Starry-Eyed (38 page)

So I was stuck. I didn't know how to end it. Part of me wanted to make it happy, for them to get back together. I tried to write an apology for Sophie, but everything sounded hollow. And then, that afternoon in world history, it occurred to me that even though you are in Utah now, even though we don't go to the same school and we don't text or talk on the phone and you blocked me from your Facebook—despite all of these things, the chances are good that we will someday run into each other again in real life and will have to confront one another in some way. Maybe we'll smile and say hi as though it's no big deal. Maybe you'll want to talk to me and we'll go sit and have coffee and I will have to try hard not to yell at you or to cry. Maybe you'll avert your eyes and pretend not to see me. Or maybe I'll pretend not to see you. I don't know what will happen, but I do have this wish that keeps running through me, and so I took that wish and I turned it into a scene. Here it is.

It is winter. We've watched Claire agonize through the year, watched Eric apologize and be forgiven, watched Sophie struggle—maddeningly, but you should also know, endearingly, fumblingly—through her tempest of self-alienation. And now the weather has changed, and everything is gray-blue and frozen. Claire is
rushing to her car against the cold, and there on the edge of campus, stepping off of the yellow curb, is Sophie. They haven't seen each other for weeks, haven't acknowledged one another for months. But this time, when Claire sees her, she doesn't turn away or feign blindness, and she doesn't feel like crying or yelling, and she doesn't especially feel like a conversation. She knows, by this point, that there are no questions between them worth answering anymore. Then Sophie catches sight of Claire and falters. She isn't sure what to do, and in her impossible-to-read face there may be a hint of hope or longing or regret. And then the camera pans away from her and back to Claire (whose story this is really, even if Sophie is the pointiest point), and we see Claire smile a small, kind smile. It says something like, I forgive you. Or, I loved you once. Or, I hope you're learning to be better to yourself. Or, maybe, just: hello.

She lifts her hand in a wave, and then she turns away.

The end.

Love,

Tori

ANECDOTE: BONNIE LANGFORD

I was three months old when I first appeared onstage. My mother carried me in her arms at the end of the annual show for the dance school that she ran. I'm told that I took to it like a duck to water, but I honestly don't remember it at all. It would be a little crazy if I could! But maybe that first of many appearances established the secure and comfortable feeling I have of being onstage.

I'm so glad I never had to make a decision to choose this peculiar profession; it was destiny and fate. I feel very lucky and blessed. I think it's so valuable to know where your focus belongs and your heart lies and, even though I was a shy, quiet child, I came alive when I was onstage portraying a role.

At the age of eight, I auditioned and was invited to play Baby June in the London production of the musical,
Gypsy
. It was the first time
Gypsy
had been produced in London, the first time Arthur Laurents (the book writer) had directed his show and was to star Angela Lansbury in her return to the West End stage. It was a theatrical event. The show was rapturously received, as was Ms. Lansbury. On the opening night curtain call, a member of the audience shouted “Welcome home, Angela!” I loved it so much and felt so fortunate to be on that stage to witness and share it all.

In England at that time, there were legal restrictions for children performing in theater, television, and on film. We could only work for a maximum of forty performances per year, which meant that I could only play Baby June for six consecutive weeks. At my final performance in London, I was devastated and cried buckets. However, after the performance, the producers, Barry Brown and Fritz Holt, asked my parents if they would consider allowing me to go to America to play Baby June on the
production's forthcoming U.S. tour and subsequent Broadway season.

To cut an extremely long, detailed story short involving American Equity, AFTRA, and the British courts, a year later I was made a “ward of court” and my mother accompanied me across the pond to New York to begin rehearsals. It was such an adventure and such a learning experience in every possible sense. To be part of a brilliant, successful show, directed by a highly respected director, and to watch Angela Lansbury give such a heartfelt, truthful, and magical performance every single night, was a treasured gift. She taught me how to behave offstage too. She doesn't know it, but just being in her company makes you learn—especially at such an impressionable age.

The icing on the cake for me was the very final performance on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre. We had played to packed houses and were set to run and run, but Angela needed to rest and return to her home in Los Angeles, so the show closed at its peak. The final show was electric. The audience was with us through each moment, and they gave me the most wonderful experience that I will always cherish.

Gypsy
incorporates every crowd-pleasing moment you can think of: I even had to twirl batons while tap dancing on pointe finishing in the splits! At the end of her vaudeville act, Baby June runs to the center of the stage to receive her applause before the play off. At this point I would look around the entire auditorium, from the balcony right to left, and the orchestra stalls left to right. Arthur Laurents had encouraged me to absorb every moment, every person, and “take my time.” So much so, that I was directed to only say my next line when the conductor, Milton Rosenstock, put his glasses across his face and winked at me.

On that final performance, I stood center stage on Broadway with my arms out to the side and looked out at the entire audience standing and applauding. There leading the applause was Arthur Laurents himself cheering for me. Mr. Rosenstock was blowing kisses, and the orchestra members applauded too. I stood there for what seemed like hours, but was probably four or five minutes. It still makes me emotional when I
remember those moments.

