The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet (6 page)

 

So until now, Mom and Dad had always been so busy making sure Dezzie grew into her intelligence, I’d had free rein. I didn’t have to worry about them showing up to events wearing their Elizabethan collars, or picking me up from school in cloaks. Even if I did get a little lonely sometimes.

Right now, lonely was looking better and better.

viii

The next week went basically the same as the first: I ran all over the school in the morning, making sure Dezzie was on time for her classes, but barely getting to my own. I suppose I could have said something to my teachers about why I was nearly late every day, but why bother? It’d only draw more attention to the oddity that was my life.

I did have time to keep an eye out for more notes or pigs, but none appeared. I hadn’t said anything to Ty about it, because he’d probably get all boy-ish and say it didn’t mean anything. And he’d definitely shoot down my idea that it was Carter. Maybe I’d tell Judith. In the meantime, the first one lived in a small pocket of my backpack, providing a little mystery to my day.

Carter was not a mystery, however: He continued to look through me like I was a nonthreatening ghost. Who else could it
be
?

In English, Mrs. Wimple explained our major project. We were supposed to pick any scene from Act I of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, then set it up in a replica of the theater we’d be building for history class. That meant we had to figure out what the characters looked like, place them on the stage, and be able to explain what scene we chose and why. Everyone complained because we hadn’t even started reading the play yet, but Mrs. Wimple said that we’d have plenty of time.

“We’ll get started right now. This is the story of four people who get lost in a forest one night,” she explained. “Two of the men are in love with the same woman, but thanks to a fairy with a sense of humor, both end up in love with the
other
girl. Oh, and there’s a jackass in the story.” When she said that everyone gasped, then giggled.

“Yes,” she continued, “I said
jackass
. Someone gets turned into one. You’ll see what I mean.” She handed out copies of the play. From across the aisle, I heard KC mumble, “
Some
people I know would make great jackasses.”

He must have seen me smile in agreement—even though I didn’t know who he was talking about; I could make my own list—because he added, “And some should just mind their own business.”

My cheeks burned. What was
that
about?

“We’ll be reading aloud,” Mrs. Wimple continued. I turned my attention to her so I wouldn’t encourage KC to say anything else irritating. “So we can get a feel for Shakespeare’s language and characters. Who would like to volunteer? I need six of you for this scene.”

Everyone’s eyes immediately dropped to their book covers. Reading out loud can be pretty awful, and the Bard doesn’t exactly make things easy on a contemporary reader—at least, that’s what my parents say. I also kept my head down. With a name like mine, why be singled out?

“Uh-huh,” she said. “I guess I’m going to have to recruit my cast. Let’s see . . . Julie, you read Hippolyta. KC, you are now Theseus, ruler of Athens. Nirmal, please read Egeus.” She chose two other boys to be Lysander and Demetrius, and then proclaimed, “Tyler, you will read Hermia.”

Ty’s ears turned red. “But Mrs. Wimple! That’s a girl’s part!”

“A lot of the female characters were played by men in Shakespeare’s time,” I consoled, forgetting that I’d be better off keeping my knowledge to myself. “It’s no big deal.”

“Said well by the girl with the guy’s name,” KC responded, voice too low for the teacher to hear.

I wanted to slug him. I settled for glaring in his direction.

“Hamlet is quite correct,” Mrs. Wimple said. “It’s good to see that you feel comfortable sharing your knowledge of Elizabethan history. So perhaps you would like to read Hermia’s lines instead?” She gave a little flourish with her hand for emphasis.

I could feel everyone staring at me. If my face got any hotter it would melt everything in a four-seat radius.

“Uh, well . . .” I started. Reading Shakespeare in my house was a sport left to the professionals. I’d attended enough plays and read-throughs to last a lifetime, and had been forced, on two occasions, to play the role of “a soldier” in a dinnertime scene execution of—yes—
Hamlet
. I felt fine sitting this one out. “Uh, I think Ty will do a great job.” I hoped he’d forgive me for throwing him back under the bus.

“Then perhaps you’ll read Hippolyta for us, instead of Julie.”

“Well,” I tried. I glanced at Ty for help, but he was staring at a spot on the blackboard. Payback. “I’d rather . . .”

