Understudy

by Cheyanne Young

  “I swear to god, if he touches me I’ll kill him.” Margot shoots me a look that could slice my script in half. “Wren, you better be careful. He’s a stagehand like you.”

  I nod, not knowing what to say; still feeling like someone has punched me in gut.

  Ms. Barlow instructs everyone (even us lowly stagehands) to sit in the front seats in the auditorium while she talks for an hour about how rehearsals will go, who does what, and what conduct is expected of us. She also slips in a few stories of her old Broadway acting days, and people seem excited about it, but not me because I’ve heard them a million times. Oddly, each time one of her stories are told, the grandeur of it gets a little bigger. I sit in the third row behind everyone else and stare at Derek, who is in the second row a few seats to my right. There is a wide birth of empty seats around him.

  His hair looks so cute from the back.

  I totally shouldn’t be thinking that.

  The light board has a maze of buttons and switches, most of them with the labels rubbed off from years of use. Although it’s electronic, the dull colors and square shapes mean it’s from the eighties and I wonder how it’s survived this long. Several minutes pass and I’m tired of pretending to be interested in this thing, but I’m too terrified of running into Derek, so I keep standing here.

  Someone slaps my butt and I spin around. “Don’t tell me the hottest girl in AP English is a stagehand?” It’s Greg. That Greg. Ugh.

  “Touch me like that again and I’ll castrate you.” I turn back around and push a button like I know what I’m doing. A spotlight flips on, blinding Gwen and Ricky who are reading from their scripts in center stage. Quickly, I push the button again. At least now I know what that one button does.

  Greg leans over my shoulder, his breath hitting the back of my neck. Invading personal space is one of his favorite pastimes. “What ya doing?”

  I sigh. “I don’t even know.”

  “Yeah me neither. I’m supposed to be the sound guy, but Teach said we won’t have any sound clips for a week or two so I’m just supposed to hang out.”

  “That woman is so freaking OCD about her plays but she seems to have screwed up a million things already.”

  Greg takes my necklace in his hands and shifts the clasp until it’s at the back of my neck. Goosebumps trail down my arms. Not because I like him—because I don’t—but because he’s a guy and he’s touching my neck. Greg is cute, but in a way that makes you want to punch him. He’s insanely book smart but in an effort to hide it, he’s a smartass. He will say the meanest shit at the worst possible time, and it’ll make you feel like you’re a loser and yet that somehow makes you want to try harder to impress him. He loves to make girls cry.

  Last month I accidently made out with him at Margot’s beach party.

  That’s probably why he’s being so nice.

  “I found a place behind that curtain that makes a really great spot to sit,” he says, staring me right in the eyes because he’s also kind of short for a guy. “Want to go sit?”

  I know he wants to make out, and it’s probably the only thing that will take my mind off Derek and how stupid I feel for wasting an entire weekend daydreaming about him.

  I glance around and find Aunt Barlow at the front of the stage, engrossed in her two lead actors. She won’t miss me if I sneak away for a while.

  “Yeah,” I say. I know this is stupid and a bad decision. I know it’s the sort of thing that parents tell their little girls about when they have the boys only want one thing talk with them. Greg is a skeeze and I’m not even sure why I say the next few words, but I do. “Let’s go sit.”

  He grabs my hand and pulls me through backstage clutter, weaving in and out of the short mini curtains on the side of the stage. Margot whistles and wiggles her eyebrows as I scamper past her.

  At the very back of the stage there is one final black velvety curtain in front of a concrete wall. It drags along the floor. Greg lifts the edge and motions for me to walk behind it. It’s pitch black behind there, and it can’t possibly have more than a few inches of space.

  “Are you crazy?” I whisper, taking a step back. I’m vaguely aware that I just kicked someone’s shoe. “We can’t fit back there.”

  “Yeah we can, it’s like two feet deep.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He winks. “Yeah, babe. Trust me.”

  “You go first.” I’m all down for making out behind the stage, but not if our bodies make two obvious lumps under the curtain. Greg steps behind the curtain and disappears. “Move around,” I say. I hear him shuffling his feet like a salsa dancer, and to my delight, the curtain doesn’t move at all.

