Beyond Clueless Read online

  “I’m going to be honest with you. This is a very, very complicated and mature piece—dramatically, musically, technically, conceptually—you name it. It is not a typical show for a high school production, especially because of its adult themes. It’s a dark show about bad choices. So I wasn’t kidding when I said the board was taking a huge risk this year.”

  No one moved a muscle.

  Sister Mary Alice looked out at the audience with smiling eyes.

  “But if I am certain of anything, it is you. Great women, such as yourselves, will rise to the challenge and be luminous.”

  I felt goose bumps. I admit it, I did.

  “Now, I like nuns as much as anybody”—(insert heartfelt laughter here)—“but I’m not sure shows like that are interesting for you. At least, that’s what I gather from your show suggestions every year. Musical theater is art, and art should challenge us, excite us, make our hearts pump a little bit, make our brains spin. And I look forward to our achieving that together this fall.” She positively beamed at us.

  “Now. Back to business. First, please note that the performances will be on November thirteenth and fourteenth. This is pretty self-evident, but if you know you can’t make those dates, please don’t waste everyone’s time by auditioning. Also, I’ve selected Jenny McCafferty as the stage manager. Many of you may remember her for her extraordinary work managing the spring play, when she was just a sophomore.”

  A tall blond girl in the front row shot up from her seat and turned around, giving a sweeping arm wave to the audience. This was clearly her red-carpet moment, and I could feel Xiang shuddering next to me with suppressed laughter. Clutching a plastic clipboard to her chest, Jenny marched up the stage steps and grabbed the microphone from poor Sister Mary Alice.

  “Thank you, Sister. Hey, ladies, let’s hear it for the fall musical!”

  Dead silence. How awkward.

  Unperturbed, Jenny kept going. “Yeah! All right! This year’s musical is going to be a big one, so I’m going to be selecting two assistant stage managers to help me in coordinating everything. Each of these positions is going to be really important, and I’m going to be very selective in choosing the individuals to fill them. Please submit applications to me at my e-mail address, which you can find in the directory. Remember, it’s m-c-c-a-f-f-e-r-t-y—not m-a-c-c-a-f-f-e-r-t-y. I will be holding personal interviews in the next few days, as there’s gonna be a lot of preparatory work to be done before the auditions next Wednesday.”

  Xiang turned to me and whispered, “Well, so much for that. If you think I’m going to deal with Miss McBossypants down there, you’ve got another think coming.”

  “Don’t worry,” I replied, “we’ll figure something out . . .”

  Sister Mary Alice clawed at Jenny’s hands for the microphone and finally managed to yank it away. With a strained smile, Sister said, “Thank you, Jenny. As Miss McCafferty mentioned, we have set the date for auditions: September ninth. Please come prepared with a short monologue and a song—with or without piano sheet music. There are eighteen roles in the play. Twelve roles for women, and six”—Sister gave us that hard look again—“for men. So, tell your friends at other schools.”

  Xiang and I looked at each other in simultaneous comprehension. Ohhhhhhh, so that’s why there were so many people interested in drama club.

  Boys.

  Ugh, another week finally over!”

  I heaved my monster book bag onto the kitchen counter. Damn textbooks. Or, more accurately, damn weekend homework.

  My mother gave me a quick, annoyed look from her desk and went back to coding invoices—or whatever it is she does all day. My mom’s some sort of “freelance accountant”—actually, I’m not sure what she does, exactly; for all I know, she runs the World Bank. Lots of paper, lots of numbers, and her hand usually looks like a blur over the calculator. But she gets to work from home a lot, which I guess she likes. Frankly, I don’t see how she does it—if I worked from home, there would be plenty of talk shows and soaps going on, not tax forms and spreadsheets.

  I poured myself a glass of orange juice and started rummaging through the cupboards. Dried apricots, dehydrated veggie mix, some sort of organic nut bar . . .

  “Geez, why don’t we have any normal snacks, like crackers or chips or pretzels or anything that any normal person would consider eating?” I reluctantly grabbed a snack-pack of yogurt-covered raisins.

  My mother peered at me over her reading glasses. “Don’t eat too much. Your father’s going to start making dinner soon. I think he said something about lasagna.”

