Look Both Ways

by Alison Cherry

  “You haven’t failed, Brooklyn. You’re being way too hard on yourself.”

  “We don’t have to talk about it anymore,” I say, hoping she’ll take the hint and drop it.

  “Okay.” She shifts, and for a minute I’m afraid I’ve unintentionally ended the conversation altogether. But she just changes position so that we’re both cross-legged and facing each other, knees almost touching. “Road trips, love or hate?” she asks.

  It’s so unexpected that I start laughing. “Um, hate, I guess—I can’t drive, I have no sense of direction, and I have a really small bladder. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I want to know more things about you.”

  I feel a small shift deep inside me, a little click, like something tiny has ignited. Zoe, with the Juilliard acceptance letter and the circle of admirers, wants to know more things about me.

  “Oh,” I say, because I’m too surprised to say anything else.

  “Now you,” she says, and I realize with a surge of happiness that this game could go on indefinitely.

  “Okay,” I say. “Um, leggings—love or hate?”

  “Under dresses, love. As pants, hate.”

  “Me too!”

  “Cats, love or hate?” she asks.

  “The animal or the musical?”

  “The musical.”

  I feel pretty neutral about it, but I say, “Hate,” because I know every self-respecting theater person is supposed to hate Cats. “You?” I ask.

  Zoe smiles sheepishly. “I kind of love it, honestly. It makes me nostalgic. I used to pin a scarf to the butt of a leotard like a tail and dance to the sound track every day when I was little.”

  I love that she answered that way. I also wonder if she was testing me.

  “Sleeping till noon, love or hate?” I ask her.

  “Love,” Zoe says. “Sex—love or hate?”

  I think about lying again, but that’s already backfired on me once, so I decide to go with the truth. “Not applicable,” I say.

  “Really? You never did it with Jason?”

  I shrug. “We did pretty much everything else, but I didn’t like him enough for that. I’m certainly not, like, waiting for marriage or anything, but I at least want to be in love.” I can tell my face is bright red, and I look down at my lap. “Is that weird?”

  “No,” Zoe says. “Of course not.”

  “How about you? Have you and Carlos…”

  “Oh, yeah. Definitely love.” The way she says it, kind of throaty and knowing, makes me feel like she’s much older than me.

  “My mom’s horrified I’ve never done it,” I say.

  “She wants you to have sex? My mom would be horrified if she knew I had.”

  “My mom is super-open about that stuff. Like, too much sometimes. I mean, it’s cool that we can talk about it, but I don’t need to know exactly what she did on the roof of the theater building in college, you know?”

  Zoe laughs and says, “Eew,” and I feel like we’re the same age again.

  Livvy knocks on our door and pops her head in. “Hey,” she says, “a bunch of us are going to watch Mean Girls. You guys want to come?”

  Even though Livvy can’t possibly know she’s intruding, shattering our fragile, intimate little cocoon, I’m furious with her for a second. I brace for the impact of Zoe saying yes and ending our conversation, but instead she says, “Go ahead and start without us. We’re kind of in the middle of something.”

  I look down and pretend to adjust my sandal so she won’t see how big my smile is.

  Zoe and I play Love or Hate for what feels like hours. I learn that she loves the Muppets, paella, snow, The Wizard of Oz, and George Clooney, and that she hates high heels, jogging, juice cleanses, rompers, and the word “punctual.” The game grows steadily more personal, and Zoe confesses that she loves chivalry even though it’s outdated, and hates when directors correct the way she’s delivering a line, regardless of whether they’re right. I wish I could take notes on all the things I’m discovering about her.

  When sitting on the floor starts getting uncomfortable, we sprawl on our beds and keep going. We never make it to Livvy’s room. I’ve known Zoe only a few days, but in a lot of ways, I already feel closer to her than to anyone I know back home. There are plenty of people I’m friendly with, but we never have long, charged conversations like this, ones that actually mean something. Even after knowing me for years, those girls don’t understand the things about me that Zoe inherently gets.

