Circle the Soul Softly Read online

  I’m in the play.

  The list is posted in the hallway of the theater. I cannot believe I am actually seeing my name—I check it five times. Nine parts, nine actors, one A.D.—and one of them is me. First rehearsal is this afternoon.

  All day long, I’m new. Nothing can bother me. I don’t care if people talk to me or if I have a place to sit at snack. I kinda like that I get a dirty look from two older girls walking by, because I remember them from the audition. At snack Layla says, “Congratulations.” My hippie-biker science teacher pats me on the shoulder and tells me he heard I got into the play. I go to the theater at lunch to pick up my script. Tess gives me a huge hug. I manage the entire day without running into anything. At three fifteen, I’m sitting in a circle with six other kids I don’t know, and the Hollywood Three.

  “Keep it simple and keep it true, ”Tess warns. She twists her long hair into a knot in the back of her head and sticks a pencil through.“This play cannot be melodramatic. Find the humor.”

  “Right, that should be easy,” says David, the guy playing my husband.

  I don’t know the play, but I laugh with everyone else.We read. I am taken into the story so completely it’s hard to believe almost two hours go by before we close our scripts.

  “Damn,Tess,” Jake says.“We’re doing a play on death.”

  “I don’t think so,” David argues.

  “Everybody’s dying, dawg, what do you think it’s about?” Jake challenges him.

  “Life, basically.”

  I don’t say anything, but I agree with David.

  Rehearsal’s over, and I have time to be amazed at how good all the actors are. I can’t help but smile at them as we pack up. Everybody but Stacey smiles back. She obviously doesn’t like that I got into the play, and right now I don’t particularly care. The girl playing Layla’s mother introduces herself—her name is Frazier. David tells me I’m an amazing actor and offers me a ride home. He figures we should get to know each other since we’re going to be husband and wife. The assistant director hands us each a rehearsal schedule, and Tess gives me a hug as we leave.

  In the car David explains he’s been at this school for three years and that he had mono in tenth grade, which is why he’s in eleventh grade now instead of twelfth. I tell him my life story, at least the part about my mom getting remarried to a Beverly Hills accountant and us moving into a huge house in Brentwood. He asks if I miss all my friends from Santa Rosa. I lie and tell him yes, and then I make him laugh by describing my asshole brother. I figure talking about my dad can wait until I know him better. He offers me a ride to school in the morning, since he only lives four blocks away. I say sure and we pull up in front of my house.

  I have to blink a couple times before I go into the house and realize this is, indeed, major. I have gotten a lead in the play. A boy has driven me home. My smile is so connected, I think I must have discovered my real self.

  SIX

  Michael’s pissed. My way-cool, nothing-ever-bothers-me jock of a brother is stomping around like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum. I hear him slam the front door and pound up the stairs to his room, across from mine. He slams that door too, then turns on the awful hard rock noise he calls music. I go back to my laptop, adding screen names to my “buddy list” from the e-mail addresses the A.D. typed up so the cast can get in touch with each other.

  Mom and Robert come in about twenty minutes later, and Mrs. Hoyt, the housekeeper (we have a housekeeper!) calls us for dinner. It’s the first time in a week we’ve eaten together. Mom is beaming, and she and Robert are acting like they always do—giddy. He’s got to be twenty years older than her and I can’t imagine him running anything, let alone his own million-dollar accounting firm. Of course, I only see him around my mom, and I seriously doubt he’s ever had a girlfriend as pretty as her. She’s certainly never had a guy as rich as him, at least that she’s told us about. It’s disgusting when your mother acts like she’s in eighth grade.

  Michael comes late to the table, and for some reason I get a flash of our dad, even though I don’t think Michael particularly looks like him. Whatever’s going on, being around Robert doesn’t help. Michael’s face is closed and stormy. He’s scary when he’s like this because you can’t tell what he’s thinking and he won’t admit to anything. I decide to hold on to my casting news until later.

  Mrs. Hoyt brings food. Mom and Robert chatter about going to Cabo for their honeymoon. Michael eats quietly and quickly, mumbles “Excuse me,” and pushes back from the table.

