A Stage Onstage

Beginning Paragraph Winter wouldn't let go. Tired gray snow clung to the curbs. Tired gray clouds clung to the sky. The lion of March still prowled, growling its storms and hissing its sleet, and I wondered why Mom ever chose to move to Wisconsin.

Middle Paragraphs A job. I got it. A break-up. Yeah. Life happened. She started over, and so did I. Again.

Explanation This time, I changed schools mid-semester, which meant I lost half my credits and had to play catch-up in every class. I knew nobody and didn't have any real desire to make friends. How long would we be here? Action I trudged to school and trudged home and sat in that gray apartment flipping through Snapchats to see the full-color lives of my friends back in Florida.

Dialogue "I'm taking a second job," Mom told me one night. "So I won't be home most evenings."

"Great," I said. "Just me, then. Perfect."

"You should find something to do."

"Yeah, I should."

Except that all of the clubs and sports at school were halfway through. I didn't want to play catch-up with them, too. Reflection Faced with few options, most guys my age would get into some pretty bad stuff. What I got into was certainly weird.

At the gas station next to our apartment, I saw a poster for "Auditions: On Golden Pond." A play? Community theater? I laughed when I saw it. What kid like me would willingly do that? I laughed again and suddenly decided I'd try out. It was almost an act of rebellion.

Description The theater was a crumbling fieldstone building dating from the Civil War, jutting up like a weird block on a snow-choked corner. I walked up to the ancient wooden door and almost turned around. Symbolism Then I saw a bronze plaque from the "Liar's Club" with this winning quotation: "My neighbor is such a liar, I have to call his dog for him." I laughed. I couldn't turn back now.

Transition In the little black-box theater, a bunch of people were milling about the seats, mostly old people, forties or fifties or even seventies. I was the only kid. I filled out an audition sheet, and the director had me go up and read for the part of Billy with a couple of the old people trying out for Norman and Ethel. It was nerve-wracking. I couldn't just read. I had to act. The old guy used a weird crackly voice. Then we got to one spot in the scene, and I stopped reading. Everybody stared at me.

"What's the matter?" asked the director.

"I'm supposed to say that word out loud? That swear word?"

She smiled and blinked. "Haven't you heard that word before?"

"Course I have. I'm just not supposed to say it in front of adults," I replied.

"We've all heard it, too," she said. "If I cast you as Billy, you'll have to say it."

"In a school play, they'd change it."

"This isn't a school play."

"Awesome," I replied with a smile of my own, then looked at the old guy next to me and said that word, and he just smiled back.

That was the first moment I realized I was in the right place.

I, of course, got the part of Billy since I was the only one the right age to play it. A few nights later, we had a first read-through to get a sense of the show. The next night, we started "blocking"—which means moving around the set to do different actions and say different lines. The two old people who got cast as Ethel and Norman had been in lots of shows. As the director told them where to move, they scribbled notes furiously in their scripts. Sometimes, they would stop and say, "I feel like Norman would turn away there," or "Ethel would be busy folding sheets during this part." They were thinking about not just what their characters were saying and doing, but why.

Then came my turn, and I pulled open the set's "broken" screen door and stepped into the "lake house." The actress playing my dad's girlfriend put her hand on my shoulder and said to the two old people, "Everyone, this is Billy."

I blushed and smiled and said my line: "How ya doin'?"

"Why are you smiling?" asked the director.

I blinked at her. "What do you mean?"

"You're smiling."

"I'm embarrassed."

"Billy should be annoyed, not embarrassed."

I looked at my script. "Where does it say that?"

"Your dad's girlfriend is introducing you to her old parents at a lake house with no cell phone reception and lots of mosquitoes. Do you think you'd be embarrassed or annoyed?"

I wrote "annoyed," in my script. Then I slouched a little and gave the old people an insolent stare and said, "How ya doin'?" They laughed, and the director said, "Perfect!"

The old guy playing Norman gruffly noted, "You seem awfully young to be a dentist."

I gave my next line flippantly, "I'm a bit stunted for my age." Again, everybody laughed.

"Oh, really," said Norman, seeming impressed.

This was fun. It wasn't just being in a play. It was playing. These old people were funny, smart goofballs who wanted me to be a funny, smart goofball along with them. I didn't know adults could be like that—friends instead of authorities.