  “Ooooh, let me guess: a chopped-walnut-and-mushroom filling with pressed organic heirloom tomato sauce, covered with whole-wheat pasta, and smothered in goat cheese. Oh, and sprinkled with freshly chopped wheatgrass. Can’t wait.” I pretended to stick a finger down my throat and made gagging noises.

  “Marty, you don’t know how good you have it. Not everyone gets to eat as healthfully as you do.”

  My parents looooove vegetables, which makes it really easy for them to eat a lot of crazy-healthy food. Like, they’re obsessed with them. The stranger and weirder the variety, the better. (Which, by the way, has been helpful in coming up with greetings for Jimmy.)

  “What good is health food if you can’t swallow it?”

  My mother just rolled her eyes and shuffled a stack of papers.

  “Your father is very gung-ho about seeing some movie tonight. I think it’s a Hitchcock.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. I’m going over to Jimmy’s. We’re going to sniff glue or something. Maybe spray-paint obscenities all over the playground at Chippewa.”

  “As long as you don’t get caught,” she said blandly.

  “Knock on wood.”

  Two hours later, I was knocking on wood—the front door to the Caradonna home. It was dark already, but I carry a mini-flashlight on my key chain to make it through the shortcut in the forest. I mean, the woods aren’t that big; they’re just kind of long, so at any point you can make out lights from houses through the trees. But still, you don’t want to step on a sleeping deer or something.

  Not that I’ve ever heard of anyone doing that; it’s just something that seems totally plausible.

  Doesn’t it?

  OK, moving on.

  Jimmy’s little sister, Jeanie, answered. She is officially the weirdest nine-year-old on the planet. She was wearing a black robe of some sort and had black mascara all over her face.

  “Um, hi, Jeanie. What’s up?”

  “Welcome to the House of Despair,” she hissed.

  “Um, okee-dokee, thanks. I’m here to see Jimmy.”

  “Oh, what does it matter? We’re all going to die.” She wandered off, leaving me standing there with the door open.

  “Right. OK, I’ll find him. Don’t worry about it,” I called after her. I started up the stairs but stopped when I heard Jimmy’s voice down in the living room. I spun around but then froze again a second later when I heard a bunch of guys laughing. Like, not two guys. More like . . . four or five. What happened to cookie dough, me, Jimmy, and his new boyfriend? Who were these people?

  I peeked through the doorway and saw Jimmy sprawled on the couch next to Derek, who looked just like his profile pic. Very cute. Then there was a redheaded guy on the floor wearing a Green Lantern T-shirt (hmm, I figured about a 6.5 on a 10-point scale in the looks department) and a dark-haired dude in the recliner (who was hard to rate, since his face was barely visible under his baseball cap).

  “Uh . . . hi.”

  “Marty!” Jimmy’s face lit up like a bare bulb. “Hey, guys, this is Marty, like I was telling you about.”

  They all stared at me.

  Jimmy jumped up. “Marty, this is Kirby”—Green Lantern gave me a nod—“and this is Oliver. And this is Derek.”

  Derek was up on his feet and presenting me his hand. Like, for a handshake? What was this, a diplomatic summit?

  “Hey, nice to meet you,” I said cautiously,
letting my hand get pumped.

  “Jimmy’s told me so much about you—I mean, he’s always talking about you. Great to meet you, just great.”

  He was so intense, I could only smile weakly and nod in response. Later on, Jimmy would tell me that Derek was only behaving that way because he was reeeeally nervous about meeting me, Jimmy’s best friend. I turned to Jimmy, giving him my who-the-hell-are-these-other-dudes? look.

  “Oh, um, Kirby and Oliver go to school with Derek in Weeksburg. They met in the GSA.”

  I was at a loss. “What’s that, like a division of Homeland Security or something?”

  They all laughed. Kirby threw some popcorn at Oliver, saying, “Yeah, we’re spies!”

  “As if you could keep anything a secret,” Oliver shot back.

  Kirby raised an eyebrow. “Sweetheart, you have no idea what a trove of secrets I keep.”

  Jimmy pulled me and Derek onto the couch so that he was between us. “Martha goes to a Catholic girls’ school, so I don’t think they have a Gay-Straight Alliance there.”