  “Why don’t you wait until we’re all finished, son?” Robert asks.

  Michael mumbles rather than speaks, staring down at the floor.“Well, for one thing, I’m not your son.”

  It’s silent at the table. Mom sighs and picks at her plate. Robert does the please-remember-this-is-my-house transformation and glares meaningfully at my brother.

  “Sorry,” Michael grunts. “I had a bad day, okay?”

  “Happens to all of us,” Robert says. He’s entirely too reasonable to be part of this family. “Sit down. We’ll talk about it.”

  “Nothing to talk about.” Michael smiles his tight, awful smile, the one he got after our father died. He wants to snap back at my mom like he used to; instead, he sits down. Rules have changed since we moved to Robert’s.

  “How were tryouts?” Mom asks him. She’s hopeful it will be this easy.

  “Didn’t go.”

  Robert is surprisingly wise and doesn’t respond. Mom is star-tled. “But I thought you—”

  “No summer practice, no varsity team. That’s the rule.”

  “But we didn’t live here this summer,” I blurt.

  “Yeah. Well. I don’t really care. The team sucks.” Michael’s face is out of balance somehow. “Am I done?”

  Robert nods almost imperceptibly, except we all see, and Mom nods out loud. Michael leaves. I think I’ll save my news for tomorrow or maybe next year, because I’ve just now realized that last night was the second anniversary of when our father died—if anniversary is what you call it.

  How could I not know that?

  The pain is unexpected; it almost knocks me over.

  My father is dead—I will never see my father again—this could not have happened….

  I look at my mom talking with Robert. I see the last of Michael going up the stairs.

  Did they cry?

  Once, each of them, that I remember.

  Did we talk about my dad?

  No.

  We did the wake and the funeral and then …then nothing is very clear. I shake my head slightly and sigh. Mom jerks her attention over to me with a not-you-too look on her face.

  Playing Clueless But Happy Girl, I smile and ask for the potatoes.

  SEVEN

  Saturday rehearsals and here I am—gossiping with the popular girls as the boys are inside running lines. Oh wait. No I’m not. They’re gossiping. I’m pretending they know I’m here.

  At least I’m smiling.

  “Why is this so hard for you?” Frazier teases, throwing her hands up.“‘Friends with benefits’? Give me a break.”

  “It can work,” Layla counters. “Look at whatshername—Kelly, and that guy John.”

  “PDA addiction. People who sleep around are sluts.”

  Layla laughs. “So that’s every guy we know?”

  Frazier pops a Famous Amos into her mouth. “And some girls,” she says. Layla sits up straighter.

  “Please,” Frazier mumbles, mouth full of cookie.“She’s out of control and you know it. At Sophia’s. That guy from UCLA. Whatshisname from Crossroads. Should I go on?”

  Layla glances in my direction, but I’ve managed to drop my head over my script. She turns her attention back to Frazier. “Maybe you should just shut up.”

  “Yeah, well maybe you should be her friend and say something.”

  The line is a cue. A black Jag swerves into the parking space next to us and Stacey slides out. She slams the door, doesn’t sa
y good-bye to her dad or whoever it is driving, and stomps straight into the theater. Frazier grabs another cookie. Layla follows Stacey inside.

  I have a hugely bad feeling, like glass in the pit of my stomach. Like seeing my mother’s face for the first time after my dad died. Like Michael’s energy at the dinner table. Something’s happened with Stacey and, whatever it is, I think I understand. Except how it is that possible? I don’t even know the girl.

  Frazier keeps enjoying her cookies. Layla yells for us to come back in. I expect we’ll find out now that some tragedy’s occurred: Stacey’s mother has died or, at the very least, a grandmother or something. I’ll step up and smile in the way you can when you know how someone feels. Maybe even help.

  We’re running act one, first time off book. We don’t have to stay onstage when the other scenes are working, so I watch Stacey carefully, to pick up on the subtext. Since I know about death firsthand, this might be worth something. Except Stacey seems fine, even more brilliant than usual onstage. And offstage she chats with Layla and teases Jake and ignores me, and I am thankful at least for that, and for the fact that I managed not to actually open my mouth.

