“Why does no one feel my pain?” I said. “This is the worst feeling in the world.”
“I know,” said Megan. “It sucks. It really does. I hate Brandon. I want to cut off his balls.”
“Good,” I said from her lap.
She stroked my hair for a second. “But it’s still your senior year. You’ve lost the beginning of your last term to this dick. I don’t want you to lose spring theater auditions. Or Carnegie Mellon auditions. None of it. Say it with me. Not because of the dick! Not because of the dick!”
“Not because of the dick,” I mumbled.
“There you go. You are on your way toward healing. Which is good, because my mom is texting me to pick up groceries on the way home.”
“Mmph,” I said, rolling onto my furry throw pillows.
“Read the column, Raina. Write to this woman. It couldn’t hurt, right?”
I lifted my head. “I guess not.” I plopped back down onto the pillow.
Megan tried to give me a hug before she got up and went home, though I refused to stop lying prone on the bed.
I turned over and stared at the ceiling for a while. It was seven o’clock. Usually at seven, I’d text Brandon and he’d tell me all the latest gossip from Mock Trial, and I’d tell him what Claire had said that day, before our exchange devolved into eggplant and peach emojis.
I picked up my phone from the floor. The screen lit up with the Two Hearts column still open.
“‘Dear Hearts,’” I read out loud. “‘My fiancé of two years recently announced he no longer could live with my four cats…’”
They were all like that. Dudes changed their minds. Women got cold feet. Nonbinary partners decided that their person’s crippling debt was too much to take on. Two Hearts really brought home the reality that love sucked for everyone and forever was a lie.
Two Hearts just tells people to keep going and honestly communicate their feelings. If I communicate my feelings in the way I would like, I think I’ll be arrested, I texted Megan.
She didn’t text back. She was probably getting ready for bed. She had the annoying habit of getting up for swim practice at five a.m., so she was never awake much past nine.
I got up to pee. I wandered around the quiet, dark house. I kept picking up my phone, expecting Brandon to live-text some video games or MSNBC on a really wild night.
But nothing came.
Around midnight, I sat down at my computer. My screen flashed to life, a picture of Brandon and I last homecoming. I went into my settings and changed it to a plain blue purple screen. I opened up a Word doc.
“Dear Two Hearts,” I said, typing the letters.
What? I just turned eighteen and thought I’d marry the first boy I ever kissed? How pathetic that seemed. But it was true. I led with that.
I loved him, and he dumped me out of nowhere, I typed. No explanation, other than he had moved on before even breaking up with me in the first place. And now I’m alone and I don’t know what to do. I finished with a flourish. I didn’t reread it, I didn’t edit it, I just copied and pasted it and emailed the remaining slices of my pride to the email address on the bottom of the Two Hearts page. I closed my computer, fell into bed, and dreamed of Ruby and Claire chasing me with giant knives.
JANUARY 8: RELEVANT PARTIES AND ENTITIES
I barely woke up to my alarm. I stepped into the shower and leaned my head against the freezing morning tile. The water ran over me, pointing out that my body still had nerves that fired and my brain still registered touch. Stupid brain. I half-heartedly blotted my hair with my towel and pulled on old jeans and a hoodie. There was no one to look cute for at school anymore, so why bother?
Megan tried to poke me into action before school and at lunch, but what was the point of laughing? Before drama, Brandon and Ruby passed me in the hall. Neither of them paid attention to anything other than each other, hand in hand, laughing at some joke only they knew. That joke was probably me.
I reached the drama room where Mr. Cooper stood in the front, deep in conversation with Claire and two sophomores I didn’t know very well. They usually kept to the stage crew. I sat down in the front row of rickety chairs and folded my arms across my chest. Breathe, Raina. Diaphragm. In and out. I focused on the white board in front of me, the swaths of old marker arching like rainbows where an eraser just couldn’t rid it all.
“Raina?” said a voice. I looked up. Claire stood over me.
I didn’t answer.
