Wondrous Strange
By Lesley Livingston
HarperCollins
Copyright © 2008
Lesley Livingston
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-157537-2
Chapter One
What do you mean, 'promoted'?" Kelley Winslow felt her
pulse quicken.
It was the fifth week of rehearsals for the Avalon
Grande's production of Shakespeare's
A Midsummer Night's
Dream. Never mind that the Avalon Players-a third-tier
repertory company so far off Broadway it might as well
have been in Hoboken-had only hired Kelley as an
understudy, which really meant glorified stagehand. It
was her first real job as an actress after a disastrous
stint in theater school, and, at only seventeen, Kelley
had been grateful for the résumé builder. But today,
three steps into the theater, Mindi the stage manager
had waylaid her.
Kelley was carrying a box of props she'd gone to fetch
from the company van parked outside, and she had a pair
of fairy wings strapped to her shoulders-the only way
she could carry them without crushing the wire frames.
"Mindi?" she asked again. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, don't bother taking off the wings, kid." Mindi
took the box of props from her hands. "Our darling Diva
deWinter just busted her ankle. She is out of
commission, and that means you, little understudy, will
be stepping into the lead role of Titania, the fairy
queen, for the run of this show."
Kelley was speechless. She'd dreamed of this-although
however many times she'd sat through rehearsals,
watching Barbara deWinter overact and undercharm her way
through her scenes, she'd never wished anything bad upon
her. But Kelley guiltily felt a rising sense of glee.
This is it. This is my big break!
"Hey!" Mindi gave her a friendly shove. "Enough
day-dreaming. We open in ten days and Quentin is-well,
to put it mildly, our esteemed director is now freaking
out. So I suggest you go slip into a rehearsal skirt and
haul your understudy butt onstage so that the Mighty Q
can run you through your scenes. Good luck."
My scenes. My scenes ...
Thoughts in a whirl, Kelley almost ran down the actor
playing Puck as he swung himself gracefully off the set
scaffolding, singing "Am I blue?" Funny, because he was
actually green, a pale iridescent shade head to
toe-hair, skin, eyes-right down to his leafy tunic.
Kelley had been told by one of the other actors that his
name was Bob but that he was something of an extreme
Method actor and had demanded he be referred to only by
his character name while in costume and makeup-on threat
of quitting the production otherwise.
Lunatic actors.
Between him and the equally demanding and very English
director Quentin St. John Smyth, Kelley was beginning to
think she'd fallen in with a real asylumful at the
Avalon Grande. She threw open the doors to the wardrobe
storage and fumbled with the rack of rehearsal skirts,
slipping one over her jeans and buttoning it as best she
could with trembling fingers. "'Fairies, skip hence,'"
she muttered aloud. "No-
that's wrong...."
Oh, God-what's my first line? Kelley thought
frantically.
"'These are the forgeries of jealousy.' Aw, crap!" She
was blanking. "That's not even the right
speech!" Her
heart pounded in her chest, and she leaned her head on
the door frame.
This is what you've wanted your whole life, she told
herself sternly. All those years of putting on one-woman
shows for the household pets, and all the months of
begging Aunt Emma to let her move to Manhattan to try to
make a go of it.
This is it. Get out there and show them
what you've got!
Feeling marginally more confident, Kelley took a deep
breath and dashed down the hallway and through the
backstage area-at the exact moment that "Puck" launched
a handful of glitter into the air. Kelley gasped,
startled, as the cloud of sparkles settled on her hair,
face, and shoulders.
"Oh-thanks a lot,
Bob," Kelley muttered, brushing at the
shimmering dust as the eccentric actor laughed wickedly
and darted toward the stage-left wings. It was
futile-she was coated in glitter. "That's just super. I
look like a disco ball." At least it matched her vintage
My Little Pony Princess glitter T-shirt.
"Is she coming sometime
today?" Kelley heard Quentin's
irate tones echo through the theater and felt her
nervousness come flooding back as she picked up her
skirt and ran toward the stage.
Once there, Kelley discovered that under the lights the
fairy dust was shiny to the point of blinding.
Distracted, she found herself tripping over both the hem
of her skirt and her lines. Her heart began to flutter
in her chest as she heard the exaggerated groans and
sighs of frustration coming from the darkened rows of
seats, where the director sat watching her stumble
around like an idiot.
After forty-five minutes they'd progressed only a little
over a page into Titania's first appearance. Kelley had
already managed to butcher half her lines, trip over a
bench, and step on Oberon's foot. When she almost
toppled off the stage and into the orchestra pit,
Quentin called a merciful halt to the proceedings.
"Kelley. Your name is Kelley, isn't it?" He didn't wait
for her confirmation. "Yes. Well. Tell me ... that bit
just now ... was that from Dante's
Inferno?"
"Uh ... no," Kelley stammered. Her face felt hot.
"Really?"
I'm in for it.
"Are you
sure?" he continued. "Because it most
certainly
wasn't from
this play. And it
bloody well sounded like
hell."
"I-"
"You know ... as-well, let's
face it, shall we?-as
completely incompetent as our former diva may have been
in this part"-Quentin sauntered up onto the stage, where
he circled Kelley like a shark-"she did
still have one
tiny advantage over
you, luv."
"She ... she did?"
"Of
course she did. She
knew the
bloody lines!"
The entire cast took a step back to avoid the leading
edge of Quentin's immediate blast radius.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Wondrous Strange
by Lesley Livingston
Copyright © 2008 by Lesley Livingston .
Excerpted by permission.
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