by Alison Cummins. @alisoncummins13.
PASSAIC, NJ. - Roosevelt High School junior Rosemary Caldwell was last seen walking into a very small forest to flee her family home. Her departure comes after her grandmother, Mee-maw Caldwell, flew from Ohio to watch her final performance as Wendla in Roosevelt High’s production of Spring Awakening.
“It was my only option,” explained Caldwell as she foraged for berries. “I simply cannot have sex on stage in front of my grandmother. I’d rather die at the hands of a wild grizzly in the New Jersey wilderness. And what if she has a heart attack? She could go into respiratory failure, and it’d be all my fault. She’d never make her snickerdoodles again. It’s too great a risk.”
Mee-maw Caldwell, an eighty-year-old woman with a “my body, my choice” pin attached to her wheelchair, expressed deep concern about Rosemary’s disappearance.
“I mean, of course I hope she comes home soon,” the Caldwell matriarch said while thumbing through her Audre Lorde anthology. “But I’m not sure why she ran away. My favorite book is Fifty Shades of Gray, and I’ve seen Too Hot To Handle. I just don’t know where she got this prudishness from.”
Senior Audrey Pratt, drama club president and self-described ‘mentor’ to Rosemary, has agreed to take on the role of Wendla for tonight’s production.
“I’m just so worried about Rosemary,” Pratt lamented between vocal warmups. “I’m sure I’ll never do her justice. Even though it would’ve made sense for me to have this role from the start, since I’m a senior and soprano. Then we could’ve avoided all this... but mostly I’m concerned about Rosemary. It would just be such a bummer if she died out there in the woods and couldn’t audition for the spring show,” Pratt added with a twinkle in her eye.
At press time, Caldwell refused to exit the woods until the performance was over, declaring that she’d never show her face in town ever again due to deep embarrassment. She was seen later that night at the Spring Awakening cast party, playing “zip zap zop” with a spiked lemonade in hand.