Oh my god. Imogen was holding my hand.
Okay, I mean…it technically wasn’t my hand…BUT STILL.
“I had to get told by Principal Durden,” Imogen continued. “Even she was surprised you didn’t tell me.”
Deep breaths, Ezra. Deep breaths. In through your nose, out through your mouth.
“I…wanted to…surprise you,” I said—unable to speak more than three-syllable spurts. “Surprise!”
“I’ll say,” said Imogen. She seemed to notice me tensing up. She let go of my hand. “So you’re driving, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, mindlessly.
“Great. Where’d you park?”
We were walking out the front doors of Piles Fork and down the concrete steps. I was already starting toward the B-Lot, raising my hand to point, when I realized:
That’s where I parked—not Wynonna.
I didn’t know where she parked.
I didn’t even know what her car looked like.
And if I did, it wouldn’t matter because I COULDN’T DRIVE A STICK.
My brisk pace just sort of floundered to a confused halt. Imogen took a couple steps past me, then stopped and turned awkwardly.
“You okay?” said Imogen.
“Yeah!” I said, forcing an ungodly level of enthusiasm into Wynonna’s face. “Here’s an idea: What if we get a ride there with Ezra and Holden?”
Imogen looked at me like I had proposed we drive in a clown car filled with thirty-eight clowns.
“You’re serious,” said Imogen finally, after a silence that spanned the cosmos.
“Yeah!” I said. The longer I forced the smile on my face, the more I felt like the Joker—Jack Nicholson version. “We’re all in this together, right? Might as well make the most of it!”
Imogen’s eyelids narrowed to slits so thin you could have flossed them.
It appeared there was no way out of this without at least a granule of truth.
Now, whether it was my truth or not was a different matter entirely.
I dropped the smile like a veil of lies.
“Prom,” I said. “I want to ask Holden to prom.”
Slowly, Imogen’s eyes widened like a pair of flowers blooming in a fast-motion time lapse.
“Oh. My. God,” she said. “You’re doing it. You’re actually doing it!”
Once again, I was forced to smile like an idiot. Or a Batman villain. It occurred to me that smiling was maybe the least Wynonna-like thing I could do. However, the Smiley Train was already rolling, and there was really no stopping it at this point.
Once I dropped the P-bomb, Imogen became a Holden-seeking missile. Meanwhile I trailed behind desperately in my punk heels, trying—and failing—to keep up.
She found Holden in less than a minute. By himself.
He didn’t look happy.
Mostly, he looked irritated. And maybe a little bit mystified. He was standing aimlessly in the middle of the B-Lot, hand cupped over his eyes like a visor, scanning the after-school pandemonium. Between the two of us—Holden and me—there was a very Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? vibe going on.
Where the fuck was she? Wynonna, I mean. Not Carmen Sandiego.
“Hey, Holden!” Imogen exclaimed. “You’re going to theater, right? At the Amityvale? Can we get a ride with you?”
Holden gave Imogen a look that was not unlike the “clown car” look she gave me.
“What?” he said.
“A ride,” Imogen repeated. “To the theater. You guys are going, right?”
Holden glanced from Imogen (bubbly, ecstatic, teetering on the edge of hysteria), to me (distressed, confused, trying to take as few steps as possible in these deathtrap heels), and back to Imogen.
“Pretty please?” said Imogen.
Holden’s gaze drifted suspiciously, wandering nowhere in particular. Maybe he was looking for the hidden camera filming this obvious TV-show prank.
“Where’s Ezra?” I asked, mostly as a tension breaker.
“That’s what I’m wondering!” said Holden. The response practically erupted out of him. “Every time I try to talk to him, he freaks out, makes up some weird, obviously fake excuse, and runs off.”
His suspicious gaze locked onto me.
“You didn’t say anything to him, did you?” said Holden. “Scare him off some—wait.” He looked at Imogen. “We? Did you say, ‘Can we get a ride with you?’”
“Uhhhhh…” said Imogen.
His gaze returned to me with a calm, murderous look.
“You’re going now?” he said. “Jesus, no wonder Ezra’s freaking out! So, what? You just changed your mind?”