To do something you love and to know that you have touched people is such a privilege. It's not about plaudits and praise; it's just about feeling a universal emotion you can't buy, and sharing it with an audience. That's one of the reasons I love my job, through all its fickle ups and downs, sweat and tears—and sometimes blood! It sounds so sentimental, but it's not. It's just a unique profession, and I'm proud to be part of it.

B
ONNIE
L
ANGFORD
starred as Roz in the U.K. tour of
9 to
5, and received a Drama Desk nomination for
Gypsy
. She has played Roxie Hart in
Chicago
on Broadway and both at the Adelphi Theatre and the Cambridge Theatre in London's West End. Other West End and U.K. tours include
Sweet Charity, Me and My Girl, Peter Pan, Cats, The Pirates of Penzance, Gypsy, 42nd Street, Oklahoma!, Fosse, Gone with the Wind
, and Miss Adelaide in the Donmar Warehouse production of
Guys and Dolls
. Television/film credits include
Bugsy Malone, The Hot Shoe Show, This Is Your Life, Dancing on Ice
, and BBC's
Doctor Who
. Her solo albums
Bonnie Langford Now
and the top-selling
Jazz at the Theatre
are available on iTunes.
www.Bonnielangford.co.uk
.

STAGE KISS

Cynthia Hand

You've heard the term, “sweet sixteen, never been kissed”?

Yep, that was me.

Back then I was just your average high school junior, player-but-not-star player of the girls' soccer team, solid B student, blah blah blah—I was sixteen, is my point. I don't know how sweet I was, but up until that spring, the spring that changed everything, I had never been kissed by a boy.

Never.

Not once.

Not even in grade school when it would have been considered cute, or in middle school at one of those spin-the-bottle type parties. Not even on the cheek. I had never, as far as I could remember,
ever
, been kissed.

But I don't want you to get the wrong idea about me. I wasn't a social reject or anything. I had friends. I'd liked boys before, and they'd liked me. We'd just never made it to the kissing stage, is all. I was too busy. My parents were under the impression that the way to keep their kids out of trouble was to make sure they were monumentally busy. From the time I'd started school, it'd been pretty much one activity after another: piano lessons, track team, ski team, soccer, gymnastics.

Just call me Little Miss Extracurricular.

The problem with all the after-school fun, besides that it becomes, after a point,
exhausting
, is that you don't have time for anything else.

Like boys, for instance.

Hence my unkissed status at the end of my junior year.

Which, I had to admit to myself, was a little sad.

“So kiss a guy,” my friend Becca told me after I fessed up on that fateful Wednesday morning in March. We were sitting on the floor of the commons in the break between second and third period, eating breakfast burritos. Becca had been telling me about how the current love-of-her-life, Peter, had taken her on a hike that weekend in the mountains near the Wyoming border. And how they had watched the sun go down together. And then he'd kissed her.

Cue the sweeping music.

“See, that's the way a first kiss should be.” I'd sighed without thinking.

Then Becca said, “Oh, that wasn't my
first
kiss. My first kiss was when I was fourteen on the ski hill, you remember Stu, that guy on the ski team—Wait, what was
your
first kiss?” and she could tell by my lack of response and the beet-red color of my face that it was true: I was an official member of the VLC.

The Virgin Lip Club.

“Wow, really?” she said, wide-eyed. “Never?”

“Never.”

“I thought you made out with that Justin guy in eighth grade.”

“No. We just passed notes to each other in science class. No kissing.”

“Hmm,” she said thoughtfully and shrugged. “So kiss a guy.” Like now, hop up, go get that taken care of. Pronto.

I scoffed. “Oh, right. I'll just walk up to a random guy and say, ‘Hi there, do you mind if I kiss you?'”

“Sure. Why not? Seize the moment, Jo.” She glanced around the commons at the dozens of unsuspecting males passing by on their way to the cafeteria. She grinned. “Pick a boy, any boy.”

“I don't want it to be just any boy. I want it to be somebody—”
special
, I was too embarrassed to say out loud, because that was way too Hallmark card.
The right boy
.

Just then my gaze happened to fall on Ryan Daughtry.

Sigh, Ryan Daughtry. The hottest guy at Bonneville High School. Possibly the hottest guy in the entire state of Idaho. Possibly the world.

I'd had a thing for Ryan Daughtry ever since speech class in ninth grade when he gave a demonstration on how to bake chocolate chip cookies, and let me tell you, I wasn't the only girl in that class who thought he was delicious. There was just something about him—the combination of deep brown eyes and olive skin, the easiness of his smile, the close-cut dark hair that he styled to look purposefully messy. Adorable. That day in the commons he was going vintage—a white button-down shirt with a thin black tie, a black fedora perched jauntily on his head. It looked good on him.