“Did you hear us? Mr. Cooper called you.”
I looked over and nodded at him.
“Are you okay?” she said. “Do you need to go to the nurse? You don’t look so good.” She backed away from me, as if significant-other abandonment was contagious.
“Fine,” I mumbled. The story of Brandon dumping me by my locker was all over our small school within an hour. Claire had to know.
“Mr. Cooper asked you to come up to see him. Over there.” She pointed to his desk.
I got up and walked over.
“Raina, did you hear anything I just said to the group?”
Mr. Cooper had been talking? Drama had started? It probably wasn’t a great look that I hadn’t been paying attention.
“No,” I said. I tried to make eye contact with him. I’d blubbered in Mr. Cooper’s office about Brandon more than once in our three-plus years of knowing each other. Three of those times had been in the last week alone.
He smiled.
“It’s okay. Listen, we are voting on the spring production. Do you want to call people to order?” he said.
“Spring production?” I said. The words bounced around my head like a foreign language I used to understand. “Voting?”
“Yes, it’s today. We determined the three selections on Tuesday and so we are going to vote—”
Tuesday. The day I sat at home hiding under my pillows after dick Brandon …
“As president,” Mr. Cooper went on, interrupting my grief spiral, “it’s your privilege to lead the process. Are you … are you feeling up to it?”
I glanced at the board. Even though I’d been concentrating hard enough on it to crack it, I hadn’t notice the names of three plays written there: Almost, Maine; Twelve Angry Jurors; and fucking Our Town.
“Our Town?” I said. “These are our choices?” A small part of my brain registered Twelve Angry Jurors. I’d never been in that play, either. I’d seen a part of it at a festival once. That could be interesting.
“We had several members suggest that enthusiastically,” said Mr. Cooper.
“I thought Radium Girls…” I said softly. But on Monday after Brandon broke up with me, I’d cried in the bathroom until Megan found me and persuaded me to go home. I skipped Tuesday and just zoned out in drama Wednesday and Thursday, and Mr. Cooper kindly let me. I’d never even suggested Radium Girls to anyone.
“All of these are by men,” I said.
“So they are,” said Mr. Cooper. He clapped his hands. “Okay, everyone, listen up!”
The twenty or so people in the room filed over to the folding chairs. Curious eyes stared up at me.
Mr. Cooper handed me the chalk. “Ready?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I just walked over to the board.
“All for Almost, Maine?” he said. One hand went up.
“Yeah, it was a good run while it lasted,” he said. “Twelve Angry Jurors?”
Claire’s hand rose. Mine went up, too.
“Two for number two,” said Mr. Cooper.
Claire and I exchanged a surprised glance. We never agreed on anything.
“So that leaves…” Mr. Cooper didn’t even get a chance to finish. Everyone’s hands shot up.
“Our Town?” Claire cried. “You can’t actually be serious.” She turned and glared at the group. “Everyone everywhere does this tired, old play. We should do something relevant. Something fresh.”
Twelve Angry Jurors was from the 1950s, but I didn’t have the energy to point that out. It was still mor
e contemporary than something written in 1938.
“It’s what we want,” said Ben, a junior.
“It’s a classic. It’s time this department puts it on. Besides, maybe we can put our own spin on it,” said Jane, a freshman.
Heads nodded around her.
Claire turned back to me. “Excuse me, new Drama Club leader? Are you really going to let this stand?”
The eyes turned back toward me.
“We voted,” said a sophomore girl. “You could have said something before, but you didn’t. This is what we want.”
“Fair and square,” said someone else.
The group cheered as Claire scowled. I tried to pay attention to it all, because fucking Our Town, but I kept flashing back to the beginning of the week, when everything seemed set and perfect.
“All right, then,” said Mr. Cooper, clapping his hands and snapping me out of my daze. “I’ll order the scripts tonight!”
The bell rang as I placed the chalk on the grooves next to the board. Our Town. God. My chest twinged with a weird burning sensation. I was either having a heart attack or being assigned this production felt like Brandon dumping me for Ruby again.
