Chapter 53: Drama
September 1959 — Hawkins High School
"Susan! Where's the lighting checklist?"
Joyce's voice carried across the classroom without her looking up from the papers spread across the desk in front of her. She had the specific multitasking ability of someone who had been running things since before anyone officially put her in charge of anything.
"On top of the prop box!" A girl in thick-framed glasses, her hair in two tight braids, called back from somewhere behind a large wooden crate. She was elbow-deep in a tangle of extension cords and spare bulbs. "Next to the Roman statue. The one without a head."
"Of course it is," Joyce muttered.
Henry had been passing by in the hallway when the noise pulled him to the door.
He wasn't looking for anything. He'd been doing a lot of passing by since first period, navigating the school's geography by instinct, staying in motion because motion was easier than arriving anywhere and being expected to stay.
But through the gap in the classroom door, he could see the kind of organized chaos that looked, from the outside, like something was actually happening. A girl standing on a raised platform at the front of the room, waving a rolled-up script like a conductor's baton. Students on a makeshift stage. Walls covered in set design sketches and hand-lettered signs.
He stopped. He told himself he was just catching his breath.
The door swung open.
"Henry. Creel, right?"
Joyce Horwath had covered the distance from the front of the room to the door in about four steps, and now she was standing in front of him with the energy of someone who had just found exactly what she needed and was not going to let it walk away.
She had dark hair and quick eyes and the particular intensity of a person who believed completely in whatever they were doing at any given moment.
"Come in," she said, and took his arm before he could explain that he was just passing by, and that was that.
She stepped back two paces and looked at him the way people looked at things they were evaluating for a purpose. Her eyes tracked across his pale face, the set of his shoulders, the way he was holding the radio against his chest like a second opinion.
"The wizard," she said, with the satisfaction of a person who has solved a casting problem. "You're exactly right for the wizard."
"I'm not—"
"Su! I need the actual script, not the working draft!"
Susan pushed her glasses up and began excavating.
The rest of the drama club arrived over the next ten minutes in ones and twos, dropping backpacks, shrugging out of jackets, filling the room with the low-level noise of people who knew each other. Henry found a spot near the door and stayed there, half in, half out, holding the radio.
Joyce got up on the platform and hit the blackboard twice with the rolled script. The room settled.
"Thanks for coming." Her voice had a quality that made you pay attention — not loud exactly, but aimed, like it was landing specifically on you. "Some of you probably thought we were running Oklahoma! again this year."
A few pained expressions confirmed this.
"We did Oklahoma! junior year," Joyce said. "We did a sanitized version of Oklahoma! sophomore year. We did—" she paused for emphasis — "a sanitized version of the sanitized version freshman year." She let that land. "Every script, approved. Every line, reviewed. Every costume evaluated for what Mr. Newby calls 'community standards.'"
She looked at Bob Newby, who was sitting in the back row against an old wardrobe with the expression of someone who had accepted that his life contained unavoidable complications. "Sorry, Bob."
Bob raised a hand slightly in acknowledgment.
"But here's what I want to ask everyone," Joyce continued. She'd lowered her voice, which made people lean in, which was the point. "Don't you want to do something that actually matters? Something that's in the yearbook for a reason other than proving we existed?"
She looked around the room.
"Because I do. So." She stopped. Made sure she had everyone. "I'm putting on a secret play."
The room broke.
"A secret play?" That was Lonnie Byers, from the third row, who had the face of someone who had dated Joyce long enough to know when she was serious and wished he didn't. "Joyce—"
"Let me finish."
"You can't be—"
"Let me finish." She said it pleasantly, which was somehow more effective than if she'd said it any other way. Lonnie closed his mouth. "The play won't be announced until opening night. No advance review, no approval process, no cuts. The real version of a real story."
She paused again, with the timing of someone who understood that delivery was half of everything.
"Gary Lancaster is coming to opening night."
Dead silence.
Then the room came apart again, louder this time.
"The Gary Lancaster? The scholarship judge?"
"Why would he come to Hawkins?"
"I read his column in Theatre Monthly—"
"What scholarship?"
Lonnie stood up. He had the manner of a person who communicated largely through volume and forward momentum. "Okay. If this works — if — he gives us a scholarship. What kind of scholarship?"
"Not just a scholarship," Joyce said. She looked at him directly, and her voice had that quality it got when she was saying something she'd been sitting with for a long time. "The Drama Arts scholarship. To the school in Indianapolis."
Lonnie's face went through several things in a short period.
"Indianapolis," he said. The word came out flat. "You're going to Indianapolis."
"I'm trying to."
"And when were you going to—"
"Lonnie, I'm telling you right now. In front of everyone. This is me telling you."
"That's your problem, Joyce." He was already moving toward the door, which was what Lonnie did when he didn't have anywhere else to put a feeling. He stopped at the door and turned back. "You get something in your head and you go, and everyone else is just — they're just scenery. You don't think about anyone except yourself. Like you're better than everyone in this room."
