Read My Lips (A College Obsession Romance) (5 page)

I’ve never been jealous of lighting equipment before.

“College is your first taste of the real world,” the wizard is going on. “Plays only have so many roles, and chances are, you won’t get any your first year here. You might not ever get cast. This is a reality you must face.”

That man onstage is a reality I want to face. I want to face him so hard. I want him to face me. I’m staring at his bulging biceps as he works, my heart racing so hard I wonder if Victoria can hear it.

“Technical Theatre is
not
for failed actors. These people make a living. More often, they make a better living than you actors ever will because there is
always
work for lighting monkeys, soundboard operators, costume stitch-weaver-people, prop masters, house managers—the list goes on and on. Our program requires only six hours of tech crew before you can graduate. That’s six times I’m gonna see your ugly faces in this room. We only meet here today. This Wednesday, you will be meeting at your assigned crew area. Understood? Good.”

Hot guy sets down a light, which issues a loud bang that ripples across the stage. He returns to the rack for yet another, sauntering as he goes.
Boy, does that sexy man know how to walk.
He has gloves on those big hands of his, those long leather things that come halfway up his arm, the kind I imagine welders wear.

I can’t seriously be the only one staring at him. That man is
fine
.

“The five departments are: costume crew, set crew, props crew, lighting crew, and box office,” the bearded wizard tells us.

As he goes on to describe the typical duties of each technical crew, I’m stuck in a daze watching the hottie carry Fresnel after Fresnel across the stage, his arms bulging with each trip, sometimes taking two at a time. His face is slick with sweat. Patches of wetness adorn his tight shirt, causing it to plaster to his muscles more and more by the second.

He stops after his five-hundredth trip and runs an arm slowly across the whole length of his forehead, taking just a moment to survey the house. His brow wrinkles as he looks out at us. He has to be an upperclassmen. His presence is so commanding that I can’t pay attention to anything else, not with him in the room.

Some papers are shoved at me. I stare down in confusion at what looks like a stack of forms. “Take one and pass them,” Victoria tells me. I do so, passing the stack to a girl two seats away from me. “Now you get to pick the crew you want. Preference one, and preference two, see?”

“I see.” I’m very thankful for Victoria’s guidance, considering how little attention I was paying to the wizard-person. I stare at the five options for crew and consider them.

Victoria leans into me, her bony shoulder poking into my arm. “Costume crew is a living
hell
,” she whispers to me. “Box office is a total blow-off. I’d go for that one, so long as you’re not claustrophobic and can do basic math. Ever work with money?”

My eyes wander to the stage. He’s examining one of the lights that still hangs from the rack. The gloves are off and tucked under his arm while his fingers expertly inspect the equipment. I imagine those fingers expertly inspecting
me
, the way they’d feel as they trace up and down my arms, run over the length of my body, and awaken a wave of excited goose bumps across my skin. I feel my toes curling in my shoes just thinking about it.

“Made up your mind?” whispers Victoria.

His biceps flex as he works, his fingers making art out of that lighting instrument. I swallow hard, unable to pull my eyes away, unable to slow my thumping heart, unable to ignore my ache any longer.

Yes, I have,
I think to myself, bringing the pen to paper and circling my first choice: lighting crew.

“There’s a whole row of restaurants on Kelly street, but they’re a bit on the pricy side …”

“Done! Lunch is on me!” I decide with a smile.

That’s how Victoria, Eric, Chloe, and I end up at an Italian restaurant on the
not
criminally-inclined edge of campus for an early evening meal after my first Tuesday morning movement class and afternoon voice class are over. Chloe’s the one I met at the mixer with choppy black hair whose eyes bleed eyeliner, and Eric is the one who just a moment ago politely asked me to stop calling him Other Eric. I apologized for calling his homebrew “cat pee”.

“Auditions are this Friday,” Victoria reminds me between bites of a very aromatic plate of basil pesto chicken fettuccini. “I hope you have two contrasting monologues prepared. Oh, I didn’t even ask! Which role are you gunning for?”

To be honest, I hadn’t given it much thought. My mind’s been circling thoughts of a certain someone so much that I forgot about auditions for
Our Town
. “I was considering the wife, maybe?”

