Take My Advice

by Tristi Pinkston

  We decided to start with the scene where Anne and Gilbert meet, and we instantly fell into our roles. I hadn’t seen Dylan act before, and I was really impressed. It was like he dropped his own persona and totally adopted a new one, like he became Gilbert Blythe, complete with a little bit of cockiness. It was kind of attractive, in a Dylan sort of way. We reached the end of the scene and heard clapping from the family room doorway.

  “You two are good,” my mom said. “I can’t wait to see this play.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Reed.” Dylan seemed a little embarrassed, but I didn’t know why. He had every reason to be proud. “Yeah, I think we’ll have a lot of fun.”

  “I put out some sandwiches and chips, if you’re hungry,” Mom offered. “I’ll be in my room getting some work done, but I’m tempted to hang out here and watch you some more. You’re really good.” She winked at me over Dylan’s head as she left the room, whatever that was for.

  We went up to the kitchen and grabbed our food. Doritos—my favorite. I waited until Dylan seemed totally relaxed. Not that he’d been uptight before, but I thought that getting his blood sugar up a little first would be good. Then I said, “I wonder if Amanda’s having a good time on her date.”

  “She probably is. Ethan seems nice.”

  What? That was a totally weird reply. Here I was, trying to gauge the levels of his deep internal turmoil (in a very non-meddling way), and he was complimenting his rival? I didn’t get it.

  “So how’s your list coming?” Dylan asked after polishing off the last of his root beer.

  I saw what he was doing—he was deflecting his emotions by concentrating on my situation instead of his own. He’d never let me get away with that, but I’d let him, just this once, because I’m nice. “I’m pretty much done. I’ve only got one thing left to do, and that’s ask a guy I like to a dance.”

  “Fall Fling’s coming up,” Dylan remarked. “Who are you going to ask?”

  “Probably Scotty.” I said this as offhandedly as I could, but I still felt my cheeks go a little pink.

  “Scotty? The newspaper photographer? When did this happen?”

  “Um, just yesterday, really. We hung out in the afternoon and then had a date last night.”

  “And you’re only talking about it now . . . why?” He put on a hurt face. “We’re besties, Jill. You’re supposed to tell me everything.”

  “Yeah, I know. I don’t know why I didn’t mention it. But now we have a problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We need to find you a date for the dance. Have you got your eye on someone special?” Maybe now he’d finally come clean about Amanda.

  He paused. “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure she’ll be going with someone else. Got any other friends you could introduce me to?”

  “More like acquaintances—you and Amanda are the only two people I hang out with. But I do know some girls I think you’d like. I’ll have a list ready Monday and we can go over it, okay?”

  He grinned. “Putting it on my calendar now.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I took my promise to Dylan very seriously, and Monday morning, I stood with him in the hall, introducing him to all the girls I thought he’d like. Some chatted for a second, and others were like, “Why is Jill introducing me to this random dude?”

  I’d thought he’d be good after meeting two or three nice girls, but he kept saying, “Who’s next?” like we were in a contest to see how many girls he could possibly meet before class started. Poor guy—it probably would take a lot of girls and a lot of flirting for him to get over Amanda.

  Ethan came over and sat with us during lunch, and Amanda looked happier than I’d seen her in a long time. That’s saying a lot, considering that Amanda is one of the happiest people on earth anyway. Ethan put his arm around her shoulders at one point, and if I were capable of looking at them objectively, I might have thought they made a cute couple, but I was too busy feeling awkward on Dylan’s behalf. It must have been so hard for him to sit there and watch Amanda flirting with another guy. If Amanda knew how Dylan felt about her, she’d be a lot more considerate of his feelings, but she didn’t know, and I couldn’t tell her because that was Dylan’s job, and he wasn’t doing it. I was getting more frustrated by the minute.

  I honestly had no idea what happened. I was coming up the hall and Scotty was coming down it, and I gave him a little wave with the tips of my fingers. I knew he saw me, and yet for some reason, he glanced away from me and kept walking like I wasn’t even there.

  I stopped in the middle of the hallway and stared at his retreating back. What on earth . . . He’d been flirting with me forever, and now, after one date, he was acting like I didn’t exist? I shook my head and kept walking. I’d have to figure this out later—I was going to be late for class.

  After school, we had our first official play practice. It was absolutely nothing like running lines at my house—the entire drama room was full of people, from the stage and set crews making lists of what they needed and the costume designers sorting through trunks of clothes to see what they had and what they should get to all the other actors and actresses. My hands were shaking so badly, I almost couldn’t make out the words of the script I held.

  “Hey.” Dylan’s voice was soft in my ear. “Just like we practiced, okay? You’ve got this, Jill. You’ve totally got this.”

  “If Bruce weren’t so sick, I’d go beat him up,” I muttered. “I can’t believe he made me do this.”

  “It was your choice to stick with it,” Dylan reminded me. “And I’m glad you did. This is going to be fun.”

  “How is throwing up all over the stage fun?” I countered. “That does not sound fun to me.”

  He put his arm around my shoulders and leaned in. I thought he was going to say something nice and friendly and comforting, but instead, he whispered, “I’ll have Amanda stand in the wings with a bucket.”