"I am," Joyce said. "I'm better than staying in Hawkins forever pretending I'm not."
Lonnie stared at her for a beat.
"Good luck with your secret play," he said, and went out, and the door registered his opinion of the whole situation loudly enough that dust came down from the top of the wardrobe.
The room was quiet.
Joyce stood in the middle of it. The vulnerability that had been briefly visible closed over again, and what replaced it was harder and more settled, like something that had been tested and held.
"This play," she said, "is my way out. It can be yours too." She looked around at what remained of the room. "But I'm not interested in doing it halfway. If you're here because you want easy stage time or a line in the program, you should probably go."
A boy in the second row had already put his arm around his girlfriend and was kissing her with the commitment of someone making a statement. Joyce watched this for a moment.
"That includes people who are only here to make out," she finished.
The couple disengaged, looked at each other, and left.
Three more people followed, the door opening and closing with decreasing force each time.
When it settled, there were fewer than ten people left in the room.
And Henry Creel, still by the door, somehow still there.
Joyce looked at what remained. Took a breath. Clapped once, sharp.
"Okay. The play is called Dark Side of the Moon."
Susan held up a manuscript, handwritten title on the cover, slightly dog-eared at the corners from handling.
"It's about a boy with extraordinary power who falls in love with an ordinary girl," Susan said, in her flat, informational voice. "He gives up his power to be with her. It destroys them both."
"That's the surface reading," Joyce cut in. "Susan only has an eye for plot summary." She said it with affection rather than criticism. "This is a play about fear. About what fear does to people. About whether love is actually stronger than it, or whether that's something we tell ourselves."
She let the question sit.
The afternoon light had shifted and was now coming through the window at an angle that caught Joyce full in the face, which was either a coincidence or something she'd calculated without appearing to calculate it.
"Who wants to audition? We need a John, a Barbara, and a handful of supporting roles."
Silence. The particular silence of a room where everyone is hoping someone else will go first.
Walter Henderson was leaning against the window with his arms crossed and the expression of someone who'd come to watch rather than participate. His eyes moved across the room and landed on Patti Newby, who was sitting with her head down and a history textbook open in front of her, performing concentration with the commitment of someone trying very hard to be invisible.
Walter had not forgotten the hallway.
He moved behind her chair without appearing to be doing anything in particular, and then he found the spot on her side that he'd apparently catalogued for future use, and he pinched it.
Patti came out of her chair like she'd been launched.
"Hey—"
Her textbook hit the floor. She spun around, one hand pressed to her ribs, and the expression on her face moved rapidly through surprise, pain, and fury before landing somewhere cold.
Walter raised both hands. The picture of innocence. "Whoa. I think Patti wants to audition. Look at that enthusiasm."
Every head in the room turned.
Patti stood there with her hand on her side and her jaw set and her eyes doing something dangerous.
"I'm here for detention," she said, in a voice that was very level for what was clearly going on underneath it. "My father assigned me to stay after school and reflect." She gave the last word the specific weight it deserved, looking at Walter when she said it. "I'm not auditioning for anything."
"Oh, come on." Walter took a step toward her, steering her by the shoulder toward the center of the room with the easy confidence of someone who'd never been told to stop. "You're already here. Give it a shot. Maybe you've got hidden talent, right? The little nameless girl, the—"
"Don't touch me."
She stepped out from under his hand and turned to face him, and the temperature of the room dropped noticeably.
"Alright, Walter." Joyce had moved between them with the speed of someone who had dealt with Lonnie Byers long enough to have fast reflexes. "That's enough. Patti—" her voice went softer—"you don't have to do anything. But if you wanted to try for Barbara, there's no pressure."
She looked at the remaining boys. "Who'll read with her? We just need a scene partner for the audition."
Bob Newby had been watching his sister from the back row with the expression of an older brother running calculations. He wasn't interested in drama. He was interested in the fact that Walter Henderson had just put his hands on his sister and seemed pleased about it.
He raised his hand. "I'll do it."
"Great." Joyce pointed them toward the center of the room. "Act Two, Scene Seven. The confession scene. Just read it through, don't worry about performance yet."
She handed them the pages.
Bob looked at the lines. He looked at Patti. Patti looked at the lines and then at the ceiling.
"Whenever you're ready," Joyce said.
Bob decided to commit. This was, in retrospect, where things went sideways.
His interpretation of John the Wizard Warrior involved a facial expression he may have borrowed from a comic book, combined with hip movements that were difficult to categorize and gestures suggesting he was kneading something invisible and enormous in the air in front of him.
He held this for approximately four seconds.
The room held it together for about three.
Then it broke completely — helpless, total laughter, the kind that takes the room and doesn't give it back for a while. Even Patti's hand came up to cover her mouth, her shoulders shaking.
"Cut," Joyce said, also clearly struggling. "Bob. That was—"
She searched. She genuinely searched.
