A List of Best Intentions

The next day, I finished what I started. I rode the bus back to Westburg without Cody with high hopes of talking with Elton some more.

It was surreal, almost; a year ago I’d have never dreamed of seeing him again, or even wanting to meet him at the time. And yet, there I was. At Westburg. In the School of the Arts auditorium. Talking to Elton.

We sat in the front row before the stage while the other performers scrambled to practice whatever they were doing. Elton kept throwing glances up there as if he were paranoid about something; I looked too, but nothing special was going on.

“So, Elton…” I trailed off, trying to make conversation.

“What.” His words always seemed bitter.

I fidgeted. “Um…so, uh…what’s…what’s happening?”

“Well, now that you returned, I’m missing rehearsal…” he grumbled. “I should be up there, but no…”

Boy, what a ball of joy. “What play are you guys doing?”

He looked at me like I had “Loser” written on my forehead. “The Blues Brothers. Duh.”

I blushed. “Oh. Um…are you Elwood?”

He nodded. “The sunglasses must’ve given that away.”

“Uh, yeah.”

I wasn’t a pro at making conversation with people who hated me.

“So why’re you here anyway?” Elton spat.

“I have a list.” Default answer. And as always, it got a response of…

“Huh?”

“A list I made,” I explained. “’Cause Y2K’s coming up and we’re all gonna die, so I made a bucket list.”

Elton smirked a tad. “You actually buy that?”

I shrugged.

“So…I’m on this list?” he asked me.

“Yeah. Number thirteen: Redeem Myself to Someone,” I told him. I never mentioned his name specifically in the list, but it was implied, especially after deciding he’d be the one I’d redeem myself to.

“Oh.” He looked at the floor in thought. “Hm.”

I leaned forward, a little excited – maybe I actually kinda hit a soft spot. “I mean…I really do regret everything.”

“You do, huh?” he said flatly.

“And I’ll do anything to make it up to you,” I added.

Elton snorted. “Doubt it.”

“Seriously. I mean, I’m trying to be nice and you’re being all stubborn,” I growled.

He leaned back. “It’s because you caused me a year of therapy and issues up the yinyang.”

I didn’t know if he was telling the truth, but I was stopped in my tracks. “Really?”

Elton glared at me.

I laughed nervously, the bomb dot com at trying to be cool. I didn’t want to stay on that topic; it only made me feel like an even bigger jerk, even though it ended up unavoidable. Like I said, there are just some things you gotta own up to. “So, uh…you’re an actor?”

“I’m gonna be,” he said confidently. “After I wow the talent scouts that’re gonna be at the play.”

“For real?”

“They’re coming from California,” he bragged.

“Just for a play?”

He shot me a stink eye. “It’s The Blues Brothers. One of the best movie musicals ever, and I’m starring.”

“Oh, yeah. You’re Elwood? The skinny guy?” I had never seen the movie, but I knew the characters. Common knowledge.

He nodded with an actual smile and not an evil grin. “Yeah. I got all the dance moves and everything.”

“Cool,” I beamed. “That’s pretty fly.”

“I know,” he boasted.

I twiddled my thumbs. “So…you like acting.”

He nodded.

“Um…how much do tickets cost?” I asked hesitantly.

Elton rolled his eyes. (Again!) “You think coming to the musical is gonna make me forgive you?”

I was caught. Damn. “Uh…”

“If you’re serious about this, you’re gonna have to try harder.”

I flipped my hands up. “Well, then you can decide. I am serious…so you can choose what I can do. I wanna do something that’s gonna mean something to you.”

Elton stopped, running a hand through his crimson curls. “Hm…”

“I’ll do anything. Really.”

“You can play the Penguin.”

“The who now?”

“The Penguin,” he explained. “The nun Jake talks to when he gets out of prison.”

The words shot, pshewwww, over my head. “Uh…”

“Have you seen the movie?” he deadpanned.

“No…”

“Well, we don’t really have anyone to play her yet…and all you have to do is see the movie,” he grinned. “We have the tape backstage, so you could come back here sometime and watch it.”

I laughed big. “And that’ll make it kind of alright?”

“Well, it’ll be funny, at least. Watching you be a nun. Payback for my humiliation,” he shrugged.

You know, even though I was no actor, doing something like that didn’t bother me. It never had, really, even if I didn’t even go to that school.

We kinda laughed. And for some reason, it didn’t feel so weird this time.

“So…you like acting, huh?” I asked.

Elton nodded along like the answer was totally obvious.

“Are you gonna try to hit it big someday? Like, go to LA?”

“I know I’m going to LA. I whore myself out to the talent scouts that come here,” he bragged. “All of them know me.”