  I elbowed him.

  Mr. Bell held up his hands for silence, and the chatter that had filled the room a moment ago subsided. “I’m glad you could all make it. Crew, please keep working on your assignments. Cast, I hope you became somewhat familiar with your lines over the weekend.” Then he asked me and Dylan to come up front.

  My legs sort of carried me up there. It was more of a stagger, really. Mr. Bell threw me a sympathetic look, and then he asked us to read through our first scene together, the one we’d practiced at my house. I was glad for that—it took some of the pressure off me. Not all of it, but some.

  Dylan was in character immediately, and I was able to follow suit a moment later. As we read, Mr. Bell made notes on his copy of the script, and I couldn’t help but wonder what he was writing. Probably instructions to give us when we were done with the scene, but of course I imagined that he was making frowny faces and questioning why he’d bothered to cast me when I was obviously doing such a crappy job.

  He nodded when we were done. “Excellent. You two are really getting into your parts. Jill, have you had a chance to look over the rest of the script?”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much all I did over the weekend.”

  “Did you notice how many scenes you’re in?”

  I gave a little snort. “Um, yes. Almost all of them.”

  “And how are you feeling about that? I know it’s overwhelming, especially when you’ve never had experience with drama before.”

  “Honestly? I might throw up. Lots of times.”

  Mr. Bell laughed. “You wouldn’t be the first. Performing isn’t easy for anyone, even those who’ve done it several times. It will get a little easier with time, though. I promise. And I’ve never had a student die on stage.”

  That was very, very comforting.

  I glanced across the room to where Amanda and Ethan were hunched over a notebook, sketching set design ideas. From what I could tell, Ethan was really talented. I’d have to see if I could get a closer look after Dylan and I were done with our scene.

  “Let’s go again,�
� Mr. Bell said. “And this time, I have a few notes.”

  Oh, boy.

  “Jill, you did great. Honestly.” Dylan nudged my shoulder. “How’d you like it?”

  I sighed and let my head rest on the back of the couch. “I liked it. It was fun. But how am I supposed to remember all those lines in front of an entire auditorium full of people?”

  “That’s what the prompter is for. He’ll whisper your next line whenever you need him to.”

  “We might just need to have him come up on stage and do the play for me.”

  “Oh, come on,” Amanda said from her chair in the corner. “You’re going to be great. Dylan says so, and he should know.”

  “I’m starting to get nauseated again. Let’s change the subject,” I said. “Dylan’s going to ask a girl to Fall Fling, and we need to help him brainstorm a cute way to ask her.”

  Amanda gave a little squeal. “Really? Who are you going to ask, Dylan?”

  “I don’t know yet. Jill introduced me to a bunch of girls today, and I haven’t decided.”

  “You make that sound as exciting as shopping for produce,” Amanda said.

  “You should go with someone because you like her, not because you feel obligated to go with her,” I added. “And produce shopping can be lots of fun. It’s all in the attitude.”

  Dylan snorted. “I already told you—the one I really like is probably going with someone else. But let’s see. Out of the girls I met this morning, I think I liked Jessica the best.”

  I nodded. My thoughts exactly. “Perfect. Jessica’s awesome, and I think you’d have a great time.”

  “Should we go on a triple date?” Amanda suggested. “That would be so much fun.”

  I was about to object, thinking how hard that would be for Dylan, but he spoke up before I could. “Yeah, let’s.”

  Okay, whatever. His choice.

  “So, what would be a fun way for him to ask her?” Amanda put on her thinking face. “Flowers always work. So you should use flowers.”

  “And make it into a little game,” I said. “Like a rhyme to go with the flowers.”

  “A rhyme? I’m terrible at rhymes,” Dylan said.

  “No worries. We’ll help you.” Amanda leaned forward, her eyes alight. “How about, ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, I’d like to go to Fall Fling with you.’”

  Dylan and I winced at the same time.

  “Okay, so that wasn’t very good. But you get the idea. And there should be a cute way for her to answer you back.”

  Dylan nodded. “Thanks. I think I’ll give it a try on my own. But you’ve given me some really good ideas.”

  I interpreted that as a tactful way of saying, “Enough already.” Yeah, we probably were getting too eager. But it was all for his own good.

  Dylan left a little while after that, and I turned to Amanda. “So, you’re never going to guess what happened today.”

  “Something happened, and you had to wait until Dylan was gone to talk about it?” She scooted forward a little more in her chair, looking ready for some really juicy gossip. “What was it?”

  I told her what had happened with Scotty in the hall.

  “Oh, that’s just weird,” she said. “Your date went really well, right?”

  “Yeah, it did. And he said he wanted to go out again. But today, I could have been invisible, for all he cared. No, worse than invisible, because you can’t turn away and ignore something you don’t know is there.”

  “Crazy.” Amanda shook her head. “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, it’s not like he was mine or anything, but I do want to know what’s going on.” And maybe go back in time and not let him hold my hand after all.

