“Yes,” I said. “My mom knew someone at one of them.”
Her eyes widened so that I could see how the green mixed with hazel. “From which theater? Can you ask her?”
I shook my head. “She’s dead.”
“Oh.” Her forehead wrinkled. I hated to see it that way. “You think you could still find out? I’m working on a routine for the Spring Fling. You know what that is? It’s a talent show. The biggest in the tristate region. They do it right here in the school auditorium. It’s no joke. People come from all over. And they give out awards, some scholarship-type stuff, but even better are the contacts you make. You wouldn’t believe who they get to show up to this thing. Hey, maybe you can send your contact a tape of my routine? Maybe even get them to come down for it? This is great news.”
I wanted to punch myself. Yes, my mother had known someone affiliated with some theater, but only barely. Most likely that person was a volunteer usher or just some schmuck with season tickets. But Celeste was practically licking her lips.
I forced a smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Oh,” she sighed, lacing her hands and leaning forward so that her head grazed the bottom of the table. It was like the first movement of a hug. I imagined the rest: the plump of her breasts, the push of her hips, the smell of her scalp. “After school. Today. Come to rehearsal room B just off the main chorus room. I’m practicing my routine. I’ve just worked out the steps. Wait’ll you see it. You’ll come, right?”
She dragged me—by the hand!—back up above the table and the ghostly prickles of that contact steered me through the rest of Fun and Games, around the suspicious glares of Woody in the locker room, past the remainder of the day, and into rehearsal room B when school let out, where to my honest surprise I found her there, as promised, stretching in a silver leotard. Almost immediately she resumed the chatter. The talent show, she explained, wasn’t until May, but it didn’t pay to rest on your laurels, not ever, not even when an event was six months away, especially when that event was the Spring freakin’ Fling.
“Everyone involved practices like crazy,” she continued. “Especially me. We practice all the way up until the day of the Fling and then we all go out to a movie together a few hours before it starts. You know, to relax. We bring our parents and significant others and everything. It’s like a tradition, and it’s hilarious, because every year a couple people leave the movie to throw up, they’re so nervous. They should be. You know Shasta McTagert? She was discovered at a Spring Fling and joined the Rabbinger Theater and now she’s on that TV show about the ghetto school. You probably think it’s a fantasy.”
“No,” I protested. “Fantasies are good.”
“They are good.” She made a sound like a purr. Then she spoke as if what she said was confidential. “A fantasy world is the best kind of world to live in because if you don’t want it to end it doesn’t have to, and it can totally take over Mere Reality.”
Her face brightened as she enunciated this phrase. Instantly I liked the sound of it. My trumpet lessons, my prayers to Two-Fingered Jesus, my specifying—all of these were escapes from Mere Reality. The only question was which half of my life was real: my fluorescent existence here in the this room with Celeste Carpenter or the dark nights spent with Ken Harnett.
“If I do something really fantastic at the Spring Fling—win top prize and all that—then there’s a chance Mere Reality will become exactly what I want it to be. I can be a dancer. Everyone says that. But I really can, I know it. I just need the right people to see.”
Finally she hooked her iPod up to a stereo, crossed her ankles, and twined her arms above her head. A Spanish theme began—a trumpet. My neck burned with jealousy. She was only running through the steps, hardly giving it her all, but if anything her casual drowsiness enhanced the titillation—it was as if her slow gyrations and sleepy spirals were being performed before her bedroom mirror. With each bend and stretch of spandex she fired more questions about my hometown theater scene—the neighborhoods, the ensembles, the directors, the wages—and I mumbled and lied my way