by Jen Klein
“I’m fine,” Ella tells him. To me, she says, “It’s not pretty,” and then knocks on the closed door. “Time to come out,” she calls. “Our ride is here.”
The knob rattles, a lock clicks, and the door opens to reveal Annette. Her outfit is sexy—a short skirt with a pink off-the-shoulder blouse and strappy heels—but her mascara is smeared and her eyes are red. They well up when she sees me. “Hey.” She lists to one side in the doorway. “I need to go home.”
“That’s why I’m here,” I tell her.
“I can’t be with all these people anymore.” Annette’s words slur together. “They’re all his friends.”
“It’s okay,” Ella says. “Let’s go.”
Annette’s wobbly enough that it takes a good fifteen minutes to get her out of the house, down the driveway, and to my car. Milo helps us load her into the backseat before turning to Ella. “I’ll drive her car back. You guys can follow me.”
Ella looks like she’s considering arguing, but apparently she decides against it, instead digging into her pocket and pulling out a key ring. By the time we’re following Milo’s taillights onto the main road, Annette is passed out in the back. Ella sits in stony silence beside me, her arms folded. I finally ask the question: “Was it the busboy?”
“Assistant manager.” Ella shakes her head. “That guy who sat us when we had lunch. Vic.”
I do remember Vic, barely. Red vest, pleasant once he knew we were Annette’s guests. And also—“How old is he?”
“Twenty-eight. With a fiancée in Ohio.” Ella’s voice is hard and bitter. “Who showed up tonight.”
“Oh crap, are you serious?”
“Yeah. She didn’t know anything about Annette.” Ella gives a short laugh. “Still doesn’t. But Vic’s friends do. It was awful. Vic was dancing with her but looking over her shoulder at Annette. Then, one by one, his friends came over to check on Annette. I tried to get her out of there earlier, but one of Vic’s friends started giving her shots to cheer her up.”
“Recipe for disaster.” Public humiliation, heartbreak, and alcohol? Even I know that’s a bad combination. “Why didn’t she want to leave?”
“I don’t know.” Ella sighs. “She kept saying that she’d show him and she was going to be a bigger person, but honestly—I think she was just drunk and wanted to be near him.” She pauses. “I mean, Vic. He’s not even hot. I don’t get it.”
“I guess you can’t choose who you fall for.”
“You can choose what you do about it.” Ella’s voice hardens. “You can choose your actions.”
After that we’re quiet for the rest of the drive.
When we arrive home, Milo helps us walk Annette up the stairs to our apartment. Her eyes are at half-mast as she mumbles words of gratitude and apology to us all. “Shh,” Ella says. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not,” says Annette before stumbling inside.
Ella takes a step into the apartment, then stops and turns back. She looks at Milo. “I accept your apology.”
He stares at her. “What apology?”
“About last summer. I was just making you work for it.” She gives him a tiny smile. “Thanks for driving Annette’s car.”
Then she disappears inside. I blink after her. She’s thanking Milo but not me? I can’t win with Ella.
“Hey.” Milo nudges me. “That sandwich didn’t count as a reasonable dinner. I owe you one.”
“But after this nonsense”—I gesture toward the apartment—“it seems like maybe I owe you.” Even though it wasn’t my plan or my sister or my drama.
“Nah.” Milo shakes his head. “Totally worth it to get off Ella’s shit list. So we’ll still do that dinner. Cool?”
“Totally cool,” I tell him, which is the understatement of the year.
“It’s a date.” He grins, and his teeth flash brighter than white in the moonlight. “Okay?”
I swallow. “Okay.”
Milo’s eyes do that thing where they get all dark and serious. “Good.”
I watch him amble away down the deck, and I wonder if he meant it as an actual date or just as an expression. Also, I wonder which one I was agreeing to.
Annette spends the next day going back and forth from her bedroom to the bathroom. She tells us she doesn’t want anything, but before we leave for the theater, Ella brings her soup and crackers. “How is she?” I ask as we get into my car.
“She’s been better.”
