Chapter One
I could practically smell the nervous sweat under my pits as I peeked out from behind the curtains at the packed house. Porter Township High School had a brand-new theater where we’d been invited to perform tonight in the Comedy Mash-Up. It was a gorgeous space with a shiny wood stage and rows of red velvet seats that were currently filled with the butts of one hundred and eighty high school students.
Maneuvering from center stage through the darkness of the wings to the backstage area, I took a seat on the ratty couch that must have hosted at least seven generations of drama geek tears and farts. It was comforting to know that even if Porter’s improv group, Scared Scriptless, had a theater that was newer and shinier than ours, it still featured the obligatory disgusting backstage area. I carefully set down the reusable water bottle with our team’s mascot swimming around in it.
“Aye, Captain Ellie!” Quinn shouted in her best pirate voice as she ran through the backstage. She jumped into the seat next to me, releasing an explosion of cushion-fluff. “This is so exciting. Did you see how many people are in the audien—you…you brought Harold?” She pointed to the goldfish.
Spontaneous Combustion had named our group’s mascot Harold after the most well-known improvisational form, the “Harold,” created by Del Close from the iO Theater in Chicago. Since our school was in a suburb just outside of Chicago, we took pride in the fact we were born near some of the most famous improv theaters in the country—iO, Second City, the Annoyance Theater. Harold was our shout-out to that. As co-captain, it was now my job to take care of him, and in the first two weeks of school, I’d come to the conclusion that goldfish were highly underrated pets.
“Yeah, for our first show of the year, I made up a new policy that we’ll bring Harold wherever we perform. For good luck. Right, lil’ guy?” I pressed my finger to the side of the bottle, and he swam up, his tiny mouth making happy bubbles.
“What does your co-captain think of that?” Quinn raised her eyebrows, her eyes reminding me more than ever of a slow loris—those weird monkey creatures whose eyeballs take up a disproportionate amount of their face—but in a hazel, pretty-girl kind of way.
“Think of what? Endangering the life of goldfish?” Hana, the other co-captain, asked in her staccato way as she cracked open a can of fizzy tangerine juice and shrugged. “I’m cool with it.”
“I just know you two will be great as our new captains.” Quinn squealed and pulled me in for a hug. She waved Hana in, but Hana, not a hugger, chugged some of her drink and then belched at Quinn in defense.
I laughed. I loved Hana. She’d moved to Northglenn the summer before high school, but after being the only two freshmen cast in Spontaneous Combustion, it felt like we’d known each other our whole lives. I’d finally found a friend I could totally relate to. It didn’t hurt that we lived on the same side of town—the ugly-apartment-complexes side, me in Glenshire Cove, and Hana in The Regency. “Such glamorous names for such humble little hovels,” Hana loved to say.
“Ew,” Quinn said as she released me from her love/death-grip.
With sweet Harold safe, providing us his goldfish good luck from his spot in the wings, we joined the other five members of our group onstage to get ready for the show.
As Hana and Quinn took their turns peeking out through the curtains, Quinn asked, “How did Scared Scriptless manage to get such a big turn out?”
“For starters, I imagine they don’t use our group’s zero-advertising marketing strategy,” I said.
“Mmm.” Hana was rubbing her cheek on the plush curtain, her eyes closed. “I want to steal this theater and put it in my bedroom so I can wake up on these golden floorboards snuggled in these velvety curtains every morning. Can I do that?”
“I believe in you.” I smiled and clapped my hands together once. “Okay, we’re about to start, let’s get the group circled up.”
“We’re ready for this.” Hana released the curtain and turned to us, looking more like a warrior than an improviser. “This place is awesome. We’re gonna wreck some faces tonight.” She gave Quinn a chest bump and then graced me with one.
“Ow,” Quinn and I said in unison.
Hana Yoon: a Chihuahua who thought she was a pit bull. She had all the makings of an all-star athlete, minus the small details of her pint-size body and zero athletic ability. Amping up before performances was how she unleashed her competitive spirit, even if our improv show wasn’t technically a competition.
The lights in the theater dimmed as the music swelled. Over the music, a guy in the sound booth announced our group. “Welcome to Porter Township High School’s Friday night Comedy Mash-Up! Pleeease put your hands together and welcome our guests for the evening, Northglenn High’s SPONTANEOUUUUUUS COMBUSTION!”