  “Come on back, it’s lonely without you.”

  “Shut up,” I whisper. “Someone could hear you.” He laughs. I lift the edge of the heavy curtain, but before I step behind it, I glance back to see who I kicked a minute ago. Hopefully it’s not someone who will snitch on me.

  Derek’s sitting against the wall, with his knees pulled up and he’s sketching the outline of the stage on a notepad. My heart goes cold when his eyes dart upward and see me looking at him.

  “Sorry I kicked you,” I say.

  He turns back to his drawing. “Have fun.”

  Day twenty-seven of the 20 Minute Abs DVD. The moves are no longer as nightmarishly hard as they used to be, but I’m still in horrible amounts of pain by the thirteenth minute. I squeeze out the last set of reverse crunches and collapse on the floor before the credits roll. I should sue this guy with his huge muscles and peppy smile for his false claims on getting perfect abs in just thirty days. My sad sack of stomach muscles look exactly the same as they did a month ago.

  The only great thing about this DVD is that it wakes me up for school better than a cold shower. In first period theater arts class, I sit at my desk in the back and doodle in the margins of my script. Although auditions were open to every senior at Lawson High, most of the members of the play are in Ms. Barlow’s theater class. So lessons have been dropped in lieu of extra play rehearsal.

  The stagehands and me—their fearless leader—hang out in the back of the class and bullshit for ninety minutes. Derek isn’t in this class, thank god. Greg drags his chair over to my desk and rests his chin on my shoulder.

  “What’s up, bosslady?”

  “Not a thing.” I slide over in my desk to knock Greg’s head off me. Just because we’ve made out twice now does not mean something’s going on between us, and he needs to know that. He probably won’t care though, because he’s on the verge of becoming a man whore, following in the footsteps of his mega hot older brother, Brian. Brian graduated two years ago and Margot still hasn’t given up her goal of sleeping with him.

  “So, should we be uh, you know,” he says, pointing to the script on his desk. “Working on this play?”

  “I guess.” Truth is, I haven’t quite recovered from the roller coaster ride my emotions went through when I found out I didn’t get Gretchen’s role. At first I was pissed, then stoked because I’d get to work with Derek, and now I’m forced to avoid him at all costs because he’s some kind of angry psycho. More than anything though, I’m embarrassed at how I let myself get carried away with fantasies of him. That is the last time I will ever get excited to see a new guy in school.

  With Greg’s insistence, we work on ideas for props and costumes. He writes everything in his notebook, organized by scene and character. As the smartest guy in this class, he should be the manager, not me.

  I mention this to Ms. Barlow after class and it doesn’t go over very well. “I’m starting to wonder if you care about me at all,” she says, taking off her glasses and wiping them with her rainbow colored quilted vest. “Not only as an educator, but as a relative. You seem so keen on hurting my feelings lately.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you, I just have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  “You can start by memorizing your lines as understudy.”

  I roll my eyes. “Tha
t won’t be necessary. Gwen loves being Gretchen.”

  “Memorize them anyway, okay?” The two minute bell rings, warning me that I’d better get to my next class. Aunt Barlow ushers me out the door and into the hallway. “By the way,” she says as if she just remembered something. “Since Derek isn’t in theater, he agreed to meet with you after school to get started on prop construction. You can bring the other stagehands as well.”

  A lump forms in my throat. “Yeah, okay.” I rush to my next class, making a mental note to track down Greg and the others at lunch and ask them to stay after school.

  Margot saves me a seat at our regular lunch table. I find Greg sitting with the cheerleaders and I choke. I don’t have the self-esteem to go up to him while he’s surrounded by beautiful, charismatic girls who flirt with him to get help on their homework.

  The only other stagehand is absent today. And I probably wouldn’t have asked him anyhow, because he breathes loudly and always stares down my shirt. I return to our lunch table, defeated.