Since Ella doesn’t seem to want to talk, I don’t push it. It’s not until we’ve parked and are walking down the side trail to backstage that she speaks again. “Only three more weeks.”
My heart drops. I’m not ready to go yet. Not until I’ve figured out what I’m doing: with Milo, with Tuck, with my life.
Being this confused doesn’t make for good theater, it turns out. In the very first scene, I trip on the edge of my toga and nearly fall. Paul—who enters right behind me—grabs my arm to hold me up, but then he stumbles, which makes Bianca bump into him. Graceful it is not.
I’m flustered, but not as much as I am during the woodland scene when I meet Milo at the center of the stage, where his eyes drift down my body and then back up to my ratty ears. “I just realized something,” he whispers. One corner of his mouth tugs up, and his eyes crinkle. “You’re not any old rabbit. You’re a hare. A wild hare.”
I burst out laughing, which earns me several glares, plus a squawk of disapproval from an actor-tech in a bedraggled pheasant costume. Milo winks and heads in the opposite direction. I wish he’d mention our potential date, but there’s time. Or at least, there’s three weeks.
Except that he also doesn’t mention it in Scene 6, when we’re slick with green paint and nestled together in our upstage line with our arms linked together. Nor does he say anything when we meet downstage after the first Greek-Trojan throwdown. Or during any of the times we pass by each other near the wooden horse…or before the final battle…or as everyone’s starting the mournful dirge.
Or for the rest of the week.
By the time Friday’s performance rolls around, I’m not just confused. I’m irritated. I’m beginning to believe that, once again, I’ve made something up in my head. I’ve invented a boy’s interest in me. After all, Milo has been pleasant. He’s been friendly. He’s been nice. But he certainly hasn’t been romantic. Not even a little bit.
I don’t know if Ella notices, because she’s spent the last several days avoiding me completely. She’s been going to sleep immediately when we get home at night, and she hasn’t been making her usual requests to do things together during the days. Although it’s been nice to have a break from feeling like I’m disappointing her all the time, I miss chatting from our beds and grabbing lunch downtown.
Tonight, as I’m driving her home from the theater, she asks, “You’re not going to McKay’s tonight?”
“Nope.”
“A bunch of kids are going. Bianca. Katrina.” I feel rather than see the look she slides toward me. “Tuck.”
“I didn’t get an invitation.” It comes out sounding huffier than I feel, which is more bewildered than upset. “Are you going?”
“No.”
She doesn’t speak again until after I’ve parked and we’re clomping up the splintered wooden stairs to our apartment. Halfway up, Ella stops walking. “Hey, Rainie.” I stop also and look at her. She’s twisting her hands together, not meeting my eyes. “Annette’s not usually like that.”
I’m not sure what kind of answer she’s looking for, so all I say is “Okay.”
“I know how it seemed. Drunk and crying about someone else’s guy.” Ella shakes her head. “I just don’t want you to think that’s who she is. Or that I think it’s all right to be like that.”
“I don’t.” I’m still not sure what Ella’s looking for, but my answer seems to satisfy her, because she nods.
“Cool.” She hoists her backpack and continues up the stairs. I wait a moment before following.
•••
On Saturday, two things happen. The first is that Tuck comes to talk to me before the show. I’m perched on the deck rail when we lock eyes over the swarms of people going every which way to get changed or find props or make plans for the night. He waves, and I tighten my grip on the post beside me as he starts pushing through the crowd. His grin when he reaches me is bright enough to blind an auditorium of lovestruck girls. I almost want to shield my eyes against it. Completely objectively speaking, Tuck Brady is beautiful.
“Hey.” Tuck’s gaze dips to my legs, braced against the lower rail to keep my balance, then back up to my face. “You look like a little bird in a nest.”
“Caw,” I tell him, because that’s what Milo would say.
Tuck gives me a bemused smile. “I heard that on our last dark day you got the hell out of dodge. Did you have a good time?”
“Yeah.” I wonder if Milo’s the one who told him about our day trip. “It’s nice to be somewhere else for a few hours.”