“Myrtle? That’s Emily’s mother,” explains Victoria. “Maybe try for Mrs. Gibbs, George’s wife, if you want to play a wife. Oh, you’d be cute as her! Go for whichever you want, just as long as it’s not Emily.”

“The lead? But she has the look,” protests Eric.

“That’s
my
role,” Victoria insists. “I’ve waited two years for it, and I shall claim it. Besides, Nina
basically
already told me I got the part.”

“Nina the acting prof,” Eric clarifies for me.

“I know. I have her for acting class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And it’s okay,” I insist with a nervous titter. “I don’t want any leads. I should really, uh … reread the play.” For all my “Theatre background”, I sure feel so uneducated right now.

“Not to mention Dessie’s experience,” Eric goes on, despite Victoria’s annoyed snort. “You’d make a great Emily. You have
world
experience. You’ve been to Italy and shit.”

“Yeah,” I admit, “but that was a small black box theater, and it was more of a training camp, and—”

“You studied in New York City,” he goes on, despite Victoria’s look of disbelief. “You already know the life. You have so much to offer
us
. Really, it isn’t unheard of for freshmen to land roles, and you’re technically not a freshman, so …”

“I already said the role is
mine
,” Victoria interjects, her eyes playing back and forth between us. “I like you, Dessie, I really do. We’re hall mates and we’re becoming friends and all that, but I think—”

“I think auditions will determine it,” states Eric. “I mean, if you’re meant to get the role of Emily—”

“I already have it in the bag,” she retorts.

“Then you got nothing to worry about, do you?” With that, he gives a light shrug, then forks another sauce-drenched ravioli past his lips.

I smile at my new friends, hoping the mask of my smile adequately hides all my misgivings. They think so highly of me, just for the ritzy school I half-attended and the fact that I’m from New York City. If they knew who my family was, I’d certainly be ruined.
Spoiled
, they’d call me.
Privileged snob
, they’d think of me. I’d become my sister before their eyes, a girl who’s been handed everything she ever wanted.

What’ll they think when they learn the truth?

“Your résumé
has
to be a mile long,” Victoria jokes with a shake of her head. “I bet you have to leave stuff off of it just to make it fit on one page. Wish I had that sort of problem.” The comment earns a chuckle from Chloe and Eric.

The truth is, since high school, I’ve only been cast in a single production. It was an original two-act play at Claudio & Rigby’s called
Quieter The Scream
. By some remarkable twist of circumstance, I was cast as the leading role. Claudio could not easily mask his disappointment in me during every single rehearsal, which led me to speculate how I’d landed the role in the first place. My speculation ended the day Claudio threw his favorite mug and I quit the school.

Even still, the whole situation confounds me.
“You’ll be a famous actress someday just like your sweet mother.”
That’s what Claudio said the first day he met me. My, how quickly
that
opinion soured. The truth is, I never fit the skin my parents and sister tried so ruthlessly to put on me. I needed to find my own.

While the others finish eating and start bantering back and forth, I listen to a tune that comes on the restaurant sound system and catch myself smiling. It’s a song I know. Finishing my linguini, which isn’t half bad even compared to Chef Julian’s masterful cooking, I hum along with the melody. I wonder if normal-people food is growing on me, or if I’m simply forgetting already what it’s like to be … me.

A couple hours later, everyone goes their separate ways and I’ve returned to the theater to sign up for auditions. In a short, closed-off hall that connects the lobby to the theater, I stare at my phone in my palm, dreading what I’m about to do. This is never easy.

I tap her name. My phone chirps at me. I bring it to my ear.

“Desdemona? Hi.”

Already, I’m annoyed by two facts. One: I almost don’t recognize her due to the thick English dialect she’s putting on. Two: she’s the only person in the world who uses my full name. Not even my parents bother with all four annoying syllables of it.

“Hey, Cece. I have a favor to ask. A really serious favor.”

“Oh, that is quite fine. I was simply partaking in a lesson with my vocal coach,” she answers in an airy voice, her English dialect annoyingly realistic. “Andre, can we take five? My dear sister needs a favor of me. Thank you. Desdemona, what is it you need, dear?”

I sigh. “Can you knock off the voice, please? This is serious.”

