Stage Presents

by Aidan Wayne

  Dana actually laughed. Just a little, but…. “So no horror movies, is what you’re saying.”

  “Oh god no, I’m such a wimp.”

  “Yeah. I’m not a fan either.”

  “So, uh. Did you want to watch Singin’ in the Rain?”

  “Okay,” Dana said, after a minute. “I think I’m going to go to bed now too, but I know Singin’ in the Rain so well that I think I could fall asleep to it. If I can’t, I’ll just go to the living room like usual and turn it off later.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Want me to hit the lights?”

  “I got it.” Ashlee hopped out of bed and flipped the switch. Then she went back to bed and crawled under her covers, watching as Dana did the same thing.

  Ashlee took a breath. “Good night, Dana.”

  A pause, then, “Good night.”

  Chapter Nine

  THE PHONE-UNDER-THE-PILLOW idea didn’t work very well. Ashlee woke up when her loud phone alarm went off. Just in time to see Dana come out of the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a green T-shirt with a picture of an elephant on it. Her long curly hair was pulled up into a messy bun, a few curly strands falling down to frame her face. It was a cute look.

  Ashlee sat up and double-checked the time on her phone. Eight ten. Looked like she was too heavy a sleeper to go with a vibrating alarm.

  “Did you set an alarm?” she asked Dana.

  Dana glanced at her. “Um, yeah. You slept right through it. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought you were dead.”

  Ashlee groaned. “I’m going to have to keep setting my alarm loud, then.”

  “Yeah, I figured.”

  “Sorry.”

  Dana shrugged. “I’ll deal with it. I told you before, I mind the alarm a lot less than the singing.”

  “I didn’t think I was that bad a singer,” Ashlee said, swinging herself off the bed and grabbing the leggings and tank top she’d left folded on her desk chair. “Um, that was a joke,” she added, when Dana didn’t say anything.

  Dana let out a little huff that might have been a laugh. “I figured. And you’re not? Bad, I mean. But you’re not quiet. And I was sick of ‘Let It Go’ way, way before I met you.”

  “Point taken. Um, are you done with the bathroom?”

  Dana nodded and went over to her bed to grab her phone. “Yeah, go ahead.”

  “Thanks.”

  It was still awkward, but the tension wasn’t crushing. When Ashlee came out of the bathroom, it was just in time to hear the front door close.

  She let out a breath. This was better. This was much, much better. Awkwardness she could deal with. Even just the few words they’d exchanged today was worlds away from where they were yesterday morning. Ashlee could work with this.

  DANA MET Isabella on the bus to go to Pop Century. Eddie and Bolin both lived in a different college-program complex, so they’d all be meeting at the hotel itself.

  “Hey,” Isabella said as they sat down next to each other. “How were things this morning?”

  “Surprisingly not terrible,” Dana said after a moment.

  “What? Seriously?”

  “Near-death experiences will do that to people, I guess.”

  “Near death? What?”

  Dana chuckled and told Isabella what had happened last night, from the pan fire to the tentative talking, to this morning and its fairly stress-free interaction.

  “I’m not banking on anything till tomorrow,” Dana added, “because I won’t know how things’ll go when she has her normal early-morning routine, but….”

  “It sounds like she might be trying to make an effort, though. That’s something.”

  “Yeah, it’s more than she was doing before, that’s for sure.”

  “Is everything else okay with her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Isabella frowned. “When you guys first started fighting, a lot of it was because… well, you said she was uncomfortable with you. Has that changed? I mean, not that you might know after a night, but….”

  Dana rubbed the back of her neck. “I don’t know if she’s cool with that, or with me. It came up a few times while we were yelling at each other, but honestly? At this point I don’t even care. If she wants to talk about me behind my back to her friends or whatever, fine. I can take it. As long as she leaves me alone, I’m good.”

  “That’s one way to look at it, I guess.”

