Drew, p.17
Drew, page 17
Join the club, dawg.
CHANGE 1–DAY 241
When I got home from school after track practice today, I checked my e-mail:
Dearest Drew,
Voila, your weekly pleading missive. WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO FULFILL YOUR DESTINY AND REJOIN THE BICKERSONS? We can no longer make music without your killer chops, and seeing how we are on track to accept the Billboard Magazine award for Top New Group in approximately 3.5 years, there’s still time for you to get in on the ground level now, before we all become addicted to fame and pills and hair extensions and yoga (respectively) and start living up to our name, unable to be in the same room together, much less share a stage.
Sincerely,
Gen (on behalf of Ray-Ray and C-Rok too)
Ah, C-Rok.
Mr. Radical Changer Freegan Anarchist Squatter Spelt-Muffin Eating, Home-Schooled, Freedom Fighter for Visibility and Equality Everywhere . . . I’m surprised that playing for an alternative Neo-Emo-Ska band hasn’t become too “mainstream” for him yet. I’m sure that day is coming.
I clicked Reply and wrote:
Dearest Gen (and fellow Bickersons),
Thank you so much for continuing to hold my spot in your esteemed band, but at this juncture, I still think it advisable to fill the position with some other (likely) subpar beat maker. I am sorry to inform you that my parental units are still boycotting my triumphant return to the stage, and there’s no telling if or when they might relent. Maybe this summer? Hard to tell. Feel free to check back periodically (as I’m sure you will), but if you need to find another drummer in the interim, please proceed. I will not be hurt, and understand well that the road to fame and fortune is paved with difficult decisions such as this one. Good luck!
Sincerely,
D-Rok
I pressed Send. Felt a twinge of an urge to play with them again, a flash of anger at my parents and the Council for not letting me, and a deep longing to see Chase’s stupid face, but I stuffed it all. Chase is becoming someone else now. As am I. And anyway, he knows where to find me, if he wants to. A girl can’t sit around and wait to be rescued or loved, or any of that rom-com crap. And besides, I’m running my own race now. Literally. I know what it feels like to win. And I’m not giving that up before I have to.
CHANGE 1–DAY 242
Today in class, Mr. Crowell informed us that we would all be performing different scenes from Romeo and Juliet. As in, memorizing scenes and acting them out with other students in front of the entire class. In costume. For a grade.
Mr. Crowell starts assigning scenes, groups of four, six, three, two. He claims he’s grouping kids who he feels will make a “fruitful collaboration,” those most likely to learn something from one another during the process. I notice Audrey and I are among the few left as he’s going down the roster, and he seems to be holding the main scenes between Romeo and Juliet for last. Chloe gets to play Juliet in the balcony scene. (“Holla!” she sings out and raises the roof soon as she hears she’s been assigned the role of Juliet in the money shot, but then her arms drop and her face completely sours when she hears her Romeo will be this burner dude named Dave.)
Mr. Crowell announces last that Audrey and I will also be performing as Romeo and Juliet (I’m Romeo), an excerpt from Act I, Scene V: the dance scene when Romeo sees Juliet for the first time.
“Now, some of you might notice that we are doing some serious gender-bending for the sake of these performances,” Mr. Crowell says after all parts have been assigned.
“So I have to be, like, RuPaul or something when I play the nurse?” Jerry the joker shouts out.
“Not exactly,” Mr. Crowell replies. “But I certainly wouldn’t frown upon a wig and a little makeup.”
Everybody groans.
“Does anybody know who played the parts of women when Shakespeare’s plays were originally staged?”
“Hot chicks?” Dave offers.
“He wouldn’t be asking the question if that were the answer, idiot,” Chloe snips. “It’s men, obviously.”
“Mostly boys, actually,” Mr. Crowell says. “During Shakespeare’s time, it was considered morally suspect for women to perform on stage.”
“I am so glad I didn’t live then,” Chloe sighs.
“Don’t worry, you’re morally suspect off stage too,” Jerry quips.
