Talk
By Kathe Koja
Square Fish
Copyright © 2008
Kathe Koja
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312376055
Chapter One
"Runner Four. Line."
"Um-wait, wait I got it-`Is this it, Doctor? Is
this what you want?'"
"`Who.'"
"What?"
"`
Who you want.' Line again."
I hear Carma's snicker, somewhere behind me.
Crew sits apart, in a pocket of its own, aloof from
the knot of thespians. I sit apart, in a pocket of my
own, the envelope of apartness I've had, used, forever.
It's like safety glass: it keeps people from being
able to hurt you, mostly, and you can still see everything
that happens.
Like Blake Tudor, now, sweating as he gives the
line again, thick jock finger underlining his way
through the script: "`Is this it, Doctor? Is this who
you want?' Right?"
"Just the line."
"`Is this-'" as Dan Castle, the Doctor, overlaps him:
"`Bring the boy into the lab. Now.'"
"`No!'" Lindsay Walsh's voice rings out, desperate, passionate;
she gives me chills, the way she reads. I know
what people say about her, Carma, the other girls, I know
she's the bitch of the school, the bitch of the world but
man, can she act. She makes everybody else look like, well,
like high school kids. She makes me want to be as good as
she is, or at least try, try as hard as I can. "`He's just a
child, he doesn't know-Reed, stop this, you can stop this,
even you must see this is wrong!'"
"`He refuses to talk to us, Lola. It's out of my hands.'" I
try to make my voice calm, regretful, even genuinely sorry;
with lava, pure red lava seething underneath. This Reed
guy is evil, I think, but still human, he can still be reached.
Lola is reaching him, despite everything, Lola is cutting
down to the bone.... Actually this is a really cool play. If
only everybody in it was as good as Lindsay. "`I intend no
harm, I never have, to him, to-you, never.
Never. I only
want you to tell the truth. You can save him, save us both,
Lola, it's up to you.'"
Silence, Lindsay hisses a sigh, like steam through a
crack.
"Runner Four," Mick's whipcrack voice,
"line."
"Um. `Is this-' No, wait. `Come on.'"
"Runner Four-" looking at his notes, "Blake, why aren't
you following along? I shouldn't have to keep prompting
you."
"Sorry."
Blake scowls, not at Mick but at Lindsay. Where she's
sitting the light hits her just right, makes her blond hair a
glimmering halo, casts a shadow fetchingly across her
face, maybe she sat there on purpose-well yeah, of course
she did-but it works. She looks like an angel, some otherworldly
medieval saint.... Although I'd rather look at
Blake, even if he is a troglodyte. I was on the swim team
with him, way back in middle school, before he bulked up,
and before I figured out I'd better get off the swim team.
Lindsay makes another little sound. Mick sighs, rubs his
chin. "Don't say sorry. Say your lines when it's time to say
them."
Sullenly, "`Come on.'"
"Mick," Lindsay says in her own voice, that cool half-irritated
drawl, "I need a break."
"OK. Fine, so do I," and he calls a break, ten minutes,
instant chatter as half the room bolts for the john, the
other half for the water table, Blake turns for Lindsay who
turns away, another kind of play? as I feel Carma's hands
clap down on my shoulders: "Hey, boy. Having fun yet?"
Sweat on my back, sticky and damp; she was right, it's
amazingly hot in here. The blue-plush sixty-seat Jewel
Box, gift to Faulkner from one of its million rich alumni,
maybe someone who was hoping his kid would play Hamlet.
Not that they ever do any Shakespeare, although at
least Faulkner stays away from the obvious:
Kiss Me, Kate,
The Music Man, stuff that's been done a thousand times.
Not like
Talk. Which according to my mom is a surprising
choice:
Gutsy, she called it, when she saw the script on the
table. My mom admires gutsy.
Now I lean back as Carma squeezes my shoulders, her
famous two-minute massage; she's got big hands, and a
grip like a wrestler's, from hefting all those power tools.
"Fun," I say, "oh sure. More than poor Blake, anyway."
"Is he not a lummox? His brain wouldn't even make a
good doorstop. Herr Direktor only cast him because-"
"-because he's Lindsay's honey," from over my other
shoulder, Jefrey-with-one-F, another longtime crew dog.
