Gracefully Grayson Read online

  “Oh,” she says. “Were you working on the Humanities paper? That’s going to take forever to write.”

  “Yup,” I say, relieved to have the excuse. “I might go to the library all week to work on it.”

  The bus pulls up, and Amelia and I get on. She runs her fingers over the creases in her skirt as we bounce along. At the Randolph stop, we say good-bye. I cross the street and don’t look back.

  That night, I’m jittery. I’ve never tried out for anything before, and I have no idea what I’ll be asked to do the next day. In first grade, our class put on The Lorax. Everyone had a part, and Emma and I were pink trees. I don’t remember much about it except for the two of us standing together in the background. This play won’t be anything like that.

  Jack used to do the plays in elementary school. He’s supposed to be helping Brett with his homework, but he’s watching TV in the living room. I guess I could ask him about tryouts, but I don’t want to. Aunt Sally and Uncle Evan are downstairs in our storage room organizing the boxes of Grandma Alice’s stuff from the nursing home, so I can’t ask them. Anyway, I don’t feel like telling them I’m auditioning, so I just pull out my sketch pad and try to concentrate on my drawing.

  The next morning, as Finn promised, we have the double period to work on our papers. I wonder if he noticed my name on the tryout list. I know I should speak up and just ask him what I’m going to have to do. So when the bell finally rings, I leave Amelia packing her things and stop in front of his desk.

  “Grayson,” he says, “I was just about to ask you to stay behind for a minute.”

  “Okay,” I say. The class is gushing through the door now, and I look down. I study my shoes as the voices and laughs drift into the hallway. The classroom is almost still and silent now, except for the echoes of other kids’ voices and a freezing breeze that has suddenly appeared. I look behind me. Somebody must have cracked one of the windows open at the back of the room and the cold breeze is rustling the poems and stories that Finn has tacked to the bulletin board on the wall.

  “So, Grayson,” Finn begins, leaning toward me a little bit in his chair. I watch his hands as he fiddles with a pen, and when I look up to his face, I see that he’s smiling at me. “I saw that you signed up for auditions. I was really, really happy to see your name on that list. I’m wondering,” he continues. “Can I ask what inspired you to try out? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think you’ll be great on stage. Theater seems like an amazing fit for you, actually, but I’m curious. You’ve never shown an interest in any of the plays before.”

  I shrug. He watches my eyes, still smiling, and I don’t know what to say. I picture the walls of the wooden library cubicle—old, dirty, and engraved with carvings of other kids’ names. “Um,” I stumble, “I don’t know. I guess I just felt like joining an activity.” I probably sound like an idiot, but he’s still leaning forward, listening. He waits, but I don’t know how to put it into words: how Amelia ditched me, and Grandma Alice died, and how I wanted to carve Grayson was here into the cubicle but I couldn’t, so I signed up for play tryouts instead.

  “Well,” he finally says, “I think it’s great. The play that I chose for this year’s performance is magnificently written. It’s really something special, so it’s a good year for you to come aboard.” I think about how cool that would be—to be a playwright and to get to decide what happens to all of the characters. The thought makes me smile. Finn is still looking at me eagerly, like he’s waiting for me to say something else.

  “I guess I just wanted to ask you what I’ll have to do at the tryout,” I finally say. The second bell rings and I jump.

  “I can give you a pass. Don’t you have study hall third period?”

  “Yeah,” I tell him, smiling. I drop my backpack at my feet.

  “Great. It’s very simple,” Finn says, taking a pad of hall passes out of his top drawer and setting them on his desk. “When you signed up, you took a packet from the folder outside my office door, right?”

  I swallow hard. “A packet?”

  “Not to worry, not to worry.” He rummages through his desk, takes out a red folder, and hands me a thin, stapled packet from inside it. He must have read my mind because he says, “You definitely don’t need to have anything memorized. There’s a brief synopsis on page one followed by some one-to-two-page excerpts from the play. They’re labeled with each character’s name. During study hall or lunch, just read through them all and choose who you want to try out for. We’ll have copies of the script on stage, or you can read from the packet when you come up to audition.”