  Because Stupid Kate has appeared full force, reminding me that I could never ever have anything in common with a Vogue model.

  EIGHT

  Jake is having a cast party. And we haven’t even opened.

  I’m invited.

  As much as I try to pretend it’s no big deal (“Sure, I can go, whatever”), nothing this huge has ever happened in my heretofore Nonexistent Social Life. I talk myself out of it and back into it forty times before Friday:

  I’ll have fun.

  I’ll feel stupid.

  I won’t know what to say.

  I have nothing to wear.

  SO WHAT, I GOT INVITED and I’M GOING.

  I’ll have fun….

  Endless little circles of insecurity. At long last the Universe takes pity on me and makes Frazier invite me over so we can get ready together. She wants to help me do my makeup and straighten my hair. I don’t usually wear makeup but Frazier thinks I should, and who am I to interfere with divine judgment?

  Michael tries to get me to say exactly where it is. He wants to crash it so he “can meet that hot redhead you hang out with.” How little he knows! I’m not worried because even if he came, he’d know how to act, but I’m guessing he won’t really even try. He’s not as sure of himself in LA as he was in Santa Rosa.

  Mom almost messes things up by changing her mind at the last minute. Robert (of all people!) intervenes.“I know the boy’s family,” he assures her. “They’re fine people.”

  I’ve almost gotten used to the opulence of Brentwood, but it’s a ghetto compared to Lexington Road in Beverly Hills, which is wider than Santa Rosa’s Highway 12.This is not a street—it’s a boulevard. There are no houses, there are estates. Jake’s is behind a ten-foot-tall hedge that takes up the entire side of one block.

  My first clue that we may not be going to your average small cast party comes when Frazier has to park two blocks away. Second subtle hint—two security guards in front of the gate, which you would never find if you didn’t know where to look. Third—we pass two dozen people in the yard who I’ve never seen before, and I’ve seen pretty much everyone at Bentley Evans Prep. The Universe has tricked me again.

  Music is blasting. We walk by a couple attached at the hip on the bench by the fountain and Frazier points and mouths, “Slut.” Two extremely skinny girls wearing more makeup than clothes strut up the stairs. On the deck Stacey’s dancing with a tall dark-haired man who’s got to be, minimum, twenty-five. Layla’s standing with a bunch of guys I’ve seen around school but don’t know. She and Frazier do the hug thing. Frazier and the boys do the hug thing. No one does the hug thing with me so I just stand there, smiling.

  Of course.

  Stacey pushes the guy away from her. “I said no.” She leaves him there with his dick in his hand (not really, it was a champagne bottle), and Layla laughs at him as she loops her arms through Frazier’s.

  “Come, children, let’s get you a beverage.” She looks back at me. “Oh, Maggie, good, you came. Jesus Christ, you’re not Maggie, are you, you’re …oh shit . . .” She slurs her words. “You’re Katie! Katie-katie! Come on, Katie. Come with us.”

  Still smiling, I trail them through the party, into the kitchen, where Layla pours us each a glass of champagne.

  “Sip it,” she advises me, waggling her finger in my direction. “You are too young to drink, so go slow.” She giggles and disappears with Frazier into the crowd. The last I see of them is Frazier motioning me to come along, but I shake my head and smile harder. I sip my drink, but I actually have never had alcohol before and it tastes really bad. David comes over but doesn’t stay when we figure out we’ve got nothing to say to each other that isn’t about the play.

  I wander. I pretend to drink. I smile at people and say “Hey,” but the most I get back is a brief nod-almost-smile from a girl in my acting class. My brain dissolves to mush and my new Briefly Confident Self slides into the murk. Stupid Kate takes stage, right on cue, and finds me a place on a couch in one of the living rooms so I can wait it out. At least I have makeup and straight hair—I can look like I’m part of things.

  “Where the hell is Jake?” Frazier demands of the room. Her face is pale, and she’s louder than the party. I try to figure out how long I’ve been sitting here.

  “Hey yo,” Jake calls from over by the corner, and they head for the stairs.

  “Stacey passed out and we can’t hear her breathing….” Frazier’s trying to whisper now, but the room’s gone silent and we all hear and surge up the stairs after her. Stacey’s guy from the porch is pacing in the upstairs hallway.