As the red curtains parted, I could practically feel our collective stomachs flip.
Hana gave our group’s standard spiel. “Tonight, we’ll be doing a short-form style of improv similar to the TV show ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’ We’ll get suggestions from you in the audience and create instant scenes based on your suggestions. Are you ready?”
The audience cheered, and we launched into our first scene. Our show clicked along as we played our favorite games of Arms Expert, Broadway Musical, and Replay. Hana and I traded off between emceeing, playing, and guiding our team from the wings.
Toward the end of our thirty-minute set, we started our last game and invited Scared Scriptless to play with us. In the game of Freeze, two players do a scene until someone on the sidelines yells “Freeze,” then the players have to hold whatever pose they were in. Another actor tags one person out, takes on the same position but starts an entirely new scene that justifies that starting position. It continues as people call out “Freeze” and start new scene after new scene.
At one point, I was onstage with Chris, a massive guy who used to be on the football team. He was carrying me around completely tipped on my side as he shouted about finding “the lost statue,” when someone from Scared Scriptless yelled, “Freeze!”
A boy from the other team ran up to tag one of us out, which meant I would soon either have to hold a stranger or be held by a stranger. Fantastic. The Porter boy was thin, but through his navy-blue T-shirt that read Scared Scriptless in a bold font, his chest and shoulders had a nice amount of oomph. Before I got a good look at his face, he disappeared behind me.
He tagged Chris out. They exchanged spots, while I tried to hold my statue position on my side with one hand on my hip and one hand under my head, elbows out. Chris’s large forearm left my waist and was replaced by a tan, leaner version. This wrist sported one of those wristbands for a cause, which nestled up to… Well, I’d have to describe it as the sexiest watch I’d ever seen—which was odd, since I’d never considered them sexy before. In fact, I was pretty sure I never used the word “sexy” to describe anything, except while being sarcastic (like when Hana jokingly made-out with her pudding cup at lunch and had brown goop all around her mouth I said, “Real sexy, Hana.”).
As the boys continued to shift my weight for the pass, I let myself dwell on Porter Boy’s watch—the thickness of the black leather band, the shininess of the silver face. The word “manly” came to mind. His thumb ever-so slightly grazed the bottom of my left breast as he took complete hold of me. Fortunately, I didn’t have time to worry about it because he had started the scene.
Even though Porter Boy had proven he was confident physically carrying me, his character pretended to be awkward and shifted me back and forth while stuttering and umming.
The experienced improviser in me pushed past the inner freak-out all his touching was causing and reacted to his offer. I wiggled out of his clutches, and we faced each other, our eyes connecting for a second. His were a pleasing shade of brown—earthy but bright. When our gaze broke, the coolest thing happened. We both started doing the same thing at the same time: brushing each other off and saying things like, “ooh, sorry,” and “err, excuse me…” We entered into some abstract game with each other.
Turning him around so his back was to me, I tapped him between his shoulder blades. As if reading my mind, he immediately fell back into my arms. I didn’t know why I needed him to do that, or how he knew to do it, only that is was supposed to happen next in our weird game. I easily caught him and dragged him backwards. Our characters were in some alternate universe where they had to get somewhere but only one person could do the transporting at a time.
Sure, it made no sense whatsoever, but that was the glory of improv, and the audience loved it. Despite the bizarreness, Porter Boy and I were so committed that every new position—me getting a piggyback ride, him on my back like I was a horse—caused the audience to laugh harder.
Porter Boy pretended to come upon a stream. He mimed testing the water and then lay down in the imaginary stream and patted his chest, signaling me to climb on top of him. I gathered I was supposed to lie on top of him like he was a raft, so that’s what I did. Putting my hands on either side of his shoulders, I lowered myself down like I was doing a slow push up. His breath. So much heat. The swish-rush-thump of his blood through his heart.
Then reality hit.
From the outside, it must have looked like a weird improv girl about to lie right on top of a strange boy. Onstage. In front of almost two hundred people.
We had been doing near-acrobatics for the past two minutes. Snippets popped into my mind—entangled arms, wrapped legs, arched backs. My brain processed the building energy of the audience, the rising laughter, the hoots and whistles, and I realized our scene must have looked like an epic dry-humping session.
Mortification enveloped me, like all the naked, peeing nightmares of childhood but without the happy escape of waking. I feared this might be one of those shuddery life-moments to etch a forever-home on my memory’s instant-cringe list.