Faulkner Drama T-shirt, his hair in a hundred small
braids, like a two-inch forest above his face. He smiles at
me, bright sideways smile; his front teeth are just a little
crooked. "You sounded really good, Kit."
"No, Lindsay's the one who-"
A loud metal
screee! from a folding chair shoved sideways,
toppling hard across the tiny stage: everyone stops,
stares as Blake storms down the aisle, and out, Lindsay
shrugs and takes her seat again and "OK," Mick claps his
hands, "break's over, let's go, people. -What happened to,
what's his name? Blake?"
Everyone looks at Lindsay, who shrugs again; she's smiling,
a one-sided, satisfied smile, like two and two really do
make four. Or two minus one is one. "He's gone."
Carma rolls her eyes, gives my shoulders one last
squeeze; Jef says something in her ear. Mick sighs again, a
loud titanic gust. "Well, he can't be
gone until I replace
him.... OK, OK, whatever. All right, Lindsay, you can pick
up from `Come on'-"
-and she does, immediate, amazing, her voice ringing
and rippling through what comes next, the long barbed-wire
speech,
fear's the real barbed wire, fear's what holds us
in, fences us from our desires, from what we know belongs
to us and it's as if she really is Lola the resistance fighter,
grimy from prison, weak from her hunger strike but on
fire with what she knows is true, what she loves, just listening
makes you love it too, makes you want to rush out
and scale a mountain or storm a building or give your life
for some wonderful cause, sweeps you away like I'm swept
away as I open my mouth, say my line but now I'm not Kit
saying a line, I'm Reed answering her, Reed who all of a
sudden like a lightning flash I see, I
get: he's in love with
Lola, in love with the freedom she represents but scared of
it too, oh god so scared and that's why he says "save us
both," in that line before, that's why he says-
"This world doesn't work the way you think it does,
dream love faith worth nothing in the fire,
nothing. They
burn people like you, Lola, they cut you to pieces and call
it the common good! The barbed wire's there for a reason,
a good reason, it's- Because they can't bear what you represent!
Because they're afraid!"
"Are you afraid? Reed, tell me. Are you afraid?"
Pause, it says, and I do, I have to, I can barely get a
breath; my eyes are squeezed closed. Then "No," I say
without the breath, without air, as if I'm caught in a vacuum,
suffocating on the lie. "But you should be."
So soft it's barely there, her voice: "Of what?"
Like lead: "Of me."
Silence: and then applause, a bright battering sound
that shocks my eyes open, my face turns instantly red.
Carma's calling something but it's Lindsay I look at first,
Lindsay smiling as people clap, a different smile than before
and for just that one second our eyes meet; she sees
me, now.
And Mick's crow, "Bravo! On a first run-through! Let's go
on to the yard scene, OK?" and we do, everyone riding the
wave now, Dan Castle the Doctor and the freshman who
plays the Boy, the yard scene and the failed escape and the
fire, and me and Lindsay, Reed and Lola at the end, onstage
we would be, will be face-to-face, mouth to mouth
almost, breathing for each other-and then the last lines
are said and it's over, firecracker hand-claps, people talking
all at once and "Yeah boy!" Carma hugging me one-armed,
Jef and the other crew kids around her, around me,
all smiles and I smile back but it's like, what? coming to,
coming down-disoriented, that's the word. Like the
Talk
world runs parallel to this one, and I don't know where I
am yet, here or there; which is weird, very weird but exciting
too, like the law of gravity's just been repealed, like
anything can happen now-"
-Kit?" Mick beside me, eyes ashine, like he's half in
that other world, too. "You've never acted before, seriously?
In a youth group, or drama camp, or-?"
"No."
"Well. I must have known, I cast you, right? -Same
time tomorrow, OK, all the principals," and off he goes,
and we go, me and Carma to Bib's where she buys me a
chocolate-raisin bagel and a mocha creme,
my treat, feet
on the seat and she can't stop talking about how amazing I
was, see didn't she
tell me, didn't she
know that if I just
auditioned I'd-but "Lindsay's the one," I say, peering at her
over my sunglasses. "She's what got me going."
Hand through her hair, that springy hedge of brown; she
sucks her straw, more noise than necessary, makes a face
but "True," she says at last; Carma always tells the truth in
the end. "She was amazing, too."
Continues...
Excerpted from Talk
by Kathe Koja
Copyright © 2008 by Kathe Koja.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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