The good news was that I had just diverted suspicion from Wynonna and her shit performance as Ezra Slevin. The bad news was that she was clearly cracking under the pressure of being me. Or maybe she was cracking under the pressure of being Holden’s best friend. Either way, our disguises were looking awfully paper thin. If I wasn’t convincing as Wynonna, this plan could very well blow up in our faces.
C’mon. Think, Ezra, think! What would Wynonna say? Think Wynonnish thoughts.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I said. “I changed my mind. You got a problem with that, shortstop?”
Imogen’s mouth fell open.
Okay, maybe I overstepped. In the spectrum of douchey things you could say to another human being, jabs at Holden’s height were off the douche-o-meter.
Holden’s jaw clenched. A shadow of something flashed past the windows of his eyes—like a passing silhouette in a dark doorway.
Hate?
Whatever it was, it was gone in an instant.
“Fine,” said Holden. He turned exclusively to Imogen. “But you have to find Ezra. Find him, and you can ride with us.”
“Okay,” said Imogen, nodding overenthusiastically. “You know what? I’m going to check the main office. Maybe Ezra’s getting the deets about this Shakespeare thing from Principal Durden. But hey, you guys wait here in case he shows up, okay?”
Imogen started off before either of us could protest. But not before giving me the most obvious wink in the universe. It was the sort of excessive wink that was usually accompanied by a pair of thumbs-up. But for the sake of being clandestine, she instead hooked her thumbs in her pockets and sauntered off like some hard-boiled private investigator. Very noir.
Flash.
Suddenly, I was lying on my side in the back seat of a car. I recognized the upholstery immediately. It was my car—the Subaru. The way my knees were curled to the side in a near-fetal position, it was obvious I was attempting to stay below the window level. I was hiding.
Wynonna was hiding. What the hell?
That was when I noticed the background music. And I say “background” generously, because it was blasting from my phone, which was lying directly beside my left ear on the back seat, the volume cranked up to Who Needs Eardrums, Anyway?
The song was “We Belong” by Pat Benatar. Wynonna had pulled up the music video on YouTube.
She was having a real Pat Benatar sort of day, wasn’t she?
What happened next was pure ninja. I hopped over the center console, slid masterfully into the driver’s seat, shoved the key into the ignition—it had been clutched tightly in my left hand the whole time, leaving a key-shaped imprint—and turned it. The Subaru engine gave a less-than-mighty roar.
As I peeled out of my spot, left hand gripping the twelve o’clock on my steering wheel, my right hand fumbled with the auxiliary cord. I started the song over and cranked the car stereo volume to I Want to Feel the Song in My Teeth.
If Wynonna needed Pat Benatar, then I would give her Pat fucking Benatar.
“Many times I tried to tell you…many times I cried alone,” Pat sang softly. “Always I’m surprised how well you cut my feelings to the bone.”
I squealed around the corner of the B-Lot, cutting off Imogen’s path to the school. Lucky for me, Wynonna had already started chasing desperately after her. Even Holden was tra
iling behind at a slow and confused pace.
I rolled down the window, just as Pat reached the chorus.
“WE BELONG TO THE LIGHT, WE BELONG TO THE THUNNNNDER,” Pat wailed, with an untamed heartache that only the ’80s knew. “WE BELONG TO THE SOUND OF THE WORDS WE’VE BOTH FALLEN UNNNNNNDER.”
Imogen seemed irked that her matchmaking moment had been foiled. Wynonna, meanwhile, shuffled to a halt in her punk-heel tracks—completely and utterly mortified that I was blasting the anthem of her bleeding heart.
“Dude!” Holden shouted. He was several yards away but rapidly closing the gap. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Where have I been?” I said. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
“You’ve been…what?” Holden’s left eye started twitching, like the harbinger of a stroke.
I took a deliberate moment to notice Imogen and Wynonna. “Oh, hey! Were you guys all planning on riding together? I can drive!”
While Wynonna and Imogen exchanged looks, I made sure to wink discreetly at Holden—like this was our plan all along. Holden gave an exasperated sigh, shook his head, and started for the passenger-side door.
