“Thank you,” I replied, and turned back to the mirror. “The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue. The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue.”
My phone buzzed from inside my bag. I bent down to get it and saw a message on the screen from Gabe:
Gabe Cell: I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.
Me: A Tale of Two Cities?
Gabe Cell: Great Expectations.
Me: Ugh, Reginald would be so disappointed in me.
Gabe Cell: No, you’ll have his heart forever. The same way you have mine. Break a leg today. Love you.
My thumb hovered over the keypad ready to text back the words I felt so strongly, but Joanna knocked again, interrupting my concentration.
“Three minutes,” she called.
“Okay, thanks,” I responded, and quickly shot off the text before I turned the phone to silent and tucked it back in my bag:
Me: Love you too.
I chugged the rest of my water, smoothed the top of my bun, and applied one last coat of lip gloss. Then, for good measure, I let out the most dramatic and exaggerated silent scream of my life straight into the mirror, chuckled at how ridiculous I surely looked, and with renewed vigor, walked toward the wings to wait for my name to be called.
“Ms. Lawrence, we’re ready for you,” said a voice from the audience, and I stepped onto the stage and into the spotlight, the glare practically blinding me. I couldn’t tell if there were five people in the audience or fifty, but it didn’t matter—in my head it was opening night, and I was performing to a packed house. In the pit sat a small-scale orchestra cued up with their instruments at the ready and their music perched in place.
The opening notes of the song began to play and I dug deep, channeling the me who sat in that roller coaster car enjoying that incredible view, the me with her arms in the air wild and free, and I gave that audition every effin thing I had. I hit every note, every nuance, every beat like I’d been born to do it. The director and producers were clapping thunderously, and I knew without a doubt that this part was mine for the taking.
“That was wonderful, Avery,” the director called out from his seat over the din of excited chatter from the room full of executives and the production team. “We have a new scene we’d like you to perform with an actor who’ll read in for Scrooge. Joanna has the pages for you, if you want to grab them and take a few minutes to look over before we call you back in.”
Joanna came rushing out from the wings with a packet of papers. “So you are going to want to look at pages 28 to 31. It’s a scene between Marley and Scrooge. She’s desperately in love with him but has come to realize everything she sacrificed to be with him—family, friends, her own ambitions. She pleads with him to be a different kind of man, but as you know, he’s incapable. He’ll be her downfall, but she follows him down the garden path anyway. The scene is followed by the song, ‘These Chains I Wear,’ Marley’s ‘I Want’ song. Here’s the music. Do you have any questions?”
My heart was in my throat, and even though I knew this was all a good sign and part of the process, the on-the-spot stuff was where I always doubted myself most. “Um . . . how long do I have to prep?”
“Well, the actor is supposed to be here around one thirty, so what is that . . .” She peeked at her watch. “About fifteen to twenty minutes or so?”
“All right, thanks. I’ll just head to the dressing room.”
“Oh, we have a small rehearsal space downstairs if you’d rather use that. Or the lobby. Or you can go outside. Wherever you’d feel most comfortable. Just come back up to the stage at like 1:25.”
I opened up the script on the floor of the rehearsal room and turned to page 28, my eyes zeroing in on Marley’s dialogue. I scanned the sentences for key words and phrases, trying to get a sense of the overall tone. From what I could tell, it was a pivotal moment in the show, Marley confronting Scrooge about the man he’s revealed himself to be.
I turned to the sheet music and sight-read it the best I could, spot-checking myself on a small keyboard plugged in by the far wall. Charlie had played the track a couple of times for me on YouTube, so it wasn’t totally foreign, but it was still a tough number to learn mostly on the fly. I tapped out a few trickier measures on the plastic keys and sang the notes back, mirroring their rhythm and tone until they lodged in my memory.
Fifteen minutes flew by in a flash, and before I knew it, I had to be back onstage. Though I’d looked through the pages quickly, I’d spent most of the time on the song, hoping that the acting bit would come naturally once I was up against a partner. I hurried back upstairs and into the auditorium.
Joanna spotted me. “Perfect timing. The actor’s onstage. When you’re ready, you can step out and begin the scene.”
I glanced down at the script, committing the first line to memory: “Past, Present, and Future, the Spirits Three, they are alive with a message bound within me.” Stepping onto the stage, I recited the words again out loud and waited for the actor to reply.
“Marley,” he croaked through a raspy voice of utter surprise, leaping off the couch where he’d been seated watching television. He pantomimed flicking off the TV with a remote and turned back to me.
I took two steps closer to him. “Still alone, I see?”
“Nobody could fill the hole you left in my heart,” Scrooge said.
“What heart?” I replied coldly, the line like sniper fire straight to the core.
Then, instead of seeing the actor reading across from me, I saw Adam’s intense face, his greedy eyes, his serpentine smile.
The actor’s posture softened, his shoulders slumping forward. “You know I had one once. You occupied every square inch of it.”
“Until I didn’t. Until your other pursuits pushed me out,” I cried.
“You always knew who I was, Marley. Who I’ve always been. I never hid it from you.”
And suddenly, it was as if I was speaking to Gabe, the actor’s forlorn face now morphing into the same face I’d known since I was a freshman new to the big city. The Gabe who had lofty dreams of making the world a better place. The emotion rising in my chest made it difficult for the words to come out in anything more than a strangled whisper.
“I lost myself because of you. And now I wear the chain I forged in life,” I replied. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard.” I held up the imaginary chain, tears pricking my eyes, begging him to see the links for what they were—the sacrifices I’d made for him, which paved my way to never creating a life of my own. “I girded this of my own free will and of my own free will, I wore it . . . I still wear it. I am forever tethered to the mistakes of my past—both the ones I made and those I didn’t because I was afraid . . . of losing you. Of failing on my own. Of not being good enough. So instead, I became nothing. I have no one.”