  “Shit, Jake—I didn’t know, man . . .” he manages to gasp. Stacey’s on the bed with her shirt open and her jeans unzipped. She isn’t wearing a bra. And she sure isn’t moving.

  “Is she dead, bro?” the guy whines.“Shit. Is she dead?”

  Layla shoves past and then turns and starts pushing people out of the room.“What’s the matter with you? Get out of here!” She turns on the porch guy, hitting him in the chest as she talks. “What did you give her? What did you give her?“ Jake is dialing 9-1-1.

  “OxyContin.”

  “What?!” Layla’s a tornado. “Are you stupid?”

  “Hey, she said she wanted it. But then she just passed out, man, and I couldn’t wake her up,” the guy says.

  “You knew she was drinking, you asshole!” Layla’s trying to get Stacey up. Jake is still talking into the phone, saying “OxyContin” and “champagne” and then listening.

  “She’s got to throw up,” he announces. “Get her in the bathroom.” More people pour in to see what’s happening. Jake keeps snapping out orders. “Wake her up, keep her moving. Don’t let her go to sleep. She needs to throw up….”

  “Shit, will somebody please help me?” Layla yells. Frazier steps forward and they somehow manage to get Stacey up and into the bathroom. Frazier turns on the tap and splashes cold water on Stacey’s cheeks. Stacey groans. Layla slaps her, not gently, and Stacey moves her head and groans again. Her eyelids flutter. Layla slaps her one more time. I stand in the bathroom door, trying to block everyone out. Stacey’s conscious now, but limp.

  “Stick your finger down your throat,” Layla orders, but Stacey doesn’t seem to understand. Her eyelids flutter and she slumps forward. “Shit! Jake! Help me!”

  Jake and Frazier hold Stacey up and Layla pushes her own finger down the back of Stacey’s throat. Nothing happens, except I gag. She does it again. Stacey’s eyes fly wide open and vomit shoots up and out and all over her and Layla. Jake and Frazier lower her down to her knees, and she heaves into the toilet. Now I seriously want to throw up. But suddenly there are sirens outside and people in a hurry. Stacey sits back on her knees, exhausted and weak, leaning on the edge of the toilet. She starts to cry, making little kitten sounds; Layla kneels down to
hug her, whispering, “It’s okay, honey, it’s okay….”

  NINE

  This house is so big, I might as well be home alone. I want to go talk to somebody, but my mom is on another planet whenever she’s with her husband-to-be, and Michael is out somewhere with who knows who, doing whatever sad, pissed-off seventeen-year-old boys do. Besides, what the hell would I say?

  Gee, Mom, it’s like I’m watching a movie but I’m in it too. Everything’s slow motion, except my heartbeat, which has doubled— and it feels just like ninth grade!

  This would guarantee the why-don’t-you-ever-talk-to-me-am-I-a-bad-mother? conversation, which would not help in the least. So I mull it alone: two fire trucks, an ambulance—the entire block lit with flashing red lights. Kids streaming out, screeching off a Vin Diesel movie, security guards nowhere to be seen. Then cops, and Frazier grabbing my hand and Layla’s: we bolt, hiding in a hedge down the street to watch Stacey being carried out on a gurney and her and Jake speeding away in an ambulance.

  “Close one,” Frazier mumbles.

  “You have no idea,” Layla mumbles back. I’m not really there, so I don’t say a word.

  In the car I expect we’ll talk about it. I have fifty thousand questions—one of which is why the hell does an incredibly beautiful and talented girl like Stacey get so out of control? But the conversation veers immediately to the mundane, and it takes me all the way to my house to figure out maybe they just don’t want to talk about it with me.

  Leaving me with entirely too much information and none at all. Is this to be the theme of my life? I get food from the kitchen and try to watch TV in the den, except the room is spooking me and I can’t concentrate. I pace awhile and end up in my bedroom. Where I sit and worry—about Stacey, but mostly about myself. Because why do I care about this girl who hates me? I pace more. I go online to look for information, and find out Stacey could easily have died.