Chapter 54: Playing Roles

Monday, November 7, 1983

Michigan got a quick mention in the morning announcements, which in turn had people giving me congratulations, handshakes, hugs, and the occasional kiss. I could get used to that. Perhaps I already had.

This was going to change in college. I was well aware of that. Much more aware than anyone at Memorial could be, except Angie. I wouldn’t be a standout in a group of four hundred, or sixteen hundred, I’d be (whether or not I was a standout) in a group of twenty or thirty thousand students. Any given student would only know the names of perhaps a few hundred of their fellows.

I might be a standout after college. That was entirely possible. Michael would be. Laura probably would be, too. So would Jess. Others, too — Cal? Andy? Calvin? Who knew?

But in college? I was likely going to mostly be one of the crowd, perhaps a standout in my classes but not to the vast majority.

I was okay with that (not that I had any real alternative, except choosing to go to a far smaller school). Like we’d said last night, high school was a necessary part of our second lives. The experience of being a big fish in a small pond was new and important. For Angie, it was more about why she was a big fish this time, but it was still important.

We started out Drama with some news before getting to work. Of the people who hadn’t gone to Michigan, but had gone to Katy instead, Kelly and Breanna had surprised everyone (including themselves) by getting to finals in Duo, though they didn’t qualify. Brad qualified in Humorous, and James qualified in Dramatic.

On the Debate side, we’d taken no CX teams at all. Our one LDer, Kenny, placed second, though. That meant all of the Debate freshmen were now qualified.

We’d fizzled in Extemp, though, with no one making finals. Kenny and Stacey got to semis, while Jeff lost in quarters.

We had plenty of qualifying tournaments left, though. We’d get a lot more people qualified for State before we were done.

In the meantime, it was time for work once we’d gotten the news. We had just this week left to go before performances. Dress rehearsal, Steffie-style, was coming right up on Thursday. We had rehearsal tonight and tomorrow night, with Wednesday tentatively a rest day. That is, if we didn’t suck so much that we needed Wednesday, too.

In fact, I was pretty sure that we didn’t suck at all. We’d worked hard on the play and it showed. I was pretty sure we were better, as a group, than we’d been for ‘Harvey’, and ‘Harvey’ had been a solid success.

A simplistic analysis would be to say that Jess made the rest of us better. And, in fact, she did. That much was true.

But Angie made the rest of us better, too. Jasmine made the rest of us better. I made the rest of us better, too. We all were important elements in making the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Still, Jess had been the wild card before we started. Now (barring an utterly improbable case of stage fright) she’d be a veteran and a big part of our success.

It wasn’t conquering Hollywood, or even necessarily a step in that direction, but it was proof that Jess (our Jess, the one in this universe) had what it took to be a damn good actress. That was more than enough for now.

One thing that none of us knew: could she sing? Perhaps Steffie knew. Jess had flat-out refused to sing for the rest of us so far.

I was certain she could dance. If she could sing, an extra range of options opened up for her. Of course, if she couldn’t, she could take lessons (and probably would), but the more of a natural gift she had, the better off she’d be, most likely.

Debate, by comparison, was a party. Of course, the problem there was that everyone knew it was a party. Everyone including Steffie.

Those of us in the play were given a bit of time to enjoy ourselves, then asked to go back to rehearsing.

Unfortunately, we had to annoy Steffie. It was mailing day, and all of us had to leave to run to the post office.

She made a stab at trying to get us to send just one person to the post office, but we refused. This was a rite of passage. Everyone wanted to go.

Jas, Angie, Paige, Cammie, and Mel piled into my car and we headed out. Other cars bearing other seniors followed. Not everyone was applying Early Action, but plenty of us were.

We marched in and handed our admission envelopes over to the clerks, making sure they were postmarked on time. Once that was done, we headed right back to the car and back to Memorial for rehearsals.

The show must go on!

Tuesday, November 8, 1983

I’m not sure that any of us managed to focus very much on our other classes. Perhaps ‘enough’ is the right word. We weren’t going to totally drop the ball, but our minds were on the play all day, along with most of the evening.

We were, in truth, having a great time. Steffie’s dress rehearsal was legendary for a good reason, but we were relaxed and in a good mood and enjoyed making the show as great as it could be. We’d had years of enjoying working hard and sometimes being sleep-deprived, after all.