“And you’re a dateless wonder,” she snaps back.
Audrey once told me that when Chloe competes in her glitz pageants, she always performs Scarlett O’Hara monologues for the “talent” portion of the competitions. Which explains so, so much.
“Yeah, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were pretty rough all around, but especially for women,” Mr. Crowell tells us. “In fact, I wrote my thesis about gender play on the Shakespearean stage, and much of my research focused on the audience’s fear of women’s sexuality, and the notion of experiencing it in such an up-close and personal way in the theater. Interesting, considering how much of Shakespeare’s work deals with the ambiguity of romantic love and sexual attraction.”
Chloe nods her head in an exaggerated way, like she already knows everything Mr. Crowell is saying—and concurs completely. Meanwhile, my curiosity is piqued. It sounds like Mr. C has dipped both feet into the Changer pool.
“Anyway, prepubescent boys were used, because their voices hadn’t yet cracked and they were of course beardless, so audiences found them more believable in women’s roles. An additional scintillating fact: the bright white makeup used by these boys was made of lead, and a lot of them ended up with the skin on their faces destroyed, or very ill from what we know now was lead poisoning. Some of them even died from it.”
Chloe fawns, “I would die for my art too.”
“I know I feel like dying when I watch it,” Jerry cracks.
“Eff you, loser,” Chloe retorts. “You should be so lucky.”
“Wait, do I have to white out my face?” Dave interjects, actually concerned.
“No students will be harmed in the making of this play,” Mr. Crowell assures the class with a wink.
I’m not so certain. My “playing” a boy who falls madly in love with a girl “played” by Audrey seems like an express train to crazy town.
“In the spirit of authenticity, I’d like you to let go of gender stereotypes, if you can,” Mr. Crowell says, and it feels like he might be speaking directly to me. Or about me. Nervous laughter spreads throughout the classroom. “I know you are teenagers, and as such, that is going to be near-impossible for you to do, but your entire quarter grade depends on it, so figure it out, people.”
I glance over at Audrey, whose attention has been on Mr. Crowell exclusively. I clear my throat, shift in my seat, but she still doesn’t look over at me. I start scanning our scene. I can feel sweat pumping in my armpits. Dang. There’s a lot to memorize.
Finally Audrey looks over, and she curls up her lips tentatively, like, Is this okay? I nod encouragingly, and she relaxes. Almost like old times. I flip through our scene, notice that after the portion we are to perform, Romeo asks the Nurse who that girl is he was just talking to, and she tells him that she is the daughter of the Capulets, his own father’s sworn enemy. Then Juliet asks the Nurse who the guy she was just crushing on is—and finds out that he’s the son of her father’s mortal enemy. It’s quite a cluster-frack.
Juliet cries, “My only love sprung from my only hate!”
Oh boy.
* * *
I am studying the scene at home when an e-mail pops into my in-box:
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Hey, you. Now we HAVE to hang out and you’ll have to stop ignoring me, or we’ll fail English. When do you want to start practicing? I can do any day this week after cheerleading. Plus next weekend nights. It’s a lot to learn, and I SUCK at memorizing lines. But I’m glad we’re doing it together. ;)
Love,
Juliet
CHANGE 1–DAY 249
“If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”
My hair slicked back, I am channeling boy, maybe even Ethan, standing at the front of the classroom in my purple stockings and fluffy Elizabethan man-bloomers and doublet that Mom rented for me from a costume shop in Nashville. Everything is so itchy, especially the gold cape tied around my neck—and stanky, as in the funk of fifty thousand teenage fears.
“Good pilgrim,” Audrey picks up, “you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this; for saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.” She inches toward me, her hooped, floor-length blue gown swaying around her legs like a giant bell.
We hold our hands up, palms out. They touch, the shapes perfectly matched. I can see my fingers trembling against hers, and Audrey looks right into my eyes, steadying me as I go on, launching into Shakespeare’s clever argument for why Juliet should let Romeo kiss her.
“Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?” I ask, sucking in Audrey’s warmth through my hands.
“Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer,” Aud shoots back, slightly smart-ass—onto my, well, Romeo’s scheming.
“O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; they pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair,” I go on.
“Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake,” she counters.
Another student coughs in the audience, which takes me out of the scene and causes me to forget completely what I’m supposed to say next. I can feel moisture building at the hundreds of tiny points where our flesh meets. I am standing there petrified, Elizabethan English phrases ricocheting around my brain. I feel Aud push her hands against me, and I look up into her eyes. In the background I hear Chloe sigh dramatically.
“Then move . . .” Mr. Crowell prompts.
“Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take!” I say, too enthusiastically and momentarily out of character. Whew. Then, damn, I realize this is where Romeo is supposed to lean in and kiss Juliet, a little fact Aud and I only ascertained once we got together and started practicing our scene. We never actually kissed during rehearsals; both of us just kept saying we’d save it for the actual performance, “to make it more real.”
I gulp down a breath, terrified of what’s going to happen, if anything. I mean, this whole superpower-vision thing must not apply to mandatory in-character, in-class kisses for a grade, right? I start leaning in, closer and closer, and I flash on the first time I saw Audrey in class at the beginning of the school year, merely a couple hours after I became Drew. How she stuck up for me when Chloe and the Bees were going for the jugular of the new girl wearing stained mom-shorts. Aud’s lips so shiny and soft-looking, and me just mesmerized by them and maybe wondering if I’d ever get to kiss them, even though it was ridiculous to think at the time.
I keep leaning in, even closer, Audrey stock-still like Juliet’s supposed to be, after Romeo convinces her to sit back and let him kiss her. I pucker up, close my eyes, and I can feel a flutter of warmth on my cheeks, my nose, my lips, and . . . CONTACT.
Wait, what? At the last second, Audrey turned her head to the side, and my lips land squarely on her left cheek. She ducked me. I am floored. And more than a little humiliated. I try to stay in character.
“Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged,” I fumble.
Audrey is red as Christmas. She is supposed to act like she enjoyed the kiss so much that she now wants another one—to give back the sin that she supposedly just took from my lips. “Then have my lips the sin that they have took.”
“Sin from thy lips?” I ask, like, I have you now. “O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.” I lean in again, this time more aggressively, and Aud moves toward me too. This time we’re really going to do it, I know we are, and we’re looking into each other’s eyes, like, This is really happening, but right before we make contact that sentiment switches over to Is this really happening? and at the last millisecond, Aud wrenches her head again, but less severely than the last time, and I graze the corner of her lips with mine.
We hold it for a few seconds. I mean, I might not have landed on the bull’s eye, but this is supposed to be the real deal, a life-altering moment that seals Romeo and Juliet’s fate. Not to mention we are gunning for that A.
We pull apart. Me dizzy. Aud more flushed than before, prettier, if it’s possible. I watch her, and now it is she who seems to have forgotten what’s supposed to happen next.
“You kiss by the book,” Aud says, snapping to, and I can’t really discern how much is acting, and how much could be reality, whatever that is.
The room is silent, and we are locked into one another’s gaze for a few beats, and then: clapping, spurred by Mr. Crowell. The rest of the class enthusiastically joins in. There are a couple hoots, a whistle or two. We shake off the trance we’d obviously fallen into, then turn to the class, holding hands and taking a little bow.
Mr. Crowell is smiling. “Now that is how it’s done,” he pronounces. “Lovely, ladies. An incredible job. Who knew we had such talent in our midst? Questions, comments?”
Chloe’s hand shoots up. Mr. Crowell nods to her. “Um, they didn’t kiss on the lips,” Chloe says, real pissy. “They didn’t stay true to the script.”
Audrey and I let go of each other’s hand. I glare at Chloe, who smirks, unmoved.
“Well, it’s not a script, but a scene, which is different. And even though it wasn’t absolutely spot on,” Mr. Crowell concedes, “I believe they really conveyed the emotion and power of what’s going on in that first meeting, an expression of the perfect love—yet one that is bound inextricably to a tragic destiny.”