  “It’s funny,” Margot says, dipping her French fry into a ketchup and mustard mix. “I auditioned for the lead role and you didn’t, and yet here you are working harder than I am.”

  “How is that funny?” I pop the tab on my Diet Coke and it bends my fingernail backwards. Gasping in pain, I shove it in my mouth and bite down hard, trying not to think about how this is probably a sign from life that today is only going to get worse.

  Margot snickers at my misfortune. “Not funny haha, just you know. Funny.”

  “Right.” I shove the soda can aside, no longer wanting to drink it. “It looks like I’ll be stuck working on sets with Derek tonight.”

  Margot’s mouth falls open. “Alone?”

  “Yep.”

  She grabs her purse off the floor and digs around in it, retrieving a hot pink keychain with a small can of mace. “Keep this on you, in case he tries anything.”

  “He’s not going to murder me.”

  While she’s in her purse, she grabs her lip gloss and reapplies it. “And if he does, I’m going to give a great ‘I told you so’ speech at your funeral.”

  Derek sits at a workbench flipping through a fresh copy of LOVE & SUICIDE. An empty bag of skittles sways in the wind from the large fan across the room and threatens to become litter on the floor. Two piles of Skittles sit on the table: a big pile of all the colors and a smaller one with just green and yellow. I toss my bag on the floor and sit on the stool next to him.

  “So I guess we’ll be working together.” Though I tried to say that friendly and upbeat, it came out a little gloomy and morose. Derek doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Good thing I know my way around the miter saw,” he snorts. He scoops up a handful of Skittles, drops the green and yellow ones in the small pile and puts the rest in his mouth.

  “Why are you doing that?” I ask.

  “I don’t like those colors.”

  I pick up a green one and eat it. “You’re kidding. Green and yellow are the best flavors.”

  He shoves his script out of the way and looks up at me. He smiles and it melts away all the nervousness I’ve been harboring. “You’re insane.”

  I eat another one to prove how delicious they are. “Plus green and yellow are the school colors.”

  “School spirit is for chumps.”

  “You’ve clearly never been to one of Lawson’s famous pep rallies.” Right as I say it, I feel like I’m punched in the gut with my own stupidity. Of course he’s never been to a pep rally—he spent the last five months in juvi. I wonder if he knows that I know. I mean, he has to, right? The whole school talks about him. My face burns. I grab my notebook and flip through it, hoping he doesn’t see how red my cheeks are.

  The silence probably lasts a few seconds, but it feels like an eternity. Derek rests his head on his left hand and watches me as I flip through pages of the detailed notes Greg had made in my notebook. “Um,” I start, and my voice comes out all croaky. I clear my throat, and without looking at him I say, “Do you want to read through the notes I made earlier?”

  “We’ll switch notes,” he says, taking my notebook and giving me his. “I was hella bored in calculus today, so I wrote down some ideas.”

  Like Greg, Derek had broken the script into scenes and acts, and listed ideas for how each set should be designed. His ideas are a million times better than Greg’s.

  “You’re right. I haven’t been to a Lawson pep rally.” Derek’s voice breaks the now comfortable silence a few minutes later, and thrusts us back into an awkward conversation. I look up from his notes. Should I acknowledge him? Play dumb? Make a joke?

  “You didn’t miss much,” I say, when it’s obvious he wants a reply by how he won’t stop staring at me. I’m suddenly very aware of the fact that Mr. Harrison is not in his classroom today. How did Derek even get in here without the key?

  Now it’s Derek’s time to clear his throat. “I was in juvi.”

  My heart rate speeds up to ten thousand beats per minute. The spandex-wearing guy on my abs DVD would be proud. “Oh?” I say, taking the playing dumb route.

  “Yes. And it sucked. Everyone in there is incredibly stupid.” He takes my pen and crosses out something in my notebook. “But I’m not a bad guy, and you don’t have to get all tense around me, you know.”

  My skin pigmentation morphs into a permanent shade of crimson. My first thought is to deny it, say I have no idea what he’s talking about. But he’s right, I am tense around him. I am both captivated with how insanely gorgeous he is anytime he’s doing anything, and also terrified of him going off on some Hulk-like rampage and kicking my ass.

