Minutes pass in silence before Darby snaps at me. “Just ask.”
“Ask?”
“You’re staring at me. Whatever it is you’re thinking, just ask it. You’re transparent, Becca. I can read you like—” She rattles her book in my face.
Transparent? Here I was thinking I’d gotten better at the whole acting thing.
“So spit it out because I’m getting to a good part in this story.”
“Does it get easier—?”
“Yes.”
“Wait. I didn’t finish.”
“You don’t have to. It gets easier, playing the part gets to be second nature. Maybe even your first nature. It’s safer.” She picks at a chip in her nail polish. “Less disappointment.”
“But don’t you ever get lost in all of it?”
Darby looks at me, turns her whole face to meet mine. “Yes.”
“I don’t want to be lost anymore.”
She shrugs, looking back at her book. “Then leave a trail of breadcrumbs.”
We read silently until I hear the garage door opening.
“My parents,” I say.
“Don’t worry. I’m good with parents.” Darby’s face transforms before my eyes, from the quiet girl reading by my side into a teen girl you might see hanging with her pals in a Pottery Barn catalogue.
She wiggles her eyebrows at me, whispering, “Showtime.”
The door into the kitchen slams, rattling the pipes in the walls. Darby and I freeze on the top step.
“Becca, get down here,” Mom shouts, her voice cracking on the last word.
I swear under my breath. “Dr. Wallace definitely called,” I whisper.
Darby cringes, but recovers quickly, holding a finger out to stop me from going down the stairs. “Follow my lead.” Her voice is a whisper between us.
Before I can respond, she goes barreling down the stairs, her hair flying out behind her. I try to catch up, but by the time I get to the landing, she’s made it all the way into the kitchen, smashing into Mom, who was about to come check on me.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Darby says, her hands moving like moths around a porch light, trying to straighten Mom’s scarf. “I’m just so sorry.” The last bit of this is completely swallowed by a sob.
She’s good.
I stop on the step behind Darby, my mom’s shocked expression pleading for answers from me.
“Darby?” I reach out to touch her shoulder.
She whirls around and crashes into me, knocking me back a step before I can catch her. She’s sobbing into my shoulder so hard it shakes my whole body. I pat her head. “Shhh. It’ll be okay.”
Mom rushes to grab the tissues off the counter, fumbling them in her hands as she thrusts them out at us.
“What is going on here?”
Still holding on to me, Darby takes a step farther into the kitchen. Like we’ve rehearsed the scene a thousand times, I suddenly know what to do. I lead her to the table and set her carefully in one of the wooden spindle-back chairs. Mom has followed us, holding the tissue box out like a beacon. I take the tissues, thanking Mom, and hand them to Darby before rushing to get her a drink of water.
Mom follows me to the sink.
“That’s Darby, from the play. She had a fight with her—”
“Stupid boy,” Darby mutters from the table. “Who does he think he is?”
“Boyfriend,” I say. I watch my mother struggle. I can see her brain choosing sides and warring over the right thing to say.
What I’m doing is downright mean. I know how much Mom wants me to move on, to meet new friends. I know she won’t tell Darby to go. But I also know she wants to ask about Dr. Wallace. Mom’s smile is fractured as she takes the glass of water from my hand and turns back to the table.
“Well, Darby, you are welcome here,” she says, setting the water down in front of Darby and pulling the chair out beside her. Mom puts a hand on Darby’s shoulder. “You let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
Darby sniffles, mopping her face with a worn-looking tissue. “Thanks, Mrs. Hanson. I’m sorry to impose. It’s just nice to have a good friend I can rely on, you know?”
Darby grabs both my hands in hers, struggling to keep her voice steady. “And, Becca, I’m so sorry about today, losing it at school and all.”
I try to hide my surprise. “It’s okay.”
“No, I don’t know what I would have done. Probably something dumb, like write some stupid stuff on his locker or something.”
She turns back to my mom. It’s such a carefully constructed scene I can hardly believe she’s improvising. “I made Becca a little late for class after lunch today because I was so busy bawling in the bathroom.”
