King of the Worlds (3 page)

“Okay,” Dylan said. “That's Hermia. Now whom does Hermia love?”

“Lysander,” said Becky.

“Correctamundo. Connor, please draw Terran-restroom Lysander next to Terran-restroom Hermia there. And then maybe you could draw an arrow to show that she loves him.”

“Great. Okay, now whom does Lysander love at this point?”

“Helena,” said Justin confidently.

“Precisely. Now draw that for us, would you, please, Mr. da Vinci?”

Connor squinted.

“Leonardo da Vinci? Genius of the Italian Renaissance?”

Only Josh Song nodded, Josh who wore a bow tie and whose face was perpetually half-hidden by a Kurt Cobain teardrop of hair. He was far and away the most learned, and most melancholic, kid in class. Everyone else just looked confused.

“I guess we'll have to settle for you doing it as yourself then, Connor. Go on now. Make your immortal strokes.”

“Very lovely. And whom does Helena love?”

“Lysander,” said Tate.

“No. Helena loves Demetrius,” said Sammy.

“Which is it?”

“Demetrius,” intoned the class.

“Sorry, Tate.”

Tate got some pats on the back for being wrong.

“And finally, what about Demetrius? Whom does he love?”

“Hermia,” said Lewis.

“Correct again. Now let's give Connor a second to complete his masterpiece.”

“Bravo, Connor. Okay, so if at the beginning of this play we had a classic love triangle with one outlying point, what geometric figure do we have now?”

“A square,” sang the chorus.

“Precisely. Everyone wants someone other than the person who wants him or her.”

“That's sad,” Lia said.

Josh, uncharacteristically, blew a raspberry. “What a waste of energy,” he said.

“How's that, Josh?”

“There must be other single people in Athens, no?”

“Spoken like a true automaton,” Dylan said. “They're in
love
, Josh. Do you really suppose it's that easy to just give up on love?”

“They're not being creative enough, is what I think. There has to be a workable solution here.”

“And what would you suggest?” Dylan asked.

“Well, in the first place, what's to stop that shape from being a circle and not a square? Circles are perfect.”

“Go on.”

“So like what if instead of having love as this petty little directional force between them, they could place it right at the center and let it radiate out in all directions
like the sun?”
7

“And how might that translate into practice, I wonder?” Dylan asked.

“They should get a place together. Maybe build one right there in the forest.”

“And then?”

“And then nothing. They live in it and bask in all the love. At the very least they could finally
sit down.”

“I can't help but inquire about their sleeping arrangements…”

Dylan could see that not every student in the class was going to be comfortable with the turn this discussion was taking. You could never be sure with ninth-graders: in terms of maturity, some were practically ready for college; others might as well still be in middle school. When he'd suggested once that there was a built-in sexual dimension to vampires, one girl, Joy Hoffman, had memorably replied, “I think you just ended my childhood.”

“They all sleep in the same big round bed,” Josh said, “and it's pitch-dark.”

Dylan nodded. “Congratulations, Josh. With a single blow, you've just overturned the entire Western romantic tradition.”

“Sorry.”

“Don't be. You're a free thinker. I applaud that.” Indeed, Dylan himself might have been a little like Josh at one time, before an orthodox lifestyle snared him the way it eventually snares anyone who hasn't made a firm conviction to avoid it.

“Okay, so let's pick up where we left off. Where are our Lysander and Helena?”

Daniel Young stood up, looking dorky and afraid as ever.

“And Helena?”

“Marie's not here,” Julia informed him.

“Oh right. Why then, Julia, you can be her understudy. No good deed goes unpunished.”

Dylan expected some rolled eyes, but Julia leapt to her feet; for every three kids who didn't want to act out Shakespeare, you got one like this who secretly did. Dylan had been that kid once too. In fact, he often wondered if there wasn't that kid deep in all these kids, if only he could break through all their fear, chop through the already-frozen seas inside of them.

“Okay, Daniel, picking up at line 124.”

“Act 3, scene 2?”

“Right.”

Daniel began:

“Why should you think that I should woo in scorn?
Scorn and derision never come in tears.
Look, when I vow, I weep. And vows so born,
In their nativity all truth appears.
How can these things in me seem scorn to you,
Bearing the badge of faith to prove them true?”

He read with all the passion and nuance of some twentieth-century AI. (To be sure, he wasn't one—at least not as far as Dylan knew.)

