Saturday afternoon, one week before opening night, Sarah McPheresen had her third anxiety attack during rehearsal. She ran off the stage and hid in the bathroom. Mr. Grady sent everyone home, except for Sarah and me.
As we sat in the empty theater, Sarah couldn’t stop crying. Tears wet her cheeks and she kept sniffling, her voice hoarse. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but I can’t control it. I keep having panic attacks. My mom tells me to breathe into a paper bag, but that only works for a few minutes, and then it comes back,” she whimpered. “I can’t breathe. How am I going to sing?”
Mr. Grady leaned against the stage and spoke in a gentle voice. “What are you afraid of?”
“Blowing it. Blowing it for everyone else. Embarrassing my parents.”
“It’s just a high school play,” he said. “No one’s expecting perfection.”
“Every night, I lay in bed telling myself that. All day it builds inside me, this feeling of panic until I think I’m going to vomit, and even when I do vomit, it’s still there, the pressure in my chest. I can’t do it.” She turned to me. “You’re my understudy. Would you switch roles?”
“Me?” I gasped with surprise. “Mr. Grady chose you, and you’re a senior.”
“Please? I’d be so relieved.” She looked at me with misery in her eyes.
Mr. Grady asked, “Are you certain you want to do this, Sarah? Have you thought of medication?”
“I’m on medication. If I take more, I won’t remember my lines.” She shrugged, her voice breaking up again. “It’s just who I am. I’m not made for this.”
Mr. Grady looked at me. “Frances? Are you ready to be queen?”
I nodded, trying to hide the swell of excitement in my chest.
When Josh’s mom dropped me off at my house, I hurried into the kitchen. “Guess what? I’m the queen, the lead! Sarah is having anxiety attacks, so she wants me to switch roles.”
Mom and Dad both hugged me. Sonja curtsied and bowed. “I knew you were a footprint.” She couldn’t have been more supportive, but instead of feeling good about it, I felt guilty for all the times I’d wanted her gone.
My brother had an away game and wouldn’t be home until late. Sonja and I did our usual ritual: we made popcorn, watched reruns of Friends, and sipped ginger ale from wine glasses. Sonja kept checking her phone for messages from my brother, but he hadn’t left any.
I tried to warn her. “You can’t compete with soccer. Soccer will win.”
At ten o’clock, I told her, “I need to go to sleep. I have my first rehearsal as queen tomorrow.” I set the alarm on my cell for six-thirty. “I’ve got to get up early and go over my lines.”
“Let’s go over them now,” Sonja offered.
I knew she was trying to find excuses to wait up for Will. “Don’t wait up,” I told her. “He won’t be home until after midnight. He’ll be exhausted. Just wait until tomorrow.”
Her shoulders dropped. Usually Sonja was decisive, but tonight she looked sad, desperately sad. She stood staring out the window.
I turned out the lights. “Seriously, I can’t be tired tomorrow.”
She lay beside me quietly, but I couldn’t sleep, not with her tossing and turning. Every time a car turned the corner, she got very still, and when it kept going, she would shift positions.
When Will finally got home long after midnight, she tiptoed into the hallway. I heard whispers, his and hers, and then his voice rose angrily—“Not tonight. Just leave me alone. Go to bed.”—and then a scuffling and more heated whispers before he slammed his door. Sonja returned to my bed and curled up in a ball under the covers. The bed shook with her muffled weeping. I reached over and put my hand on her back, unleashing a flood. “He ended it,” she wept. “He said it would be better to just be friends.” She tried to muffle her tears in the pillow, but they came in waves. Eventually I fell asleep, even with her crying beside me.
By the time I woke up the next morning, she was gone. I thought she’d gone into my sister’s room, but when I opened my sister’s door, I saw that Sonja had taken everything, her suitcase, backpack, and toiletries.
I found Mom in the kitchen reading the newspaper. “I guess her mother came to pick her up.”
“I took her home,” Mom said. “She was up at five. She said she needed to leave.”