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Talk
By Kathe Koja Thorndike Press
Copyright © 2006 Kathe Koja
All right reserved. ISBN: 9780786288113
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 canstop 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 © 2006 by Kathe Koja. Excerpted by permission.
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