Still, we cheered when Steffie said we’d earned tomorrow night off. It was the last evening we’d have until Sunday night to be free of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (though many of us might find it filling our dreams).

Wednesday, November 9, 1983

Jas and I agreed with Paige and Angie that it would be more fun to double-date tonight. We’d end up at Jasmine’s house, anyway, no matter what else we did.

We also decided we should do something simple. Even with the night off, spending it driving across town and back was silly.

Instead, we went back to a place we hadn’t visited nearly enough recently: Pho King. Huong wasn’t there, but the girl at the counter recognized us and greeted us warmly.

Even without Angie angling for leftovers, we ordered larger soups. The leftovers might be good after a late rehearsal.

We talked a fair bit about college. It felt closer with our applications mailed out, but I knew we’d probably have to wait until January or perhaps February to hear back. Late December was at least a possibility, but later was more likely.

Everyone wanted to start putting together degree plans, or at least first-year plans, but that had to wait. Hurry up and wait — isn’t that how it often goes?

After dinner, we headed back to Jasmine’s and wound up talking with Camille for about half an hour. It was good to catch up with her. She was looking forward to seeing the play.

For over a year now, I’d known Camille was a big supporter of our relationship. More and more, I’d come to believe that she thought of me as her future son-in-law rather than as her potential future son-in-law. That was fair enough; Jas and I might not say it often, but we thought of each other as future spouses, just with a bit of space left for unforeseen circumstances upsetting the applecart.

Perhaps it would turn out that we were terrible at living together, for instance. That happened to people. Living with someone every day, day in and day out, is very different from spending a night or a weekend. As a friend of mine had said, you can sleep with someone for years and always enjoy it (the sleeping part, that is), but that might be because you’re never waking up with class or work or other obligations half an hour away. You’re never trying to get to sleep on a school night, or a work night, knowing you won’t get enough sleep.

All that said, that was one thing my ex-wife and I had never had trouble with. I was pretty optimistic that Jas and I wouldn’t either.

The sex part? We were quite good at that, and proved it to each other again tonight.

After we’d finished, and were all snuggled up, Jas said, “Nervous?”

“About the play? No, we’ve got that.”

“I meant about the play, but ... anything else on your mind?”

I paused, then shook my head. “No. Honestly, there’s nothing I’d say that I’m nervous about right now. Curious, maybe. Impatient. Eager, even. But not nervous.”

“State? ToC? Nationals?”

“Nah. It’s no secret that I want to get to Nationals, but I’m not nervous. Que sera, sera. Nothing about me being unusual gives me an edge there. We’ll get there or we won’t. Not getting there won’t ruin my year or my life or anything else.”

“Throwing in a little Spanish! Good for you! Yes, I know, it’s that song, but still. You almost had the pronunciation right. I think, anyway.” She paused, then sighed, and said, “My French pronunciation is usually almost right, too.”

“I’ll have to learn a bit before we go.”

“We’ll have to learn a bit before we go. I need a refresher! I am supposed to be French! You have an excuse, being just a dumb American.”

I chuckled. “Still, I need to be able to say things like ‘Lyon’ properly. I’ve known people who pronounced it ‘Lion’. Repeatedly. After being corrected.”

“That’s just rude! Also, that’s first-life, right?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Did you ever visit, back then?”

I shook my head. “England, and the Amsterdam airport, but never France. I always wanted to just get a Eurail pass and spend a few weeks or a month going around seeing things, with no real agenda and often just having the journey be the destination.”

“I’d love that!” she said, grinning. “We need to do that! But not next summer.”

“Why not?”

“First, I think we need more time to really justify the money. You have the settlement, but we need some cool business-y things and investments and all. Starving students is one thing, but I think we’re going to want to do a little better than that. Second, we deserve a really cool break after our first year of college, at least if we’re not doing summer school or something. And, third, I want to tour the US this summer. There’s so much of it that I haven’t seen, and I loved seeing Illinois and Wisconsin with your family. Piling in a car or a van or an RV or something and seeing lots of the country sounds like fun — preferably with Angie and Paige along, seeing if we go psycho all crammed together for a while.”