One Last Callback, Part 2

Published by Liz Lydic at March 22, 2026

Be sure to read Part 1 first.

I got to Jonah’s house in Pasadena, a bungalow situated close to a drag of the downtown area. Walking up, I could hear the beat of drums and laughter against the still of the rest of the block.

I hugged Carole, Jonah’s mom, who had been at all of our shows. She was short, tan, and looked like the therapist I saw before I moved to LA, the one who told me what I wanted to hear when I was skeptical about skipping college to move to this city to pursue acting.

Carole was clearly happy to have so many people over, and, as rumor had it, she was completely comfortable with these underage kids drinking and smoking at her house. When I got to the backyard, I was unexpectedly met with hugs and cheers, and many “I’m so glad you showed up. We were all wondering if you were going to come” comments.

Tavi came to me and hugged me too, and I breathed in his familiar odor of cigarettes and dirty hair.

Right away, it felt good to be part of all of them, and of this celebration.

I was late to the party, and by the time I got there, everyone was in various stages of intoxication. I saw that there were some fathers of some of the younger kids there, too. Many of the kids who helped on the show were even younger than the cast, and had to have their parents take them to and from the theatre.

I wasn’t expecting these same parents to be at the party, though, especially with such outward and public partying going on. This was a whole new world to me, and it was not the first time I’d felt younger than most of the partiers, though actually, not counting two other older people from the cast — two peripheral characters — I was the oldest kid there.

There was an announcement of a drinking game to take place in a little building in the middle of the backyard, something that reminded me of a barn, with a loft upstairs. I met up with two of the girls from high school who stage-managed the show, and for whom I had a big-sister-like fondness. We settled in for the game as we waited for everyone else.

Zoi, a dark and energetic chatterbox whose older brother was part of the alumni while she still attended, was trying to get on her way to drunkenness, and was enthusiastically showing off her bottle of stowed-away vodka and her marijuana pipe. I was sort of amused by her youth and awkward desire for attention, but it also made me sad.

Lilian — a tall beauty who looked older than her fourteen years and who wore the same pair of faded jeans with Magic Marker peace signs on the front to all rehearsals — sat on the other side of me, her long legs tangled up in the armchair. She was not drinking, and I wasn’t sure if it was because her dad was there or because she didn’t drink, but I hoped for the latter.

To my delight, Tavi joined us in the sort of anti-social corner as the rest convened around a poker table and mismatching chairs to get ready for a round of something like ‘King’s Crown.’

Soon, Zoi, Lilian, Tavi, and I were talking, and in the moments when Zoi would slow down or calm down a little from dominating our conversation, Tavi would turn to me with a puzzled look on his face and a personal question, as if he’d been suppressing his desire to know about me this whole time.

Though I truly hated talking about myself, I was grateful for this attention from him — that he was interested in something about me, because he had no reason or ulterior motive other than his own interest in asking me my age, where I was from, whether or not I ever drank or if it was just tonight that I wasn’t, about my post-high school experience.

So, I answered his questions, anticipating that establishing this level of comfort would help me get to my question about yesterday. I knew that this would be a perfect opportunity to ask, seeing as how he was interested in me, or at least acting like it.

We were sharing stories of cast parties and our general partying behavior when Tavi suddenly stated, “My girlfriend doesn’t like it when I drink.”

An awkward silence fell upon our quartet, and for some reason, Zoi and Lilian were as surprised as I was. Yet, none of us proceeded to ask Tavi about the girl, about whom we’d never heard anything before. Tavi broke the silence by asking me if I had a boyfriend. I looked at him with what I anticipated as longing and coyness and shook my head ‘no.’

For some reason, though I was surprised about Tavi’s girlfriend, this announcement did not completely shake the notion of asking him about yesterday’s experience in the warmup, or even completely blocking out a possibility of kissing him.

I knew a step in the right direction of all of this would be to smoke some pot, and as I was thinking that thought, Tavi simply stated, “I need marijuana. I need it bad.”

The game had ended by the time Tavi left in search of pot, and everyone else was milling around the barn, looking for something more exciting, ready to change the scene, and pot seemed to be everyone’s motivation.

After about ten minutes of sneaking in order to casually go upstairs to the barn loft, out of sight of adults who probably didn’t care — but whom we didn’t want to disrespect — myself and some of the girls settled in to pass around a pipe.

I took three or four hits. I had a quick initial head rush, and hoped for something more if I just had some patience. In the meantime, I didn’t want to be cramped upstairs with all these people.

I walked down from the loft, trying to detect any high I might have gotten up there. I felt a little more relaxed, but nowhere near as stoned as I’d been in pot-smoking experiences before. I was thirsty, though, so I got a soda and went outside and looked around.