Mom looks at me, lifting her brows in a question.
“I kind of missed my appointment with Dr. Wallace—she’s the counselor you asked me to see at school—because I was with Darby. I’ll apologize to Dr. Wallace on Monday.”
Mom nods, still appraising me with her mom-vision.
I look away, back at Darby, whose gray eyes are looking glassy as she remembers back to the fake fiasco of her fake breakup with her fake boyfriend. In this moment, I kind of love this girl. She’s brilliant. Shifty. But brilliant.
Scene Nineteen
[A party]
Darby’s acting prowess did not end there. She somehow suckered me into coming with her tonight to Thomas’s party. And she managed to make my mom and dad think it was their idea that we go out. The girl is scary good. I hope I don’t run out of breadcrumbs so I can find my way home after all of this.
Thomas lives in a big house in a ginormous golf course neighborhood with humongous wrought iron gates that look like they could keep a tank out. Darby has dressed me in a pair of black leggings she found in the back of my closet, a long cardigan we found in Charlie’s closet (why does my brother own a cardigan?), and a purple shirt that looks like it shrunk in the wash that Darby found in the trunk of her car, which is the only trunk in the history of trunks that is more disgustingly overflowing with crap than Charlie’s.
At least I got to pick my own shoes—Charlotte’s raven-winged ones.
Darby said to think of it as a costume. When wearing the too-small shirt, I was not Becca Hanson, book nerd, but Rebecca Hanson, star of the high school stage, sweetheart to a line of waiting Romeos from here to the Mississippi. I’d eyed her like she’d lost it, but not for long, because she was coming at me, brandishing a mascara wand like the broadsword Greg taught her to wield onstage as Tybalt.
I head for the front door of Thomas’s McMansion, but Darby pulls on my elbow. “This way, rookie,” she says, leading me off toward the backyard. “And stop tugging on that sweater or I’ll take it away.” I’d been pinning the sweater shut with my arms hugging my middle, but I let them drop. It’s only a costume. I’m only a character tonight. I repeat these mantras as Darby opens the gate.
There’s a pool, of course, lit with tiki torches, and a patio with a dozen lounge chairs and—
“Is that a bar?”
Darby waggles her eyebrows at me. “But first we must find our host.” Her voice is admonishing, like she’s the queen of etiquette.
We weave through the crowd on the patio and enter through these giant doors that slide open to connect the pool deck to the finished basement (the size of my whole house, but way fancier with a TV the size of a frigging movie screen). Darby scans the crowd looking for Thomas, but before she spots him, her minions lock in on her.
“Darbilicious, where you been?” Meggie hip checks Darby, sloshing some of her drink on the floor.
“Oh, you know,” Darby drawls, her face composed in a bored expression that I imagine would take me years to copy. “Be a doll and fetch me a drink, girls.” Meggie and the other one—Peggy? No that can’t be right? If it were, the tall one’d be Leggy?—I snort at my stupidity.
“What?” Darby asks.
“Don’t you ever get tired?”
Darby blinks at me before her eyes crystal
lize, impermeable diamonds. “Camouflage is essential when”—her eyes slide away from me, looking just over my shoulder—“Thomas.”
“Wow, Becca. I can’t believe you’re here.” Thomas wraps an arm over my shoulders and pulls me into a side hug. I smell the pungent earthiness of beer on his breath.
I nod. “Me either.”
He claps his hands, and everyone turns toward him. “Guys,” he shouts, and I want so badly to run away, but Darby is blocking any escape on the other side. “The fair Juliet has arrived.”
The crowd cheers, and I’m crushed with hugs and high fives and—my, these drama folks sure are a happy bunch.
Darby claps her hands like she’s dusting them off, before slipping away in the crowd to join her harpies on the leather sectional sofa that’s bigger than my kitchen counter.
Marcus Zimmerman (the benevolent Friar Laurence) and Terrell Donovan, who plays Benvolio to Darby’s Tybalt, are playing something on a video system, and the competition must be fierce because everyone’s gathering around and cheering. It reminds me of being at Victor’s house, listening to Kelli and him trash talking as they play. Victor can’t sit still when he plays, though. He dances around with his remote, like moving his body helps his poor avatar escape Kelli’s sharpshooting.
