The Fat Lady Sings by Charlie Lovett

without a drink -- this has probably been the most horrible time of her life. She's probably been through all sorts of nastiness, and she did it for me, so she could have one last chance at being my Mom.
    And I hold her a little more tightly and, OK, maybe I cry a little bit. But only a little. I mean, I've got a five-page paper due tomorrow.

Scene 3
And so begin the weirdest two weeks of my life -- so far, at least. Every morning Mom is up dressed like Betty Crocker -- apron and all -- making breakfast, and I'm not talking frozen waffles in the toaster, but actual bacon, eggs, and grits breakfast. And she sits across the table while I'm eating and asks about rehearsals and about math class -- because apparently Karl told her everything that happened while she was gone.
    In fact, it seems like Mom is talking to Karl practically every day -- half the time he calls her during breakfast, and when I finally ask her about it there's this long pause and Mom gets her sincere face on -- which is a totally new look for her -- and tells me that she's going to Alcoholics Anonymous and that Karl is her sponsor.
    Well, knock me over with a chicken feather! Apparently Karl was this real heavy drinker during college and he started going to AA twenty-five years ago and he's the one who convinced Mom to go into rehab (after years of trying, she said). Karl! Go figure. So I now officially live in America's strangest family.
    Anyhow, I go from this surreal domestic drama every morning to school, where I continue my surreal mathematical drama with Cynthia Pirelli. She's still nice, and I still act angry without ever really being able to hate her while she's sitting right there, and she still explains math better than Mr. Donahue, and we still don't talk about theatre, and it's all still weird, weird, weird. You know that saying about nobody talking about the elephant in the room? Well, when I'm with Cynthia, it's like there's a whole herd of elephants in the room along with some camels, a couple of llamas, and a Sasquatch, but we just keep on talking about integrals. Who knew there could be so much unspoken drama in calculating the area under a curve?
    And then there is the dramatic drama. Maybe my first couple of days at rehearsal were some sort of grace period, but now I can't even walk in the door without being pestered to death. Melissa Parsons constantly wants to change lines or add something or take something out. Walker Stewart, who's playing Jean Paul, the exchange student, seems to take delight in finding typos in my script. Cameron wants to me to lengthen one scene to allow time for a costume change and shorten another since Janet Humphries has to miss four rehearsals because her family is going to Disney World next week. Everybody wants something from me.
    On the one hand this is really annoying and I wish people would leave me alone so I can concentrate on my acting -- I mean, I am playing the lead. On the other hand -- well, it's pretty cool that everyone needs me. I mean, here I am, the kid who got ignored for most of school, and suddenly I'm in demand. I'm the expert. I'm the Creator -- and yes, I spelled that with a capital "C" because in the world of this play, I basically am God.
    And so it goes for a week or so -- breakfast with Mom, math with Cynthia, rehearsal with my ego. And then we finish blocking Act I, and it's back to music rehearsals. Time for me to sing.
    There are eight musical numbers in the show. Three of them I sing all by myself, and in three more I have solo verses. Cameron's lyrics are outrageous, and we all have to stop singing about a thousand times, we're laughing so hard. Actually, not all of us. Our music director never laughs, as far as I can tell.
    He's this guy David Larson who plays guitar and piano and writes songs and sings in the chorus and takes private voice lessons and has already gotten into Berklee in Boston. Cameron says we should all be super grateful that David has agreed to help us, like