Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen - Dyan Sheldon [28]
I raised my voice, just a little. “I saw her heading towards the office after last class.”
Catlike, Carla kept her eyes on Andy, waiting for him to answer.
Andy had gone from uneasiness to a kind of mild terror. You could practically hear his palms sweating. He glanced at me, and then turned back to Carla.
“She went to the office after her last class,” said Andy. He twitched, trying to decide whether or not he could safely move away now.
He couldn’t.
“But school ended half an hour ago.” Carla tilted her head to one side. “It isn’t like Mrs Baggoli to be late for rehearsals. Especially not the first one.”
Andy stared back at her, looking as if he might implode. “Well … uh…” he grunted.
“She had some Xeroxing she had to do,” I went on, warming to my story. “For us. She has a last-minute change to the script.”
Andy shifted from one foot to the other. “She’s Xeroxing,” he informed Carla. “You know, a last-minute change to the script.”
The delicate, sculpted nostrils twitched.
“What changes? I discussed the revisions with her during lunch period and she didn’t say anything about more changes.”
Andy gulped under the interrogation-strength beam of Carla’s gaze.
“Oh.” He looked at me out of the corners of his eyes. By now everyone else was looking at me, too.
I truly believe that if you have a good, brave heart the forces of the universe will help you if they can. Even though the forces of the universe had been unable to keep me out of a world that included Carla Santini, they were able to do something else. They inspired me.
“She only thought of it last night,” I said. “But she believes it could revitalize the entire play.”
Andy started to relax a little.
“It was sudden,” he said. “But it’s big.”
“Oh, really?” drawled Carla. “And just what is this big idea?”
I dropped my cape from my shoulders and leaned back in my seat.
“She’s writing out Mrs Higgins,” I said with a smile.
Totally forgetting that I no longer existed, Carla turned to me, her face full of scorn. “Oh, hahaha.”
I grinned. I’d known I could make her talk to me.
Not that I actually heard her, of course. Everyone else was laughing too loudly.
YOU CAN CHOOSE YOUR ENEMIES, BUT NOT YOUR RELATIVES
What with starting to learn the new script and being distracted because Ella and I were deep in Siberia, I hadn’t yet addressed the problem of convincing my mother to let me go to New York to see Sidartha. I was so cheered by my victory in the skirmish with Carla that afternoon, however, that I decided to launch my campaign that very night.
I know my mother; she can be handled, but it usually takes some time and I couldn’t afford to blow it because I’d waited too long to start on her. Now it was even more important that Ella and I get to the concert than it would have been normally; this had grown beyond a personal desire and become a righteous cause. I couldn’t let Carla humiliate and ridicule us; I had to go to that party and laugh in her face. I owed it to the rest of the school.
It may seem naïve, but I didn’t really think that persuading my mother was going to be this incredibly ginormous problem. After all, she’d already more or less said maybe. Well, what she’d actually said was, “I’ll think about it.” But I am destined to be a great actor. What’s another thing that separates a great actor from an average one? The ability to convince. Convince the audience that you’re an old woman when you’re only in your twenties. Convince them that you’re a murderer when you’re really mild as a newborn lamb. Convince them that you’re a saint when you’re really Carla Santini.
I took the job of convincing my mother to let me go to the concert as a professional challenge. I was confident that once Karen Kapok had given her permission, the Gerards, with their new, guilty understanding of all she’d suffered, would let Ella go, too.
“Is there something wrong with the spaghetti?” asked my mother.
She’d finally noticed. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been sitting there for at least fifteen minutes, languidly pushing my food around my plate and (as usual) no