Yes, Baby, I'm Proud

How awesome is my sister? This is an old picture, but she's the loveliest thing. I mean the very most beautiful girl I've ever met.

So today was the day I was supposed to read/hear my play. I was nervous, of course; all those people hearing my script! Frankie was right when she wrote that cold readings are frightening. I sucked it up, though, and bugged everyone about coming all day and made sure Chris and Taylor ducked out of Fencing and Frankie and Sharpie came in and Elena took time off of studying for her finals and Maya came and Andy Fish responded to my nervy email with two(ish) words: "I'm there! -Fish". I was excited, nervous, shivery.

I was also misanthropic. During my two frees I avoided the park and the smoking-crew on the grounds that I would get cold in my skirt and went to the reading room for a few minutes. It was boring, and I didn't like feeling pressured to talk to people, so I went to the library and wrote a bit, filling pages with my tall drippy handwriting that nobody seems to be able to read. I sat in the hall, I talked to the eighth graders, I poured myself coffee. I wrote some more. I threw away most of the pages. I wished Harry were there. I printed more copies of my play and then reread it and hated it. I went to Algebra and wrote some more; I went to English and drew a face made of palm trees and then one that was a landscape in itself. I lied and told Camille that I had done my sheets and left them at home.

Then Elena showed up, cheerful and cynical and nostalgic, and David and I printed our scripts and collected Scott Shreiber and music stands and headed over to the black box.

Everyone was there (except for Jaya and LK), and I got nervy all over again. Rie and Sofia were busy looking hot; David was busy handing out scripts; everyone else seemed to be talking about the O.C. I couldn't sit still. Frankie and Shapiro came in a few minutes into the script, radiant and apologetic, and I smiled.

David Tay's play was read first. It was excellent. I hadn't foreseen how the scenes would add up and come together, but when we were reading it everything seemed to make sense. In very few scenes he painted an accurate picture of the lives of three characters. I realized that my play was, contrary to what I had thought, longer than it needed to be. The drama was dense; there were two alternate endings. It was entitled the Good, the Bad and the Slutty, which was awesome in itself. The ending we chose to enact was more serious than the other, and less optimistic, and made a larger-picture statement about the nature of trust and of a relationship. Harry insisted on reading all the stage directions in the most dramatic, deep, foreboding voice he could muster. The best part by far, though, was a throwaway line that David read (he played the "disembodied female voice"): "Girl, fuck you!"

It took longer than we'd thought it would, and more music stands than we'd anticipated, but it was OK. Nobody was bored or anything, and time seemed boundless. At least until a bunch of our actors left before Matt's play, including Eddie Pailet, who was my Garrett (male lead). "Rie, if you see Eddie, tell him to get the hell back in here!" I said, a bit too loudly. She gave a kiss on the cheek and assured me that she would. We read Matt's play. It was short, because he wrote the whole thing today, but interesting nonetheless. I liked the characters a lot, but I'm still not sure I understand the underlying message about fate. That it's unpredictable? Hrmph. I'll have to ask him about it.

Alex DaSilva (love that guy!) played a great hobo/murderer, and when he walked off and had to be called back ("Wait, I have more lines? Oh! Put your hands on your head and count to sixty!") I thought my stomach would split in two.

Anyway, Matt's play took longer than we'd expected, too. And Tracy needed to color the blackbox. So I told everyone we'd do it next tuesday.

I'm sorry, guys! I really am!

It was cold and dreary, and I felt cold and dreary. I wasn't really upset at anyone in particular, but I did curse fate in a halfhearted manner before going off to St.'s Alp with Tia, Sofia, David, Matt and Renata. We drank tea and talked about drugs and Prom and Jacob Ledoux and I got very sombre and hated the rain and the stoners and gorgeous people.

So I went home in the rain with Renata, and we both started feeling a little down, and then Harry came over and I was all "do I really have to go to prom?" and he was all "I'm not going to make you do anything you don't want to, but..." and I relented pretty much instantly. I just can't find a dress! Plus, I hate formal events where everyone looks good. I've only ever manicured my fingers once, and I've never had my hair done, or makeup, or waxed my eyebrows or used spray hair-removers on my arms or legs or even let my nails grow very long. (I just found out on Ex Ed that tons and tons of girls do the spray-hair-removal thing. How creepy is that?) I'm not naturally that... girly. (I practiced by wearing pink socks today, but it didn't seem to do much.) So I pondered my diluted version of androgyny and the sinfulness of stealing sweaters from the Lost & Found and then Harry's magic worked itself over me and I got a lot happier. Renata did, too, I think. I kissed him good night and my sister and I went to Ennju to eat cheap sushi and Japanese candy (Harry's evil influence!) and talk about philosophy and aging rock stars and tacky writers and seniors and drugs and whorishness and unintentional whorishness and consumerism.

We also talked about being obscured by your own image, so to speak. People know me as V.V. the Hippie, so they don't realize that my main focus is writing. V.V. the Hippie Semi-Writer can't be interested in art or oil paintings. She's too busy being a hippie semi-writer. V.V. the Hyper Clumsy Dancer who Sings In The Hallways can't hold an intellectual conversation or analyze a book. They don't realize that I used to pour over Picasso volumes and old architecture books almost as much as I read Nancy Drew novels, way back in first and second grade. I didn't hit on Klimt and Goya and Dali until I was eleven-ish, but I used to consider myself more of an artist than a writer. (I never wrote almost anything until Lori Renna told me that I could, really. She was the first person who ever believed in me as an artist. I worshipped her. I won a prize in the middle school poetry competition and I gave it to her.)

Renata's having the same problem: she's a pianist mostly, but she's also a cartoonist and is turning into quite the little photographer. My dad always told us that I was the writer of the family and Renata was the musician, so she didn't read and I didn't play instruments. Her stories are amazing. By now, though, she's avoided reading for so long that she's learned the plots of half of the classics just by discussing them with me and hasn't heard of the other half.

Bob Rosen just put two-and-two together and realized that she's my sister. He told me twice by accident, between "doo-wap-a-doo-skeedul-yee-doo-bam"s. He says she's going to be "the next big one."

"The next big... what?"

"Big one. On keyboard, of course. Of the music world. The next great jazz pianist."

He looked like a prophet when he said it. His eyes were slightly misaligned, glossy and reddish, and all of the colors on his face and clothes seemed to melt together, and his head was cocked like always and his hair seemed to slick itself back without gel or even a comb and it seemed certain that he was listening to some music that only he could hear. He seemed to be half in another world already. Half of me felt inclined to distrust anything that seemed even vaguely prophetic, and the other half wanted to be a little girl all over again and believe passionately and blindly and pray and sigh and cast tea leaves over his drippy sweet visions.

Instead I gave him a script and said "Yeah, she's great" while I stood on the precipice of something I still can't name.

And you know what?

I think I believe him.