  Dana traced the side seam of her jeans. “It sucks to live with someone who’s transphobic. It does. But she hasn’t acted like I’m contaminating anything by touching it, so that’s a plus. Minimal interaction works for me.”

  Though, thinking about it, what had Ashlee yelled yesterday morning? Sorry it took me more than a second to get used to you!

  “What’s that face for?” Isabella asked. “That’s a thinking face.”

  Dana tried to sort through her thoughts. “I’m… I’m wondering if… if maybe she might not be as transphobic as I think she is.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I just… okay, we kind of got off on the wrong foot from the get-go. I told you.”

  “About the emails and stuff, yeah. You did kind of already go into it not liking her.”

  “Right.” Dana reddened. “I’m not super proud of that. But it’s not like I can fix it.”

  “So you got off on the wrong foot,” Isabella prompted.

  “And she… did a couple things that made me uncomfortable. But then again, I guess… I guess since I was probably the first trans person she’s ever met, that’s, I don’t know, understandable? Or something.”

  “That’s giving her a lot of benefit of the doubt,” Isabella pointed out. “She grew up with an internet connection, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah, but I do know that learning about something or knowing about it in theory is different from encountering it in person.”

  “True. So?”

  Dana tilted her head back to look at the bus’s ceiling. “So I’m wondering how much of our interaction was her actually being transphobic, over her just genuinely not knowing how to deal with me, and then the both of us just being defensive. And then offensive.”

  Isabella pursed her lips. “Well, you’re talking to each other now. You could always ask. You know I think the direct way is best.”

  “Yeah.” It was one of the reasons they got along; they both believed in being direct. It made communication easy. And hell, she’d already taken Bolin’s advice. It wasn’t a bad idea to take Isabella’s too. “Maybe I will.”

  “WAIT, WAIT, wait,” Maya said. “The pan caught fire?”

  Ashlee nodded. “While I was still holding it.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, fine. Dana, um, Dana knew what to do. She made me go outside and throw it on the concrete, and the fire went out.”

  “Thank god.”

  “Yeah. But I was so freaked out, oh my god.”

  “I would have been too!”

  “Yeah. But Dana was totally calm. She knew exactly what to do.” Ashlee rubbed her arm. “I’m really lucky she came home just then. I probably would have burned the entire building down on my own.”

  “Wow, yeah. Good for Dana.”

  “Yeah,” Ashlee said again. “And I… it was nice. After.”

  “After?”

  “Mm-hm. After she, you know, saved me. She told me to open the balcony door and wafted the smoke away from our fire alarm so our sprinklers didn’t go off, and then made sure I was okay and wasn’t hurt, and after I got cleaned up and changed she… she said maybe I should watch some TV to calm down.”

  Maya raised an eyebrow. She knew all the intricacies of the ongoing TV argument, and so was aware that Dana suggesting Ashlee watch some was pretty big. “She did?”

  “Yeah. And, uh, then she asked if I’d eaten, and… and made me dinner.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  Ashlee shook her head. “She was really nice about it. Kind of, you know, gruff
? But nice.”

  “Well good. Considering you’d just experienced a trauma.”

  Ashlee laughed a little. “Yeah. But also, uh….”

  “There’s more?”

  “We got to talking. Like, actually to talking. About some of the stuff we’d been arguing about.”

  “Okay, and?”

  Ashlee sighed and closed her eyes. “And apparently I sing when I get ready for the morning.”

  “You… sing.”

  “Yeah. Just absentmindedly. I didn’t even know I did it until Dana pointed it out.”

  “Dana… who has been bugging you about being loud in the morning. Pointed out that you sing. While you get dressed.”

  Ashlee hid her face in her hands.

  Maya patted her on the back. “So okay, now you know, so you can stop. And then she won’t get mad anymore.”

  “I just can’t believe it,” Ashlee said, voice muffled. “We’ve been arguing for weeks, and it turns out it was all my fault.”

  “Hey now, that’s not true. She’s been ragging on your taste in shows and everything too.”