“Okay, Daniel,” Dylan said. “Not bad, not bad, but remember: you
love
this girl. She doesn't believe you, but you know that your future happiness depends utterly on convincing her of it. Imagine this is your only chance to persuade her, and if you fail, you die. That's what it has to feel like.”

“But he doesn't
really
love her though, right?”

“Au contraire, he definitely
does
love her. He's crying to prove it, and these are no crocodile tears. That what he's trying to persuade her of.”

“What are crocodile tears?” somebody asked.

“Phony tears. Fake tears.”

Daniel balked some more: “But he only loves her because Puck put the juice on his eye, right?”

“That's true, Daniel. Good point. That's
why
he loves her, and
we
know that, but the key thing here is that
he
doesn't know it. He feels himself overwhelmed by love and that's that. I can see how it might bother you that the
reason
he's so powerfully in love is because for all intents and purposes he's been drugged, but the truth is, Daniel, if you were to ask a biochemist, they'd tell you that love is
always
a matter of chemicals. It's always a drug. It comes on strong and then wears off over time. The only difference here is the chain of causality, but whether the love causes the chemicals or the chemicals cause the love, subjectively speaking I don't suppose it makes much difference, and as an actor your primary concern is always with subjectivity. Subjectivity is your bread and butter. Do you get what I'm saying to you?”

“Not really,” Daniel admitted.

“Okay, well just try putting some more passion into it, would you, Daniel? See if you can't work up some tears for us.”

“I'll try,” Daniel said. His hair vibrated.

“That's all anyone can reasonably ask of you,” Dylan assured him.

Daniel was just about to begin when Tiffany spoke up from the curtains, “How come you're so much nicer today, Mr. G?”

“Am I nicer today?”

“About a thousand times.”

“Well, I got a good night's sleep for one thing. That may have something to do with it.”

It was true. Last night he'd made a point of sleeping on the living room sofa so he could follow Dr. Cohen's advice and omni up some tinnitus-masking white noise without disturbing Erin. Sure enough, he'd slept like the proverbial baby, and it no longer bothered him so much if Daniel Young wasn't the greatest Shakespearean actor in the universe; indeed, as Daniel proceeded to act out his scene there in the classroom, it was clear that, despite overwhelming odds, he didn't have a Shakespearian atom in his body.

Surprises
were
possible, of course.

• • •

Back when Dylan was fourteen, no one would have guessed that he'd go on to be a famous actor one day. It wasn't until his senior year, after all, that his father overheard him belting out Pearl Jam's “Black” in the shower
one evening
8
and encouraged him to try out for the spring musical, which was
Jesus Christ Superstar
that year. Dylan would have been content to be in the chorus, so he was rather terror-stricken when he checked the board the morning after callbacks to find he'd gotten the lead.

Despite feeling in the secret mind at the back of his ordinary mind that he was
meant
to play this part, he was so off-the-charts nervous during the next couple months of rehearsal that he felt as if he was always on the verge of puking. Mr. Armstrong, the casting director/geometry teacher, was tough on him, always making sure he hit
precisely
the right pitch and stood in just the right place on stage when he hit it. Dylan's worst fear was that he would blank during a live performance and forget the words, so in the interest of being over-prepared, he spent so much time and energy at home listening to cast recordings of
Superstar
, and recording himself singing it, that his eyes went all raccoonish and his grades tanked in every subject except English, which had always been easy for him.

But then, come opening night, his efforts paid such high dividends that he didn't merely sing the songs so much as he became them. And just as in his audition, he didn't quite realize what he'd done until it was over and he was taking his curtain call. But whereas a couple of dozen kids had clapped for him after his audition, several hundred adults were now giving him a standing ovation. Dylan Greenyears had found his calling, and everyone in the school knew it.

Overnight, Dylan became as popular as it was possible to be at Cardinal O'Hara High School, and not just among his peers but teachers, parents, custodial staff, alumni, and everyone else who'd come to see the show or read the stellar reviews in the
News of Delaware County
or
The Springfield Press
as well. To be sure, there are few ways to inflate a teenager's ego more than to assign him the role of God in the school musical. One way, though, is to award him “Most Likely to Be Famous” in his senior yearbook, and Dylan had that honor too. It didn't hurt things either that he had lately begun dating Erin Wheatley, the dance captain, who'd been cast as his temptress in more ways than one. The future had never looked so gorgeous.