Jade
For nearly fifteen minutes, Jade sat in her empty dressing room, wondering if she wanted to leave or not. All the other girls had left already, talking in loud voices and not really listening to each other, intoxicated by the thrill of performance. They were vapid, Jade thought, but she couldn't really blame them. Usually, she felt the same way after a show (although she never let it show). Usually, she loved to greet the audience after a performance. She knew that it's superficial and ridiculous, but she just likes the attention. She loves accepting praise and flowers with that confident, calculated, slightly bored smirk painted on her face the entire time. She loves the congratulations, however sincere. Even the criticism. She loves that too. Few people would ever guess just how much she and Trina think alike when it comes to attention. Jade simply refuses to show it. That would be like admitting defeat. It would show weakness.
It's a lot more than the attention though. She loves the familiar feeling that you get at the end of a show when you're still stuck in that other world that you've fought to get to and you're too exhausted to get out. To climb out. It's dizzying and it's electrifying. And it's probably the best thing about theater, she thought. And the hardest. It's like being drunk off on exhaustion, fear, and excitement and it feels like you're standing at the edge of a cliff with no idea what's in front of you and every idea of what you've just left behind. It's thrilling and it's definitive and she loves it. Usually.
But tonight was different. Jade didn't think she could handle all that emotion at the moment. She didn't think she could keep her face from betraying every thought that was racing through her mind just now. No. She couldn't. And that aching, thrilling, fighting feeling that she usually embraced would only make her hurt more. The thought of stepping forward off of that cliff was unbearable. Yeah it's a cliff, she thought, but stepping off it feels nothing like free falling. Actually, it's quite the opposite. It's like climbing uphill.
And it still felt safe here in that other world, she thought. But she knew, she was dimly aware, that this security was false.
She took a moment to allow herself to breathe deeply and let her mind drift back lazily. This was something she liked to do when she was alone in silence because it sometimes helped to take the edge of the nullity. But letting her mind wander always required more effort than it should. Whenever she let her thoughts go, they always found an anxious place to rest. But the trick she had hit on long ago was controlling them just enough so as to steer them away from the bad things but not enough to drive them directly into the good things. The effect was neutrality. Beautiful, silent, blissful neutrality. If not release, lack of control.
Today was Sunday. She had school tomorrow. All her homework was done but she still hadn't started an honors paper for her dramatic lit. class that due Wednesday. She was underprepared for her piano lesson this week. She hoped her teacher would understand. She knew that that was unlikely.
She thought about London. She thought about Lily Allen and Colin Firth. She thought about Paris. She thought about Gilmore Girls. She thought about her mother. She thought about the first time her mother took her along to Paris, shortly after the divorce, and she got lost in the Louvre for three hours. The best three hours of the whole fucking vacation.
She thought about Cat for a moment, how she always managed to be so goddamn happy. She wondered if it was all an act, a mask. Somehow, that wouldn't surprise her. But really, Cat had always been like that. Hadn't she? Jade found that she couldn't quite remember what Cat was like when they first met in fifth grade. Her memories seemed blurred and hazy. Like she had tried, purposefully to forget.
She directed her thoughts back towards neutrality.
She thought about Tori. She wondered if Tori had a mask. Probably not. Besides, Tori is just too good. She's too simple.
Jade is good at reading people.
She thought about Beck. But thinking about Beck made her feel too much.
She thought about her mother again. And about her last therapist. Too much.
She needed neutrality.
She quickly went back to the play.
The play had gone so well. They all said it was the best role she's ever played. She had garnered praise her friends and teachers, from her critics and even her father. She was surprised he even came. But it wasn't like he stayed.
Yes. The play was good, by all the usual measures. The costumes were perfect, the music was wonderful, the actors were brilliant. She was brilliant. Naturally brilliant.
TEREUS: Now I wish you didn't exist.
PHILOMELE: When will you explain, Tereus? TEREUS: Explain? PHILOLMELE: Why? The cause? I want to understand. TEREUS: I don't know what to do with you. PHILOMELE: Me...
It had felt just a little too real tonight. A little too raw.
But there was still something more than the play that was bothering her. Or maybe there wasn't. Maybe she was just overthinking things again. Maybe she should just pull herself together, pull herself out of this reverie and face whatever it was that she was hiding from. Because she was definitely hiding from something.
PHILOMELE: I was the cause, wasn't I? Was I? I said something. What did I do? Something in my walk? If I had sung a different song? My hair up, my hair down? It was the beach. I ought not to have been there.
I ought not to have been anywhere. I ought not to have been...at all...then there would be no cause. Is that it? Answer.
Jade took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She tried to relax every muscle in her body one by one so that when she opened her eyes, she would feel refreshed. It almost helped. She quickly gathered her things, afraid that her courage would dissolve if she lingered any longer in this cold room that smelled like sweat and hairspray and desperation. She made it to the door before she had to stop again, arrested by her reflection in the full length mirror. She stood half-paralyzed for almost a full minute.
She looked different. And tired. Her hair was twisted back into an elaborate, braided design that Cat had spent almost an hour perfecting. It had to come down. If she was going out there, she would not go like this. It just felt wrong. She pulled out each pin, letting them fall to the floor, and raked her fingers through her hair. She thought briefly about Beck again, how she loved it when he played with her hair. When she let him play with her hair. She smiled at the thought of his hands, in spite of herself.
It was better, but still wrong. She studied her face a moment more and then pulled off her fake eyelashes. Ugh. She hated wearing those things. They made her think of the 80's and beauty pageants and her mother. Then she walked over to the sink and scrubbed off all her makeup. It made her feel dirty and fake, like she was still stuck inside Philomele's skin. PHILOMELE: My body bleeding, my sprit ripped open, and I am the cause? No this cannot be right, why would I cause my own pain?
That isn't reasonable. What was it then, tell me, Tereus, if I was not the cause?
It was definitely better. Much better. She turned toward the door and almost made it out, but the stark nakedness of her reflection made her pause. She rarely left her house without perfectly lidded eyes and carefully curled lashes. Feeling weak, she quickly returned to the mirror to redo her eye shadow and mascara. It was better, she told herself. Glancing around the room, half-worried that someone had just witnessed her brief moment of seeming insanity, (or was it merely indecision?) she sighed and finally left.
~ The italicized lines are from an absolutely gorgeous play called The Love of the Nightingale by Timberlake Wertenbaker.