Don't Fear The Reaper

{ix. sweet ophelia}

❝This above all: to thine own self be true.❞

-Hamlet by William Shakespeare

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Three days after my night-time adventure with Macy and Kat, it's back to the grind, and which means it's time for auditions for Hamlet. After I woke up that Monday - still tormented by nightmares, but decidedly more content with my waking life - I spent the entire in-service practicing and practicing my lines, but now I feel strangely anxious.

Sitting in one of the many hard, red, peeling plastic chairs in the hall next to the auditorium, I try not to have a panic attack; it's a challenge, because I can't help but feel that if I don't succeed, I'll be letting Will down. Being a senior, and seeing how theater is really my only talent, this is my last chance to do something worthwhile.

I'm not looking for a future in this place, or any place, for that matter, but some part of me wants to at least give my past in the theater a curtain call instead of cutting it off short. Neither Will nor Mama nor even Papa would be proud of me if I quit so soon.

For this production, I'm trying out for the character of Ophelia, Hamlet's young lover who is driven mad with grief and eventually dies - arguably by suicide. I'm not planning on climbing up a maple tree and falling into the New Haven River, a la Shakespeare, but in some strange way, I feel a connection to Ophelia. Just like me, she's young, sad, and has no agency for herself aside from her love and loyalty to those she knows.

I'm finding the closer I get to death, the more self-aware I become.

We - the other theater kids and I - have been waiting in the hall for some time now. Mr. Summers, the play's director, has been calling in kids one by one. Right now, through the thin walls, I can hear some freshman giving a valiant effort at Laertes, although his voice keeps cracking every time he says "I".

Out in the corridor, where the only light is that of the late-afternoon sun shining in through the doors at the end, a few people are whispering happily, blissfully unaware of the irony of doing a play all about death only a few months after the death of our former star.

Then there's Veronica, sitting three chairs down from me, right next to the door to the stage. Her golden hair is pulled up in a ponytail, her tan skin is glowing in the shadows, and she would look as Evil-Queen like as ever if it weren't for her slumping posture and the dead, emotionless expression in her eyes.

We'd exchanged a few terse words when I first arrived, coming directly from my 7th period study hall. I'd sat down in the empty seat furthest from my frenemy, pulling out my phone to look like I was busy, but for some sadistic reason, Veronica still attempted to talk to me.

"Lila," she'd said, her smug smile gone, an even, flat line in its place.

"Veronica," I'd replied, trying and failing to gauge what she was thinking. She's always been an expert at keeping her emotions an enigma, but she at least always has an aura of confidence. Now, without her shoulders pushed back and her head held high, she almost looks normal. No longer a minor villain in my narrative. Just a girl.

Her junior sheep - er, friends - , Jenna and Alexis, are sitting to her left and right, but neither are saying a word to the other. The former, a Self-Taught "Edgemaster", is attempting to fix her dark lipstick in her phone mirror; the latter, more of a lonely athlete than a lady-in-waiting, is running her long fingers through her caramel hair almost in a nervous tic. I know Alexis better than I know Jenna; whereas my knowledge of Jenna comes merely from her Instagram and the mountain of complaints lodged by Macy and my sister, I'm aware for a fact that Alexis actually plays soccer with Kat. If Ashdown was a graph and its student clubs were lines, play season and soccer season would be almost perpendicular, but I don't care enough to imagine how Alexis will fit it all in.