We change into pajamas pretty immediately after dinner because why the hell not, and then we go up to my attic and I put on my toe shoes.
“Do something,” she says. She’s still hoarse. I keep telling her not to talk. “Anything.”
I turn some fouettés because they were always my favorites and because they feel like sinking into a bubble bath.
“I missed this so much,” I say. “I just, I missed this so much.”
And then I’m dancing. The floorboards are creaking underneath me but I don’t care. I’m doing the Swan Lake combinations I memorized back when I was this tiny kid twirling in front of the TV when I watched the grainy VHS recording my mom made for the billionth time. I’m this baby in her shoes at her first class and I’m the sixteen-year-old who really genuinely loved this until one teacher made her feel like shit and apparently that was all it took to convince her that ballet wanted her to be small.
Ballet wants me to be big, to be sweeping lines (but my body isn’t lines, I don’t understand) to be committed with every inch of me, and however many inches I have, I can do it.
Ballet.
Maybe my first best friend. It can fight Rachel for the title. (It can fight Rachel for everything, I guess.)
Bianca’s entranced, knees up to her chin.
“You’re beautiful,” she says.
I smile at her and cool down through some pliés and slow stretching. “You should do ballet.”
“I trip over my feet walking.” She lies down, cheek against the floor. “And I get so tired now.”
“I know, baby.”
“If you don’t get into Brentwood, you should try for dancing schools. Aren’t there big ones in New York?”
“Yeah, but I don’t really do ballet anymore. I don’t know if I want to. I want . . .” God. I want this girl, or I want people who are going to make me feel like this girl does. I want people with big voices who surprise me and scare me and make me feel things and I want this girl to not wilt and die like this is a Victorian novel.
I think she’s falling asleep here.
“I have a better shot at them, though, I guess,” I say.
“Maybe.” She yawns.
I say, “You’ve got to get better, Bee.”
“I know.”
“This . . . what you’re doing. This isn’t sustainable.”
“I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“That’s big, you know?”
She shrugs. “Except I don’t know anything else I want to do either.”
“You want to sing.”
She shrugs again, closing her eyes. “I’m so tired.”
• • •
I wake up at seven to a motorcycle roaring outside, and, genuine surprise, Mason’s here, and, bigger surprise, he has James.
“This kid is not missing his audition,” Mason says.
I run up to James and hug him. “What about Ian?”
“He’s meeting us there,” Mason says, and I let James go so Bianca can get all over him, asking if he’s okay and checking him over like their parents might have hit him (shit they wouldn’t hit him, would they?). Mason knows I’m thinking it and he catches my eye and shakes his head all reassuring. Okay.
“I’m fine, Bee,” James says. “Stop fussing. C’mere.” He gathers her all up and kisses her forehead. “Hey, you’re shivering.”
“She’s gonna have a yogurt shake in the car,” I say. “Right, Bianca?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Park the motorcycle in the garage,” I say to Mason. I kiss him quickly on his way by. “And get in the car. We have to go.”
I drive most of the way, with Mason taking shifts, and Bianca and James crash in the backseat together. They’re not saying much, just leaning all over each other, and when they do talk it’s too quietly for me to hear most of it. But the gist is that their parents are threatening all kinds of ship-you-off-to-military-school bullshit and Bianca’s freaking out.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I hear her say at some point, and God, this is so like when Mom went to that PTA meeting and some parent said some homophobic bullshit and my mom came home and hugged me and told me how proud of me she was and how she didn’t care who I wanted to love, all of that stuff. I guess there’s nothing like someone in front of you being an actual bigot to make you climb out of your own hardwired bullshit. It’s not Bianca’s fault she’s got this underpinning of prejudice, y’know? I should really forgive my mom, too, but there’s got to be a difference between Bianca’s hesitation to let James date a guy and my mom’s hesitation with me, first of all because Bianca’s issues are religious while my mom’s are just this isn’t how things have been done, and second of all because I’m her daughter and supporting me is her job, isn’t it? I mean, I’m not out killing people, I’m just making out with girls, and if she didn’t want to have to deal with me then she should have thought of that before she got pregnant. I’m fundamentally a good kid. I know that.
Sometimes.
Anyway, somehow this all culminates in me calling Rachel at a rest stop.
“God, what fucking decade is this?” she says.
I’m still trying to get over the fact that she answered, and now I have to warp my brain until I’ve processed that yes, I did just tell her all about James’s issues with Ian and their parents and yes, I somehow did it all without revealing that there’s nothing going on with Bianca and yes, I’ve somehow accidentally become a terrible and manipulative person. No wonder my mom judges me.
I say, “I don’t even know how to deal with this. Every time our parents were shitty they were, like, sane-people shitty.”
“Right? Are they going to send him to one of those reprogramming camps?”
“What? No. I don’t think anyone actually does that. Wait, do people do that?”
“I think they use electroshock there.”
“You know some people—”
“Find electroshock very helpful and the way the media portrays it as a torture form isn’t accurate since it’s still therapeutically safe and effective for many cases. You’re so predictable, Ett.”
