Illyria (9 page)

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The cheerleader was right: it made no sense. My face burned. The words of Olivia's speech began to skitter across the page like insects fleeing a light. I took a deep breath and concentrated on speaking as clearly as I could, on getting through the speech without passing out. When I was finished, I stumbled from the stage and thrust the pages at the next girl, then collapsed into the seat beside Rogan.

"That was horrible," I gasped. Rogan grinned. "You did great."

The boys' auditions weren't much more impressive than the girls'. Mr. Sullivan gave them the speech that opens the play, Duke Orsino's command, "If music be the food of love, play on!" Their second reading was cobbled together from Orsino's amatory advice to Cesario.

I was disconcerted by how good the two football players sounded, though maybe it was just that their booming voices were more suited to the Duke's admonitory tone. Or maybe it was simply that anything sounded better than my own dismal effort had.

"Rogan?" Mr. Sullivan pointed at my cousin. "You ready?"

Rogan shook his head. "I'm going last."

I looked at him furtively. He was taller than me, of course, but then, Viola's twin brother would have been taller than she was. Our eyes were different colors, but would anyone be able to tell that from the audience?

The main thing was the hair. But surely I could find a wig among Madeline's trappings or in the box of props and costumes stored in a closet at St. Brendan's. Or Mr. Sullivan would buy one.

"Okay, Rogan," said Mr. Sullivan. "You're up."

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Rogan went onstage. He moved around, face turned to the light, until he found a spot he liked; then began to read.

"If music be the food of love, play on!

Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken and so die..."

I watched, transfixed. Everyone did.

Because Rogan didn't pronounce the words in a fake English accent or stumble as though they were a foreign language. He read them as though he knew what he was saying. And when it seemed like maybe he didn't, he winged it--he mimed some other, private meaning, looking slyly sideways at the audience and indicating by a gesture or smile that, even if we didn't understand what was going on,
he
did.

Only we
did
understand. I did, anyway, and when I stole a look at the other students, I saw that they did, too. They laughed or stared at Rogan with this odd expression of delight and disbelief, as though they'd just been told school was canceled for the day.

Only Mr. Sullivan didn't seem surprised. He leaned back in his seat, chin in hand and a small, knowing smile on his face, as Rogan straightened and began the Duke's second speech.

"Come hither, boy. If ever thou shalt love,

In the sweet pangs of it remember me..."

When he reached the end, Rogan tossed the script pages into the audience, made a mocking bow, and jumped offstage. There were

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murmurs of approval, and then everyone began to clap and cheer.

"Thank you, Rogan," said Mr. Sullivan, as he'd said to everyone. He looked pleased, but also businesslike. "Thank you all. I'll post the cast list first thing Monday morning."

"Monday?" I said in dismay. "We have to wait till Monday?"

Mr. Sullivan nodded. "Yup. Have a good weekend, everybody."

Several people clustered around Rogan as we left the auditorium.

"Hey, man, that was good." One of the football players pretended to punch Rogan's arm. "Play on!"

"You were really funny." The flaxen-haired girl smiled, then turned to me. "You were good, too, Maddy. See you Monday."

On the way home, I found myself looking at Rogan warily. It was like the day his voice had changed, when I'd first heard him sing in a chilling tenor that had come from--where? The same place this ability to act Shakespeare had come from, obviously.

But when had he learned this?
Had
he learned it? Or was it some bizarre fluke, like his voice?

"Did you--did you practice that?" I finally asked him.

"Practice? Yeah, some." He reached into his pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes, glanced around, then lit one. "I read it in front of the mirror in my room. Isn't that what you did?"

"Yeah," I said. But I was lying.

I looked at him again and thought of what Aunt Kate had said about glamour. That it could be taught, and learned. That it wasn't a matter of magic or luck.

"You were better than me," I said at last. "A lot better."

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***

ON MONDAY I WENT TO SCHOOL EARLY. ROGAN

liked to sleep until the last possible second, so I walked up by myself. None of the buses had arrived yet, and only a few of the teachers. I looked for Mr. Sullivan's Dodge Dart but didn't see it in the parking lot. Inside I dumped my stuff in my locker, then with feigned nonchalance strolled to the English Department. The bulletin board was empty, save for an outdated announcement about the school poetry magazine.

I killed time as best I could, drifting around the library where I read old magazines. When I went back to the English Department, a knot of people was crowded around the bulletin board. One of them was Rogan.

"Maddy." He gave me a strained look. "You got your part."

"Really?"

He pointed at the cast list. I slipped through the crowd to stand beside him, and scanned the names on the typesheet.

TWELFTH NIGHT
CAST

ORSINO, Duke of Illyria

VIOLA, a shipwrecked lady

SEBASTIAN, twin brother of Viola

Kevin Hayes

Madeline Tierney

Duncan Moss

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My mouth went dry. Duncan Moss was a nondescript sophomore with longish brown hair and glasses. He was standing in the crowd, too, and flashed me a happy grin.

Short,
I thought with a sick feeling; he was short and had hair the same color as mine. Onstage, without makeup or wigs, we'd look alike.

"Oh. Jeez." I turned to Rogan. "Did you--?" He gave me a twisted, I-told-you-so smile, then jabbed his thumb at the final name on the list.

FESTE, a clown also called FOOL, Olivia's jester

Rogan Tierney

"Typecasting," he said. He turned and walked away.

Our first rehearsal was that afternoon. We sat in chairs onstage, where Mr. Sullivan handed each of us a new Penguin paperback edition of the play.

"You can make whatever notes you like in these," he said.

