The World Outside, 2
Passion
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THEN
For a long time after The Kiss (she couldn’t think about it except in capital letters), Erik receded into the background of Joanna’s life. She was cast as Ariel in the play, after all, and the impact that that show had on her was something no one could have foretold. She was good at it, in a way she’d never really been good at anything before, and, for the first time, she began to consider a future on the stage. Memorization came easily to her, and she could move around and carry a tune well enough to satisfy a middle school theater teacher—but what compelled her was the power to craft an audience’s reaction to her words, her gestures, her expressions. A smile on her face garnered a different reaction than a furrowed brow; a big smile garnered still a different reaction than a small one. The permutations she could achieve with her mouth, eyes, and body were infinite, and so were the audience’s experiences. She had always loved stories; now, she could tell a different one every day, just by being.
This realization came at a fortuitous time in Joanna’s life. Thirteen was the year that it really began to mean something that she and Josh were orphans. Everyone else she knew had one, or two, or three, or four parents. Even the people who had lost one of their parents could usually remember something about them—Josh could. Joanna couldn’t. She studied photo albums in a way she hadn’t ever before. The pictures were familiar, but the people in them weren’t.
Poppa had taken the two of them to their parents’ graves, at least once a year, for as long as Joanna could remember, but this was the year that she began to go alone. At least once a month, she would feel a pull towards the graveyard and would go, spending an hour or more chatting with her parents and clearing the accumulated brush. She told them about her classes (math seemed not only difficult, but also stupid; geography was her favorite), about Josh (beloved about as often as disdained), Mary (still the braver of the two of them), Poppa (the kind of father she hoped her own father had been). She talked with them about acting and about Max Whitcomb (although she directed this topic more to her mother’s grave than her father’s) and about the books she was reading. She asked her mother what to do about period cramps and her father how to tell if Charlie Guethle, who played Prince Erik, was actually flirting with her or was just a really good actor.
She never expected an answer, of course—she wasn’t crazy, she told herself. Still, it was soothing to talk to them.
“Where do you think they are?” she asked Josh, and Poppa, and Mary—and, once, Erik. Josh and Mary didn’t know how to respond. Poppa launched into a long and teary-eyed conversation about the beauty of them being together, wherever it was. Erik, whose own father had also died in a boating accident when he was four, chewed on the side of his thumb and squinted into the distance for a minute before saying, “I hope they’re with my dad. I think there must be someplace we go after this, don’t you?” Joanna did.
Joanna and Josh’s family—the Beaulieus—had lived in Grace, Maine, for generations. The earliest anyone knew for sure was that Tomas Beaulieu had come down from Halifax in 1827, before the town’s founding, but there could have been descendants in the area even earlier than that. Such a pedigree carried big weight in small-town Maine, where you were either born and bred in a place for generations—or you were From Away. Poor Sarah Hagill had moved to Grace in fourth grade and was still considered new. Even Erik, who’d been born in Grace, would never really be considered a native. His mother was from way up in Aroostook, and his dad had meandered up the coast after growing up in Hartford, of all places.
Joanna had lived her entire life to that point in a state of mindless inertia, being shepherded from one developmental milestone to the next and watching the same sequence of maturation unfolding all around her. Suddenly, this year, it seemed like she could have some say in what happened to her. She had chosen to audition for the play—maybe she could also choose to wear bell-bottom jeans or give up the swim team or listen to Jewel instead of the Spice Girls. Maybe she could learn to live with the hips and breasts she’d thought were a nuisance, instead of covering them up so she’d look more like everyone else. Maybe she could tear down all of her old pictures of Devon Sawa and Hanson and put up hand-made collages instead. Maybe she could tell Josh she didn’t feel like tagging along when he went to play baseball with his friends and stay home and read a book or watch an old movie or go for a walk. After all, she’d be in high school soon. Maybe it was time for her to grow up.