  “But I have been playing stuff kind of all the time. I never even thought about watching stuff on my laptop with my headphones.”

  “You haven’t?” Maya looked confused but not judgmental, bless her. “Why not?”

  “I….” Ashlee lifted her head but avoided Maya’s eyes. “She wasn’t very nice, and then she just got meaner. I didn’t exactly feel like being nice back,” she admitted.

  “I wouldn’t have either,” Maya said loyally. “I’m not big on being nice to someone who isn’t nice to me.”

  “Yeah, but….” What had Dana said? Last I remember, you were weird about me from the get-go, focused way too much on what I happen to have between my legs, and, let’s not forget, I’m not normal. “I might not have made her feel the most. Welcome. When we first met.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I probably came across as a transphobic asshole.” Transphobic was a word she’d learned since rooming with Dana. And Ashlee had sort of had to come to terms with the fact that, at least for the first couple of days she’d roomed with Dana, the word had probably applied to her.

  It didn’t anymore, because she’d grown the fuck up, but it had. And Dana had picked up on it and, understandably, hadn’t been happy. No wonder she hadn’t been nice.

  Ashlee would never know what Dana had gone through (and still went through, great job, Ashlee) to be Dana, but she did understand a little bit about not being accepted. There was a reason Ashlee didn’t tell people back home in Georgia she was into girls.

  Whatever, that didn’t matter. What did matter was that Dana might have some things to apologize for, but so did she.

  Probably it was a good idea to have that conversation sooner over later.

  “So,” Ashlee started, because she had a lot of thinking to do, but she didn’t want to do it right now. “About Disney contacting you about your stilt-walking. Did you hear anything yet?”

  “I would have told you immediately if I had. But no, not yet. I did sign up for those audition emails, though, to make sure I get the notice about auditions as soon as they go up. What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Well, you said that you wanted to dance, right? Being a princess sounds fun and all, but the big ticket is the parades.”

  “Yeah,” Ashlee sighed. “I know. I mean, in a perfect world, I’d get to be a parade princess.”

  Maya laughed. “I wouldn’t put it past you.”

  “But you’re right about going to the auditions. I should be ready for any new ones that get posted.”

  “Right,” Maya said, holding out a fist.

  “Right,” Ashlee said, pounding it.

  DANA GOT home late, after working a Fantasmic shift where she stayed at the park until the end of the performance. She still didn’t get home as late as she could have, since she didn’t do safe deposit or anything, but by the time she got off the bus at Chatham, it was after ten o’clock.

  She fumbled her shoes off and went to the bedroom, intending to change before she had dinner. If she had dinner at all. She was tired enough that she was thinking about skipping it.

  “Oh,” she said, when she opened the door to find Ashlee still up. Watching, surprise, surprise, another animated film—Brave this time, though, which at least didn’t have much singing in it. Ashlee muted the TV as soon as Dana walked in.

  “Hey,” Ashlee said.

  “Um, hi.” Dana went to her bed to grab the pajamas she kept folded on her pillow. “I’m just going to change. You can keep watching, if you want. I mean I won’t mind.”

  “Okay.” Ashlee bit her lip and then said, “Hey, could we talk? After you get changed?”

  “Sure,” Dana said, trying not to sound too hesitant. This was good. She’d wanted to talk to Ashlee, so now was a good time. Of course she sort of wished it was when she was less tired, but at least she didn’t have to be at work until one the next day.

  Even if she got woken up at six tomorrow morning.

  Then again, Ashlee was planning to wake up at six tomorrow, and she was still up too.

  Dana changed quickly and gathered her costume up into a ball. When she left the bathroom, she went straight to the closet to put the costume-ball into the laundry bag provided by Costuming. That was definitely a perk to working for Disney; she didn’t have to wash her uniform herself.

  Then she turned to Ashlee. “Hey, so, I haven’t eaten dinner or anything yet. Mind if we talk while I eat?”

