Beneath The Skin(191)

I blanch. Now Ariel is the one who wanted the lead role? I guess I’d be naïve to think otherwise; every woman in the department wanted the part of Emily Webb.

“What do you mean by that?” I shoot back at her, twisting around in my chair.

I couldn’t hear my own thoughts a second ago. Now, the dressing room is so silent, I hear the jingle of a hairpin touching the counter at the other end of the room.

“You haven’t heard the commotion?” she says, making the question sound like an accusation. “They had to bring in campus security to secure the doors of the lobby.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about.

“Make way,” says Ariel demonstratively, waving her hands around the room like a magician, “for the one and only Desdemona Lebeau. Do you all even realize who you’ve been acting with? This princess here who robbed me of my senior year lead because her famous mommy and daddy bought it for her?”

Oh, fuck.

Fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck mermaids. Fuck everything.

“Ariel,” I plead fruitlessly.

“So was this your plan all along?” she blurts, spreading her hands. “Bring in your parents from New York on your opening night and cause a scene and make this huge deal over your big Texas debut?”

Wait a minute.

Wait one fucking minute.

“They’re here?” I breathe, horrified.

“And call in the press, of course. Channel 11 News. 13. Whoever the hell’s in the area. Weather? Traffic? Who cares. The Lebeaus are in town. You are a real piece of work, you know that?”

I can’t even produce words. My heart is lodged somewhere up in my brain, and all I can hear is my pulse and my own erratic breathing. The room spins while I try to imagine the horrific sight of my mom and dad in the lobby right now, slowly being escorted like precious pieces of gold into the auditorium to claim whatever seats they must have secured for themselves ahead of time. Did Doctor Thwaite invite them? Did they come on their own, my mom desperate for more attention and my dad curious to see what his darling Kellen has designed? Is my sister with them?

“I’m sorry.” My voice is so small and pathetic. I don’t know if I’m apologizing to her, or to the whole room. I look around and all I see are confused eyes, contemptuous eyes, blank eyes. I don’t have a friend in this whole building suddenly. Even the actress next to me who I was just talking to, she looks at me like I’m a total stranger. “I’m sorry. I was … I just wanted … Ariel, I’m sorry. I was—”

“Sorry? Sorry for lying to everyone in this room?” she prompts me, her voice turning all sugary again, the same tone she used to warn me about Clayton. “Sorry for … what?”

I lick my dry lips. I can’t seem to swallow. “I’m sorry for—”

“She’s sorry,” says Victoria from the costumes rack, “that you’re being such a royal bitch, Ariel.”

Gasps and whispers wash over the room like a sudden breeze.

Victoria, her arms crossed, saunters away from the rack, facing Ariel in the center of the room. She gives her a pointed once-over.

“Dessie here’s sorry that she even had to keep her identity a secret,” Victoria goes on, “because bitches like you can’t handle it.”

Girls snicker in the back. The blonde one from costumes gawps at her partner, her stitching work forgotten in her lap.

“You think you’re the only one who got robbed of that Emily role? I wanted it, too,” says Victoria with a careless sweep of her hand. “Hell, I dreamed about that role all summer. Now, I get to sit backstage and watch Dessie perform it.”

Ariel folds her arms, her eyes seething with derision.

“And does that ruffle my pretty feathers? Sure,” says Victoria with a shrug. “You know what else does? The sheer lack of roles in the Theatre world for people of color. Am I barging into the dressing rooms of every all-white cast to tell them about all their precious privilege? Fuck no. I’m a big girl. I’ll keep auditioning for whatever the hell I want. I will play Emily someday in some other production. But Desdemona Lebeau, she can have this production.”

“Yeah,” agrees Ariel, her tone quickly converted from sugar to acid, “and she can invite her famous parents to have a big showy opening night, and that’s somehow fair, because—”

“Oh, trust me, I know all about embarrassing parents,” Victoria cuts her off, waving her hand in Ariel’s indignant face. “You don’t want to be moving into the dorms with your dad yelling Cantonese down the halls at twenty words a second, trust me. I can only imagine what kind of hell Dessie has to contend with, and why she had to run all the way down here to Texas to get the fuck away from it.” She whips her head around to face me. “Am I right?”