  Around one in the morning, I ask Zoe’s opinion on the concept of love at first sight, and when she doesn’t answer, I realize she has fallen asleep. I’m disappointed, but I love that she wanted to talk to me up until the very last moment that she could stay conscious. It reminds me of the times Jason and I used to fall asleep on the phone, doing that stupid “You hang up first. No, you hang up first” thing just to continue hearing the sound of each other’s voices.

  I turn off our lamps and match my breathing to Zoe’s in the dark, feeling for the first time like I’m in the right place after all.

  I’m exhausted when my alarm goes off at seven-thirty, but I still feel bubbly with happiness from last night’s conversation. It’s possible Zoe was being nice only because she knew I was upset, but she certainly seemed to enjoy our talk as much as I did. If the two of us are going to be good friends, maybe my summer at Allerdale will actually be worth something.

  Zoe’s rehearsal doesn’t start until ten today, and I get ready as quietly as I can so I won’t disturb her. I’m in such a good mood that I want to make other people happy, too, so half an hour before my crew call, I head to Kayla’s Cakes in town and buy doughnuts for the lighting crew. The decor inside the shop kind of creeps me out—there are mounted taxidermy animals all over the walls and counters. But I’m sure the doughnuts will still taste good, and this gesture might finally earn me some respect from the tech people.

  When I get to the theater, most of the crew is already there, quietly smoking and sipping their coffee. But the second I put my pink pastry box down on the loading dock, everyone starts wolf-whistling and whooping. Douchebands pats me on the back. “Nicely done, new girl. Doughnuts the first week! I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  I move away from him with the excuse of undoing the tape on the box; I want the crew to be friendly, but not that kind of friendly. “I mean, why wait when doughnuts are involved?” I answer.

  “That’s what I always say.” Douchebands takes a chocolate one and crams it into his mouth.

  Courtney reaches into the box and selects a coconut doughnut. “Congratulations,” she says, which doesn’t really make any sense, but at least she doesn’t sound like she wants to kill me.

  “Enjoy,” I say.

  “Oh, I will.”

  Solomon shows up and makes a beeline for the doughnuts. “You again?” she asks Douchebands.

  He shakes his head. “Not today.”

  “Who brought these?”

  “I did,” I say, and I give her a big smile.

  “Loud and proud,” says a guy with dreadlocks. “Nice.”

  “Knock it off, Lamar.” Solomon turns to me. “I respect a girl who learns the rules quickly. Thanks for the doughnuts.”

  “No problem,” I say, but I’m really confused now. I’m clearly missing something here, but if there was a rule about doughnuts, wouldn’t my family have told me?

  “Get inside,” Solomon says. “The designer’s here, and focus starts in ten minutes. Brooklyn, stick with Courtney today, okay? She’ll show you what to do.”

  “Okay,” I say, and when Courtney doesn’t roll her eyes, I know I’ve taken a step in the right direction. I make a big show of attaching my wrench to my belt as I follow her into the theater, and she actually smiles at me. I consider asking her about the doughnuts, but I don’t want to look completely stupid in front of her again, so I keep quiet.

  Focus sounds like some sort of relaxation exercise my mom would be into, but it turns ou
t to mean pointing the lights in the right directions and attaching gels, thin pieces of plastic that diffuse and color the beams. Courtney and I are assigned to the lights on the second catwalk, and the designer stands onstage, waving his hands around to indicate where he wants us to point them. I’m pretty slow and clumsy with my wrench, and my first couple of lights take so long, I can see the designer getting frustrated. But Courtney is surprisingly patient with me, and after a while, it starts to get easier. Every time one of the guys on the crew walks by, he smiles at me, which is a distinct improvement over the way they’ve ignored me all week. Courtney keeps snapping at them to leave me alone, and I wonder if maybe she’s a little jealous.

