by Barbara Dee
I stared at Liam. What he was saying was really smart. And it was like the gods of theater or Shakespeare’s ghost or something like that had sent him here to say those words. To me.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Me? No, I’m fine. It’s just . . . I agree with you.”
Liam nodded. “I mean, Friar Lawrence is sort of a friend, but he’s too old, and anyway, he’s a monk. And Juliet doesn’t even have any friends. Which is ridiculous.”
“You’re right.”
“I know I am.” Liam smiled at me again. “Hey, Mattie. Let me know if you need any more help with the play.”
* * *
We finally did start reading the lines aloud that period, and Liam did fine. His main problem was that he overfocused. He’d start thinking about something Romeo said—one line, one image, one word sometimes—and then he just couldn’t get past it. Or he’d decide something Romeo did was stupid, and then he wouldn’t shut up about how “no normal guy” (meaning himself) would ever behave like that. Not that he was wrong, for the most part.
Mr. Torres had already figured out Liam’s other problem: the way he freaked out whenever people were watching, even other people in the cast. Working with me, though, he didn’t purposely ask dumb questions, or waste time the way he did at rehearsals, and he had no trouble reading the lines, or even showing emotion.
But that afternoon, as he rehearsed Romeo’s scene with Friar Lawrence (when Romeo tells Friar Lawrence that he wants to marry Juliet that very day), Liam started reciting in that flat, dull way again. I was sitting in the third row of the auditorium, taking notes in the back of my English binder, but compared to Elijah, Liam was so quiet I could barely hear him. A couple of times Mr. Torres told him to “speak up,” but it didn’t help. Also, Liam kept saying he “didn’t understand” why Romeo wanted to get married right away; he’d only met Juliet the night before at the costume party, and now they were eloping?
“That makes no sense, man,” Liam kept repeating.
“Yes, and that’s what Friar Lawrence is telling him,” Elijah said.
I could see that Elijah was getting exasperated. He kept trying to catch my eye, the way Gemma did, but I ignored him. I wasn’t on Liam’s side, exactly, but after he’d said that thing to me about Romeo and his friends, it felt as if we had a connection. Also, I knew he actually cared about the play—but he didn’t want other kids, especially boys, to know it.
I saw the look of panic on Liam’s face at the end of rehearsal, when Mr. Torres mentioned casually that it might be a “smart idea to start learning lines over the weekend.”
“Already?” Liam said. His voice cracked. “I have a ton of hockey practice on Saturday, Mr. Torres. And we have an away game on Sunday in Mantua.”
Poor Liam, I thought. I’d had no idea hockey took up so much time.
Mr. Torres shrugged. “Sure. No big deal if this weekend’s not convenient, but I’m recommending that the leads begin memorizing. Everyone needs to be completely off-book after winter break. Some people need a little more time to learn lines, so if you’ve never studied a part before, I’d suggest getting a head start.”
“I already started,” Elijah said. “Last week.”
Show-off. Puke-stocking.
“That’s great, Elijah,” Mr. Torres said. He smiled at me, but his eyes were darting. He’s nervous. Uh-oh. “Mattie, you’ll help Liam with the memorization, too, right?”
I almost choked on my grape-lemonade Trident. My favorite teacher was obviously losing it. How much did he expect me to do here?
“Oh, sure,” I said. “Of course.”
22
“Shall I hear more,
or shall I speak at this?”
—Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.39
“I don’t believe this,” Tessa wailed. “You get to spend every single English class alone with Liam, and now Mr. Torres also wants you to help him memorize? You’ll be with him so much you guys will be a couple by winter break, I just know it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Pass the M&M’s, okay?”
That Saturday Lucy and I were over at Tessa’s gorging on the Halloween candy rejected by her mom. Tessa had recited her Queen Mab speech at us five times, until even she admitted she had it nailed. So now we were in the pigging-out phase of the afternoon.
“So did Liam smile at you that way he smiles?” Tessa was asking as she chomped on a fun-size Snickers.
I admitted he had.