“Oh, shotgun!” said Imogen. She beat him to the door. “I have dibs on shotgun!”
“What?” said Holden. “You can’t call shotgun.”
“Why not?”
“Because best friend always gets shotgun!”
“That’s not a rule. The rule is: Whoever calls shotgun gets shotgun. The end. No epilogue, no addendum.”
Wynonna shoved her way between the two of them. Opened the passenger-side door, slid inside, and shut the door behind her.
Holden and Imogen stared at her through the open window, slack-jawed.
Wynonna pressed the automatic window button. It rolled up with a long, intense VUHRRRRRRR.
Then she locked the door.
• •
It was one of those awkward car rides where nobody was talking, the tension was thicker than a bowl of Chunky Campbell’s Soup, and only half of us knew why. The other half—Holden and Imogen—were silently puzzling over the highly unusual behavior of their respective best friends.
Wynonna was brooding like a vampire in the passenger seat.
All I could focus on was how uncool she was being. I’d never seen her with her shit so not together.
I really wanted a moment alone with her. Just to ask her what was going on. I mean, I kinda knew what was going on—but I felt like there was a whole layer beneath the surface that I was missing.
I turned my attention to the road.
Downtown Carbondale walked a fine line between quaint and sketchy with a chance of violent crime. The SIU Power Plant—yes, Southern Illinois University had its own power plant—pumped plumes of smoke into the air like the cove beneath the Piles Fork bleachers where all the skeezy kids vaped. We crossed some allegorical-looking train tracks, passing college apartment complexes that maybe used to be decent, but now they had an eerie Roman Polanski vibe. Past Polanskiville, it was all ancient houses, ancient businesses, with a faint undercurrent of ancient evil. Like a fictional Stephen King town with a dark secret—a sort of Midwest Derry or Castle Rock.
The Amityvale Theater itself was all used-skeleton-colored stone walls, an ominous dark brick tower, and a vertical, Toblerone-shaped sign that read AMITYVALE in a red vintage font—visible on two separate, slanted sides. It was probably impressive in the 1920s—back when flappers were the “cutting edge”—but now it was only impressive in the sense that it was most likely haunted.
I mean, Amityvale? C’mon. You’re not fooling anyone.
“All this time, I thought Ms. Chaucer was spoiled,” said Holden. “I’m kind of shocked she settled for this dump.”
“Maybe she was into the occult?” I offered.
“Welcome to the seedy underbelly of the drug world,” Imogen whispered.
“It was Adderall,” said Wynonna, exasperated. “Adderall is not part of the seedy underbelly of any drug world. God, why did I even tell you about that?”
“I feel like I’m in Breaking Bad,” Imogen squeaked.
Wynonna sighed, looking the Amityvale Theater up and down. “This place does look like it was baptized in unholy water. Or tetanus. You know what? Maybe prom’s overrated.”
Both Imogen and I reacted in various stages of panic, directed at no one in particular.
“What, are you afraid all the Shakespeare kids will be more thug than you?” said Holden.
He then proceeded to do voices.
Holden’s “voices” were—as all “voices” are—terrible. One voice sounded like Jason Statham if he was deaf to his own voice. The other sounded like Rocky Balboa after Creed turned his face into a soufflé.
Holden Balboa: “Whaddaya in here for?”
Holden Statham: “I’m in here for armed robbery and murder and hate crimes against kittens.”
Holden Balboa: “Whadda YOO in here for, Wynonna Jones?”
Holden’s Wynonna-voice was basically Lisa Simpson. It’s like he wasn’t even trying.
Holdonna Jones: “I broke a window with MY BIG BUTT.”
Wynonna’s nostrils flared like a pair of kilts in a Scottish hurricane. She unceremoniously exited the Subaru, slammed the door behind her, and marched toward the serial-killer-corpse-storage theater.
The rest of us followed—very reluctantly. Holden’s amused chuckle faded like a wisp of smoke.