  By the time the day is over, I’ve successfully focused a bunch of lights by myself. As I leave, Solomon says, “Good work today,” and I actually feel like it’s genuine. It’s the first time I’ve left the theater with a feeling of accomplished exhaustion instead of humiliated exhaustion, and all I want to do is tell Zoe about it.

  I check the electronic call board on my phone and see that she gets out of Midsummer rehearsal in twenty minutes, so I head over to Haydu to wait for her. The dance studio has a window set into the door, and through it I see the woman playing Titania, queen of the fairies, doing a monologue in the center of the room. Zoe and the rest of the fairies are running and leaping and spinning around her, gorgeous and graceful. When the choreographer stops the girls, Zoe leans over and says something to Livvy, who laughs. It’s so unfair that all these people get to spend entire days in this room with her while I’m stuck in the catwalks.

  Rehearsal finally ends, and everyone puts on their shoes and gathers their things. When Zoe heads toward the door, my hand flies up to make sure my hair looks okay, and then I immediately feel ridiculous. Why would she care how my hair looks?

  “Hey!” she calls when she notices me. “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought I’d see if you guys were done before I went to dinner.”

  “Aw, thanks for waiting,” she says, like I have this whole other group of friends I could be eating with instead.

  “I forgot my wallet,” Livvy says. “Meet you guys there?”

  “Sure,” I say. As I watch her go, I wonder if being alone with Zoe will feel different now that we’ve connected on such a deep level. I wait for my friend to give me a hug or say something about how much she enjoyed our conversation last night, but she just heads toward the dining hall like everything’s totally normal. I rack my brain for something fascinating to say.

  “You guys looked really good in there,” is what I come up with.

  It’s not exactly insightful, but Zoe smiles. “Oh, were you watching? How much did you see?”

  “Not that much,” I say. “There was a lot of leaping and spinning. It looked exhausting.”

  “It was,” she says. “I could eat, like, six sandwiches right now.”

  None of this feels any different from how it would’ve felt yesterday afternoon, which is a little disappointing. I’m trying to think of a way to tell her how much last night meant to me, when she says, “Hey, where were you this morning? I woke up at eight-fifteen, and you were already gone.”

  “I left early so I could get doughnuts for the lighting people.”

  Zoe stops walking. “You brought doughnuts?”

  “Yeah. I thought—”

  She smacks me on the arm. “Brooklyn! We talked for hours last night! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Tell me who it was!”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say.

  Zoe claps a hand over her mouth. “Oh God,” she says. “You don’t know about the doughnuts, do you?” She sounds gleeful and horrified in equal parts, and my stomach drops like it does when someone says, We need to talk.

  “I don’t know what about the doughnuts?” I ask. “Just tell me.”

  “When you bring doughnuts in the morning, it means you hooked up with someone the night before. It’s like insurance. If you give someone a doughnut, they’re not allowed to ask you questions, and if they find out who it is, they have to keep it a secret. I can’t believe nobody told you.”

  Everything starts to click into place. The way Douchebands reacted when I said, Why wait when doughnuts are involved? Solomon’s comment about following the rules. The way every guy who passed me in the catwalks today made a point of smiling at me. I stepped up and claimed those doughnuts like they were an accomplishment. I am officially the biggest idiot in the world. I can’t believe my family told me about all the best nooks for secret sex but didn’t bother to warn me about this.

  “Oh no,” I say. “Was that in the welcome packet?”

  Zoe laughs. “No, of course not. It’s not, like, an official rule. My sister told me about it.”

  “And you didn’t think you should pass that along?”

  “I wasn’t hiding it from you on purpose! I didn’t even remember it was a thing; nobody’s brought them to rehearsal yet. I don’t think accidental doughnut-buying is usually an issue. I mean, who randomly buys doughnuts for their crew for no reason? Nobody’s that nice.” She looks at me and smiles. “Except you, I guess.”