“And? Aren’t I right? Isn’t he ridiculously cute?”
“I can see why you’d think so,” I said carefully. “I also think he’s pretty smart.”
“Seriously?” Lucy said. “Based on what?”
“Just stuff we talked about.”
“Omigod,” Tessa shouted. “You talked?”
“Well, sure. We can’t rehearse if we don’t talk. Listen, Tessa, you don’t need to be jealous, I promise.”
“Yeah? Why not?”
“First of all, you like him. Second of all, I may . . . like someone else.”
Lucy looked at me with wide eyes.
Tessa didn’t see. “Not Elijah, I hope,” she said, snorting.
“No. Definitely not Elijah.”
“Woo, she’s finally decided! So who is it, then? Don’t tell me: It’s Ajay.”
“Are you insane, Tessa?” Lucy squealed.
“Of course I am. So does the Mystery Person know?”
“Absolutely not,” I said.
“Hmm. Is it someone I know?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I give up. Who?”
Lucy was nodding slightly, like she was urging me on. Rooting for me, almost. You can do this, her eyes told me. Breathe, Mattie.
I almost said it then. I did. Because I hadn’t stopped thinking about what Liam said about Romeo, how talking to friends might have helped him think straight.
But I just couldn’t get the words out. By now I was okay with Lucy knowing, especially because she’d never brought it up again. So I felt I could trust her to keep it to herself. But Tessa? She was just so loud about everything. And if she blabbed about it at school, and people heard, who knew what could happen?
I mean, at rehearsal the other day, Willow had scolded Ajay for using the word gay as if it was an insult, or something. Most kids I knew would probably say being gay was fine, blah-blah-blah. But knowing that an actual girl in middle school had a crush on another actual girl? Possibly they wouldn’t giggle and tease, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Also, I didn’t know how Gemma would react. That could be the worst part.
What if she freaked out and never wanted to talk to me again?
“I’m just not ready,” I said. “I can’t.”
Tessa tore off the wrapping of a KitKat bar with her teeth. “Sure, Mattie,” she said. “More secrets, huh?”
Dang. “It’s not like that,” I said.
“Yeah?” She looked at me with huge, hurt eyes. “What’s it like, then?”
“Come on, Tessa,” Lucy said. “Mattie will tell us when she’s ready. Don’t force her.”
“I’m not forcing anybody,” Tessa said. “I just think if one of your best friends has a crush, she should share the information. I don’t keep anything from either of you.”
It was true; she didn’t. She shared everything. And that was the problem.
“I’m really sorry, Tessa,” I said.
She shrugged. And if she caught that I’d apologized to her, but not to Lucy, she didn’t say.
23
“Tut! I have lost myself; I am not here;
This is not Romeo, he’s some other where.”
—Romeo and Juliet, I.i.200–201
I felt jittery all Monday morning. Jittery at breakfast, jittery on the walk to school, jittery when Tessa greeted me in homeroom.
“Good morrow, fairest Matilda,” she said, bowing. Thereby letting me know she was not still pouting about the crush business. Which was a big relief, obviously—but at the same
time, it made me feel guilty. Tessa was a great friend, so shouldn’t I trust her to keep a secret? How could I be close to someone I didn’t trust? Maybe I wasn’t being fair to her, I thought. But if she messed up, it wouldn’t be fair to me.
At the start of English class, I checked in with Mr. Torres, then went straight to the auditorium. This time Liam was playing something on his phone, so I was okay with interrupting.
“Hey,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. “Did you have a nice weekend memorizing lines?”
I meant it as a joke, but by the look on his face I could tell he thought I was serious. And he wasn’t happy I’d brought it up.
“No,” he muttered. “There are just too many of them. I can’t do it, Mattie.”
“Sure you can, Liam,” I said. “You get this play really well. What you said about Romeo on Friday—I was thinking about it all weekend.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “Thanks for helping me understand it. Anyway, we’d better get started. You want to go over that scene again with Friar Lawrence?”
“Not really,” Liam said, running his fingers through his hair.