“Good,” she said, snipping the word like her lips were scissors. “Let’s begin, then.”

I flipped to the beginning of the play. Theseus was talking about a wedding.

KC was reading Theseus like he was acting on a soap opera. “Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour”—he waggled his eyebrows at me—“draws on apace . . .”

“Respectfully, please,” Mrs. Wimple corrected.

“Long withering out a young man’s revenue,” KC finished. I noticed that when he wasn’t overdoing it, his voice sounded kind of warm reading the lines. Like honey.

Ew! I snapped out of some sort of Shakespeare-spell. KC was more like pickles than honey—sharp and stand outy. Now Carter, on the other hand . . . he was like frosting: good to look at and sweet. Just thinking about him listening to me read made the back of my neck feel warm. My turn. I took a breath.

“Four days will quickly steep themselves in night/ Four nights will quickly dream away the time: and then the moon—like a silver bow/New-bent in heaven—shall behold the night of our solemnities.” Theseus was supposed to speak next. I waited for KC’s line. He didn’t come in.

I glanced up.

Everyone in the class, including Mrs. Wimple, was staring at me. If my life was
actually
a cartoon, instead of just feeling like one, their jaws would be on the floor. Even Ty was gawking.

“Uhhh,” I mumbled, feeling sweat bead on the back of my neck. Had I missed a line?

My noise thawed Mrs. Wimple from her freeze. “Well, Ms. Kennedy. I
am
impressed. How have you hidden this talent from us?” Her eyebrows bunched tight over her nose. I couldn’t tell if she was mad or complimenting me. I turned to Ty, hoping he could explain. I’d never had Mrs. Wimple as a teacher before—and I wasn’t hiding anything from anyone. What was going on?

The bell rang, ending class and busting the exaggerated stares. Backpacks were stuffed and zippered, and everyone started to leave. I also packed up.

“Hamlet, I’d like to speak with you for a moment,” Mrs. Wimple said from her desk. I turned to Ty, who was half out of his chair.

“What is
UP
?” I hissed.

“Your reading,” he whispered back, looking over his shoulder to Mrs. Wimple.

“
So?”
What had I done?

“Hamlet,” he said gently. Ty
never
called me Hamlet. “You read it
perfectly
.”

“So?” What was the big deal?

“Mr. Spencer,” Mrs. Wimple said, smoothing the front of her denim jumper, “I believe you’ll be late to your next class if you don’t move along.” Ty scooted out of the room, leaving me with an apologetic glance and mouthing the word “lunch.” I nodded, and then brought my stuff up to Mrs. Wimple’s desk.

She was just sitting there, waiting for me, eyes glittering behind her round glasses. I couldn’t read her expression—her lips were pressed into a line, but her cheeks were bunched tight, as though she was trying not to smile. She folded her hands on top of her ragged copy of
Midsummer
.

“So, Ms. Kennedy, have you been studying the play outside of class? Or acting in it?”

I shook my head, still confused. “I’m not sure what you mean,” I pleaded. “Honest. Ty said something about the way I read, but I didn’t do anything special. Just looked at the lines.” My hands were sweating. I still needed to get my sister and walk her to her next class.

Mrs. Wimple sighed. “It’s all right if you like Shakespeare,” she said. “You don’t have to pretend that you don’t. If you’re practicing with your parents, I’d just like to know the strategies you’re using.” She leaned against the back of her chair and dropped her hands to her lap.

“But I’m not!” Why wouldn’t she believe me? Would Dezzie make it to TLC okay without me? “My parents read the play to me before, but that was almost three years ago. Today I just flipped through the scene and checked my lines while KC was reading.” I picked up her copy of the play and turned the pages like I had in class. The late bell buzzed and I jumped.

“I’ll give you a pass,” she said. “This is my free period. Finish showing me what you did, but pick another scene.”

The last thing I wanted to do was read more Shakespeare—my mouth was so dry that I was sure my tongue was made of sand, but the rest of me was sweating like I’d just been hit by a wave. I turned one more page, then scanned the words. It was the scene after Puck gives Bottom a donkey’s head. Mrs. Wimple leaned over. I tilted the book toward her.