“I hear that.” Tuck takes the tiniest step toward me, close enough that he’s almost touching my knees. “You want to do it again?”
I stare at him. What?
“Camping in Linville Gorge. A bunch of us are going. Logan, Paul, Milo—”
Milo.
“—Richie. Everyone fun. Girls too. You and Ella should come.”
“I’ll think about it,” I tell him, hopping down from my railing.
Tuck doesn’t step back, which means that now we’re right in front of each other, our bodies an inch apart. “Good,” he says, just like Milo did on my apartment deck.
Do these Zeus! boys know how to be clear about anything?
•••
The second thing that happens is I lose a tooth. At least, I pretend I do. Last week, Ella and Bianca stuffed pillows under their togas and went onstage as fake pregnant during the hatching scene. Nikki was pissed, but as Ella explained later, when you do the same show six times a week, sometimes you have to mix it up so you don’t die of boredom.
Since I’m feeling more and more like I want to mix things up, this seems like my chance. After I put on my ears and tail, I steal a dab of oil paint out of Mandy’s tray. When I hop up to Milo in our Grecian forest, I beam really big at him. He stifles a bark of laughter.
“Subtle,” he says, staring at my mouth, where I’ve blacked out one of my front teeth.
“Just mixing things up,” I tell him.
Milo flaps his wings. “Hey, remember opening night? Would you ever have believed that someday you would mix things up onstage?”
“No.” I hop a little and do some intentional tail wiggling.
Milo grins. “Now you’re not scared of anything.”
I look up into his angled face and lose my breath for a second. Something about him is extra hot tonight. “There are still things that scare me,” I tell him when I can speak again.
Milo looks like he wants to say more, but the three goddesses are almost done with their dancing and bickering, so we have to head off in opposite directions.
•••
The next time I run into Milo onstage, he dips his head close to mine. “You should do one of the things that scare you,” he whispers. “I am.”
My green-painted arm is between his rib cage and bicep as we stand in our upstage line. I feel his muscles, tense and lean, against my own. “When?” I breathe, hoping against hope—
“Monday. You’ll be the first to know.”
I smile, even though right now I’m supposed to be a very serious Muse.
The camping trip.
“That’s a good plan,” I tell him. “I’ll do my scary thing then too.”
“It’s a deal,” Milo tells me.
“It’s a date,” I tell him back.
•••
Ella is adamant that we need our own set of wheels. It took a lot of convincing to get her to agree to come, and it only happened after I promised that I would leave if she wanted to go. “If it turns into a minus-Ella hookup fest, we’re out,” she told me.
“Fine,” I replied.
Now, as we follow Bianca’s car off the road and into a parking lot, I desperately hope it doesn’t happen. My legs are shaved, mascara is on, and I’m ready to do the scary thing: to tell Milo how I feel. That I want to be more than friends. That I think we already are more than friends. And then, when I’ve done that, I’ll have to do the even scarier thing…
I’ll have to tell Ella.
Paul hops out of Bianca’s passenger seat. He points to the other cars parked nearby. “Tuck’s already here, and Logan. There’s Gretchen’s ride; I think Milo was riding with her. I don’t know if Katrina and Finley are coming.”
I try not to think of Milo riding with Gretchen or about why she and Tuck drove separately.
I’m here to do the scary thing.
The hike is fairly easy—the trail loops back and forth against the mountain—but it’s got to be two miles, if not more. And since it’s all downhill, it is not lost on me that coming back tomorrow will be a slow uphill climb.
When we finally arrive down at the gorge, it isn’t too different from the rock colony. Trees overhang a dirt floor sweeping up to a stream, except the water is running faster here, and it’s not scattered with boulders.
There are three tents set up already, and Logan and a guy I don’t know are working on a fourth one that is bigger and—based on the amount of swearing—more difficult to assemble. There’s a big pile of wood in the center, but no fire yet, which is fine with me because I’m sticky from the hike down. The last thing I want is a bunch of smoke and heat.