“Okay, then what if we practiced for today’s rehearsal? It’s a fun scene with the Nurse who comes to Romeo with a message from Juliet. All the scenes with the Nurse are so funny, don’t you think?”
He shrugged. “Sure, Mattie. If that’s what you consider funny.”
Why was he being so difficult today? It was like dealing with my little brothers. “Okay, let’s start where Mercutio is teasing Romeo about running away from them last night.”
I read Mercutio’s lines the way I thought Tessa would, except instead of swooshing my arms around, pretend sword-fighting, I did a Darth Vader–y lightsaber sort of move. Whatever it looked like, I have to admit, I sounded pretty good. But Liam said his lines as if he were standing on line in the cafeteria, deciding between the hamburger or the hot dog. So it sounded weird when Mercutio tells Romeo that he’s glad the old, fun-loving Romeo is back—because the last thing Liam seemed was fun-loving.
“Okay, we’ll skip the part when Mercutio is teasing the Nurse,” I said, glancing at my watch. “Let’s do the conversation between the Nurse and Romeo. The Nurse is annoyed with Mercutio for teasing her, and Romeo tries to calm her by saying Mercutio is a ‘gentleman that loves to hear himself talk, and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.’ ”
“Mattie, you have that memorized?”
“What?”
“You didn’t look at the script when you said Romeo’s line just now. It’s like you just knew it.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “It’s not so hard to remember.”
“Maybe for you.” He kicked an imaginary pebble.
“Okay, Liam, is something wrong?” I asked.
“Nah,” he said, staring past me, at the stage. “I was just thinking. When do we put on this play?”
“In about eleven weeks. Which is nine weeks of rehearsal. More or less.”
“That’s when the ice hockey finals are. If we make it this year.”
“Cool,” I said. “So Romeo says—”
“And when’s the Valentine’s Dance?”
“What?”
“The eighth-grade dance. You know.”
“A week after the play, I think. You can look all that stuff up online. There’s a calendar.”
“Yeah, right. So can I ask you a question?”
“Sure. That’s why I’m here.”
“It’s not about the play.”
I was starting to sweat a little. “Okay, but we should be rehearsing now, right?”
“I need a time-out. That’s allowed, isn’t it?”
“Of course. You wanna go to the bathroom, or—”
“Nah. So, Mattie. About the dance—”
“What about it?”
“Do you know if your friend Lucy is going?”
“Lucy?” I blinked. “Don’t you mean Tessa?”
“No, I mean Lucy. Your smart friend who’s a really good dancer. Do you know if she’s going to the dance with anyone?”
Dang. This was out of control. Liam refused to rehearse, and now he wanted to break Tessa’s heart.
Well, I wouldn’t let him.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “I’m pretty sure Lucy asked someone already.”
“Really? Who?”
“Elijah.” It was just the first name that popped into my head, probably because it had occupied brain space for so long.
“That’s insane,” Liam said, shaking his hair. “I can’t believe anyone would like Elijah.”
“Well, it’s really not your business, is it? And he said yes. So can we please get back to—”
“Right, the play.” He sighed. “Whatever. You’re Mercutio and I’m Romeo.”
“Actually, no. Now I’m the Nurse.”
“Hey, Mattie. I have an idea. Why don’t you be Romeo and I be the Nurse?”
“That’s a joke, right? Ha-ha. I got it this time. It’s very funny.”
But I wasn’t laughing, and neither was Liam.
* * *
So now I had another secret. It isn’t fair, I thought.
Although at rehearsal that Monday afternoon, it occurred to me that maybe Liam’s crush on Lucy wasn’t the most secret-y secret. I mean, just because I’d never noticed that he liked Lucy didn’t mean nobody else was noticing it. Maybe they were; maybe everyone had been noticing but me.
And the funny thing about noticing: Once you finally do start noticing something, you can’t stop. Like how if you suddenly look in the mirror and think, Omigod, my earlobes don’t match, the rest of the day all you see are EARLOBES. EARLOBES EVERYWHERE. It wasn’t as if people suddenly grew earlobes overnight, or you’d mistakenly entered Earlobe World—just that you began noticing earlobes.