"You mean, like, we can write in the book?" asked Duncan Moss.

"I think it would be a very good idea," said Mr. Sullivan.

We all smiled tentatively. Rogan took out a pen and made a big X on the cover of his paperback. Mr. Sullivan shot him an admonitory look.

"Hey, I'm the fool," said Rogan guilelessly, and everyone laughed.

"The zanies have their own little world, outside the mundane one that we live in, that Olivia and Orsino live in," said Mr. Sullivan later. It was too soon to start any blocking, but he stood and paced the

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stage, tracing an invisible boundary. "It's not governed by our laws-- that's what the holiday of Twelfth Night is all about, a time when the Lord of Misrule takes over and our world is turned upside down. For the play to work, the audience has to completely believe in that other world. They have to look at Viola disguised as a boy named Cesario, and see a boy there, the same boy Olivia is in love with. But they also have to see Viola."

Abruptly he stopped and looked at me expectantly. I gazed at my script, flustered.

"Methinks she is speechless," said Rogan, and everyone laughed again.

"It's a balancing act," said Mr. Sullivan. "Acting is a matter of balance. Method actors, they say they lose themselves in a part--but you don't really want to lose yourself, do you?"

I looked up. Mr. Sullivan was still staring at me.

"Because if you really lost yourself," he said in a low voice, "you might not come back."

We finished the read-through, and Mr. Sullivan slapped his book against his knee. "Good job, everyone. We'll meet every day right after school, this week and next. After that we'll start going into night rehearsals."

We all stood to go. Rogan gathered his books and joined me. "I don't know how you're going to balance
those?
He gazed pointedly down my uniform blouse. "Master Cesario."

"Rogan." Mr. Sullivan came up behind us. "Can you read music?"

"Not really. I fool around with the guitar, but--no."

"That's all right. Here." Mr. Sullivan pulled something from his

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briefcase and handed it to Rogan. "I want you to listen to this. All the songs marked
Feste?
I want you to learn them."

"Thanks," said Rogan, bemused.

It was a record album titled
Songs from Shakespeare,
illustrated with a dreary-looking bust of Shakespeare. Rogan turned to the back cover. There was a boring description of antique musical instruments, followed by a long list of songs, with play titles and character names beside them.

"Hey." Rogan looked at Mr. Sullivan in surprise. "This is a lot of music."

I peered over his shoulder. The entire second side of the album was taken up with songs from
Twelfth Night,
all of them sung by Feste.

Mr. Sullivan nodded. "It's a part for a singer. A strong singer. See what you can do with it."

He put a hand on Rogan's shoulder and smiled. "I've heard you singing by yourself in your room. I'd like you to sing like that here--"

He gestured at the empty auditorium. "When all those seats are full. Think you can do it?"

Rogan shrugged. "Yeah, sure. I guess."

We walked home. It was too late for us to steal any time alone, so we said good night in the street in front of my house. "What do you think?" I asked.

"I dunno. I was kind of bummed at first. But now..." He glanced at the record album. "I guess I'll see how this music sounds."

I stood and waited for him to say something about me, about the different voices I'd tried using as Viola--one for when she was a girl,

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the other for when she was dressed as Cesario. But he just stared at the record.

"Well," he said at last. "I better go put this on. See you."

I had trouble falling asleep that night. I read and reread the play-- my scenes, anyway--and tried to make sense of the unfamiliar words and the scrawled notes I'd made of Mr. Sullivan's commentary. In act 3, Viola and the Fool had a scene together. I read her part aloud.

"So thou mayst say the king lies by a beggar if a beggar dwell near him, or the church stands by thy tabor if thy tabor stand by the church."

I frowned and deciphered my scribbled notes.

Tabor = drum

I tried to imagine Rogan speaking his lines and me responding.

"I warrant thou art a merry fool and carest for nothing."

It was hopeless. I dropped the book and turned off the light, lay in the dark, and thought of Rogan. It felt like weeks since we'd been together in the attic. I tried to dredge up an image of the toy theater, the eerie dance of light upon its arches and tiny stage; I tried to recall Rogan's voice, singing, and imagine his hands on me and not my own.

But it didn't work, any of it. I was alone. The room was silent and dark. I could no more fill it with Rogan's face or voice or touch than

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I could fill it with snow or rain. I had no glamour, no magic; no voice to summon up anything extraordinary, here or onstage. I had no presence.

I brooded on why Mr. Sullivan had even cast me as Viola. Anna, the flaxen-haired girl, was prettier and at least as good an actress as I was--why hadn't he chosen her?

The only reason I could come up with was that Duncan Moss and I could, in a pinch, at a distance, pass for twins.

That was it. There was no glamour in it. No talent, even. Just cold necessity.

I shivered. I felt light-headed and shaken, as when I first saw the toy theater. I stared at the dark ceiling and remembered Aunt Kate's words.

It'
s
something that can be taught. It can be learned. Words, how to speak and walk. How to make your voice carry. Diction ...

I thought of Rogan, how effortless it was for him. All he had to do was say the lines, and people laughed.

The tail wags the dog with him.

I couldn't do that. I was too self-conscious; people would never look at me of their own accord.

But maybe I could
make
them look at me.

You're building a house, a beautiful house, a little bit at a time out of all these things.

I thought of how Rogan moved, of his hands drawing patterns in the air. I thought of how he walked, shoulders canted back slightly, head tilted as though he were trying to listen to some far-off sound. His face raised always to the light; the way he'd stare at you so intently it was like a challenge, even if he said nothing. You take all these little