  “Sorry,” I blurt out, wondering what I’m apologizing for. It just seems like the thing to say when someone calls you out on being scared of them.

  “Want to start over?” Derek asks, his head tilted in exactly the right way that makes him look like a vintage Vogue model. Do psychos say things like this right before they murder someone? He slides the green and yellow Skittle pile in my direction as a peace offering.

  How can a girl say no to green and yellow Skittles? And what’s the harm in being nice to the guy? I’m sure he didn’t beat up that teacher without a good reason. So I tell him, “Yes, let’s start over.”

  He drops a handful of Skittles in his mouth. “It smells like a dumpster in here. Want to take this meeting to my house?”

  I don’t know what I’m expecting when I walk into Derek’s normal-looking middle class brick home to meet his parents. Two deranged washouts, passed out on the floor with heroin needles sticking out of their arms? Okay, maybe not that bad, but what do the parents of a juvenile delinquent look like?

  “I’m sure my mom will want to meet you,” Derek says, pushing open the screen door and motioning for me to go first. I duck under his arm. “So let’s get that nightmare out of the way, yes?”

  The house is surprisingly normal and devoid of any noticeable drug paraphernalia. Also it smells like cinnamon. A stack of Latin Dance DVDs rests on the coffee table, next to a coffee mug that says TRUST ME, I’M AN ENGINEER.

  “Mom, I’m home,” Derek calls out, tossing his backpack on the couch.

  The sound of high heels clicking across a tile floor gets closer. “What do you want for dinner? I was thinking pizza because I’m sure as shit not going to cook tonight after painting all day.”

  “Pizza is cool.” Derek steps out of the way, revealing me behind him.

  “Oh!” Derek’s mom wipes her hands on her jeans and rushes toward me with her arms extended. “Who is this?”

  “This is Wren. We’re building stuff for the play.” Derek slides his hand through his long hair and gives me an apologetic look. I go to shake his mom’s hand the normal way but she cups my hand in both of hers. Drops of blue paint decorate her bangs and parts of her messy ponytail. “Hi Wren, I’m Jody.”

  “Hi,” I say. She’s a female version of Derek, with the same sharp nose and dark brown hair. The awkward handshake fina
lly ends. She wraps her arm around Derek’s back and pulls him in for a quick hug. “Now you call me Jody, not Mrs. Hayes. I hate being reminded that I’m old.”

  “If it helps, you don’t look old.” I’m not even sucking up—she really doesn’t look old enough to be the mom of a high school senior.

  “Married at seventeen, baby Derek at eighteen,” she says, poking him in the arm. “Not that I would recommend that route for you, Wren. It sucked, I assure you.”

  “Yes ma’am.” I hope she isn’t implying that I want to have Derek’s baby in a year.

  “None of that ma’am crap either.” She wags her finger at me then turns back to the kitchen. “I’ll order us pizza.” Derek grabs my elbow and pulls me to the couch as fast as his legs will take him. “She can be a bit much,” he says.

  I sink into the couch, which is so fluffy it feels like I’m diving into a cloud. “I like her.”

  He scoffs. “You would.”

  “No one likes their own parents. But I’m allowed to like yours.”

  “You don’t like your parents?”

  “I like them. I mean, my mom thinks all she’s good for is to be a house wife so she’s dropped out of community college like six times and my dad is never home because he has to work so much, but I yeah like them.”

  Derek cocks his head to the left. His question was a simple yes or no question. Quick and dirty, just the way guys like it. So why did I ramble on like an idiot? I glance around for something else to talk about besides my boring family. “I like how your mom has paired denim blue curtains with the mocha walls. It’s a great color scheme.”

  “Yeah,” he says, gazing around the room with a roll of his eyes. “Totally.”

  “Shut up.” I playfully punch his arm. “You don’t have to mock me.”

  His hand grabs the part of his arm that I had just punched. He leans in close—like only ten inches away from my face close—and says, “I wasn’t mocking you.”