  He pauses. I must look nervous because he says, “Grayson, your ability to analyze text and understand characters is excellent. Read the parts. Choose the one that feels right. I know you’ll be able to do a very thoughtful reading.”

  I glance at the hall passes. Study hall is such a waste of time. “What’s the play about?” I ask.

  “It’s a mythological story. Do you remember Persephone from your unit on the Greek gods last year?”

  “Sort of,” I say. “It’s about how the seasons were created, right?”

  “Exactly. In this version, Persephone is a girl who’s about your age. She lives with her mother on Mount Olympus until she gets kidnapped by Hades, the god of the Underworld. The play is about how the seasons came to be, but it’s also the story of her struggle to return home.”

  I nod. “And anyone can try out for any character?”

  “Absolutely!” He looks over at the clock, puts my name and the time on the hall pass, and rips it off the pad. “Here you go,” he says. “And, Grayson?”

  I take it from him. “Yeah?”

  “I’m glad you’re trying out. I know it’s not easy to do something new.” I pick up my backpack and try to picture myself on stage.

  “Thanks,” I say to Finn, and I smile at him and at the thought of not disappearing again.

  WHEN THE THREE o’clock bell rings, I throw all my books into my backpack and grab my jacket from my locker. The halls are bustling, and I’m surrounded by people as I make my way to the auditorium. I feel like I’m swimming in a crowded school of fish.

  The giant room is empty when I arrive, except for some commotion behind the curtain on the rounded wooden stage, so I sit in the front row of fold-down chairs and flip through the packet Finn gave me. I’ve already read through the whole thing three times, but I flip through it again anyway.

  The thick velvet curtain is partly opened, and I can hear Finn’s voice from behind it. “I think I want to rearrange this today,” he’s saying. “I prefer the chairs on the opposite side, and this long table over here.”

  “I agree,” a woman’s voice answers, and furniture rattles across wood.

  Some other kids start to file in. Most take seats near the back of the auditorium, but a few make their way over to where I am. I think again of The Lorax. I remember how the bright stage lights made it impossible to see the audience, and it felt like it was just the kids, all alone, up on the stage.

  Andrew Moyer sits down right behind me. He’s an eighth grader who has been a lead in every play I’ve seen for the past few years. I glance at his black T-shirt, open flannel button-down, and serious green eyes. Paige Francis and Reid Axleton, two more eighth graders, inch their way in next to him. I’m sure the three of them will get the biggest parts. I face forward quickly so they don’t think I’m staring at them. They probably have no idea who I am, and I wonder if they think it’s weird that I’m sitting up front, all alone.

  Finn comes out from behind the curtain. He’s disheveled looking, and he smoothes back his hair. When the noise in the auditorium dies down, he smiles at us. “Welcome,” he calls out. Ms. Landen, one of the seventh-grade humanities teachers, comes out from behind the curtain with a microphone stand. Jack always says how much he hates her class, but she seems nice. She’s smiling and young looking, and her long blond hair is pulled back into a low braid. She puts the microphone stand in front of Finn and hands him the mic. “Thanks, Samantha,” he says to her back as she disappears behind the curtains.

  “Welcome to play tryouts.” Now his voice booms and fills every corner of the auditorium. Every crevice. My heart thumps. “I’m eagerly anticipating your auditions for The Myth of Persephone today. I am grateful to Dr. Shiner, as always, for supporting the arts programming here at Porter and for giving me the opportunity to direct this play.”

  Finn looks to the end of the front row of seats and smiles a stiff, polite smile. I glance over to see Dr. Shiner, the principal of Porter, sitting calmly in the last seat of the front row. His long, bony legs are crossed neatly, and his thin body looks like it has been swallowed up by his perfectly ironed suit. Everyone starts clapping, so I clap, too. Dr. Shiner stands and waves to the auditorium. His eyes are dark black, like they’ve sucked up all the color from the room.

  Finn continues. “One by one, Ms. Landen and I will call you up for your audition. Once you’re done, you’re free to leave. All we ask is that you remain relatively quiet while you wait your turn. If you want to practice with a friend or talk softly, that’s fine. We’ll have the curtains partially drawn, which will block out a good deal of noise, but we can’t have the volume level getting out of hand.”

