Embarrassing

Sarah and I stood around the piano in the chorus room. Blue lockers lined the room; we each had one of the coveted lockers, a status symbol in the music department. Our lockers stood next to each other, shoved up together. We were best friends, so why did I feel like gritting my teeth every time I stood next to her?  The worn black lacquer on the grand piano was familiar under our fingertips as we leaned against the edge and rehearsed for the upcoming performance. I’ve always found the curve of a baby grand sexy. I wanted to punch her in the face.

We had been practicing for weeks, readying ourselves for the big Spring Sing performance. It was one chance every year for everyone and anyone to shine.  Performing was nervewracking, but it was a chance to really show off your pipes, your stage presence, your talent. We were to perform a duet “Sing!” from A Chorus Line.  Two parts comedic monologue, one part sung, it was hilarious and surprisingly challenging.  The week prior we had finally begun to really get it together. It made sense for us to perform a duet. We were best friends. It made sense, but I hated singing with her.  I should have said no.

One afternoon, in her typical dramatic fashion, Sarah decided she wanted – nay, needed – to switch parts. She didn’t want to do the sung part anymore. She wanted the monologue. I doubted her ability to learn all the words – the performance was in less than a week! – but she insisted. Fine. One more nail in the coffin of our friendship. I sullenly agreed, and we reversed roles. I failed to be surprised. Sarah was not a great singer or performer, but she did manage to do one thing with ease – drama.

Fast forward.

The night of the performance, we were ready. Sarah and I stood side by side in the wings, waiting for our cue. I leaned against the curtain pulley and inhaled the scents of the backstage. A little musty, a little heavy with makeup and perfume and nervous sweat. Sarah wasn’t wearing enough deodorant; she always under-applied. I thought about our duet coming up, and nursed the little angry part of me that said we should have stopped being friends years ago. It was our Senior year. I only had to make it through a few more months, then I could be done with this sham. She always took more than she gave.

The piano struck our opening chord and we strutted out onto stage, blinded by the bright lights, blissfully unable to make out faces in the crowd. The stage always seems more expansive as you walk across it. From the wings, it seems manageable and from the audience, practically minuscule, when compared to the experience being front and center, traveling with your heart beating so heavily in your ears you can hardly hear the harmonies. I tried to swallow my anger as she prepared to perform the part that had originally been mine.

I could hear Sarah beginning the monologue, breathless and slightly nervous, but it worked well for this performance. At my cue I sang a note, then another, then one more – the vocal part of the song is challenging because you have to pluck the notes seemingly out of thin air and let them hang there with nothing else to support them. It’s perfectly right or glaringly wrong. I thrilled in it. Being on stage was invigorating – anything is possible.

We walked through our carefully choreographed stage movements, and then Sarah faltered. She forgot a word, then two, then a line, and I couldn’t hit my notes, the timing was off, the choir teacher couldn’t modify the chord progression fast enough to catch her mis-steps…. We stopped. We stood on the polished, shining wood of the stage and stared at each other, glancing down in the pit at our choir director as he marked time with basic chords, and we realized we couldn’t continue. We were too far gone. We’d have to start over, we couldn’t start over, we were on stage… hundreds of our peers, teachers, family, friends. We stared at each other.

I stared at this girl whom I’d known for most of my life, and all of my school years. Through grammar school, elementary school, middle school and now high school. We had been inseparable. I stared at her mousy brown hair and her too-small eyes, now reflecting the panic and fear in my own, and I burst out laughing. We laughed.

We laughed. We laughed, and laughed, and slapped our knees and gasped for breath and forgot that we even had an audience. We couldn’t stop, not for anything. We stood on that stage, and bent over and held our stomachs and laughed so hard our faces might shatter into pieces from the strain of it, and then we finally limped off stage.

We made it to the wings, still giggling, laughing, chortling, chuckling, as the reality of what had just happened dawned on us. We had just completely fucked it up. We failed. We failed, and then instead of finding a way to recover, or exiting gracefully, we laughed ourselves off the stage!

From the other side of the curtain, hastily closed by stunned stage hands, there was first silence. Then a small titter of laughter spread across the crowd. Then from the corner, a smatter of applause. It spread, and grew, and within moments the entire audience was cheering and whooping and laughing, not at our failure, but because they thought it was all part of the act.

We had fooled them.

We had fooled them even as we fooled ourselves into thinking that perhaps our friendship wasn’t dead, after all.

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