"Very committed," Susan said, appearing at Bob's elbow, patting his arm with the solemn sympathy of a nurse. "We'll be in touch." She guided him gently back toward the rear of the room.
Bob went to the corner and put his face in his hands.
"Okay," Joyce said, getting herself back together. "Patti. Solo audition. Barbara has a song at the end of Act One. Just the first verse, give me the emotion, it doesn't have to be—"
"I can't sing."
Patti said it fast and flat and final.
"It's fine, nobody's expecting—"
"I'm tone-deaf. I genuinely cannot."
Joyce gestured to Susan, who moved to the upright piano in the corner and found the opening notes of the piece. The melody came into the room — simple, minor key, the kind of song that was sadder than it appeared on first hearing.
Patti stood in the center of the room with the script in both hands, knuckles pale.
The music continued. She didn't move. Her jaw was tight and her eyes were doing something complicated — not tears exactly, but the thing that happened before them when you were determined not to let them come.
"Patti," Joyce said, gently.
Her mouth opened. A small, nearly soundless breath came out. Not a note. Not even close.
She shook her head and started to step back.
"Hold on." Walter's voice came from the corner. He'd recovered from the earlier laughter and found his footing again. "Joyce." He used the tone of someone raising a reasonable point. "Shouldn't Barbara be all-American? Like, authentically American? For the character to work?"
Patti's eyes went to him.
"I am American," she said.
"Are you, though?" Walter moved away from the wall, hands in his pockets, performing casualness. "Because you don't actually know where you came from, right? So how can you be sure?"
"Walter." Joyce's voice had lost all patience.
"It's a genuine question." He'd closed the distance to Patti now, and his voice had dropped to something that was only for her and for everyone watching at the same time. "What are you, really? Where'd you actually come from? Does anyone know?"
The color went out of Patti's face.
It wasn't anger, or not only anger — it was something older than that, something that had been waiting for exactly this kind of question in exactly this kind of room, and now that it had arrived she didn't have anything to put in front of it.
"Walter, enough." Sinclair was on his feet, arms crossed, voice flat with the particular disgust of someone who has decided they're done watching.
"Nobody asked you," Walter started.
"Nobody asked you either," Susan said, from behind the piano.
"Get out, Walter." Joyce moved toward him.
Walter put his hands up in the innocent gesture he'd already used twice today. "I'm just saying what everyone's thinking—"
"You're the only one thinking it," Joyce said. "And I'm asking you to leave."
Walter looked at Patti one more time — making sure she'd registered the full effect — and smiled the smile of someone who had gotten what they came for. He moved toward the back of the room, not out, just to the corner, because leaving would have been conceding.
Joyce turned to Patti. She put a hand on her shoulder. "Come sit down. We're done with the audition, it's okay—"
"It's bad luck to leave a song unfinished."
The voice came from the direction of the door. Not loud — the opposite of loud, actually. But clear.
Every head turned.
Henry Creel had stepped out of the shadow by the door. He was holding an open copy of the script — he'd apparently picked it up from the prop table at some point while everyone was looking elsewhere. His face was the same color it always was, but his eyes were doing something different from their usual careful blankness. They were focused. On Walter first, for exactly one second, and then on Patti.
He looked down at the page. "'They say moonlight brings a curse,'" he read, in the same quiet, even voice, "'but I'd rather sing myself to death under the moon than live a life of silence in the sun.'" He closed the script. He looked at Patti. "That's Barbara's line. Act One, Scene Ten."
A pause.
"So." Simple. No performance in it. "Sing."
The room was completely still.
Walter's mouth was open slightly, which was unusual.
Joyce stood where she was, and something shifted in her expression — a director's instinct recognizing a moment, the way you recognized it when it happened and couldn't manufacture it when it didn't.
Henry stood there with the script in one hand and the radio in the other, straight-backed and completely out of his depth and apparently not letting that stop him, like some kind of disastrous knight who had wandered into the wrong century.
Patti looked at him.
He didn't look at her the way Walter did — like something to be assessed and diminished. He didn't look at her the way some of the others had been looking at her all afternoon — with the careful sympathy of people who felt bad but weren't going to do anything about it.
He just looked at her like he thought she could do this and would like to see her do it.
No particular reason. No particular agenda. Just that.
Patti looked at Joyce.
Joyce looked back at her. She didn't say anything, because she'd learned, in three years of running this club, that sometimes the worst thing you could do was fill a silence.
Patti closed her eyes.
She stood there for a moment with them closed, and whatever she was doing in there — whatever she was putting down or picking up or moving out of the way — it took about five seconds.
Then she opened her eyes, looked at Susan at the piano, and nodded.
Susan found the opening notes again.
And this time, Patti didn't step back.
[Milestone: 500 Power Stones = +1 Chapter]
[Milestone: 10 Reviews = +1 Chapter]
Enjoyed this chapter? Leave a review.
20+advanced chapters on P1treon Soulforger