And yet. The rare connection, the out-of-body-ness… I understood what it felt like to be in the moment. I also knew there was “in the moment,” focused but aware, and really in the moment, where everything outside the scene slipped away. It was what I’d read about in all our improv books—like some Holy Grail of improvisation. But I hadn’t known it was possible to totally “lose your mind” and be completely in the moment. Now I did, and it was fun.
If only it could have happened in private.
But it hadn’t. And we were still in it—I was hovering perilously close to his face, as all this flashback processed in the embarrassment quadrant of my brain in an instant. I made the mistake of looking him in the eyes.
Our faces were so close. His lips formed a shy grin on one side, revealing a single, irresistible, dimple. We cracked up, and I released the rest of my weight onto him in a fit of nervous laughter, my head falling in the crook between his neck and shoulder. My nose informed me I had a new favorite smell. As he brushed off some of my hair that had fallen in his face, his arm mashed against me in a nice and only slightly suffocating kind of way, and he shouted, “Will someone please yell freeze already?”
Someone from the audience yelled, “No! We’re waiting for you to do it.”
“Yeah!” the whole audience agreed in unison.
And then they chanted, “Do it! Do it! Do it!”
Oh my God. It hit me that I was, in fact, still laying on top of him. Super speedily I stopped sniffing him like some crazed wildebeest and jumped up, only to be left standing downstage, caught and bewildered, a flush of embarrassment crying out like a face tattoo.
I decided I really should quit improv.
It would make life so much easier.
Finally, Quinn rescued me by yelling, “Freeze!” and tapping Porter Boy out. Spontaneous Combustion had been asking for the guest improvisers’ names, so as Quinn came to tag-out Porter Boy, she did the same.
“Everyone, please give Jason a big round of applause.” And with that, Jason waved sheepishly and ran down the stage steps to sit back with the rest of Scared Scriptless.
My scene with Porter Boy—Jason—was all I could think about during my next scene with Quinn. People were laughing, but I was going through the motions, still reeling inside. Fortunately, I was saved from trying to get through another scene when Hana said, “And freeze! Thank you. That’s our show.” She let the audience clap a bit, then Spontaneous Combustion took our bows, and she shouted, “We’d like to thank Scared Scriptless for inviting us to play here tonight. Now, please give a big welcome to Porter’s own: Scared Scriptless!”
Spontaneous Combustion took our seats in the front row of the theater as Scared Scriptless took the stage. My heart seemed to beat louder than the music that started up again.
A tall guy with curly hair and glasses who introduced himself as Owen addressed the audience. “Thanks, Spontaneous Combustion. Before we start our set, Scared Scriptless has an exciting announcement.” Owen got mock-serious and made his voice low, rumbling into the microphone he was holding. “We were recently approached by some people who are a pretty big deal.” He popped his words into the mic. “These comedy VIPs want to hold a contest right here.” He pointed to the wood floor. “I’m talking about none other than your favorite online source for comedy. That’s right—drum roll please…”
From the side of the stage, all the members of Scared Scriptless made drum roll sounds with their mouths or with their hands hitting against their thighs.
“This is big. Are you ready?” The audience cheered. Owen held the microphone a few inches from his face as he yelled, “Comedy Hub! Did you hear me? Comedy Hub. Here at Porter Township High School, Comedy Hub will be hosting a huge Comedy Contest for college-bound seniors from all over the Chicagoland area. The competition is only six weeks from today, on October thirteenth. Yes, it will be on Friday the thirteenth, but don’t fear. It’ll be someone’s lucky day.” Owen’s pale skin turned splotchy red with the force of his screaming and excitement as his lanky limbs gesticulated wildly.
“The main part of the competition is a standup competition where the grand-prize winner will receive five hundred dollars. The winner will also…” Owen inhaled deeply, then raised his free hand above his head as he shouted, “have his or her set featured on Comedy Hub dot com.” The audience became even crazier. I was really glad he chose to save this announcement until after our set.
I stole as many looks at Jason during Owen’s speech as I could. He had a habit of running his hand through his hair to keep it out of his eyes. Lucky hand.