I drifted into the hallway without saying goodbye to Mr. Cooper. I felt an arm on my shoulder. I turned to find Claire looking over me.
“What the hell was that?” said Claire. “You just caved to fucking Our Town. Do you know how many schools are going to put that on in the greater Steelton area this semester alone? Probably, like, six. We could have done anything. But you let that happen, Madam President.”
A familiar exercise-and-stress-induced asthmatic cough sounded next to Claire. Brandon, Ruby-free for a moment, stood next to her arm. A look of confusion crossed his face, as if his instincts were telling him he was meant to intervene with a sarcastic comment right at this very moment. But his dick brain also registered that I was no longer technically his concern.
“Uh. What? Hey,” he managed.
Claire turned toward him. “Oh, don’t think I don’t know that this is your fault, you unfaithful dirtbag. Everyone knows that. I swear to God you better leave this hallway right now, and never let me see your stupid pimple-free face for the rest of the year. Because of you I have to compete to be Emily Webb or some shit. Leave. Now.”
Because Claire was about two inches taller and a third more muscular than Brandon’s skinny five-foot-seven frame, he listened. I watched him retreat down the hall as fast as regulation permitted him. Claire tried looming over me, as well. But all the fight I once held had just run toward the science wing.
“Look, I’m sorry about the moron. But this is bigger than him. Bigger than both of us. This is Drama Club. Don’t you care?”
I nodded, but my face started the stupid burning thing. I closed my eyes, willing the tears to stay inside the ducts. Breathe. He wasn’t worth it. Breathe. Diaphragm. I gave Claire a small wave that I hoped she interpreted as “thank you for being mean to dick Brandon.” I headed to class. I didn’t want to flunk out, though I didn’t know if it mattered whether I did. It’s not like I could bring myself to audition for fucking Our Town. I could hear Carnegie Mellon laughing at the joke my chances had become all the way from Pittsburgh.
Drama was my life. But so was Brandon. Now it seemed like both had slipped through my fingers, and I hadn’t even realized I was losing my grasp.
2
EMILIA GOODWIN,
:
SUPREME(LY PISSED
:
OFF) COURT OF
Plaintiff,
:
CAMBRIA COUNTY
:
v.
:
:
THE STEELTON HIGH MOCK
:
Case No. NO2BOYSSSSS5
TRIAL TEAM,
:
:
Defendant
:
JANUARY 11: MATERIAL WITNESSES
Today was the day.
I looked in the mirror for the twentieth time. I smoothed the deep ocher and sienna folds of my skirt. I bent down and straightened my new knee-high socks. My faux suede Mary Janes completed this look. So what if it was 11 degrees outside?
I was ready.
“Millie, hurry up already or I’m not driving you to school. You can walk.”
I couldn’t walk. It was four miles, a mile of it through woodlands with poorly maintained paths covered in snow to get to school. But Dad might make me take the bus, the experience of which was on par with wildlife and avalanches.
“Coming,” I yelled. One more look in the mirror. I turned and picked up my backpack next to my bathroom door and grabbed my coat hanging neatly on the hook just inside my room.
“Have a toaster pastry,” said Dad. He shoved a piece of toast in his mouth, narrowly avoiding sticking the sleeve of his suit coat in the butter dish.
“Dad, look out. You don’t have any other clean work clothes. Which reminds me, you need to go to the dry cleaner and pick up your work clothes.”
“Yes. Right. Where is the ticket?”
“In your briefcase, in the little pocket on the front. Where it was, oh, I don’t know, last week when we had this discussion.”
“Right, right. Thanks, baby. Are you ready?”
Oh heck yes, was I ever. I smiled to myself as we headed to the Jeep.
We drove down our driveway and the long, winding woodland access road in silence. Traditionally, Dad didn’t like conversation until we hit the highway. He needed to concentrate on not taking out a deer or raccoon or fox after hitting a patch of ice. Ever since Mom had left and then gotten remarried, the silence between him and me stretched the remaining miles and yards and feet until he stopped the car long enough for me to hop out in front of Steelton High.