  The next day, Mr. Bell brought in a box of props and handed me the one on top. It was a slate, like Anne would have used, but it had a loose frame. “If you hold it like this,” he showed me, “the frame will pop off when you bring it down on Dylan’s head.”

  “Am I going to brain him?” I asked.

  “No,” Mr. Bell said with a smile. “Boys are pretty thick-skulled. He’ll be fine.”

  I couldn’t wait to try it out, and that was the first scene Mr. Bell asked us to rehearse that day. The prop crew had brought in some old-fashioned school desks so we could start putting the scene together. Heather sat beside me in my two-student desk, still not being very Diana-like. Dylan sat across the aisle from me, a big grin on his face.

  We ran through our lines a few times before we added the slate smash. Then we were ready to take it from the top “for real.” Everything went great until I brought that slate down on Dylan’s head.

  In that moment, it was like something shifted in the room. Everything started spinning around me. All I could see was the blue of Dylan’s eyes as he looked up at me, and I couldn’t bear the thought that I’d hurt him. I threw the slate down on my desk and turned and ran. I didn’t even know where I was going—I only barely heard Dylan calling after me. I didn’t stop until I reached the long hallway leading to my locker. It was after school, so everything was nearly dark, the only light being filtered in through the classrooms on either side of the hall. I leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor, then put my head on my knees.

  “Hey.” Dylan squatted down beside me and rubbed my back. “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I was just . . . One minute, I was just saying my lines, and the next . . .” I didn’t know how to explain it. That flash of feeling, seeing his eyes, seeing something in them that I couldn’t identify and yet wanted to so very badly—how did I even begin to explain all that to him? How could I when I couldn’t even explain it to myself?

  “Did I say something or do something—”

  “No. No,” I said quickly. “You know what, let’s just go back and keep rehearsing. I’m fine now.” I stood up and smiled to show how very, very fine I was. He seemed to buy it.

  “Okay. But I think this time, you need to smash the slate harder. That didn’t seem very realistic.”

  Yeah. That would solve everything, right?

  A pile of mail was waiting on the table. Mom must have brought it in earlier, but I didn’t see her anywhere. What I did see was a large white envelope with a jaggedly opened edge, and I picked it up. It was addressed to my mom, so I didn’t pull out the contents, but the return address label was from a lawyer’s office downtown. These must be the divorce papers. I hadn’t expected them to come so fast. They must have been sitting on this guy’s desk just waiting for the go-ahead to drop them in the mail. I wondered if Mom had signed them already, and how long it would take for everything to be finalized. It was happening too fast—much, much too fast.

  “Mom?”

  “Up here.”

  I followed the sound of her voice. She was upstairs, lying on her bed, with the curtains drawn. “Mom?” I spoke softly in the doorway.

  “You can come in.”

  I sat down on the edge of her bed. Her eyes were red and puffy, but she wasn’t crying anymore.

  “I guess you saw the mail,” she said.

  “Yeah.” I paused. My own emotions were roiling, but now as I looked at her, I saw her. Not as my mother, but as a woman, someone who was hurting, who was facing the end of an era and maybe even the shattering of some hopes and dreams. I was surprised to realize that this was the first time I’d stepped back emotionally and seen her that way. My stress was transformed into compassion, and I climbed up next to her on the bed and put my arm around her. “I love you, Mom,” I said, and we lay there together until the sun went down.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mom and I called a pizza for dinner, and we ate ice cream and watched her favorite sappy movie. I wouldn’t have thought that hanging out with my mom was fun, but it actually was. As the closing credits rolled, she reached over and patted my knee.

  “Thank you, Jill,” she said. “Today could have been really awful, and to be honest, I dreaded you coming home because I
knew this was going to hurt you. Thanks for handling this so well, and thank you for being here for me.”

  Her voice was so open and raw, I couldn’t help the tear that rolled down my cheek. “You’re welcome, Mom.”

  “I’m going up to bed.” She patted my leg again before standing up.

  “Hey, Mom? Can I borrow the car? I want to go see Bruce.”

  She glanced at the clock. “It’s after nine. Do you think they’ll let you in?”

  “Can I try?”

  “Sure. Keys are in my purse. Try not to be out too late, all right?”

  I wasn’t sure why I felt so drawn to go visit Bruce that night, but it was a pull I couldn’t ignore. When I got to the hospital, I walked right in and no one stopped me, so I figured I was okay to be there even though the visitors’ hours posted over the desk ended a few hours before. Bruce was sitting up watching TV, but as soon as he saw me, he flipped off the screen.

  “Hey,” I said, dropping into the chair next to the bed. His mom must have gone home for the night. “How are you?”

  “Can’t go home yet. I got an infection and they’re killing it with antibiotics. But other than that, I’m fine.”

  “You’re fine except you’re dying?”

  “Pretty much.” He scooted a little so he could see me better. “What’s up?”

  I don’t know why I did it, but I suddenly found myself telling him everything—Scotty flaking out on me, my weird Twilight Zone moment in drama class, the divorce papers, my mom looking like a forlorn little girl. To my surprise, he listened to me—really listened.

  “Man, that’s rough,” he said when I was done rambling.

  “Yeah. I’m not dying in the hospital, though.”