“Well, you know how I love to be up-to-date on treatments of homosexuality.”
“When is someone going to suggest weed as a cure, that’s what I want to know.”
I miss her.
She says, “Ugh, I’ve got to go.”
“Going out?”
“What? It’s nine thirty, you’re lucky I’m awake, you think the other Dykes are?”
“Right.”
“I’m taking the twins to the park.”
That sounds like some kind of strange euphemism. “Tell them Aunt Etta says hi.” I’m really pushing my luck here.
“I will,” she says. She pauses. Then, “Let’s have lunch when you get back? Break a leg.”
So that’s it, then. We’re going to be okay. Rachel isn’t a bad person. Rachel isn’t James’s parents in this metaphor, maybe wanting to send me to reprogramming camp because I slept with a guy. Rachel’s just this girl, just my best friend, trying to reevaluate how she thinks of me because I did something she wasn’t expecting. It doesn’t have to be the political move the Dykes are trying to make it. Maybe they really care if I’m a lesbian, maybe they were just looking for a coup or were bored and wanted some drama. Rachel doesn’t care that I’m not a lesbian. Rachel cares that I’m not the girl who she thought I was.
And maybe I’m not. I don’t really know what girl I am. I’ll figure it out. Maybe with her.
18
THE AUDITION HALLWAY LOOKS ABOUT the same as the other, just with a ton more people. The list of who got through last round was only about twenty people from all of Nebraska, and here we are with the deserted half of the Midwest, let’s be honest, and there’s still more people here than I bet are in the entire student body of Brentwood, so unless they’re looking to totally clear the decks there, just about all of us are screwed. I always knew I didn’t have a prayer, but now I’m looking at craz
y-talented James and Bianca and thinking they might not either. Maybe Bianca was in better shape emotionally, if not physically, when she tried out last year. But she did it once. She can do it again. She deserves this. Be big, Bee.
There’s an acting section of this audition, a cold reading, always Shakespeare, James says, but nobody knows what it is. Probably shitty for girls. Guys get all the good monologues in Shakespeare. And pretty much in everything. There’s also a dance combination, turns out, maybe a little harder than last time, and then whatever we want to sing—a short section, twenty-four to forty-eight bars, and mine is right at the long end of that because I have to get as much Sheila in as I can to develop that personality and have even the tiniest prayer, and I’m really concerned that that’s going to count against me. Bianca, James, and Ian are all prepared at this point and here I am bouncing from foot to foot like I have toe shoes on.
Oh and did I mention it’s a cappella? As in no music? Jesus Christ.
“Maybe I can just go in there and dance,” I say to Bianca. “They’re like, ‘Etta, come sing,’ and I’m like nope and just start dancing.”
“Calm down,” she says, but she’s jittery as hell too, shaking down to the ends of her fingers. At least she drank that yogurt shake, but now she’s all worried about how that might have affected her throat, which is still sore.
“I can’t do this,” she says, all of a sudden.
“What?”
“This is too much. Just . . . I can’t concentrate. This is too much, I can’t do this, I’m going to mess up.”
“Bianca. Hey.”
“I’m going to screw it up and they’re going to be laughing at me.”
“Look at me, Bianca.”
She does. Her chin’s shaking.
I lower my voice to the damn ground. “You’re better than all of these people and you know it. You can do this.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know. I’ll be right there with you.”
“I’m going to mess up. I know it.”
“I’ll be right there.”
We take these deep breaths and kind of hold on to each other and then it’s time to go.
The dance combination is still easy, but there are more girls struggling this time, so I guess it’s not as easy as the last one. Bianca isn’t perfect but she’s been practicing steps with me so she’s better than a lot of them.
The monologue is Juliet. All righty then, way to dig deep, auditioners. A bunch of the girls are really, really good. Once again I’m called near the end of it, so I just sit here and drive myself crazy reading it over and over and rating the other girls from one to ten. Bianca’s a seven. It’ll do, I think, once they hear her sing. But she’s shaky, and that’s not good. They’re not going to like that. And she doesn’t do anything the other girls didn’t do, but at least she does it well.
Then it’s my turn and I’m thinking, well, it worked for “Far from the Home I Love,” and these are different people so maybe they don’t know all my tricks. Worth a shot.
At least it’s not the balcony monologue. It’s Juliet coming up with her plan to drink the poison that will make everyone think she’s dead blah blah yeah yeah. Romeo and Juliet is stupid, but this is probably the best part. The other girls are playing the monologue fairly straight, which for Shakespeare means exaggerated, and I get that, and naturally it would be the choice I would make, but I have to be weird so here goes.
I step up and take a deep breath and yep, let’s do this.
Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again.
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
That almost freezes up the heat of life:
I’ll call them back again to comfort me:
Nurse! What should she do here?
My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
Come, vial.