Marcus Zimmerman wails as Terrell’s sleek car nudges him off the road into a fiery explosion. Everyone goes wild.
How did I get here? I’m feeling trembly, like my bones have gone to gelatin, so I clench my fists by my sides, forcing the stillness to spread from my muscles there to the rest of my body.
Thomas leans down to whisper in my ear, “You okay?”
I shake my head. I suck at acting. Why can’t I just pretend to be girl having fun at a party? “I need to get some air.”
Thomas grabs my hand and pulls me away from the crowd, back out to the patio. “Come on then,” Thomas says. “Let’s get you a drink.”
Outside, the last vestiges of autumn warmth drape around my shoulders. Thomas grabs two beers from behind the outdoor bar and leads the way to a pair of lounge chairs on the far side of the pool. We sit in silence and watch the others from across the pool.
“Where are your parents?” I take the beer Thomas is holding out for me.
Thomas shrugs. “Out. They had to attend the something society of something or other’s charity ball of do-gooderness.”
“Ah,” I say, weighing the heavy sarcasm behind his words. “I’ve heard of them. They do plenty of gooderness.”
He’s just about to take a sip of beer, and does a laugh-snort kind of thing into the can that makes a funny woofing sound. “You’re kind of funny, Becca.”
“Well, thanks, kind of.”
We clink cans. I take a sip, and he takes a long gulp before leaning back in his chair with his face turned toward me, his eyes earnest. “Can I ask a personal question?”
My heart speeds up. “Um…okay.”
“I can’t read you like I can read other girls.”
“We’re not books.”
His lips quirk in a half grin. “Do you…I mean”—he takes a big breath—“is it serious? With you and that techie guy, Max. Are you dating?”
I clench my hands around the beer can in my lap to keep from twisting a chunk of hair right off my head.
“Too personal?” Thomas asks.
“No. I just don’t like my answer.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know exactly what’s going on.”
Thomas sits up, swinging his long legs into the space between our chairs. “Because you’re blind?” When I peek up at him, he shakes his head and continues. “That guy’s got it bad for you. Romeo bad.”
“And we all know how well that worked out.”
Thomas chuckles, his eyes shining in the light from a nearby tiki torch. “Okay, yes. Bad example. But you know what I mean. If you like him, too, I don’t get what’s holding you back.”
“Soul-crushing fear.”
“Oh, sure,” he says, grinning at me. “I can see how getting everything your heart desires could be terrifying.”
Everything my heart desires. What do I desire? I want to sit and read while Max works in his dad’s barn on sketches and sculptures, bending iron with his bare hands. I want to take him to my favorite section in the library downtown and show him my favorite books, and if we were to kiss there in the stacks, well, that’d be okay, too. I want to tell Max how special he is to me and that I want to be with him even though I’m afraid to be with anyone I care about because what if—
What if, Max?
I’m staring up at the stars, lost in thought, when Thomas continues. “But hey, that all works out for me. You should definitely not date that guy when there are plenty of other young Romeos around.” He nudges my hand with his fingertips, drawing me back into this reality. I take a long sip of beer and blow out a lungful of stale air.
“All the world’s a stage,” he quotes.
“And all the men and women merely players,” I continue.
He finishes. “They have their exits and their entrances.”
Yes. Yes, they do. And I can’t take any more unsanctioned exits. My life. My terms. I say who comes into my life. I say when they leave.
“Let’s rejoin the party.” I want to get back to pretending I’m playing the role of girl at a party, not reprise my most famous role girl who frequently fails at life.
Standing, I reach out my hand to pull Thomas up after me. We have to stand very close in the small space between the lounge chairs. I can hear music, a familiar song, playing from inside. “I want to dance.”
Charlotte taught me to dance. I’ve just never had anyone dance with me. I push away the second beer Thomas offers me and join Darby and some others at the center of the makeshift dance floor, a wide-open space between the foosball table and pool table in Thomas’s fancy basement.