  “And now the entire lighting crew thinks I’m a slut. Fabulous.” I sigh. “Okay. I’ll tell them tomorrow that I didn’t know and that—”

  Zoe cuts me off. “No, absolutely not! First of all, hooking up with someone doesn’t make you a slut. And second of all, why do you care what they think? I’d play it up, if it were me. You should bring doughnuts again next week. It’ll make you seem mysterious.”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah, right. Nobody’s going to believe I found multiple people to hook up with that quickly.”

  She looks confused. “Of course they will. Why would you say that? You’re totally gorgeous.”

  I suddenly feel very warm. Is she flirting with me? Or is she stating what she believes is a fact? Either way, I can’t quite meet her eyes.

  She’s not flirting with you, I think. Get over yourself. She has a boyfriend.

  “Thanks for telling me before I made an even bigger fool of myself,” I say. “People were so nice to me today that I probably would’ve started bringing them all the time. God, I’m so ridiculously naive.”

  Zoe puts an arm around my shoulders and pulls me closer. She’s still all sweaty from rehearsal, but I don’t even mind. “You’re welcome,” she says. “Stick with me, and that innocence will be gone in no time.”

  Rehearsals for Midsummer are kicking into high gear when we’re called in for our second shot at Señor Hidalgo’s Circus of Wonders. Since a bunch of our cast members are in both shows, we aren’t even able to gather until ten-thirty at night, after the main stage rehearsal is over. I’ve already been in the theater for twelve hours, fetching gels and moving ladders and refocusing lights, and I’m not looking forward to another useless night of slogging through imaginary tar. But I’m a little heartened when I arrive and see that Clark is carrying a stack of stapled packets that look like scripts. Even having a couple of concrete scenes to read through would make me feel so much better about this production.

  But when we settle into our circle of chairs and I look down at the “script” Clark has handed me, I feel the bizarre urge to laugh and cry at the same time.

  SEÑOR HIDALGO'S CIRCUS OF WONDERS

  my mind is a circus of wonders

  wonderful circus of the mind

  dark matter in three rings, circling, circling

  (THE ENSEMBLE becomes a series of concentric circles, pulsing, nesting, pulling apart, linking and unlinking)

  rings like a ringmaster

  rings like a doorbell

  (DING, DING, DING, THE ENSEMBLE becomes a doorbell)

  rings on my fingers and bells on my toes

  (jingle bells, jingle bells)

  rings around my mind

  like an iron band squeezing, squeezing, clamped around my brain

  until the pain the pai
n the pain

  the pain turns into rings

  rings like saturn

  my mind is a circus of planets spinning spinning spinning out of control

  (THE ENSEMBLE spins out of control spins spins spins EXPLODES)

  explosion of light, explosion of the mind

  the furious light of a supernova

  my mind is a supernova

  wonderful supernova circus

  (THE ENSEMBLE coalesces into a writhing mass of fury)

  I wonder wonder wonder wonder wonder

  wonder wonder wonder wonder

  wonder wonder wonder

  wonder

  (THE ENSEMBLE sings)

  Okay, seriously, what are we supposed to do with this?

  I glance up at our “playwright,” who’s sitting across the circle. He’s looking down at his lap, tapping a pen against his leg with one hand and sliding his glasses up and down his sweaty nose with the other. He looks like the kind of person who would spend his time doing something comfortable and safe, like painting model airplanes alone in a basement. He does not look like someone whose mind is a furious supernova. Russell’s sitting next to me, and I turn to give him a Can you believe this? look. The expression on his face is so horrified, I have to look away so I won’t burst into inappropriate laughter.

  “Um,” says the guy with the long hair from across the circle. “I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but how are we supposed to read this? It doesn’t indicate who says what.”

  Clark runs his hands through his hair and heaves one of his world-weary sighs. “It’s not a script. It’s a jumping-off point. These are prompts, not lines. It’s an ensemble piece. That means we create it together. Right, Alberto?”

  Our playwright looks up like he’s in the crosshairs of a rifle and nods quickly.