And so on and so forth. Instead of trying to disguise when I’m looking down at my paper, I make it part of the monologue, and instead of being all tragic and romantic I’m doing it like a crazy person, mumbling to myself, and instead of asking questions to the audience I’m asking them to the voices in my head or whatever. I’m just muttering these lines, and maybe you can’t understand them all but come on, they’ve already listened to it through twenty-five girls, and then I’m saying some of them loud, bold, but not the ones you would expect. I’m punctuating weird spots and pausing in weird places and saying some of it as straight and clear as a seventeen-year-old modern damn girl, because I’m not a fourteen-year-old tragic heroine and in a minute I’m going to pretend to be some thirty-five-year-old washed up dancer in “At the Ballet” so if I want to be Etta for any of this (I was dancing in the second row to the side; they couldn’t see me, just a girl who got all the steps right) then I have to do it right now. So screw it. These other girls could be a real Juliet better than I could anyway, so if this doesn’t work at least I did what I could.
None of these girls except Bianca heard me do a bizarre rendition of “Far from the Home I Love” like the same one-trick pony I apparently am, so they’re all looking at me like I’m crazy all anew just like those girls did. I’m choosing to believe that’s a good sign because hey, it worked once, and Bianca’s smiling at me.
And then it’s singing time.
They go reverse-order this time so I’m near the beginning. I’ve practiced this a hundred times, so even if I know it’s far from perfect, it’s not especially scary. I focus on getting the character through and not making it look like I’ve done it a hundred damn times.
And when I get to the chorus I sing a few of the notes as pretty and clear as I can to show that I have at least some skill, that I can do more than talk my way through a song that’s conveniently meant to be talked through. What’s weird is that I do pretty well on showing off those couple of notes. I only have to sing a little bit, all in all, so as long as they don’t clock me on that I’m pretty sure I got through it, and it’s not like I didn’t do the song how it’s supposed to be done. All they can judge me for is my song choice, and, you know, fair enough, but just like the monologue this is about all I can do. I can’t hold a whole song on my own like Bianca. I can’t hit the high note in Maggie’s part of “At the Ballet,” so I’ll just be Sheila and I’ll do a damn good job.
Unlike the confused silence after my monologue, I get some applause now, hooray.
Some other girls go, and I’m actually surprised by how just okay some of them are. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a ton of talent here, but in between there are girls who I’m kind of wondering how they got through. I mean, they’re no worse than me (except this one girl, did she sleep with someone?) but they didn’t choose the right song for them. Like, come on, don’t try to sing “It Won’t Be Long Now” if you can’t fly your way into Vanessa’s high notes, y’know?
And then it’s Bianca, and God, she’s nervous in this way she’s only supposed to be for the dancing. I give her wrist a little squeeze on her way up to the front of the room. She can do this. She’s auditioned with “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” a billion times. I realize all of a sudden that there’s a good chance these exact auditioners have heard her do “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” a billion times and maybe they’ll remember her as the girl they once let in or maybe they’ll take off points for that maybe being the only song she can sing. But it isn’t. Bianca could sing anything.
But she doesn’t. She’s afraid.
So she sings it, and she sings it well. She hits her notes and gets her vibrato on the right ones. But she doesn’t sing it like she’s having fun. She doesn’t sing it with that spark in her. She doesn’t sing like it’s easy and she wants it and she’s pouring out notes like water.
She doesn’t sing it like Bianca.
And I know in that minute that she’s screwed.
• • •
Called back:
James Grey
a really small group of people we don’t care about
Me
; 19
ME.
Who the hell have I fooled?
The list is posted online somewhere between fifth and sixth period and I see it when I’ve run to the computer lab to check, and there it is, there it freaking is, fifty names from all over the country and one of them is James and one of them is me. In two weeks they’re flying us into New York to meet with the board and sing and dance and read all by ourselves for the final audition.
And one of them is me.
And none of them is Bianca.
I know at some point I need to call her, or maybe James first, but I can’t. My phone immediately lights up with texts from Mason. Congrats!! and dinner tonight? but I can’t, I can’t, because I don’t know how many spots they’re looking to fill but I know that, on some level, it could have been Bianca and not me. They could have taken me out and put her in.
And I know there is a part of me that does want to call and convince them to switch her in for me.
And there is a part of me that doesn’t.
So no, I can’t call her right now. I can’t do anything but duck into the nearest bathroom and bawl, and I didn’t even process what time it is or what floor I’m on and then I hear that voice, all feathers and cream and home, saying, “Etta?”
I sink to the floor of my stall and I’m crying so hard I can’t see her, but then she crawls under the door of the stall and unlocks it and she’s sitting with me and she says, “Shh shh shh okay, come here. Etta, it’s okay, hey hey hey.”
I hear the bathroom door open and someone says, “Rachel?” I think it’s Isabel.
“Fuck off, okay?” Rachel says.
“Jesus, fine.” The door closes.
Rachel pulls me into her, crossing her legs over mine, whispering, “Okay, okay. Did they do something?” she says. “I told them to leave you alone, honey, I told them . . .”
“I’m a terrible friend, I’m a terrible friend, I’m a terrible goddamn friend.”
“No. Hey. No, you’re not.”
“Y-yes.”