There were groups of kids, the ones still in high school, the ones from the show, and others somewhere in between age and familiarity to one another, and everyone was content and seemed to be fixed on one activity or another.

Some had gathered around Kade, the vibrant piano rock player from the show who was now passionately playing a keyboard and singing, no doubt something he himself had written. The kids on plastic chairs and on the grass around him seemed to try to match his words, mumbling along, though they weren’t familiar with the song.

Another small group was gathered in Jonah’s room, after some talk of playing ‘Stairway’ backward. The dads sat around the food table, deep in conversation about what, I wondered. Their kids, their pasts, their own acting or artistic endeavors?

Looking into the house, I could see that Carole was on the computer — a smile plastered on her tan face — happily surfing the web alone, clearly aware of the company and obviously thrilled to be the mother hen. Some young kids were playing video games in the living room. I could hear that a group was still in the barn, probably gathered around and talking.

Suddenly, one of the LACHSA kids announced that he was ready to give Kade a haircut. Soon, everyone was gathered around the big, gawky, dark musician, who was now outgoing and funny in his state of intoxication — completely opposite of the misanthropic and withdrawn boy I’d seen for the last month.

Small, squirrel-like Rey, a funny-looking and even funnier-sounding character who confused my assumption that he was gay by constant female-based sex jokes and stories, was the one about to perform the haircut. Many others, mainly the girls, were trying to help out, to take over, and yell about Rey’s haphazard styling.

For about ten minutes, everyone was magnetized to this haircut, to Rey’s quick, snipping motions, to Kade’s apparent nonchalance and trust in his classmate, and to Kade’s changing appearance. He looked older, more sophisticated. He could easily now pass for being in his twenties.

People were yelling, chanting, offering advice, and laughing a lot. When the excitement wore off, when it was impossible to find anything new about this haircut situation, when people realized how uninvolved or unaffected they were by it, the crowd thinned out, and the smaller groups began to re-form.

I looked around and realized that this was its own world, this moment, this party; that this was something I’d never had before, or that maybe I’d had it with not the right people at the right time.

This was what I’d pictured — what I’d dreamed of — when I read about hippies and bohemian people, artists, and an era in the past, a time that we — my own generation, my own youth, the kids from my narrow adolescence — would never understand or be part of. Here they were, a small handful. Obviously, there were others; after all, this was just one play.

These were what I imagined when I thought of flower children, peacemakers, the time when young people were on the brink of the rest of their lives and almost in charge of the future, or at least the artistic future.

It was beautiful seeing them unashamed and unafraid of being who they were with one another, and it was this that I recognized as what I admired and adored about them so much. And that I had none of it in my own growing up time.

It was exactly what made me bitter about getting older — bitter for my own already-gone past and youth, resentful of my parents for not living somewhere closer, more accessible to this opportunity and for them not pushing me further into this open, free lifestyle.

And for them not being the type of parents who could be around their children as they explored the world. They hadn’t simply observed and let me be. Instead, they were judgemental and conservative, and sheltered me from a world like this one.

A short time after Kade’s hair cut, and when I knew for sure I hadn’t really gotten stoned — or at least that the high I might have had was now gone — people began milling toward the front door and to leave.

Some of the younger kids’ parents gathered things up to go, and those picking up were circling back around the block ready to chauffeur their drunken teens home to safety. A group of actors were outside, having thanked and hugged Carole, who was still blissful from our presence, though perhaps beginning to be sad that we would all be leaving her house.

I personally wasn’t ready to leave — wasn’t ready to say good-bye. After months of involvement with shows, intense experiences of great acting and new friendships and a much-needed huge surge of confidence, I did not want any of it to end.

Tomorrow, I would have nothing — no rehearsals, no shows, no cast members, nothing to swim around in my head or be part of.

We spent our last moments together lingering on Jonah’s front lawn. We promised one another we’d be in touch and I wondered if that would really happen — if this night was enough fuel to support a further attempt at a group of us forging better friendships.

I had kept my eye on Tavi as we disbanded and I tried to catch up to him on his way to his car. I had to ask him about the warmup, if he felt anything, and explain that I had, and that I was curious if it was just me. I thought maybe this night of pot-smoking would cover for me if he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. And if he did, at least I’d know.

I walked faster and then broke into a little run toward where I sensed him disappearing. But by the time I got close to his car and called out his name, he was already inside, the headlights were on, and he was driving away.

As I got into my own car to drive home, I noticed a chill in the air. I drove through Glendale, onto the freeway, and headed home. As I came over the hill that divided the San Fernando Valley and the rest of my world in LA, I noticed that the fog had rolled in, and that the temperature had changed dramatically.

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