The music is everywhere now, wild with a thick bass line that moves you from deep inside. Thomas joins the crowd, slowly moving closer to me. One song ends and another plays and we keep dancing. We can hardly move where we stand at the heart of the crowd. I slide toward the pool table, climbing up to get away from the pressing bodies. Thomas joins me. I close my eyes and sway my hips like Charlotte used to. Thomas’s right hand perches on my hip. I don’t open my eyes.
For a fleeting moment, I think of Oh, The Places You’ll Go. I am dancing on a table. Charlotte, look! I am dancing on a table. But then Thomas moves closer. His hand slides around to the small of my back, under my cardigan, to the slip of skin Darby’s too-small T-shirt fails to cover. His fingers play the bones of my lower spine like chords on a guitar.
Thomas gets a peculiar, determined look before he leans in to my ear, his stubble brushing against my cheek, to whisper one of Romeo’s lines. “There lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords.”
There are catcalls from below as he presses his lips to mine. Someone cries out, “Go, Romeo.” But this is no stage kiss—not for him. There is no holding back, no timidity, no show for the audience around us. And most importantly, there is no Max in a booth shining a spotlight on us. I immediately break away, leveraging my hands against his chest.
“Thomas—” I’m interrupted by applause from below as the crowd cheers, but even their cheers are different than those in the theater. This is unscripted. This is life off book.
“This is a mistake,” I say.
“Wait,” Thomas pleads, his hands slipping from my waist as I pull away. Just before I climb off the table I catch Darby’s eye. She looks a little too pleased, and I feel like such an ass for thinking any of this was a good idea—trusting Darby, coming here, dancing with Thomas, pretending to be someone I’m not.
She’s pushed her way through the crowd to meet me when I hop off the pool table. “Let me guess,” she says, taking my elbow to lead me out, “you want to go?”
I shake her off. “Not with you.”
I push my own way through the crowd, conscious that bot
h Darby and Thomas are following me. I make my way to the pool deck and gulp the fresh air before whirling to face them.
“Is this some kind of joke?” They both freeze in their tracks. “Because I’m not laughing.”
“Becca,” Thomas pleads, taking a wobbly step toward me. “I’m sorry. I thought you—”
“Were Juliet? Well, I’m not. I’m Rebecca Jane Hanson. I sit in my room and read. I especially do not kiss boys in front of an audience. I am not Juliet.”
Thomas recoils.
“And you,” I say, pointing at Darby. “Acting like my friend. Helping me with my mother. Playing with me like I’m a paper doll.” I tug on the shirt she’s loaned me.
“Hey,” Darby says, reflexively.
“Why did you bring me here?”
That same smug smile returns to her lips. “Well I was hoping you’d screw up royally, of course. So thanks for coming through.”
“Jesus,” Thomas swears, stepping away from Darby.
All the words in my vocabulary have evaporated. I stand there gaping at her.
Darby gets closer, her face in mine. “I did this for your own good, Becca.”
“My own good?” Words! Finally! Okay, so I just repeated hers, but it’s a start.
“I am sorry, Thomas, that I had to use you to prove my point, though.” Darby shrugs.
“Use me?”
“Becca’s determined to throw away a good thing, the thing she really wants, because of some screwed-up idea that the worst thing in life is to lose what you love.”
Thomas shakes his head. I still don’t get what’s going on, so I mirror him.
“There is worse shit out there than loss. Regret. That’s a real bitch, and you’ll have no one but yourself to blame.”
“But now I’m going to regret this,” I say, motioning to the space between Thomas and myself.
Darby’s face contorts into a small apology. “Yeah, well, so my plan wasn’t perfect.”
“Perfect?” Thomas asks.
“I said I was sorry,” Darby snipes. “I didn’t expect you to kiss her. I just wanted her to come here and have a crappy time and realize that she needs to take a damn chance.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to squeeze out the headache blooming there. “Thomas, I’m sorry.” I turn toward him. “I didn’t know—I mean, I thought—”
Life After Juliet Page 17