Owen continued pacing around the stage like a panther, unable to contain his enthusiasm. “There’s even more. In addition to the standup competition, there will also be a sketch category, with each member of the winning sketch team—another drum roll is needed, guys…” Scared Scriptless provided another, louder drum roll sound effect for Owen. “One hundred dollars each for up to five members. Can you believe it?” He wiped his now-sweaty forehead while the audience continued to cheer. “The details were just posted to Scared Scriptless’s website. Okay,”—all through the audience phones lit up—“back to your previously scheduled show. Scared Scriptless will now do a different style of improv from what you just saw. We do a long-form called the Harold and we need one suggestion to get us started.”
Hana leaned over to me. “Ooh, here’s your chance to try standup like you’ve always wanted.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve never written a joke in my life.”
“But you could. I’ve seen the way you watch it—like you’re studying.”
I shook off the idea. “I don’t have anything interesting to write about. And even if I did, I’d be up against people who’ve probably, you know, done it before.”
“Since when has standup been about something interesting? Usually it’s about nothing.”
“Okay fine, you do it then.”
“Solo at the mic is not my style. And, I’ve got to focus on rustling up some assistant directing or producing opportunities before the ol’ college apps are due. Can’t prove to anyone I’m supposed to be in charge if I’m not in charge of anything,” Hana said.
I scoffed. But I didn’t tell her how hypocritical she was, because I was still reeling from the sensation of having left my skin onstage in my scene with Jason. Plus, now was my chance to focus on their show and stare freely at Jason for as long as I pleased.
By the end of Scared Scriptless’s set, they managed to get all three storylines of their Harold to converge. Compared to our show, theirs was magic. And Jason was definitely one of the strongest improvisers in their group. His performance came off as effortlessly funny, and he had an incredible range of characters. What impressed me the most was that he was like a comedy surgeon, knowing exactly when to enter or exit a scene, or add the smallest detail to support his teammates and make the scene that much tighter.
I leaned over to Hana and Quinn and whispered, “Can we please get out of here as fast as improviserably possible?” As I got up to join in the clapping, I caught Jason’s eyes. He seemed to be staring right at me.
Yeah, I should definitely quit improv.
After the show, I grabbed Harold and tried to round up all the freshmen and sophomores in our carpool and get all eight members of our team to a centralized spot. While I had my guard down, the captain of Scared Scriptless—Mark Weiss, who was the son of Channel Seven News’s affable weatherman—came up to invite us to an after-party.
“We’re headed to J.C.’s house. You should come.” He said this, theoretically, to all of us, but his eyes were in a laser-pointed lockdown on Quinn.
I didn’t answer, too busy noticing the intensity of Mark’s stare and how much he resembled his dad—they even had that same oddly tan skin.
Fortunately, Hana hadn’t zoned out and could still form sentences. “We’d love to, but we’ve got a few young newbies with annoying curfews mucking up our hangout options.”
“Damn. The good news is there will be a bigger party tomorrow night. You should all definitely come to that one. Yo, J.C.” Mark, finally breaking his creepo gaze away from Quinn, shouted at his teammate and waved him over.
When I stopped trying to figure out if Mark’s skin color was real or sprayed-on, I was surprised at who was jogging toward us. Somehow I’d managed to convince myself I wouldn’t have to see him again until I’d better prepared myself. And yet, there he was, standing right next to me.
“Hey, nice show,” he said to me.
“I thought your name was Jason,” I blurted like a champ. Mark and Jason looked at me quizzically, and even Hana and Quinn cringed a bit.
“It is. Jason Cooper. First and last names. Mark has a thing about calling people by their initials.” Jason did that one-corner-of-his-mouth smile again, as his brown eyes seemed to twinkle.
Could eyes really twinkle? That wasn’t fair. Maybe it was his long lashes reflecting the stage lights and causing some illusion? I willed his eyes to stop looking so good. “Cool.” A nervous, gulping, laughter-like sound lurched out of me. Apparently my wits had been taken hostage and beaten to death by my hormones.
Also, it was more evidence I hadn’t had a lot of boyfriends. No serious ones at least. It wasn’t that I was a total prude, but people are brave in different ways. Making a fool out of myself in front of hundreds of people by pretending to be someone else was way easier than in front of one person as the real me.
Hana, who had closed her eyes in pain, was taking a deep breath, trying not to laugh. Thanks, Hana. Stay strong for me. After a silent beat, she finally opened her eyes and came to my rescue. “Hello, Jason, nice to meetcha. I’m Hana, this is Quinn and Ellie. So. Mark tells us you’re having a party Saturday and we’re invited?”