Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen - Dyan Sheldon [20]
All she’d said to anyone else was “Thank you”, or “Try it again”, or “Could you speak up a little?”. At no one else had she rolled her eyes and sighed.
I’d gone too far. This is something my parents often wrongly accuse me of doing, but this time I really had. I’d figured Mrs Baggoli would be impressed by my desire to know the character I was portraying in every intimate detail and to make her real, but now that I thought about it she’d been more annoyed than impressed. What convinced me of that wasn’t the expression I could remember on Mrs Baggoli’s face, but the look I could remember on Carla Santini’s. That smile… It was the smile of Iago as he watched Othello storm off to ruin his life.
I jumped out of bed and dressed in record time. I raced into the kitchen, grabbed something for lunch and was out of the house before my mother could yell at me for not having any breakfast. I had to get to school before everyone else. If I really wasn’t going to play Eliza, I wanted to be the first to know. And I wanted to be alone when I found out. I could handle it – after all, rejection is part of the creative process; as painful as it is necessary for true growth and greatness – but I’d need a little time to prepare myself, to decide how I was going to play my defeat.
It wasn’t something I’d thought about before. I had a pretty good idea how Carla Santini would play it if she got the losing role. When she stole Anya Klarke’s boyfriend last spring, Carla had managed to act as though she and not Anya were the injured party. It was Anya who was generally treated as though she were an evil witch and Carla who sat around polishing her halo. There was no way I was going to let that happen to me.
By the time the green fields of Dellwood High finally hove into view, I was sweating and breathless and my mascara was running. There were a few cars in the car park, including Mrs Baggoli’s old Ford. That meant she’d posted the results. I jumped the curb in front of the main building, and rode straight to the entrance of the auditorium.
Carla, Alma, Tina and Marcia were standing in front of the doors, their heads together as though conjuring a spell. If I’d been quicker, or if I ever bothered to oil my bike, I might have gotten away before they saw me. But I wasn’t, and I didn’t. My brakes screeched as I tried to slow down enough to retreat.
Like cows, they turned together. There was no sweat on Carla or her friends. They all looked as though they were waiting for the photographer. Considering the amount of make-up they all wore, they must have been up at dawn.
“Well, will you look what the wind’s blown in,” cooed Carla.
I knew that coo. If it had been a weapon, it would have been a submachine-gun. Carla was happy. I hadn’t gotten the part.
But a great actor acts, whether she got the part or not.
I smiled. “I couldn’t stand the suspense,” I said, as if I was interested but personally unconcerned. “I had to see how the casting went.”
“Oh, did you?” Carla smiled. A switchblade joined the Santini arsenal.
“Yeah.” I forced myself to smile back. A great actor puts the play before her own petty needs and desires. She doesn’t sulk or get grumpy when she loses out to a lesser talent. She is generous even in the most ignominious defeat. “Well,” I said brightly, “are congratulations in order?”
Alma, Tina, and Marcia all looked to Carla. Carla just stared at me.
When no one responded I went on. “I can’t wait to see what part I got. No matter what, it’s going to be a great production.”
“If it is a great production, it’ll be thanks to Carla,” said Alma. I thought she meant because Carla was going to play Eliza, but she didn’t. “I mean, whose idea was it to update the play in the first place?”
Surprise, I’ve noticed, can often provoke honesty.
“Well, actually, it was—”