My Life After Now - By Jessica Verdi Page 0,79

discussion so that HIV/AIDS would no longer be this phantom, ghoulish hypothetical and instead be understood as everyone’s problem—something that we all need to be fighting, positive or not. And for the people who were already positive, people like me, we needed to stop the rampant discrimination and judgment in our schools and workplaces and families. The only way to do that? Keep talking about it.

So, as my dead body rested on the stage floor that night, I’d asked myself what I could do. I still wasn’t comfortable with the assembly idea, and I wasn’t the preaching, happy-go-lucky, let’s-start-a-student-club type. But there was something I was good at.

Mr. Fisher and I approached Andre together.

“Lucy has come to me with a rather intriguing idea,” Mr. Fisher said, “and I’d appreciate your full cooperation.”

Andre narrowed his eyes at me in suspicion. “What idea?”

“I think we should do another straight play this spring,” I said simply.

Andre guffawed. “No way,” he said, shaking his head vehemently. “We always do a musical in the spring. It’s our biggest moneymaker of the year.”

“True. But Mr. Fisher and I have been talking, and we agree that we should do a show that has the ability to truly change our audience’s lives. Or, at the very least, make them think. Isn’t that the real purpose of theater, after all?” I challenged.

“Of course,” Andre mumbled, knowing he couldn’t very well disagree with that. “That’s why I chose The Sound of Music. What makes you think more than Nazis?”

“The Normal Heart,” I said without missing a beat.

Andre quickly looked to Mr. Fisher. I could see the possibilities turning in his head and tried to hide my smile. We had him.

“The school would really let us do The Normal Heart?” he asked, cautiously optimistic, The Sound of Music all but abandoned.

Mr. Fisher nodded. “Lucy has been kind enough to lend me a copy of the play, and though there is some…questionable language involved, I think the overall message is important enough that the school board will overlook the standing no-profanity rule. Just this once,” he added.

Andre’s face lit up, as the rare chance to do gritty, contemporary theater grew real. “Screw the musical!” he said with a conspiritorial grin.

As was his way, Andre played with casting so that the normally almost all-male play included a few women as well. It was an extremely brutal and challenging show, in my opinion even more of a tragedy than Romeo and Juliet. Set in New York City in the very early years of the AIDS crisis, before anyone even had a name for the mysterious disease that was killing so many gay men, the play tackled the very issues I wanted my classmates to be thinking about.

The cast had really stepped up and so far rehearsals were going brilliantly. Every day, I thanked my lucky stars that I lived in a community that was willing to let us do a play like this, and that the administration had such faith in our ability to pull it off.

It was a smaller cast than Romeo and Juliet, but all the central people in my life were in it. Evan, Max, Courtney, Ty, Elyse. It was scary at first, working on a project like this with them, when so many of them knew what I was going through and how close to home it rested with me. But I think that made them work even harder, like they didn’t want to let me down.

And as far as I could tell, Elyse had kept my secret from Ty. I was impressed, especially considering the fact that we were doing a show about AIDS and it would have been so easy for her to accidentally-on-purpose let it slip at any time. But she was keeping her word. So far, anyway. She and I would never be friends, but at least our feelings toward each other had evolved past sheer hatred and were hovering a little closer to tolerance. I considered that progress.

• • •

The commercial ended, and suddenly my family was pulling me to my feet for a deluge of hugs and kisses. I radiated with accomplishment—I was finally, officially, a professional actor. I had to admit, it felt good.

All at once my cell phone started chirping, and for a while I was busy fielding calls and texts from a gushing Max and Courtney, telling me again how amazing the commercial was—even though I’d already shown them my DVD copy. Then my dads started getting calls from my grandparents