“The list has to be posted,” Teri said, sounding scandalized. “It’s tradition.”
“Tradition,” Jayson, Emery, and Stevie sang together, throwing their hands up in the choreography from when we were all in Fiddler freshman year.
“Tell you what,” Mr. Campbell said, smiling at me as he shook his head. “If I finalize the casting tonight, I’ll email it to the office and have them print it out and post it sometime over the weekend. But no promises—I’m busy tonight.”
“Are you going to the premiere?” Aminah asked breathlessly. “The new Amy Curry movie?”
Amy Curry was the department’s most famous alumnus. I hadn’t believed it the first time I’d walked through the theater lobby, looking at the framed pictures from past productions, but there she was, at eighteen, with the lead in Hedda Gabler—the person that I’d seen in big blockbusters and small prestige movies and a few memorable episodes of a medical drama that ended in a summer-ruining cliff-hanger. If she wasn’t a star yet, she was getting there, and the fact that she was kind of from Stanwich (she’d transferred from California her senior year) and had gone to Stanwich High, had been a part of the Stanwich drama department like me… it somehow made it all seem more possible. Mr. Campbell had taught her when she’d gone here—his second year teaching in the theater program, and if we begged enough, he would sometimes tell us Amy Curry stories. He’d tell us about what a scandal it was when she got a lead role straightaway, since she hadn’t paid any of the dues that you usually had to—but her talent was just that undeniable.
And while Stevie thought the Amy Curry trivia was cool, I didn’t get the sense she spent a huge amount of time thinking about this fledgling movie star she’d never met. But I’d gone deep down the rabbit hole, reading articles online and features in magazines, practically memorizing some of them, staring at the glossy images—her red hair, her big smile, her off-duty casual wardrobe of vintage T-shirts and high-waisted jeans. I knew all about how she lived in Los Angeles with her landscape architect boyfriend, how they had two rescue dogs, how she took a long road trip once a year. I wasn’t even entirely sure why I sought out all these articles and stories—but every time I read one, it was like the jump from here to there got smaller. That maybe this thing I wanted to do wasn’t that impossible, because Amy Curry had acted on this stage and walked these same halls and was now being interviewed for Vanity Fair. It was like if I looked at the pictures long enough, I could conjure the same kind of path for me.
“It’s a Ghost Robot movie, not an Amy Curry movie,” Erik said to Aminah with a roll of his eyes. “Isn’t she, like, the fifth-billed?”
“And how many movies have you been in, Erik?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” Teri chimed in.
“I didn’t say I had!” Erik yelped. “Jeez.”
“It’s premiering in the city?” Jayson asked.
“Yeah,” I said—I was as up on this information as Aminah was. “The premiere in LA was last week. New York premiere tonight, and then an after-party at the Gansevoort.” I wasn’t sure exactly what the Gansevoort was, but it was a word I very much enjoyed saying.
“Are you going?” Aminah asked again. Mr. Campbell just smiled. Even though Amy had graduated over eight years ago, she’d kept in touch with Mr. Campbell—he would occasionally drop references to notes and emails she’d sent him, and one time she had him give feedback on a self-tape she was submitting to a casting director.
“Let’s just say I have plans tonight,” Mr. Campbell said enigmatically. “Plans you guys do not necessarily need to know about.”
I quickly looked down at my hands. I was pretty sure that out of everyone in the class, I was the only one who did know what Mr. Campbell was doing tonight.
I had found out about it by accident last year, late one night when I’d been procrastinating writing my history essay and I’d gone down a Google rabbit hole about Mr. Campbell. His name, Brett Campbell, was common enough that you had to be willing to wade through a lot of pages that weren’t about him, and figure out how to pair the best keywords with your search. I hadn’t even been looking for anything in particular—just idly searching and avoiding writing about the Stamp Act (my working title was “Who Cares About the Stamp Act,” but obviously I was planning on changing it)—when I found the website.
It was for a theater company in New York, the Echo Theater Company. I’d had to go several pages into the website to confirm it was really him, onto a page with pictures of the members of the group. But there he was, in a black-and-white headshot that looked a few years old, under the name B. L. Campbell. He was the founding director of the company, and it seemed like he wrote and acted in a lot of their plays as well.
I’d just stared at my laptop for a few moments, heart hammering, not able to believe how cool this was. It was like finding out Mr. Campbell was a superhero, with a whole other life and a secret identity. But a second later, I realized that he’d never mentioned this at all—and that I probably shouldn’t let him know that I’d found it. The last thing I wanted was for him to be mad, or feel that I had crossed some line. Because if everyone knew, we all would have shown up to see his plays—that was just a given. Which was maybe why, I’d realized as I clicked through the website, he hadn’t. He probably wanted something that was separate from us, from his job in Connecticut. Probably the other members of his company were cool New York City people and wouldn’t have appreciated a whole bunch of suburban teenagers suddenly showing up.
But even though I’d never been to see any of the shows—or told anyone but Stevie about my Echo Theater discovery—I still checked the website occasionally. Which was how that I knew that a new play—Navel Gazing, written and directed by Mr. Campbell—was premiering at the Echo Theater tonight.
“Anyway,” Mr. Campbell said, shaking his head. “I’m really sorry about the list, guys. I know you were expecting it. But I promise it’ll be soon.” He gave us all a smile that crinkled his eyes at the corners, then glanced at his watch. “And somehow class is now half over. On your feet, everyone! Warm-ups!”
We all jumped to our feet, Mr. Campbell moved his chair out of the way, and with only twenty minutes left, class officially began.
STARBUCKS COFFEE COMPANY
11/5
2:15 PM
CAT
Hot
Grande
Mocha
ASK ME
One pump white mocha
STEVE
Iced
Venti
Sugar-free vanilla
Soy
Latte
ASK ME
Only two shots espresso
Only four pumps sugar-free vanilla
Less ice
Still ice, but just less than normal
Like half the amount of ice
(guest seems overly concerned about the ice)
PAID
Starbucks card account XXXXXXXXXXXX1981
I frowned at Stevie’s Starbucks cup. “Is there enough ice in there?” I had ordered for both of us—I had long since memorized Stevie’s far-too-complicated latte order—and I wanted to make sure it was right.
“It’s perfect,” Stevie assured me with a laugh. She took a sip and then made a face.