Speaking of heat…
I see Tuck straighten from his seat on a stump. His hair blazes bright in the spots where the sun dapples through the leaves to hit it. He looks like a Ken doll, perfect and all-American. He waves an arm in our direction and calls out, “Hey!”
We all wave back. As he starts to trot over, Ella leans close and brings her mouth to my ear. “Someone’s happy to see you.”
“He’s happy to see all of us,” I retort, right before Tuck arrives and scoops me into an enthusiastic hug that lifts me off my feet. I make eye contact with Ella over his shoulder, and she gives me a knowing look.
“So glad you came,” Tuck tells me as he sets me down. He launches toward Bianca and bestows a hug upon first her, then Ella, then Paul—prompting me to return Ella’s look—before grinning at us. “Check out the tents. Richie got a new one. It was a bitch to carry down, but it sleeps six.”
“I’m gonna get wet,” Paul says, which causes everyone to make grossed-out noises and throw sticks at him. He and Bianca head toward the water and, after a glance at me, Ella does the same.
I watch them go before turning to Tuck. He’s gazing down at me with a half smile on his face. “Can you believe we only have two weeks left?”
God, why does everyone keep talking about that?
“Yep. Two weeks, back to Dobbs.”
He keeps smiling at me, and I look away because it feels oddly intimate. My gaze falls on Logan and his friend working on the tent. “Who else is coming?” I ask Tuck.
“No one. Everyone’s here.”
I look around, but there’s no sign of Milo. “Where’s Gretchen? I heard she and Milo drove together.” I hope that last part sounded more casual than it felt.
“Milo’s not coming.” The way Tuck says it, it’s like he barely notices his own answer. Me, however—it hits me like a bomb. A bomb filled with disappointment.
And humiliation.
And failure.
Once again, I’m wrong. Whatever Milo’s scary thing was, one thing is certain: it has nothing to do with me. I came here for nothing. I came here for a lie of my own making.
Just like always.
“Rainie.” Tuck’s smile has slipped away. He’s peering down at me, all intent and serious. No idea of the turmoil he’s caused inside me. “I feel like I should tell you something.”
“
What?” I ask, because it’s the polite thing to say.
“Gretchen and I broke up.” Tuck reaches out to touch my arm as if he can hear the perfunctory “I’m sorry” rising toward my lips. “It’s fine. It’s not ugly or anything. We’re good. We’ll stay friends.”
“Congratulations?” My word scales up at the end like a question. If it had happened at the beginning of the summer instead of the end, everything would be different now. Maybe it would be right.
Tuck’s smile deepens. “Do you want a beer?”
That’s the last thing I need. “Maybe a water.”
“You have a good-girl thing about you.” His lips part in a grin. “You’re a breath of fresh air.”
It sounds like a veiled insult against Gretchen. I frown without meaning to. “I don’t know if I’d call myself that.” I instantly wish I’d said something else, because now that the words are out of my mouth, they sound like I’m flirting.
“Whatever you are, I like it.” The wind shifts and the tree above us rustles. Sunlight hits Tuck’s eyes, making them even bluer than usual. He’s looking at me like I’m the only girl in the world and…it warms me. Because at least it’s something.
At least it’s someone.
“Come on,” he says, and I follow him down toward the others. I know I should be doing backflips at the news I’ve just learned, but it’s no longer a victory. I only feel numb.
As we reach the campsite, Logan lets out a war whoop of conquest. The big tent is finally up. Beyond him, the water sparkles under the summer sun. I fade out for a moment, returning to different water, to a different boy, dark-haired and leaping over the rocks.
I fade back in to find Tuck grinning about something he just said about Logan and the tent and getting it up. In a flash second, I decide the only thing I can do is get it up myself. I throw back my head to laugh really long and really loudly.
What is wrong with me?
•••
The next few hours are a blur of the same: chatting with Tuck, keeping track of Ella, wondering what to do…
Some of the guys pull out weed and cigarettes—neither is my thing—to go with the beer. Obviously, it’s not like I’m never around weed or cigarettes or beer, but right now we’re far away from civilization. Everything feels a little less settled. A little more dangerous.