I looked a lot like her, my mom. Same long dark hair, same dark eyes. I think that’s why Dad had a hard time with me. Maybe I should have gone to live with her in Ohio. She kept offering. But she had a new baby, and cute as he was, I hadn’t really felt like being live-in childcare or starting over in a new place my senior year of high school.
Besides, this was my year. Today I would gather my forces to make the most kick-butt Mock Trial team that Cambria County, the state of Pennsylvania, or our fine nation had ever seen. Mr. Darr, the Mock Trial teacher, had been at a conference last week when we got back from break, but now he had returned, and it was my time to take over. I didn’t know if many people would join up. Most of the old team had graduated or defected to Model UN, since the field trips were better. But Jeffrey would still be there, of course, and Brandon. I’d be the third lawyer, but we’d need to find witnesses. Last year we’d almost taken state, so maybe that would generate some interest. I’d heard rumblings before winter break that the boys had a plan to recruit members, but no one new had shown up to meetings yet.
New-term energy still buzzed around me as people danced like honeybees communicating the directions their new schedules had taken.
“Focus,” I said to myself. “Only you can manifest your inner power.” My affirmation app always seemed to know what to say.
Or at least what to tell me to repeat to myself.
“Millie, over here!” Claire called.
“Hey,” I said. The frenetic surge around me gave me life and made me nervous all at the same time.
“Look at you. You look hot,” she said, eyeing me up and down. “I don’t suppose…”
“Claire, we’d kill each other,” I said.
Claire legitimately pouted. “We’d be good together,” she said.
“No, you’d get sick of me in a week. Plus, as I have mentioned before about a hundred times when you bring this up, you like sex. A lot. You talk about that frequently. I do not. With anyone at all, maybe ever. It’s nothing personal,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah. I get it. Can’t blame someone for trying. I haven’t been on a date in a million years. And that really is an amazing skirt.”
I beamed. “Thanks! Mom sent it. Mom guilt is reall
y helping my wardrobe. I asked if she wanted to FaceTime on the first day of my last term. She burst out crying and then the Zara box arrived five days later.”
“Wow. Uh…”
“It sucks,” I said. “Kinda. But there are pros and cons to parents no matter where they are.”
“Tell me about it,” said Claire.
“What’s up for you today? Spring play discussions, right? You’ll be ruling VP style.”
Claire sighed. “Yeah, Raina didn’t choke on a strain of iambic pentameter in December, so I still have to deal with her. That girl has been bugging me in every play since The Food Pyramid almost a decade ago. She got to play the carrot, and I was stuck as the beet. And she was barely there last week so now I’m about to audition for fucking Our Town. Our. Town.”
“Yes, you mentioned that a few times over the weekend. I’m sure you’ll be great in it anyway. Break a leg!”
“I will be great in it,” Claire mumbled. She looked up at me. “Same to you? Do you need luck?”
“A little,” I said. “Let’s hope I don’t have to recruit people. I hate that.”
“I believe,” said Claire.
* * *
After lunch, I made my way down to Mr. Darr’s classroom.
“Hello, Millie! Have a good break?” he greeted me.
“Yes!” I said. I looked around the room. I counted the people slumping into desks and chairs. Jeffrey and Brandon nodded to me.
“Wow,” I said to Brandon. “Look at all these people. Who are these”—I strained my neck to look past him—“all these guys?”
“I emailed a few friends. So did Jeff. I knew we’d be short a few and didn’t want to put the burden on you to solve our witness problem.”
“Oh. Thanks!” I said encouragingly. Problem solved already. Perfect.
The bell rang, and Mr. Darr raised his hands to quiet us.
“Wow, there are a lot of you. How about we go around the room and introduce ourselves. I’ll start. I’m Mr. Darr.” All of us laughed.
Six Angry Girls Page 2