  “Oh, um, sure,” Ashlee said, unfolding from her position on the bed and following Dana out into the kitchen area.

  There was still some of the baked ziti left, so Dana just put that onto a plate and set it to microwave while she pulled out a glass and poured herself some water. The microwave beeped a few minutes later, and she took her food to the table and sat down across from Ashlee.

  “Okay,” she said. “What did you want to talk about?”

  Ashlee twisted her fingers together before she blurted out, “I’m not a transphobic asshole.”

  Dana blinked. Okay, so that was not what she was expecting to hear. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not,” Ashlee said again. “I looked up all the words about, um, about you, and I read a whole bunch of tumblr posts and stuff, and I’m not transphobic, I promise. I probably was. I mean, at least a little. But all that fighting we did was about totally normal stuff, not for… for any other reason. I mean maybe you thought it was, and I get that, you weren’t wrong, but I swear I know better now.”

  “I—” Dana said, still taken aback. “What?”

  “Which… which part did you not get?”

  “I think I got all of it,” Dana said after a second. “And good? I’m glad you’re not?”

  “You don’t sound like you believe me,” Ashlee said, frowning down at the table.

  “It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s that I, uh, I wasn’t expecting this.” She paused. “You really don’t have a problem with me?”

  “Not anything but the usual problems,” Ashlee said. And then quickly added. “Um. That was a joke.”

  Dana couldn’t help it. Ashlee looked and sounded so awkward, she had to laugh a little bit. “I got that it was a joke. It’s cool.” She raised an eyebrow, unable to help asking again. “You seriously don’t have a problem with me?”

  Ashlee bit her lip. “I know I freaked out when we first met. And that things didn’t get… better after that. I’m sorry.”

  Dana averted her eyes, feeling uncomfortable. “It wasn’t all you. I wasn’t the nicest either. I, uh… I tend to judge people before they can judge me. And sometimes they don’t… deserve that.” She played with her fork. “I guess you didn’t deserve that.”

  “So are we good?” Ashlee asked after some more silence.

  “Yeah. I think we’re good.”

  Ashlee let out a breath. “Okay. Okay. I’m, uh. I’m goin
g to go to bed now, I think. I have to get up early.”

  “I know,” Dana said wryly.

  “R-right.”

  “It’s not a big deal.” It wasn’t. It wouldn’t be. Dana was going to do her best to keep this tentative peace they’d just settled on. “I’m going to finish eating. You have a good night.”

  “Thanks. You too.”

  Ashlee walked back to the bedroom and went inside, closing the door behind her. Dana could just hear the sound of Brave starting up again.

  She turned back to her food, putting the dishes and pan into the dishwasher once she was finished, before heading into the bathroom to get ready for bed. By the time she opened the door to go back into the bedroom, Ashlee was sound asleep under her covers.

  Dana went over to turn the TV off, sighing into the silence of the room. Then she crawled under her own covers and tried to turn off her brain and go to sleep.

  Chapter Ten

  WHEN ASHLEE’S alarm went off the next morning, she turned it off quickly and then set about getting out of bed as quietly as she could. She’d left her workout gear on her desk chair and went to grab it.

  Dana groaned and rolled over, and Ashlee clapped a hand over her mouth. She’d been humming one of the tunes from Brave and hadn’t even noticed. Dana hadn’t been kidding.

  Now aware of it, Ashlee made sure to go into the bathroom in silence, closing the door slowly behind her. She let out a sigh of relief once she was inside the bathroom, before she proceeded to get changed. She could do this. Compromise. She’d do her part.

  ASHLEE’S ALARM blared out loud at six, just like usual, but Dana kept to her word and tried to go back to sleep. Of course, then Ashlee started humming. Dana groaned and rolled over and, amazingly, the humming stopped. She still heard Ashlee moving around, but her steps were quiet. The sound of the bathroom door opening and closing wasn’t too disturbing either.

  It was a start. Dana tried to go back to sleep.