Back in my own room, my roommate Sam types at her desk on that ancient, last-decade laptop of hers. She’s wearing the same thing she wore the day she arrived, which both unsettles me and breaks my heart. We exchange halfhearted hellos before I lock myself in the bathroom and enjoy the comfort of my own reflection.
I study my face intently, because whenever I blink, all I see is his.
I’m standing at the door to the rehearsal room gripping my obviously embellished résumé. Every line of the dramatic monologue I spent all Wednesday night and Thursday rehearsing repeats in my head over and over like gold fish swimming around the bowl, circles and circles and circles. I can hear the tapping of water as they make laps in my brain.
I’m oddly calm. I haven’t seen Clayton at all since shift sign-up on Wednesday, which is strange, as I had gotten used to running into him daily.
It isn’t fair. Every little thing I do now becomes all about Clayton. When I decide where to eat lunch, I consider whether or not he might be eating lunch at the same time and place, too. When I walk down the halls on the way to my Theatre classes, I wonder if I’ll run into him around every corner, or if we’ll bump into each other in the lobby, or out in the courtyard. It’s crazy how far an obsession or innocent crush will take you, dictating your day, bullying your mind into submission so badly that even choosing which damn bathroom to use becomes a chore—because at any point in the day, I could run into him. Even on my way to the bathroom.
Yet I didn’t, and haven’t.
And likely won’t.
I don’t even notice the rehearsal room door open when the voice catches me mid-thought. “Desdemona Lebeau,” it speaks softly, its source being a girl with electric blue hair and a nose ring, one of the director’s assistants. “We’re ready for you.”
Inside, a table’s been erected at the far end of the room, at which four visibly coldhearted individuals who have each had a worse day than the other sit patiently awaiting my audition. Not one of them smiles. The only one of the four I recognize is my acting professor, Nina Parisi, a needle-eyed, cold-faced bone of a woman whose caramel skin sags at the eyes as if she hasn’t slept in sixty-six years.
“Hello,” I say when I take my place before them. I don’t know how close to stand, so I measure myself at roughly thirty feet away, which still feels too close. “I’m D-Desdemona Lebeau, and I’ll be acting in a … Sorry, no. I’m performing one verse of an original song called ‘A Palace of Stone’ … as well as a dramedy—er, dramatic piece from D-D-Damien Rigby’s Quieter The Scream.”
Then, with all due emotion, I perform.
“How’d it go??” Victoria begs me the moment I’m out of the door.
I’ve returned to the lobby filled with the others who have either gone already or still anxiously wait, practicing their audition pieces to the walls or the stairs or each other. There’s a peculiar comfort in watching them go at it while knowing that my own audition is over with and I’m no longer enduring the anxiety that is so visible on their faces and in their wringing hands.
“It went okay, I guess.”
“Just okay?” She frowns on my behalf. “It’s alright. Nerves get the best of us. Maybe spring auditions will be better for you.”
I smile. “And yours?”
“Perfectly!”
Her face bursts with ecstasy. It’s like she’s been dying to express how perfectly her audition went for the past hour. And she does just that, detailing to me every little nuance she discovered, even in the tiny sixty second opportunity we’re given in front of them.
“Oh, Des, you should come with us!” she exclaims suddenly. “We’re all hitting up the Throng & Song after this.”
I squint at her. “Whose thong?”
“Throng. Come with us! It’s the Theatre hangout.”
Considering it’s Friday and, now that the audition is over with, I just have a weekend full of freedom ahead of me, I tag along with Victoria, Eric, and Chloe on a trip across campus, down a street, and into a piano bar slash diner called, as previously warned, the Throng & Song. The inside is shockingly crowded with college-aged kids, most of whom I’d assume are not old enough to drink. Baskets of fries and wings adorn every table and a thin veil of smoke hovers in the air.
We claim a table near a very small circular stage, upon which stands the most rundown upright piano I’ve ever seen, and a stool where a guitarist strums and sings unheard in the thick clamor of the room. Victoria is telling me something about her audition and I’m just smiling and nodding, unable to hear a word of it even sitting across the table from her. We haven’t been in here for two minutes and I already feel drowsy from the noise and smoke.