I cocked my head. “Does anybody else know, though? I mean, Westburg…Tanglewood…we’re not that big.”

His face fell. “Well…it’s…yeah. But…I’ve got this idea,” he brightened, snapping his fingers. “They should make an Internet website thingy where people can put, like, videos of themselves up. Or music videos. Or video journals. Anything. And the website would be called…YourVids.”

“Needs a catchier name,” I suggested. The idea was pretty solid.

“I’ll work on it.”

A question I needed to ask suddenly came to me, and I hesitated, trying not to be rude. “Um, oh yeah…er, are you…I mean, I’m not trying to be mean or anything, but are you gay?”

He laughed out loud, but not in an insulted way. “Yeah. Who told you?”

I refrained from blurting out, “Everyone in our kindergarten class,” so I just said, “A couple of people I know.”

“Oh…” He looked confused. I just kept it from the kid; he didn’t have to know.

~~~~~~

There wasn’t much of a “drama” department at my school, except for the type of drama that’s all gossipy. That didn’t count. So I didn’t really have much of anything to work with or have a reference for.

As far as I was concerned, acting was just something where you say stuff and pretend to be someone you’re not. Apparently, the kids at the Westside School of the Arts loved that. And as long I had ten cents to ride the bus to Westburg every day, I considered myself lucky. There were people there who were willing to help.

The first thing I had to do was actually watch the movie they were doing a play of – The Blues Brothers, if you hadn’t picked that up already. It wasn’t bad at all. It was actually pretty neat, and the music was dope, even if it was the kinda stuff my parents listened to.

I was glad that the Penguin only showed up once, too, ‘cause I wasn’t ready to go up in front of people I didn’t know and act like someone else. (A girl, to boot.)

But what really mattered was that I finally got through to Elton, I think. I really did feel like a turd after lookin’ through my yearbook and seein’ him there and being reminded of the crap I caused the poor kid. Making him wanna move away like that. And I was a big reason for the whole thing.

And get this – that kid was so serious about acting that he seriously gave me a business card with his phone number and address on it. Not even kidding. As if I contacted talent agents all the time! I understood, though, and I really couldn’t knock his determination. It was admirable, really.

The next week, I went straight over to Westburg after school for practice. And even though I was only in one scene, I think I did pretty good. I also got to stay for the rest of rehearsal and watch all the actors perform. A lot of them even sang their songs, too – they weren’t just mouthing out the words or anything. It was cool.

I got a whole lotta respect for those type of kids that week. After being alongside Westburg’s kids, I thought those kinda performance-y people were pretty dank. That stuff took guts.

Elton wasn’t as much of a dick to me as time went on. At first, he was all mean ‘cause he didn’t think I was for real, but after trying hard at apologizing and meaning it, he finally let up. And whenever the situation got awkward and stuff, I changed the subject to theatre. ‘Cause that kid glowed when we talked about musicals.

I felt real good about all this. It wasn’t the first time I helped a kid out, yet it didn’t make it any less special.

I wasn’t so sure that just being “The Penguin” would be enough, though. He said it would be nice, but I think I had to do more. I didn’t know what else I could do yet, though.

The day of the play – opening night – I saw the local newspaper lying on the coffee table in my house. And like a sane person in a sea of crazies, it was flipped to the pop culture section. The headline read, “HOLLYWOOD COMES TO THE SOUTH.”

Next to the words was a photo. It was a picture of these two guys who looked all panicked, and one of them was driving. Underneath it was the caption, “Actors Cuba Gooding Jr. and Skeet Ulrich star in the movie, ‘Chill Factor,’ being filmed in Liberty, South Carolina.”

I skimmed over the article. It was talking about how they were filming some movie in South Carolina – Liberty, though. That was real close to Georgia. About two hours away, really, from where we were. And while I was reading, there were pieces in my head coming together. I never heard of the actors or the movie they were talking about, but that didn’t matter.

And I didn’t have my driver’s license, but that didn’t matter either.

I was a man with a plan.

And I was takin’ Elton with me, whether he liked it or not.

~~~~~

The night of the musical was thick with the buzzing feeling of anxiety. Of course, it wasn’t like the kids in Tanglewood knew what was going on. But Cody did. And he promised to come, at least.

Even before the play, I made a habit of memorizing my lines, reciting my scene over and over in my head. I had it down to a science and I knew it was gonna be awesome. I was confident beyond belief, even though I definitely wasn’t an actor or anything.

I told my parents I was going to some sort of banquet for my school – they bought it. But a Tanglewood event happening in Westburg? Come on. They probably weren’t even listening. I wasn’t complaining, though.