  Ohhh, gay club. Right.

  Kirby smirked. “What about all the dykes? I mean, come on, there’s got to be a lot of that going on at an all-girls school.”

  I shrugged. Honestly, it had never even occurred to me that some of the students at Our Lady were gay. “Um, I have no idea, actually. I think maybe the conservative Catholic parents would get freaked out if there were some sort of club. Or the nuns would get fired by the Pope or something. Anyway, I haven’t met any lesbians,” I waffled.

  “That you know about,” Kirby corrected me with a smirk.

  “I guess,” I conceded. There was an awkward silence, and I decided this was the perfect moment to start stuffing popcorn into my face.

  “So, which school do you go to?” asked Oliver, the brown-haired guy.

  “It’s . . . uh . . . Our Lady of the . . . Oaks,” I said between chews and swallows. “Down in Grantville.”

  “Do you like it? It must be a big change from going to public school here with Jimmy,” said Derek.

  “Oh, it’s complete torture,” I assured him.

  “Uh-huh. So you miss the boys, right? I totally get that,” said Kirby, giggling. Oliver bopped him with a couch pillow.

  “Well, no, not really,” I said, finding myself unexpectedly puzzled. I leaned over and crushed Jimmy in a one-armed hug. “I mean, of course I miss this one, and I’m all for boys in general, but it’s actually kinda nice not to have to worry about certain stuff. Like, it’s so much easier with a uniform. You don’t have to stand in front of your closet every morning hating your clothes. Plus, it’s nice not having to worry about shaving your legs.”

  All four guys reared back in horror, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

  “Gross, gross, gross,” said Kirby, shuddering. “That’s an argument for coeducation if I ever heard one.” Then he leaned in conspiratorially. He may only be a 6.5, but he has totally amazing green eyes. “So, are there really no guys anywhere? Like, no cute volleyball coaches hitting on the horned-up girls or anything?”

  “Well, my math teacher’s a guy, but I don’t think anyone would ever describe him as cute.” I started picking at some popcorn between my front teeth. “Hmm, there are a few more guy teachers, but still, nobody who is in any way attractive. Otherwise . . . well, there’s the play. We’re doing Into the Woods. Auditions are next week, and it seems like everyone wants to be in it ’cause there’ll be guys auditioning from other schools.”

  Jimmy tossed up a handful of popcorn so that it landed on Derek. “How ’bout you audition for Prince Charming?”

  Kirby snorted, and Derek returned fire at Jimmy—my cue to seek cover on the floor. Pretty soon Kirby, Derek, and Jimmy were in a full battle, with Jimmy screaming, “It was a compliment!” Meanwhile, I was lying on the floor near Oliver, giggling.

  “Prince Charming’s not even a real role,” I muttered to Oliver. He sent some popcorn their way, then held out a protective arm over me as the other three suddenly joined forces and started pelting us mercilessly.

  We were laughing pretty hard, but when we finally caught our breath, Jimmy said, “No, seriously—why don’t we all audition, too?”

  Kirby pulled a sour face. “Uh, maybe because we have better things to do than schlep down to a Catholic girls’ school in Grantville? They’ll probably throw holy water on us to see if we melt.” He turned to me to add, “No offense.”

  I threw up my hands and shrugged to show that no offense was taken.

  But Jimmy had a look. I knew that look. It’s somewhere between crazed and crazy. When Jimmy gets an idea, no matter how harebrained, he gets very attached to it. “Marty, that’s a perfect way for us to spend more time together!”

  “Jimmy, sweetie, didn’t we try something similar in fifth grade?” I raised my eyebrows as high as they would go, hoping he would read my thoughts. And my thoughts at the moment were: THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA. DO NOT CONTINUE THIS LINE OF REASONING.

  After a truly disastrous foray into theater in fifth grade (an audition for You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown—trust me, you don’t want to hear about it), Jimmy had stayed far away from any of the drama stuff I did. I mean, other than seeing me perform, of course. But at the moment it seemed he was ignoring both the past as well as my elevated eyebrows.

  “Oh, fifth grade, schmifth grade,” he replied, waving my objection away. “This is a genius idea! This way you’ll have company, too!”

