The Juliet Spell. Douglas Rees

all I’m saying is, you’re wrong. It’s not that I’m scared. Scarred for life, definitely. But not scared. I’m just not interested.”

      “Miri,” Bobby said. “Explain to him why he’s interested.”

      “I can’t,” I said. “But, Drew. Cast parties.”

      “I come to those anyway,” Drew said.

      Which was true. Whenever there was a cast party and Bobby showed up, Drew was with him. This was whether Bobby had a girl on his arm or not.

      “They’re more fun when you’ve just finished a show,” I said hopefully.

      “I have all the fun I can stand at them now,” Drew said. “Any more fun, I’d die from sheer pleasure.”

      “Please,” I said. “We need people.”

      “No.”

      Edmund picked up Drew’s script. “I see ye have marked Mercutio’s speeches,” he said. “Friar Lawrence’s, too. Why have ye done so if ye are not interested?”

      “I’ve been helping him,” Drew said. “We’ve been running lines for weeks.”

      “I could see ye as Mercutio,” Edmund said. “Friar Lawrence, too, though ye be something too young. ’Twould depend on who else was in the company.”

      “Ed’s an actor,” I said. “A real one.”

      “Hey,” Bobby said. “You ever play in this thing?”

      “Yes. Okay. I have,” Edmund said.

      “What part?” Bobby asked.

      “Different ones. I’ve played in it more than once. But tell me, what part do ye fancy for yourself?”

      “Romeo,” Bobby said like there was no question about it.

      “Romeo,” Edmund mused. “It would not be my first thought for ye.”

      “Oh? Who would you cast me as?”

      “Tybalt, mayhap, if ye can fence well,” Edmund said.

      “Tybalt’s not a very big part,” Bobby said.

      “Thirty-five lines,” Drew said. “But he’s on a lot.”

      “Not a long part,” Edmund agreed. “But a large one. He tries to kill Romeo at old Capulet’s party. Later, he kills Mercutio. Thus Romeo slays him, and must flee Verona. If there were no Tybalt, ye’d have no tragedy and Romeo and Juliet would live to ripe old ages.”

      “Well, anyway, I’m up for Romeo.”

      Edmund turned to Drew. “Tell me, fellow. When ye went dry onstage when ye were a lad, what happened next?”

      “What do you mean, what happened next?” Drew said. “Nothing happened.”

      “What nothing?” Edmund persisted.

      “I just stood there until I started crying. Then they pulled the curtain.”

      “Horrible. D’ye mean no one came to your aid?” Edmund asked. “No fellow-actor came and said, aught like, ‘Will you not give us a song?’ or somewhat like that?”

      “We were just kids. Nobody thought to do anything.”

      “Would that happen now, d’ye think?” Edmund asked.

      “Never,” Bobby said.

      “No way,” I said. “We’d be there for each other.”

      Drew shrugged. “Look, I’m not being neurotic about something that happened when I was twelve. I’m just not interested anymore. Walking on stage, reciting lines. The same lines every night. It gets old real fast.”

      “Is that what ye think acting is?” Edmund said.

      “It’s all I know about it,” Drew said. “If you even call it acting.”

      “Then ye do well to stay away from it—for ’tis nothing of the kind.”

      “I’m always finding new stuff to do,” Bobby said.

      “And ye, cousin Miranda,” Edmund said. “What is acting to you?”

      “It’s hard to say,” I said. “But it’s the most important thing in my life.”

      Edmund scratched his beard and looked up. “For me,” he began, “acting is queen, mother and mistress all in one. And more than a bit of a bitch. But I love her as I love no other thing. But, no. That does not speak to what acting is. Acting is—is finding the truth in the most artificial thing there is. For theater is a metaphor for all of life and all that is truest in it. Acting an endless race through a hall of mirrors seeking the one that shows, not yourself, but the truth of the character you’re playing. The truth in the shadow. And then reflects it, not to yourself, but to the audience at your feet. And when it works, there is nothing finer.”

      “Man,” Bobby said. “I mean, word, dude.”

      “I do not take your meanin’, friend.”

      “He means you really told the truth about it,” I said.

      Drew picked up the script and pondered the cover. It showed a balcony with the doors behind it open and light streaming through them. Romeo was in silhouette below, but the balcony was empty. No Juliet. We all had the same copy of the play. I thought it was a really stupid picture. Juliet was supposed to already be on the balcony when Romeo showed up. This cover looked like whoever’d done it hadn’t even read the play.

      But now Drew was staring at it like it meant something to him. “I wonder if I could do that,” he said. “You do make a guy want to try.”

      “What part do ye favor?” Edmund asked.

      “I don’t think it matters,” Drew replied. “As long as I could have some of that feeling you were talking about.”

      “’Tis hard to do. ’Tis not to be counted upon. But mayhap I could help ye toward it if ye would like.”

      “Yeah. I would.”

      Bobby burst into the conversation, excited. “Cool. Drew reads tomorrow, he scores a part, and Ed coaches him. Ruspoli and Jenkins together again, live on stage. Thanks, Ed!”

      “Listening to meself, I wish—Cousin Miranda, may I not read tomorrow?”

      “Do it, man,” Bobby said. “It’d be so cool to have a real English dude in the play.”

      I felt a whoosh of panic. No, no, no, Edmund must not read. Edmund must not be cast. Edmund must be hidden away. But then I thought how stupid that was, and, really, how impossible. For better or worse, Edmund Shakeshaft was living in California, in this century, in my house, and he’d have to find a way to fit in. And maybe being part of the one thing he’d learned how to do in his own time that we were still doing in this time would help him to adjust.

      “Yeah,” I said, though still a little weakly. “Tryouts are two-thirty tomorrow after school.”

      “I will come then.”

      “Okay,” I said, thinking that in one way at least this could end up being the most accurate Romeo and Juliet anybody had done in more than four hundred years.

      Bobby and Drew started asking Edmund all kinds of questions about what it was like to be an actor in England. And I was really impressed with how he managed to answer them without giving anything away.

      “How long have you been acting?”

      “Oh, since I left school.”

      “How many shows have you done?”

      “I don’t recall for certain. About fifty, I think.”

      “Have you