  He looks around at us and smiles in my direction. I turn again to look at Andrew, Paige, and Reid behind me. “The cast list will be up on my office door Monday morning when you return from break. I want to stress to you,” he continues, “that everyone will be cast in a role. There are many small nonspeaking parts in this play, between the Elves and the Souls of the Underworld, so if you want to be on stage for this performance, you will be. Nobody will be cut.”

  Finn takes the microphone off the stand and sits down on the edge of the stage with it. “And now for an extremely brief overview of The Myth of Persephone, for those of you who can’t remember what you learned in fifth grade or didn’t read the synopsis on page one of your packet.” Andrew, Paige, and Reid giggle behind me.

  “So, Persephone lives with her mother, the goddess of the harvest, Demeter. Her grandfather is Zeus.”

  “Zeus!” Andrew calls out in a loud, low voice, and everyone in the auditorium laughs. I turn around to look at him again. He’s smiling at Finn.

  “Moving along,” Finn says, amused, “Persephone is kidnapped by Hades, the god of the Underworld. When this happens, Demeter becomes so depressed that all the crops begin to die.” I think for a minute of Mom and Grandma Alice as Finn continues. “Zeus goes to Hades and tells him to free Persephone, which he does, and in the end, it’s agreed that she’ll spend half the year in the Underworld, at which time no crops grow, and the other half of the year with her mother, during which time the world will be in full bloom.”

  “And that’s why we have the seasons!” Reid calls out.

  “Exactly,” says Finn.

  He looks us over. “If there aren’t any questions, we’ll get started.” He waits for a minute and then nods at us. “Good luck to you all; I know you’ll do great. First up, Andrew Moyer.”

  I look down at the packet in my hands. “Wish me luck,” I hear Andrew say as he inches his way out. He leaps up the stage steps, two at a time.

  I can’t make out everything he’s saying up there, but I hear him tell Finn that he’s auditioning for Zeus, and I watch him take a red script from Ms. Landen. He flips through it, takes a deep breath, and starts to read. It looks like Ms. Landen is reading some of the lines, too, and I turn to page four in the packet, Zeus’s part, and strain to hear what line Andrew is on.

  I figured I’d try out for Zeus, but I know there’s no way I’ll get it over Andrew. He’s older and taller and would obviously make a way better Zeus than me. I flip through the packet nervously and skim through the other parts again. I chew on my nail.

  Up on stage, Andrew is handing the red script back to Ms. Landen. He takes a little bow and laughs, and I hear Finn tell him he did an excellent job. Paige scoots out behind me and grins at Andrew as she walks up the steps onto the stage. She seems so confident in her long, black skirt, shimmery with sequins, and I look down at my shiny black track pants that I used to be able to imagine so easily into a skirt just like hers.

  Up on stage, she tells Finn she’s reading for Persephone. Of course. I listen as she begins. Hades has kidnapped her, and she’s demanding to be taken back to her mother. Her voice is loud and clear, and she sounds super dramatic. I look at the second page of the packet, at Persephone’s part, and then around the auditorium again.

  When Paige finishes, she and Andrew wait for Reid to audition before the three of them put on their coats and walk out the auditorium doors together. I glance at the clock on the wall and watch everybody in the room try out, one by one. I turn through the pages of my packet slowly. I should be rereading Zeus’s part, but I can’t focus on it.

  It’s almost my turn. My heart starts pounding, and when Finn finally calls my name, I’m the only one left except for two seventh-grade girls packing up at the back of the room. I watch them whisper and laugh as they put on their jackets and gather up their long hair, and I think about Lila and Amelia. The familiar longing races through my body—the familiar wish.

  My heart thumping, I walk slowly up the stage steps and through the opening in the curtains into the small, makeshift room that Finn and Ms. Landen created. The auditorium doors slam as the two seventh graders leave. The lighting is dim on the stage, and the heavy burgundy velvet surrounds us. Finn and Ms. Landen sit behind the long table smiling at me, notebooks open to blank pages in front of them.