There were hours of set up before the play. First of all, there were a lot of scene changes in the movie, so we had to get the sets ready accordingly. And as far as the car chases and crashes went (I think they set a record!), we…couldn’t do that. So we just projected the scenes from the movie onto a screen that could be pulled down.

And when we were all suited up and ready to go, the patrons started filing in. I watched them come in, standing backstage where I could see everything. I had my nun costume on, too. I’d gotten used to it over the dress rehearsals and it sorta started feeling like a second skin, even.

As I stared, I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder. It was Elton, of course, lookin’ like no one other than that Dan Aykroyd dude himself (they even temporarily dyed his hair darker). “Oh my God, I’m freaking out. This is gonna be so huge,” he gushed.

“You got stars in your eyes, man,” I grinned.

He smiled for a moment and looked me over. “You don’t look like a nun at all.”

“But I play one.”

“Still…” he trailed off.

I nudged his shoulder, remembering the newspaper article from earlier. “Oh, hey, you wanna go to Liberty?”

“What? Liberty, South Carolina?” he said uneasily.

“Yeah! They’re filming a movie up there called ‘Chill Factor,’” I added. “Maybe we can drop by the set…and get in a background shot or something.”

Elton smirked a little bit. “Like, be an extra?”

“Yeah. Make your mark,” I winked.

He waved his hand. “I’m gonna make my mark after this.”

~~~~~

Like I expected, the play was a total success. It was funny, action packed, musical – and a damn fly musical, too. The dancing was perfect. And even the people I thought would have a hard time doin’ stuff onstage shined.

“You can’t lie to a nun. We gotta go visit The Penguin,” Elton (Elwood) said.

“No. Fucking. Way,” Charlie (Jake) deadpanned back. (Since their school was pretty much exclusively just for the arts, they figured the kids and their families were used to that kinda language.)

When my scene was up, I had butterflies, man. They weren’t those wimpy little things, either. They were the kind that sort of made me wanna puke, yet at the same time, I was happy.

For one thing, I got to hit people with rulers. (Elton and Charlie, anyways.) And like I’d been doing it all my life, my lines were pro. No one knew who I was – they just knew me as Sister Mary Stigmata, The Penguin. That’s acting.

“Get out. And don’t come back…until you’ve redeemed yourselves,” I recited. The door on the set closed, thus ending my appearance.

Sure as hell wasn’t the end of the show, though.

No, Elton and Charlie pulled on as Jake and Elwood through the musical, never failing to give a great performance. The first time I watched the movie, I didn’t really get it, but after I saw it more times than I could count (we had to review scenes and stuff) I did. And I think Elton and Charlie “got” it, too.

It was inspiring, watching someone I’d once bullied take that frustration and turn it into something beautiful. Even if he didn’t truly forgive me, I wouldn’t have minded. ‘Cause even if he forgot everything I did to him, he might not have put his heart into it as much. Call me selfish.

The musical parts were hella great and well done – there was no question about it that this school was for the performing arts. Charlie wasn’t a bad singer, either; he actually kinda sounded like Belushi. And the flips and stuff! First of all, everyone’s dancing was spot-on – Elton especially – and Charlie was doin’ backflips galore. He made it look easy, especially for a guy his size.

By the end of it all, the crowd was clapping so hard it was tough not to imagine their hands not being bright red. After the credits, Elton was beaming so wide, man. So was I. Shit, we all were.

But as sad as it was that it was all over, the backstage chat was no intimation of that. We kept the lamps burning as we changed back into our normal clothes, talkin’ about whatever happened to pop up. I tore the nun hat off and threw it in the accessories bin. Elton and Charlie took off their hats and sunglasses.

“So do you wanna go to Liberty?” I asked, directing it at Elton.

He looked a little taken off-guard. “Uh…I…”

“Liberty, South Carolina? An hour up?” Charlie popped in. “That’s where they’re makin’ that movie they were talking about in the paper, right?”

“Yeah! Chill Factor!” I smiled.

“Hell, I’ll go! I always wanted to be famous,” Charlie laughed. “C’mon, El.”

Elton hesitated, loosening his tie. “Well…maybe…”

“Come on! We can crash the set!” I begged. “It’ll be fun. Please? I’ll even get my friend Cody to go. And he’s a buzzkill and he’ll keep us from doing anything too stupid!”

He snickered. “Maybe…”

Charlie ruffled his hair. “We’re on a mission from God. He’s tellin’ us to go.”

“Alright!” Elton sighed in defeat, still having a miniscule smile. “I’ll go…”

“That’s my boy,” I chuckled. All I had to do was get Cody to go with us, and even if he stonewalled us, that wouldn’t stop me from wanting to go along with it.