I didn’t reply.
‘How about you just give it a go? I promise I will be nothing but supportive. And I’ll throw something at Rooney if she says anything negative about you.’ As if to demonstrate, Pip pulled her boot off and held it aloft.
This made me laugh. ‘OK. Fine. I’ll try.’
‘I’m back!’ Rooney galloped into the room, somehow not spilling hot drinks everywhere. She slumped down next to me and Pip, putting her tea on the floor, and handing a coffee to Pip.
Pip stared at it. ‘Wait, you actually got me one?’
Rooney shrugged. ‘Yeah?’
Pip looked up at Rooney, genuine surprise, and something almost akin to fondness on her face. ‘Thanks.’
Rooney stared back, then seemed to have to wrench her head away. ‘So how’s the scene going? It’s only two weeks until the Bailey Ball, we need to get this one locked down before then.’
‘I had an idea,’ said Pip. ‘We could add in the clown.’
I half-expected Rooney to immediately protest this, but instead, she sat down next to Pip and leant towards her so she could read her copy of Twelfth Night. Pip made a face of moderate alarm, before relaxing, though not without very quickly adjusting her hair.
‘I think that’s a good idea,’ said Rooney.
‘Yeah?’ asked Pip.
‘Yeah. You do sometimes have good ideas.’
Pip grinned. ‘Sometimes?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘That means a lot.’ Pip nudged her. ‘Coming from you.’
And I swear to God Rooney went redder than I had ever seen her.
It’d been a long time since I’d stood on a stage alone. Well, it wasn’t technically a stage, but the way the other four were sitting in front of me, watching, while I was standing in front of them, had the same effect.
In Twelfth Night, the clown, whose name is actually Feste, shows up periodically to either provide some light comic relief, or to sing a song relevant to the themes of the story. Right before Jason and Sunil’s scene, Feste sings a song, ‘Come away, death’， about a man who dies, possibly of heartbreak because a woman doesn’t love him back, and he wants to be buried alone because he’s so sad. It’s basically just a fancy way of saying that unrequited love is pretty rough.
We all decided that I should recite it as a monologue rather than sing, which I was grateful about. But I was still nervous.
I could do this. I wanted to prove that I could do this.
‘Come away, come away, death,’ I began, and I felt my breath catch in my throat.
I can do this.
‘And in sad cypress let me be laid.’ I kept my voice soft. ‘Fly away, fly away, breath; I am slain by a fair cruel maid.’ And I read the rest of the song. And I felt all of it. I just felt … all of it. The mourning. The wistfulness. The fantasy of something that could never happen.
I’d never experienced unrequited love. I never would. And Feste, the clown, wasn’t even talking about himself – he was telling someone else’s story. But I felt it anyway.
‘Lay me, O, where sad true lover never find my grave, to weep there.’
There was a pause before I closed my book and looked up at my friends.
They were all staring at me, transfixed.
And then Pip just started clapping. ‘Fucking YES. Absolutely fucking yes. I’m a genius. You’re a genius. This play is going to be genius.’
Rooney joined in with the applause. So did Sunil. And I saw Jason very subtly wipe his eye.
‘That was OK?’ I asked, although that’s not really what I wanted to ask. Was I good? Will I be OK?
Everything in my life was upside down, but did I still have this? Did I still have one thing that brought me happiness?
‘More than OK,’ said Pip, smiling wide, and I thought, Yeah, OK. I hated myself right now for a lot of reasons, but at least I had this.
In the two weeks between that rehearsal and the Bailey Ball, we had three more rehearsals, during which we completely surpassed Rooney’s aim of getting one scene done. We got all three done – Much Ado About Nothing with Pip and Rooney, Twelfth Night with Jason, Sunil and me, and Romeo and Juliet with Jason and Rooney, having decided that I wasn’t the best choice for Juliet. We even had time for the pizza night we’d promised Sunil. He and Jason seemed to be fast friends, getting immersed in a discussion about musicals they’d seen, and Rooney and Pip managed to make it through a whole movie without making a single snide comment to each other. At one point, they were even sitting with their shoulders pressed together, amiably sharing a packet of tortilla chips.