… and Stevie was Cordelia.
I drew in a breath without knowing I was going to, forcing myself to keep reading. Teri was Regan, Emery was Goneril… I scanned down the page, looking for my name, faster and faster, and there at the bottom, after the list of the ensemble and understudies:
Kat, please see me about assistant directing.
“Oh my god,” Stevie breathed. Her hand was over her mouth, and I turned around to see that all the other seniors were staring at me, with looks ranging from baffled to pitying to horrified, or some combination of all three. I could see just how shaken everyone was by this—this was not supposed to happen in a world they understood.
And in that moment, I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was payback. If I’d been able to lie last night—if I’d been willing to say the right things—I would have been looking at a list with Cordelia across from my name.
“Kat,” Teri whispered, and I could see there were tears in her eyes. “I don’t…”
“He’s such an asshole.” I turned to see that Stevie was looking angrier than I’d ever seen her. She was practically shaking with fury. “He’s such a fucking asshole.”
“Who?” Aminah asked nervously, looking around, like we were being bugged. “Mr. Campbell?”
“I never even read for Cordelia!” Stevie exploded. “The only reason he cast me was to mess with Kat, to hurt her.…”
“Why would he want to do that?” Erik asked, sounding baffled.
Everyone looked at me, and I could tell that they were all waiting for something. Some explanation, something to put this in context, something that would let them know that there was still order in the world as they understood it. Because, I realized as I looked at the list, at my name on the bottom like an afterthought, they still thought that the emperor was a great guy, wearing a really nice suit.
I let my eyes roam over the paper one last time and felt a pang—not a huge one, but it was there. The kind you get whenever you say goodbye.
And then—because there was no other reaction, really—I threw my head back and laughed.
“Kat?” Stevie asked. I could hear in her voice that she clearly thought my disappointment had caused some kind of psychological break.
“I’m fine,” I said, shaking my head, trying to get control of myself. But I was, I realized. I was fine. And what’s more—I was free. “Really, I’m good,” I assured my best friend, looking right into her eyes so that she would know I meant it. “Anyone have a pen?”
Jayson handed me his, and I took a breath and stepped forward. There, at the bottom of the list, right next to my name, I carefully wrote, I would prefer not to.
I took a step back and smiled as I looked at it, then handed Jayson his pen. “Thanks,” I said, and he nodded, still staring at me like he wasn’t sure who I was or what was happening.
I headed toward Stevie’s car, and she fell into step next to me. I glanced back at all the other seniors, most of whom were still looking gobsmacked. I had a feeling that as soon as we drove away, the speculation would begin—and I had no doubt a new group thread, but this one without me, was already being put together. “Congratulations,” I said as we both got into Nikola. Stevie paused, hand hovering near the ignition, and gave me an anguished look. “I mean it.”
“I didn’t want it. You know that—”
“Of course I do. But he didn’t give it to you just to mess with me.”
“Partially, at least.”
“Well, maybe a tiny bit. But you’re going to be great. You’re going to be so good. And I’m going to be cheering you on.”
Stevie nodded, and looked at me for a moment, then smiled.
I smiled back at her. It was going to be okay. We would make it okay.
Stevie started the car and I folded my legs up underneath me. “Breakfast?” she asked.
“Oh god, yes. I’ll text Teri and see if she wants to meet us at the diner.”
“And just what are you going to text her on?”
I laughed. “Can I borrow your phone?”
“Thank you,” she said. “I mean, it’s been my phone for a whole five hours, so…” As she talked, Stevie pulled out of the parking lot, and I made sure to look straight ahead, so as not to be tempted to look in the rearview mirror and see what was behind me.
Because after all, there was coffee and a diner breakfast in my near future. I had a brand-new crush, I had to decide what I was going to do now that I wouldn’t be in this play, not to mention that I needed to talk to my parents about why I needed another phone, And beyond that—I would just have to figure it out as I went. Like Stevie always said, I had to eat the whale one bite at a time.
I finished texting Teri just as Stevie pulled into the diner parking lot. She immediately responded that she’d be right there. “We good?” Stevie asked.
I smiled at her. “We’re great,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt, already dreaming of pancakes. “Let’s go.”
PART SEVEN February
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, And say my glory was I had such friends.
—William Butler Yeats
CHAPTER 31
Stevie
Ten minutes to places!” The assistant stage manager, a sophomore named Greta, stuck her head into the green room and looked around.
“Ten minutes, thank you,” we all chorused. She nodded and hurried away.
“How are you feeling?” Teri asked, grabbing my arm and, as usual on opening nights, looking a little bit green.
“I’m feeling great,” I said, as calmly as possible. We’d all learned, over the last four years, that if you displayed even a hint of nervousness, Teri was liable to forget her first few lines. But if everyone was calm and collected, she got past her early jitters and was able to shake them off entirely by her second scene. “You’re going to be fine.”
Teri nodded and adjusted the collar of her skirt suit. Mr. Campbell had decided on a modern-day setting of King Lear. In this version, King Lear was actually the CEO of LearCorp, and the play was about the company being broken up, hostile takeovers, everyone in business attire.
Despite a rocky start, the show had really come together. I’d loved playing Cordelia, and I couldn’t wait for everyone to finally see it. I looked around for Kat, out of habit, and then realized what I was doing.
Of all the changes in the last few months, that had been the hardest to get used to. I kept expecting her to be there—at the read-through, at rehearsals, at the tech. All of us were aware that we were missing one of our regular people. But between her and Dara Chapman both absent—and the fact that they were both doing great, even without being in the production—it was almost like it was giving other people permission to think about the possibility of not doing every single play. Of stepping away occasionally. Nothing had happened yet, but there were rumbles. I’d heard Erik talk about training to do a half-marathon instead of the musical, and Jayson hadn’t told Mr. Campbell yet, but I knew he was thinking about going on his history class’s trip to Greece, which would mean he couldn’t be in the improv show.