“Read Puck,” she instructed.

I sighed and swallowed, trying to get rid of that gritty-mouth sensation.

“I’ll follow you, I’ll lead you about a round, through bog, through brush, through brake, through brier./Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound, a hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;/and neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, like horse, hound hog, bear, fire at every turn.” Mrs. Wimple was watching me covetously, like I was a rare species of child first discovered in her classroom.

“See? I read it.”

“You didn’t read it, Hamlet,” she said, smile finally splitting her face. “You performed it. Quite beautifully.” The way she said that made my stomach feel like someone had filled it with slippery fish. “I don’t understand,” I said, hoping for another explanation—one that would make sense and get rid of the uncomfortable shaking in my gut. I’d spent my whole life avoiding the Bard, and this was like finding out we were related.

“You may have read the lines from the text,” Mrs. Wimple said. “But your inflection, pronunciation, and emotional content brought the character to
life
.” Her face broke open into another wide smile, which made that stomach of sea creatures splash into my feet. “Shall we try it again?”

“I know what I did,” I snapped, anger busting through the fear. “I
read
. And I don’t want to do it again.” Suddenly, all I wanted was to be sitting in Mr. Symphony’s class, fumbling through pre-algebra. I tried to control my voice. “May I have a pass, please?”

“You have a gift, Hamlet, that you are surely wasting. It might seem like a burden now, but it is something that you owe yourself to explore. When you are adult enough to discuss it, let me know.”

“I’d like a pass,” I stated more firmly, staring at a spot over her head. “I need to go.”

Mrs. Wimple made a hissing tsk-noise at my borderline disrespect. But she pulled out her pass packet and scribbled a note to Mr. S. When she handed it to me, I spun on my heels and walked out as fast as I could.

The deserted halls echoed with the murmurs coming from the classrooms. I went straight for the girls’ bathroom on the second floor, trying not to think about Shakespeare, reading, or anything else the whole way there. When I reached it, I slammed my body through the door and locked myself in a stall. Angry tears flowed down my cheeks. My hands shook. I tried taking deep breaths to get control of myself. It was just a fluke, I reasoned, the breathing helping me calm down. I blew my nose on some toilet paper and swiped at my eyes. There was nothing to be upset about. I was just familiar with the lines because my parents practically talked in sonnets. I wasn’t
performing
anything. I just understood more of Shakespeare’s language, so my reading sounded better than the other kids’. Way better, evidently. That’s why she thought I was performing—because if that
wasn’t
it, I had a real problem:

There was nothing talentless, or average, about a girl who could spout Shakespeare like a pro. I knew it, Mrs. Wimple knew it, and my parents would too.

And the crazy of Dezzie and my parents would be nothing but shadows next to the spotlight that this fiasco would beam on me.

ix

By the time I left the bathroom and skidded—late—into pre-algebra, I’d convinced myself that if I ignored the whole thing, other people, Mrs. Wimple included, would too. It wasn’t the best strategy, but it stopped the tears. I’d have time to figure it out later, when I was in the privacy of my room and not in danger of being scouted out by a hall monitor.

That didn’t last too long. At lunch, Judith—who wasn’t in my class, but had heard the story—kept asking me questions about what happened in English. I brushed her off.

“No biggie,” I explained, trying to keep my voice light. “I knew that section because my parents had been working on the book with me at night. You know how
they
are.”

Ely and Judith bought it. Ty, I could tell, wasn’t convinced. He knew that: a.) I
never
worked on Shakespeare stuff with my parents, and b.) I was as shocked as he was when it went down. But he didn’t say anything. I owed him a cone at our next Chilly Spoon trip for that one.

As if all of that wasn’t bad enough, Saber and Mauri came by our table at the end of the period to rub it in, just as Ely was leaving for his meeting with James, the school counselor. Ely had an appointment with him every other week since his sister got leukemia when we were in sixth grade. She went through a rough time, but was okay now. After she got better, Ely said he liked hanging out with James, so he kept going.

“Heard you gave quite a performance today, Puck-face,” Mauri sneered. “Showing off what you learned at home?” Next to her, Saber curtsied.