“This is quite serious as well,” she goes on, the dialect remaining perfectly intact. “I must master every bit of idiosyncrasy in the Upper RP dialect, and that entails remaining in-character for the rest of the week at the very least, dear sister. My work is
quite
serious
.”

“Fine.” I roll my eyes, unable to bear one more word than I absolutely have to. “Cece, I need help with an acting résumé. I’m required to have one for auditions this Friday.”

“Oh, silly girl, I am afraid I do not do my own. That is the job of Xavier and Iris. I would be happy to connect you, if you so wish to—”

“No, no, no.”
I resent that I even have to have this conversation.
“You don’t understand. I don’t have any shows to put on mine. Other than high school, I’ve only done the one show at Claudio’s, and I didn’t even do that to completion. My résumé’s empty.”

“Are … Are you requesting my assistance in an act of forgery, dear sister? Oh, how wayward you have become! Oh, stars! I am afraid I cannot—”

“For fuck’s sake, Cece, I need your
help
,” I hiss into the phone, my hands trembling. “It’s just a résumé. I can’t go in there Friday with nothing!”

Cece draws a deep breath into the phone. I can even picture her as she does so, her body turning rigid and her long eyelashes batting with irritation as she steels herself for her next words.

“Every actor must start somewhere. It is not my fault that you have no history. To have a history, you must first make one. Life experience makes the actor, Desdemona. Not a sheet of paper.”

“I haven’t been given the
experiences
you have. It isn’t fair of you to act superior to me, treating me like it’s
my
fault I don’t get the callbacks. You’re the one who inherited all our family’s
magic
mojo
and left none for me. So help me out a little, Cece.”

“If I may allow you to stand corrected,” my sister retorts, her voice clipped and sterile, “with regard to our family’s ‘magic mojo’, you did, in fact, ask for a journey to Texas to find that very thing, didn’t you, dear sister? Why cannot you try and see this as a most precious opportunity to find that very special thing that makes you, you? I guarantee, it won’t be by forging a false résumé.”

I’m clenching my phone so tight, the muscles in my palm ache.

“Thanks for nothing, Cece. I gotta go. I’m so busy over here having my
life experience
.”

I hang up, cutting off her response. I always regret asking my sister for help; she makes me want to act upon violent impulses. With a huff, I turn to the sign-up sheet on the wall and bring a pen to its surface with too much force, scratching on my name.

When I’m about to turn away, I hear a noise from the opened door of the auditorium. I stop and listen.

Nothing else comes.

I move to the door and poke my head in. I don’t see anyone in the seats. Coming further inside, I look up at the stage. No one. Nothing.

“Hello?” I call out, like the half-naked bimbo does in the horror movie before she’s caught and gutted by the killer. “Hello?”

No one answers. I move down the aisle, curious, drawn by the silence. I ascend the steps and stand center stage, looking out at the seating, which is only half-lit by the spray of stage light above.

A smile finds my face. No one uses the auditorium at all, not until after auditions when the set building and rehearsing begins. This big room is abandoned for the time being, according to my new friends.

This auditorium is mine.

I imagine the seats filled to the walls with people who’ve purchased tickets. I imagine the hum of an animated crowd as they enjoy the house music and await the first act to begin. I imagine myself standing backstage, wringing my hands and excitedly longing for the drapes to be drawn. This is my moment. This is my show.

On this big stage, I feel a stronger sense of privacy than I do in my dorm. The desire to express myself grows strong, stronger … until I can no longer contain it. The first thing that comes to mind is a song no one’s heard of called “A Palace of Stone”. I part my lips and sing:

I have made a palace of stone,

a place of which to call my own.

Here is my bed

to lay down my head

and dream that I’m not alone.

For such a feat, what do I win?

The doors are deceivingly thin.

But I built the walls too high

nearly kissing the sky

so no one can find their way in.

There’s no staff to help with the messes.

There’s no guests to admire my dresses.

Dinners cook themselves

as I dust off my shelves

and watch as my lifetime progresses.

I’m an actress who shows no fear.

The bravest in my whole biosphere.

And by my painted skin

you see the people I’ve been

and the people I’ll never go near.

It’s work to perch atop this throne

made of credit cards and silicone.