I especially liked the old guy playing Norman. His real name was Rob. One rehearsal, I was wearing my Metallica shirt, and he said, "I was your age when they were first cool." I replied, "In my book, they're still cool." We talked metal and hair bands, classic rock and grunge and lamented that nobody had garage bands anymore. In the play, Billy and Norman became friends though they are "66 years and 50 weeks apart," so it helped that Rob and I had a lot in common. In one scene, Billy and Norman get caught in a downpour while fishing, and so we had to tromp onto the set dripping. Rob went onto the back porch of the theater, dunked his fishing hat in a bucket, and dumped it over his head. Water ran down his shirt and made it look like he wet his pants. Hilarious! Soon, I was dunking my hat, too, and trying to avoid the failed-Depends look.

As opening night approached, I got nervous. Really nervous. I knew my lines all right, but when I thought of an audience, my heart started racing. What was I doing? Why had I tried out for this show? I wanted to act in a play? The day of opening, I was having panic attacks.

When I got to the theater, Rob said, "You look white as a ghost. I'm supposed to be the old one here."

I groaned, "My stomach's a knot."

He smiled and nodded. "That's adrenaline. You're gonna have it. I still do after 30 shows."

"You're kidding. You're nervous?"

"Haven't been able to eat all day," he responded. "It's a fear response. Back in the day, it was for hunting mammoths. Fight, flee, or freeze. Well, onstage, you can't flee, and you better not freeze, so that means you've got to fight. Take that adrenaline and attack. Be bigger. Be louder. Be bolder. That's what the audience wants, anyway. We've got a mammoth to hunt. This show. It could bring us down, or we can bring it down. Use that adrenaline to bring down the house."

I nodded, not sure what he meant. Then the lights went out, and the audience got quiet, and the mood music started, and the lights faded up. Out stepped Rob. He commanded the stage. He was playing a frail 80-year-old guy, but he was the guy. Every eye watched him. He moved with total purpose, surveyed his lake house, looked out the screen door, and knocked it off his hinges—just like he was supposed to. The audience roared as he jolted, trying and failing to right it. Then he gave up and went to the phone. He hadn't said a word, but the audience knew he was going to bring down this mammoth, and they watched with smiles on their faces.

The third scene arrived. It was finally time for Billy to show up. My heart pounded. I stepped onstage, and the woman playing my Dad's girlfriend put her hand on my shoulder and said, "Everybody, this is Billy."

"How ya doin'?" I said.

Norman looked at me—he wasn't Rob anymore, but a cranky 80-year-old—and he growled, "You look awfully young to be a dentist."

I couldn't remember my next line. I stared back at him. I froze. Terrified. That's not what I was supposed to do with my adrenaline. So I attacked: "Yeah, well you look awfully old to still be alive!"

Norman glared back at me and said, "Oh, really?"

The woman playing my dad's girlfriend saved the scene, "This is Billy Ray, Junior."

Norman stepped up to shake my hand. "Oh, I'm Norman Thayer, Junior."

The scene went on, and I clamped down on the adrenaline and used it to be bigger, louder, and bolder than I ever had been. I remembered every line and delivered them better than ever.

By the end of the night, we'd killed the show. The audience roared and cried and gave us a standing ovation. I never felt such a rush in my life. I stood there, taking bows with all these old people, all these friends.

My real mom was beaming in the front row, tears running down her cheeks as she applauded. She'd taken the night off her second job to see my opening. She even stepped up to the stage and handed me a bunch of flowers. I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn't. That's what they give you when you march back from the hunt and bring home the mammoth.

I'd auditioned for this stupid show as an act of rebellion. It had been the darkest winter of my young life, with no friends in a gray world, with a mom working two jobs. But the show wasn't a stupid show. And the old people in it with me were my friends. We'd spent six weeks literally playing—dressing up, doing weird accents, pretending to get in fights and goofing off—but we also were making art. During rehearsals, Mom called it that "place where you swear." Now she called it that "place where you make me proud."

And it wasn't just at the theater. At school, too, I stopped fleeing and freezing. I started fighting. I caught up in all my classes and turned C's into A's. I was bringing down more mammoths. And I made friends.

Ending Paragraph When we took our last bows closing night, I couldn't believe the show was over. But it wasn't. Spring had come, at last. The world was green and warm again. And I was already getting my monologue memorized for my next audition.