megan comes back too, shaking her head. “It’s the lines,” she says. “They’d kill to do the singing, but none of them knows all the lines.”

“Wait,” I say. “Everybody just wait.”

I step through the curtain, hop down off the stage, and run up to where my family are just taking their seats. “Merry,” I say, ignoring Dexter and her guests, “I need you to help me.” I take her hand and lead her past my astonished family, up onto the stage, and through the curtain, to where
Mr. Harris and Mean Megan and Regan are waiting. “Merry knows the lines,” I say.

There’s a long moment when everything feels suspended, as though time stops while we all look at each other. Then suddenly everything is moving again. Mr. Harris tells Regan to take Merry to the change room and get her dressed. He asks Mean Megan if she knows Cordelia’s songs. There’ll be no business with a screen or lip-synching; there’s no time. She’ll just sing when Cordelia’s supposed to sing and let Merry do the rest. “You want her to sing for you too?” he asks me.

“No,” I say. “I’ll be fine.”

“You can’t sing,” Mean Megan says.

“I know,” I say.

When Merry comes out in Cordelia’s costume, the soft green dress with the great dragonfly wings, backstage goes silent.

Sam goes up to Merry. “You look beautiful,” she says.

Merry is smiling so broadly she can’t even answer. She takes Sam’s hands in hers and starts to laugh.

All around me, people start to clap. They clap, and whistle, and stamp their feet, a standing ovation for Merry to make up for yesterday’s boos. Surely the audience can hear us, but Mr. Harris doesn’t tell us to shush.

“Ready?” Mr. Harris says when the noise finally dies down.

After the performance, I push through the crush of people in the hall outside the theatre to find my family. I don’t have any makeup to remove or costume to change out of, so I’m out before any of the rest of the cast. Mom and Dad and Aunt Ellie give me hugs, and so do Daniel and Robert and Robert’s mom, and finally so does Dex. They’re all laughing.

“Oh, Edie,” Mom says. “You’ll always be my Edie.”

“Mom!” I say, mortified.

Robert’s mom says she wants us all to go to her restaurant to celebrate. “You can’t say no. I’ve already made a cake.”

“It’s true,” Robert says. He and Dex are holding hands, beaming at me.

Around us, everyone starts to applaud. We turn to see Merry, still in her costume, running toward Aunt Ellie, who catches her in an enormous hug.

Regan is close behind. “The wings!” she says. “Please don’t tear my wings!”

While everyone tells Merry how amazing she was, Regan gingerly removes the wings and carries them away to use again tomorrow night. She holds them high over her head as she disappears down the hall. I watch them catch the light and sparkle until I can’t see them anymore.

The drive to the restaurant seems to take about five minutes, five minutes crammed with laughter and breathless, non-stop talking. Mom and Aunt Ellie and Daniel have gone with Robert’s mom. Robert, Dexter, and I are squished
in the back seat of our car, Dex in the middle, with Merry in the front seat and Dad driving. I lean my forehead against the window, for the cool, and listen to everyone laugh. We park on a busy avenue I recognize from our drive to the planetarium, and meet up with the others on the sidewalk outside Robert’s mom’s restaurant. A sign taped to the door says
CLOSED FOR PRIVATE FUNCTION
. Robert’s mom punches a code into the lock and lets us in. “Make yourselves comfortable,” she says, flicking on the lights.

“Oh my god,” I say. “You didn’t.”

“Surprise!” Robert and Dex shout.

A huge banner saying
WAY TO GO, EDIE
! swags from one corner of the ceiling to the other. Chairs and tables have been pushed against the walls, leaving one long table in the middle of the room, set for all of us. There are balloons and streamers and pictures of clowns stuck to the walls. “We did it this afternoon,” Dex says proudly.

I say, “Clowns?” but fortunately no one hears because someone’s just turned on some music. I recognize the song from the CD Dad gave me for my birthday: “Embraceable You.”

“There’s a cake, too,” Robert says. “Shaped like an old man, with a robe and a big beard. Mom wasn’t sure what King Lear was supposed to look like, so she made a wizard cake.”

I say, “What’s a wizard cake?”

“She collects unusual-shaped cake pans,” he says. “Buys
them on the internet. It’s one of her hobbies. She had the wizard one from my birthday when I turned twelve. I was really into Harry Potter.”

“No kidding,” I say.

“Like you weren’t.”

I say, “Clowns?”

“They’re supposed to be fools.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Aw, don’t be mad. Everyone just does their best, Edie.”

“I’m not mad,” I mumble, but that too gets lost in the noise.

Daniel comes over and puts an arm around my shoulders, grinning. “You are crazy brave, String Bean. I admire you so much. You inspire everyone around you. You are the most amazing—”

I mime shooting myself in the head with my finger.

“Ignore him,” Aunt Ellie calls across the room.

“Sit, everybody.” Robert’s mom comes back in from the kitchen with an apron on and a tray on each arm. “I made a few snacks.”

“A few!” Robert says.

“Merry, right here. Ellie, Daniel, James”—that’s my dad—“Dex, honey, next to Robbie”—that’s Robert—“Anne”—my mom—“Edie, sweetie, over here. A toast!”

“To Merry!” I call quickly, holding up my glass. Everyone says, “To Merry!”

“Bathroom?” I say, hopping up before anyone can
propose a toast to me. Robert’s mom takes me back through the kitchen and points down a flight of stairs.

“Don’t hide, Edie,” she says, touching my shoulder. “We’re all really proud of you.”

I tell her I just need to pee.

The bathroom is tiny but clean. Each wall is painted a different colour: orange, purple, blue, green. The ceiling is pink. There’s one of those funhouse mirrors on the inside of the door that make you look super-tall and skinny. A sign over the mirror says,
YOU LOOK LIKE YOU COULD USE A SANDWICH
!

I wash my hands with soap that smells like mangoes and dry them under the
XLERATOR
. When I was little, I was scared of
XLERATOR
s because they were so loud and strong, like sticking your hands under a blast of wind from the Sahara. Mom says I got scared of them the day Dex dared me to stick my face under and I did, which sounds likely, but I don’t remember that.

I start to think about what I’m scared of now, today, this minute, with my hands under the dryer. Three hours ago I would have said singing in public, and those first moments onstage were excruciating. For a second I was afraid to open my mouth to sing because I thought I might throw up instead. But then I thought about Merry, and everything I’d put her through, all the times I’d been mean or impatient or tried to use her to show how smart I was instead of just letting her be herself, and I knew I deserved some kind of
punishment. It made sense to humiliate myself in front of everyone I had wanted to prove myself to. So I sang, and it was bad—my voice cracked and wobbled all over the place, and I could see Sam in the wings desperately signalling me to be louder—and when the applause came, it was polite, pittering, with some laughter too. I stumbled over my lines, the lines I’d written myself, and tripped over my feet, and blushed, and was certainly a fool, though not much of a Fool. When it was all over, I let myself think for the first time about Dex and Robert, a thought I’d somehow managed to push away throughout the performance. I was a fool, all right.