  He turned to Derek. So, you know when hostages are forced to say stuff on camera, and it’s super-obvious from their faces that they’re being forced to say it? That was Derek’s face at the moment.

  “Sure! Sounds fun!” Derek finally said.

  Oliver grinned. “Yeah, why not? Let’s do it! I mean, it could be fun!”

  Aww, these guys were so nice! I didn’t know what to say. We all looked at Kirby.

  “Well, you ladies do what you want,” Kirby said, shaking his head. “But I’m not going to join your merry band in Nunville. No way, José.”

  The Tudor-style house was pretty impressive, with neatly trimmed topiary bushes lining the walkway up to the front door.

  Ding-dong!

  Click-click.

  Creeeak.

  “Hi, my name is Martha Sullivan. I, uh, go to school with Xiang. Um, I think she’s expecting me?”

  The gray-haired Chinese man just looked at me, completely expressionless.

  Tick.

  Tock.

  Tick.

  Tock.

  Xiang suddenly materialized, squeezed past her father, grabbed my hand, and pulled me away from the front door and down to my dad’s idling car. She looked amazing, with her hair down and wearing a sky-blue dress with a Peter Pan collar—I realized that I hadn’t seen anyone from Oaks wearing anything except the school uniform or our gym clothes. I suddenly felt self-conscious about my boring red T-shirt and jeans. Why did I still dress like Dora the Explorer? I was almost fifteen, ferchrissake. That needed to change, and today was the perfect day to start.

  “I’m so completely mortified. My dad is so weird,” she murmured.

  “I know exactly how you feel,” I said, pointing to my waiting father—eyes closed, air-drumming the steering wheel to God-knows-which rock anthem. Xiang looked a little shocked.

  I knocked on the windshield to bring Pops out of his reverie, then plopped myself into the passenger seat. Xiang slid into the back, extending her hand between me and my dad. He was busy doing some sort of head-banging thing, with no apparent sense of personal dignity or shame.

  “Hello, Mr. Sullivan. My name is Xiang,” she said in a bright, high voice, smiling a flight-attendant smile. She really laid it on thick for adults, apparently.

  Dad tried to shake her hand, but he used his left hand and ended up grasping her fingers instead. Yeah: awkward. I started thinking maybe this was all a mistake. I mean, there was a definite risk that Xiang would never speak to me again after meeting my dorky da
d. He finally released her hand and turned down the music (Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” as it turned out—no further comment necessary).

  “Nice meeting you,” he said. “It’s great to see that our Marty is making friends at her new school.” I glared at him, using my (unfortunately feeble) psychic powers to try to shut him up. God, could he be more lame? I wanted to send Xiang some sort of physical signal, to make it crystal clear that I was not amused by my dad, but she was busy rummaging in her purse.

  She took out a tube of lipstick and started applying it as my dad peered at her through the rearview mirror. “Do your parents want you back by a certain time?”

  Xiang made a pouty face. “Yeah, if I’m not back here by four, it’s likely the planet will explode.”

  My dad smiled. “Rightee-oh. Then we’ll shoot for three thirty to be safe. I mean, we have seven billion lives to think of—it’s quite a responsibility!”

  Groan.

  Xiang moved on to applying mascara. “Um, thanks,” she said.

  Needless to say, I couldn’t have been more relieved when the car finally pulled up to the mall entrance.

  “Now, you girls be good. Marty, you got your cell?” I rolled my eyes and nodded. “Great. So I’ll see you at this entrance at three o’clock sharp, ’K? Oh, and remember what I said about talking to—”

  “Bye, Dad!” And with that, the door was closed, and I was pulling Xiang away from the car. The giant glass doors to the mall mercifully slid apart, allowing us to get away from that man. I let out a heaving sigh.

  Xiang, weirdly, couldn’t see how completely irritating my father was.

  “Your dad is sooo nice,” she said. I had no idea what she was talking about—her parents must torture her with yodeling or electric forks or . . . something.

  Then she said, “And he is so cute!”

  With those words, I spontaneously combusted into a mushroom cloud of fire all over the entrance of the mall, inflicting third-degree burns on a dozen nearby shoppers and melting several fake palm trees.