In pursuit of this new adult Joanna, she made the decision to forego rec camp that summer and, instead, signed up as a volunteer at the summer stock theater 20 minutes away in Harper. She was too young to perform, but she was happy to do all the grunt work. It only took a couple of weeks to ingratiate herself with the performers, who were clearly charmed by her eagerness and treated her like a little mascot. Joanna, in turn, fell a little bit in love with each of them and a lot in love with the lot of them. She eavesdropped on them and studied them, incorporating their movements and expressions into her daily life—Mary rolled her eyes when Joanna confessed, “I don’t think Leonardo DiCaprio is the hottest actor, per se,” but Joanna loved the way those last two words rolled off her tongue. She sat in on their rehearsals and, in that way, saw The Importance of Being Earnest, Barefoot in the Park, Comedy of Errors, and Noises Off dozens, if not hundreds of times—and not only saw them, but heard them dissected, discussed, debated. She learned how to read meaning into a script, how to find her light, how to develop her own stage business. She learned how to placate difficult directors and improvise to cover a dropped line. Every day, she came home from the theater, wanting to put it all into action, but there wouldn’t be an opportunity until the next school play, in the fall. It felt ages away. For the first time, she felt like her life was moving too slowly.
And then, suddenly, it wasn’t.
On the first day of ninth grade, Erik arrived at the Beaulieus’ house bright and early. He and Josh had both gotten their licenses over the summer, but Erik was the only one with a car, and he was happy to drive them both every day. Joanna had convinced him to drive Mary too, so that both of them could arrive on their first day in style—or, if not style, at least in an old (but clean) Acura Legend.
At the time that he arrived, Joanna was in her room, wrestling with a hairstyle that she’d previously identified as sufficiently Grown Up. It was supposed to be a pile of braids at the crown of her head, but no matter how many pins she used, it looked less like a fountain, spewing forth, and more like a bowl of spaghetti, toppling over.
“Jo! Let’s go!” Josh yelled, pounding on her closed door as he walked by and clomped down the stairs.
“Aargh, I’m coming!” she yelled back, ripping the pins out and starting over. One failed attempt later, she decided to cut her losses and just leave it down. She convinced herself that her thick, dark, wavy hair paired well with the flower-patched bell bottom jeans and lace-edged ivory camisole. She sighed once more, told herself it was all right, grabbed her backpack, and headed out the door.
Poppa, Josh, and Erik were all talking in the kitchen, laughing about something when she walked in. Poppa let out a whistle when he saw her, to which she rolled her eyes and smiled. Josh tossed her a granola bar from the cupboard and made a hurry up gesture, and Erik gave her a wink.
“Ready?” he asked, looking her over. He’d grown a full beard over the summer, and the blue polo shirt he wore stretched taut across his broad shoulders. Joanna felt the same sense of dislocation she’d experienced, and nearly forgotten about, almost a year earlier, but she attributed it to nerves and followed the boys out of the house. Josh got in the passenger seat, and Erik held the back door open for Joanna before walking around to the driver’s side.
“Drive carefully,” Poppa called from the front step, coffee mug in hand.
“Yes, sir.” Erik climbed in, turned the key, and turned to back out of the driveway. Joanna could tell that he was nervous to drive, even for a few seconds, in front of Poppa, but he got them out and turned the right way without incident, and then they were off.
A few minutes later, Mary settled in next to Joanna, Josh turned back to look at them and said, “We’ll walk you guys to your classes today, okay?”
Joanna, horrified at the thought, let out a “Whyyy?”, just as Mary gave Josh a sugary smile and said, “That’s so sweet of you.”
“It’s just—it can get really confusing. Trust me.” Josh turned around in a no-questions-asked kind of way, leaving Joanna to huff and cross her arms and Mary to gaze adoringly at the back of his head. Joanna rolled her eyes; Mary’s crush on her brother was really annoying sometimes. She saw Erik glancing at her in the rearview mirror with an expression she couldn’t decipher and looked out the window, aggravated with the lot of them.
Though she didn’t want to admit it, it only took about five minutes for her to realize Josh’s idea was a good one. She’d walked through the halls of the high school a few times before that, but never with 600 other students, and never with warning bells and tardy bells and announcements over the loudspeaker and so many people to look at while she went. So—even though Josh could be overprotective and a little overbearing—and though he’d been on edge for the last couple of months—she quickly relaxed and turned her attention to getting through the day without incident. More than once, Joanna had the heady, exciting, sudden realization that she belonged here. She’d spent her life watching the big kids gather in front of the high school at the beginning and end of every day and now, she was one of them.