I Was a High School Musical Junkie

Last night my father took his best girls--that's me and his girlfriend who has the ridiculously attractive son--to the theatre. We went out for a steak dinner and then to a performance of Mama Mia. It was a late celebration of my birthday.

I got more than I bargained for.

The moment the pit band struck the first notes of those glitzy-golden ABBA songs, I was riveted. Not because of the ABBA—although I do appreciate any musical based on ABBA songs—but because of the whole musical thing and this:

I walked out of basketball tryouts my freshman year in high school. I walked out because that morning Tammy and I had The Fight. The Fight that stopped our friendship. I couldn't stop thinking about it—about how I was so right and she was so wrong—and because of that, I screwed up every layup and then, discouraged and suddenly wanting to cry, I faked an ankle sprain and walked into the locker room. I never went back.

Instead of spending my time playing basketball, I decided I'd try my hand at doing something I'd never done before, something I was nervous about, something I was half afraid to do. I tried out for our high school's musical. I tried out because I loved the idea of it. It promised to be so glitzy, what with its tense tryouts, its costumes, and its makeup. Also, because I am me and we all know it's very rare that I don't find some sort of inspiration in boys, I felt that maybe there was a chance that if I joined the musical one of the cute musically-inclined seniors I had a crush on would notice me, fall in love with me, and ask me to marry him.

That didn't happen.

But I did make it through tryouts. I even got called back. After my second reading, the director took me aside. "You're quite the little actress," she told me. I wasn't, really. I'd learn that later. But I think the director was shocked by me. She was also our choir director, and since the school year had begun I am sure she had found me wholly unimpressive. Sometimes I got in trouble for talking to Amy or Patty or Steph or Anne or Becky or Missy or Michelle. Sometimes she would spontaneously call out the names of four people—one alto, one soprano, one tenor, one bass—and only those people would sing. That was a test, and it scared me more than anything. "Jessica!" she would say when she called me to be in one of those groups. "Jessica! I need more alto! Where's my alto?"

The thing with me was and is this: I can't sing. Well, I can't sing alone. When I was standing next to the older girls who were good singers, girls who knew their parts and had no problem when called on to sing in those exclusive test groups, I could listen to them and match my voice to theirs. But finding a note on my own proved difficult. Our director would play a chord and ask why I couldn't hear my starting note. I couldn't find my starting note because she was playing all the starting notes, and I couldn't hear the difference. I heard them as one thing. A block. A graceful peel of music, but not as individual things.

So I don't think our director thought very much of me until I got up on that stage and read for the part of Aunt Em in The Wizard of Oz. I called for my niece. I screamed Dorothy! at the top of my lungs. I stomped my feet. I put on a convincing show. I surprised even myself. After all, I was just coming off The Fight with Tammy, and I was still sorting myself out. The new post-Tammy me was an entirely different creature, and at first I'd had trouble walking the halls. I felt like a ghost-girl, an almost-thing. I was afraid people wouldn't be able to see me now that I was Tammy-less, because when they saw me back then what they were really seeing was me with her.

But when I screamed and stomped and put on the show, I thought, Hmm. Maybe I am my own person after all. Maybe I can do some things without Tammy.

I was cast as one of the Oz girls. I had lines. Some of my friends weren't as lucky as I was. They were shuffled into the munchkin choir or into the group of girls who groomed the weary travelers after they came to Oz. Some of my friends were much luckier than I was. Becky, for instance, was cast as one of the wicked witch sisters. That's because Becky can sing. And she looked real good in a pointy hat.

Anyway, I went on to realize I wasn't as good an actor as I or the director had hoped. My tiny role required that I make a splashy entrance. I chased the Cowardly Lion into the auditorium from a back entrance. I had to scream. I had to shriek. I had to beat him with an umbrella. I could do all those things, and I could do them just fine, but the director wanted some more. She wanted me to go into the audience, to implore them to help me, help me, HELP ME!

I was too embarrassed. I was too much of a pussy. I just kept on doing what I had done—screaming, shrieking, beating—and never did what she asked. I just couldn't. I couldn't stop thinking about what would happen if people laughed for the wrong reasons.

Still, I did what I could, and sometimes I like to break out the VCR and show off the copy of that play where all of a sudden I am bursting into the auditorium and the audience is laughing at all the right places and I deliver my lines—my favorite being, "Isn't anyone going to do anything about this terrible beast?", which referred to the Cowardly Lion, the only musically-inclined boy who had a crush on me, and he was short, overweight, and once almost drove us into a mailbox on the way home from a cast party.

After The Wizard of Oz, I was hooked. I went on to do Peter Pan, which was my favorite because I had a good role as Wendy Grown-Up. Bye-Bye Birdie was the musical my junior year, and Cinderella was the musical in my senior year.

I loved musical season. I especially loved dress rehearsal week. We stayed after school and rehearsed from 3:30-9:00 at night. We tried out costumes and lighting and sound. For those five nights, mothers would volunteer their services and cook us giant themed meals that we breaked for after our first run-through. During Wizard of Oz I was obsessed with Italian night, because I was obsessed with all things Italian. It was because of a boy. His name was Jon Camardo, and he played the trumpet. He had ruddy skin but brilliant floppy hair that shined underneath lights. He was a member of pit band, and I was a fan of watching him take his trumpet out and watching him put his trumpet away.

I hoped and hoped and hoped that he would notice me during those communal nights when we sat at long tables and ate together, but it was only his best friend—the Cowardly Lion—who ever expressed any interest in me. Still, it didn't matter. The whole thing was lovely enough to distract me from the pain of being unnoticed by Jon Camardo. The dinners, the singing, the quick costume changes, the careful plotting of stage directions, the swell of the overture. I loved it all. I love it still.

And I was remembering that last night. Those first few notes sounded, that curtain went up, and I was sucked into it all over again. I had to bite the inside of my cheek because all of a sudden I had the strange urge to cry. I wanted to cry because I was so far away from those days that seemed like they happened yesterday, when really they happened eleven years ago. I wanted to cry because I'd never have that type of fun again, and because I'd never again get the chance to perform like that. The actors on the stage at Shea's were stepping and dancing where I'd stepped and danced twice before, when our high school was invited to participate in the Kenny Awards, which was western New York's version of the Tony Awards. There they were, where I'd once been, and there I was wishing I could—for just a second, just one second—be where they were. It was a strange feeling to be having when Dancing Queen was playing, but I seem to be having more and more of those moments lately. I blame it on being home after a long absence. I blame it on revisiting old haunts and having to, for the first time in a long time, face memories I might've pushed to the side.