So maybe that was why as I sat in the third row of the auditorium, taking notes about lines to work on with Liam, I couldn’t help noticing the way Romeo looked at Benvolio: shyly, and for slightly too long. Sometimes he even blushed a little too—a sure sign of a crush if there was one. Versus the way Romeo looked at Mercutio: a quick glance, no eye contact, no change in skin tone. Was everybody else seeing all this? Was Lucy? Was Tessa? It was crazy to imagine anyone not noticing what now seemed so obvious to me.
And then I had this thought: If Lucy noticed all that stuff about Gemma and me, maybe she wasn’t the only one. Maybe other people noticed it too.
Including (but I had no evidence of this) Gemma.
24
“A villain, that fights
by the book of arithmetic!”
—Romeo and Juliet, III.i.103
The next day during English, Liam didn’t say a word about Lucy or the Valentine’s Dance. But he was even more distracted than usual. That afternoon Mr. Torres was rehearsing the scene when the Nurse tells Juliet about Romeo’s plan to meet at Friar Lawrence’s cell to get married—and since Romeo wasn’t in that scene, we had nothing to prepare. So I thought it made sense to go over old stuff—like the Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? scene on the balcony.
But every time I tried to get Liam to focus, he cracked a joke, or texted someone, or had a sudden urge to tie his shoelace. Once, he asked if we could take a break, and I said, “From what? We haven’t done anything yet.”
“Aww, come on, Mattie,” he said, smiling the Smile. “Don’t you get tired of being Mr. Torres’s pet?”
“I’m not his pet,” I growled.
“Sure you are. That’s why you’re here, right?”
“I’m here because Mr. Torres asked me. Because he was worried about you.”
Liam’s eyes narrowed. “He told you that?”
“No,” I said immediately, realizing that I’d just said the All-Time Stupidest Thing You Could Say to a Person Freaking About Playing the Lead. “He just wants you to relax. Look, Liam, if you want me to go away—”
“Nah. You should stay.”
Although I couldn’t fi
gure out what for. He almost seemed as if he didn’t care. As if by now he’d decided that being Romeo was impossible, and there was no point even trying.
So then I started to freak, too.
I have to tell Mr. Torres, I thought. My failure as a Romeo tutor had to be obvious to him at every rehearsal, but still, maybe he thought the situation wasn’t hopeless. And if he did think that, he needed to hear the truth.
So that afternoon I went to the auditorium, even though technically, without Liam, I shouldn’t have been there. I climbed onstage. Mr. Torres was busy talking to Keisha, but right away Gemma came running over.
“Mattie! Where have you been? I haven’t seen you in ages!” She gave me a hug that threw me off balance. I almost fell, too, but my backpack strap caught on the arm of a chair that Mr. Torres had placed onstage for the scene.
She couldn’t help laughing. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I said. And even though I’d come on a bad mission, I found myself grinning stupidly. Gemma was looking especially pretty that day, even by Gemma standards: Her cheeks were glowing, and she had on silver earrings that looked like dolphins. Or possibly they were question marks; I didn’t get a close look.
“Are you here to watch?” she asked. “Liam’s not in the scene today.”
“I know,” I said, inhaling the powdery Gemma smell.
She smiled. “Are you here to watch me, then?”
“What?” I felt my cheeks burn. “No. No, I need to—Excuse me.”
I scurried over to Mr. Torres, who was still talking to Keisha.
“The Nurse is teasing Juliet here, making her wait for news about Romeo—Mattie? Did you want to speak to me?” He looked surprised.
I nodded. “Can we please talk in private?”
“Of course. Keisha, why don’t you start reading with Gemma? I’ll be right there. What’s going on?”
“Mr. Torres,” I said, taking a breath. “I don’t think I’m helping Liam.”
“Sure you are. He seems more settled. He isn’t questioning as much at rehearsal.”