Chloe, not satisfied, crosses her arms and leans back in her seat.
“Any other observations? Anything?” Mr. Crowell asks.
“Ye-ah,” Jerry says, raking his fingers through his hair. “Drew, you got game, man.”
“Shakespeare has game, more correctly,” Mr. Crowell says. “All right, Drew, Audrey, good job. You’re excused.”
* * *
We practically floated down to the girls’ bathroom then, where I couldn’t wait to get out of those ridiculously uncomfortable clothes. Sure, I’d thought it might be fun to dress up as a “guy” again for the assignment, but once I realized that prospect involved thick tights and poufy short-shorts, that theory sort of flew out the window. Elizabethan menswear? About as masculine as Tracy’s wardrobe.
Audrey started gratefully peeling off all her layers too, her massive gown falling to the floor in a circle around her.
“We kind of hit that out of the park,” I say.
“I know,” Audrey chirps. “We are so getting an A.”
“Did you see grody Chloe’s face?” I laugh. “There’s room for only one diva Juliet in this town.”
“She is welcome to that title!” Audrey says. “Hey, help me untie this kirtle? I think it’s in a knot.”
Aud stands in her bra by the sinks, presenting her pale back to me. I try not to look at her reflection in the mirror while I relax the knot. And for that matter, I also try not to look at my own. Because for a while there—and I know this probably sounds a little bananas—but it sort of felt like I was Romeo, or even good old Ethan (RIP). Just a boy who saw a girl at a party and went up to talk to her for a minute. Nothing more complicated than that. (Minus the Olde English.)
Of course, my life is more complicated than that. It’s the whack-a-mole of complication. I hammer one down, and another pops up, bearing its grimy yellow teeth.
That’s what I was thinking as I stood there. Refusing to look at myself. Afraid to see who I was. What I was. Realizing that any reflection I saw in the mirror would be a lie.
“It was fun pretending to be someone else for a while,” I hear Audrey say.
I don’t answer. I worry if I do I’ll blurt something like, Not as much fun as you might think. Or, About that . . . have I got a crazy story for you! Or, I was a boy. And now I’m a girl. And neither one feels like the whole truth. And neither one feels like pretending either.
After a minute I catch her staring at me, her face soft, concerned. “You okay?” she whispers.
I smile, faking. “Totally,” I say. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Audrey tilts her head, seemingly unconvinced. “Are we okay?” she murmurs, her voice so quiet I can barely hear the words.
I clear my throat, turn around, suddenly obsessed with folding my doofy costume.
“Because if we aren’t okay,” she goes on, her voice wavering, “I don’t know if I can deal with that. You know me better than anyone. I don’t . . . I don’t want to be in a world where nobody gets me. You’re the only person I can be myself with. Does that make sense? At all? God, I feel like a creep. Do you ever feel like a creep?”
I drop my costume and embrace Audrey, her body going limp as I do. “Only every day,” I say into her hair, which smells of lavender and brown sugar. “And you couldn’t be a creep if you tried.” I hug tighter. “Your brother, on the other hand . . .”
Audrey begins to giggle, and I let her go. She looks so relieved. Pretty. And I decide in that moment, Eff you,Council. Audrey is my friend. Audrey has been my friend since the moment we first met. And I plan on being hers. As much as possible in the time we (okay, I) have left. So if you think that’s wrong, or it breaks the commandments, you just go ahead and try to stop me.
CHANGE 1–DAY 260
Nana wrote me today. An actual letter. Her handwriting all chicken-scratch from arthritis. For as long as I can remember, her fingers have looked like gnarled tree branches, her wedding ring lodged beneath a knuckle swollen big as a walnut. When I was Ethan, I took morbid fascination in Nana’s hands, reveled in how deformed they were. I remember telling her how they were “cool,” that they could be a special effect in a horror movie. She always just laughed and started chasing me, her hands raised in front of her face: “I’m gonna getcha!”