  I try to smile back at them, but my legs feel suddenly weak, and now I feel like my thumping heartbeat is coming from somewhere else, somewhere outside of me. I look at the script that Ms. Landen is holding out to me. It looks like it’s floating toward me. I take it.

  “Grayson, you’ve been waiting forever,” Finn says. He turns to Ms. Landen. “Samantha, this is Grayson, one of my sixth graders.”

  “Hi, there,” she says, and I watch her write my name in her notebook. “Is this your first time trying out for a play?”

  I nod and look down at the red script. The Myth of Persephone sparkles on the cover in shimmery gold writing. Beyond it are my black track pants and just one more time I try—I try to see them like Paige’s sparkling skirt, but I can’t. My heartbeat is like a drumbeat. It surrounds me. Each gentle thud creates ripples all around me.

  I flip through the script. The word Underworld jumps out at me from the page, and I think of Grandma Alice’s coffin, light brown and disappearing under shovelfuls of gray dirt and snow. I think of Amelia and Lila and their matching skirts, and of Paige’s sequined skirt. And then I think, again, of my track pants.

  “So, Grayson, who have you decided to read for?” Finn asks. His words come to me softly through the thick, warm air, and I look up at him, but I can’t answer. All I can do, for some reason, is think about the years and years that I spend pretending my pants into skirts just like Lila’s and Amelia’s and Paige’s, and how, for all those years, I just pretended that everyone else could see what I saw. And I think about how doing that used to make everything okay.

  At home, my track pants and basketball pants hang in my closet, silky and shiny in a row of bright yellow, black, gray, silver, and gold, but they’re only pants to me now. My too-long T-shirts don’t look like dresses. Without them, I’m nobody, and the idea takes shape in my mind. It takes shape and floats into my mouth, and it waits there.

  I look down at my hands, at my chewed-up fingernails, and then back at Finn’s face. The stage is silent and still. Finn and Ms. Landen are waiting for me to say something, so I do. I ask the question: “Can I try out for Persephone?”

  NOBODY MOVES and nobody says anything and my words hang in front of us like fog. My heart is pounding all around me. I watch Finn watching me, and Ms. Landen watching him. His face is calm, but he’s studying me carefully now. I want to look down again, but I don’t let myself.

  He takes a deep breath. “Well,” he says. And then he doesn’t say anything for another minute. He picks up his gray pen and studies it, like he’s trying to decide how to start the story that he’s about to write.

  I can’t move, and I can’t tear my eyes away from him and Ms. Landen. I don’t know how much time passes, but it feels like forever. Finally, Finn opens his mouth to talk. “I suppose,” he says slowly, like he’s thinking aloud, “I suppose that there’s no reason why you couldn’t try out for Persephone.” I nod. My heartbeat sinks back into my chest and I start to breathe evenly again.

  “I mean, a tryout is just that, right? A tryout,” he continues, and then he pauses again before saying, “What I mean is, yes, of course you can. Why shouldn’t someone be able to try out for whatever character they choose? But, Grayson,” he continues, looking at me carefully, “I should add: if we do feel that you’re right for this role, we’d, well, of course we’d need to sit down and talk about things—about how people might react.”

  An image of Ryan’s and Sebastian’s faces pops into my mind, and my heart starts pounding again. I hadn’t even thought of that, of what everyone else would think. “Yeah, maybe I—” But Finn’s voice interrupts me.

  “But it’s premature to talk about that now,” he says, and nods his head a final time. “Go for it, Grayson. Let’s see how you do, reading for Persephone.”

  Persephone. I let the name bounce around my mind. I don’t even want to imagine what people would say—a boy cast as a girl—and I think again of Ryan and Sebastian. And Jack. And everyone else, and for another second I think that maybe I should just try out for Zeus, or forget tryouts and join crew, but Finn’s brown eyes are deep and kind. I’m frozen in front of the long table. And the faraway shadow of a hand from another lifetime has slowly rested itself upon my shoulder, like an echo. It smells like hand lotion and the clementine it just peeled and broke into pieces in front of me. Stay, it offers. I close my eyes for a second. I see endless black dotted with glimmers of gold. I focus on them—on the sparkling lights, and then I open my eyes.