The Amityvale Theater wasn’t much better on the inside. It was all deteriorating motif-patterned carpet, splotchy black-painted concrete floors, less-than-sturdy-looking pillars, and walls that used to be red but now required a fresh coat of blood. Er, paint. (No, definitely blood.) If you craned your neck back, the ceiling was a spiderweb of wooden framework, and between those, actual spiderwebs. We passed a tomb of a box office, a moldy concession stand, and proceeded down a long, narrow—but surprisingly well-lit—corridor.
“Did they actually use this place?” asked Holden.
I shrugged. “All of their actual performances were either at the Varsity Center or the McLeod Theater at SIU.”
Wynonna rolled her eyes. “You would know that, wouldn’t you?”
Imogen walked with quiet steps, head lowered, like she was traversing the lawless jungle of the Darién Gap.
“This is where the drug deals transpired,” she whispered.
We pushed through a pair of gloomy double doors into the actual theater room.
It was big. I’d give it that. The auditorium seating was steep—a waterfall of plush red chairs, crashing down into the basin of an empty orchestra pit. A pair of treacherous staircases ran along either side. The stage was vast and scratched and worn to a husk. Like it had been clogged to death—pulverized by malicious Riverdancers. In front of the stage were two push racks filled with tacky costumes; a large mobile whiteboard with the words Welcome to Theater! scrawled in purple dry-erase marker; and a folding table with a coffeemaker and biodegradable cups. The whole thing had a very Alcoholics Anonymous vibe.
There was a small handful of kids already seated, but I was putting forth great effort not to make eye contact.
“Welcome, welcome, young thespians!” said the last person in the world we expected to see. Although we didn’t see him until he spoke. He was standing just inside the entrance, back flat against the wall, like an actual serial killer.
It was Ziggy—the Piles Fork High School groundskeeper.
Ziggy was a tall, lanky dude with a goatee, sleeve tattoos, Jesus-y hair, and a look on his face that was part stoner, part sagely and all-knowing. He walked a very precarious line.
“Ziggy?” I said.
“What?” said Imogen.
“No way,” said Holden.
“Ziggy fucking Donovan?” said Wynonna fucking Jones.
Okay, so Ziggy was kind of a legend at Piles Fork. Not only was he cool, but he was disgustingly talented. He could outskate the skater kids. He could outplay the roc
ker kids on every instrument they threw at him. HE COULD OUT-SPIN THE FIDGET SPINNER…ERS. Really, he could outdo anyone at anything. If you thought you were good at something, chances were, Ziggy could do it better.
The weirdest thing about Ziggy Donovan, however, was how nice he was. And how he tried to be friends with everyone. Like, he had a genuine interest in each of our shitty lives. Hence how the four of us each knew who he was.
“What are you doing here?” said Imogen.
“What am I not doing here?” said Ziggy. “Am I right?”
The four of us exchanged confused glances.
Ziggy gave a clarifying cough. “I’m what modern society likes to call ‘the Boss,’” he said, air-quoting. “But I prefer to think of myself as a ‘Spiritual Guide’ to the ‘Sphere of the Bard.’” Again, air quotes and more air quotes.
“You’re in charge?” said Holden.
“You like Shakespeare?” said Wynonna incredulously.
“What’s not to like?” said Ziggy. “I’ll have you know, Shakespeare changed my life.”
“Shut up. No, he didn’t.”
“Cross my heart, hope to die,” he said—tracing an actual X over his heart with his finger. “I could tell you quite the story, right here and now. But let’s save that for introductions, yeah?”
It was only when Ziggy escorted us down into the gulch of the theater that I recognized some of the other kids present. I might have been surprised by some of them—notably Jayden Hoxsie, sitting in the front row—wearing a different-colored polo shirt, but one that was still two sizes too small, stretched across his chest like spandex.
Unfortunately, I was a little too preoccupied with the emo-haired freshman girl, awkwardly leaning forward, one skinny arm folded against her stomach, the other propped up on it, scratching her eyebrow in a feeble attempt to hide her face.
It was Willow.
Flash.
our heads slowly, eyes the size of jawbreakers, meeting each other’s gaze with pained exasperation.
Willow seemed to notice that her alleged big brother was directing his jawbreaker stare elsewhere. Which made her visibly confused.
“Willow?” said Holden. “You’re here?”
Where I End and You Begin Page 9
