Understudy

by Cheyanne Young

  I sit in the center of the stage, my legs dangling off the front carelessly as if the entire world isn’t resting on my shoulders. Like my future in interior design isn’t hanging on by a shred of hope that I can actually pull off directing this stupid play. I came in here right after school, fifteen minutes earlier than the time I had told the rest of the cast members in my carousel of text messages this morning. I wanted to be here early so I could prepare myself mentally.

  I’ve spent the first two weeks of rehearsals slacking off with Greg backstage, sketching sets with Derek or ditching rehearsal altogether under the guise that I was working on sets from home. So when everyone starts to filter in from the back of the auditorium, my freak out meter goes from Mostly Freaked Out to Explosively Freaking Out. I have no idea what to do.

  But apparently, my cast members do. Ricky, who plays Jeremy, hurls himself up on stage in one swift motion and then leans over and offers a hand to Gwen, who takes a ladylike approach to climbing up here. Everyone else either hops on stage, or takes a seat in the front row. Greg gives me a wink as he climbs up next to me and heads backstage.

  “So where’s Barlow?” Ricky asks. His script is rolled like a diploma and shoved in his back pocket. I stand and turn around, facing the stage like a conductor. For a second I think he’s talking about me and wonder why he would ask where I am when I’m right in front of him.

  “She’s not directing the play anymore since she, you know, quit and all,” I say. Twenty-five sets of eyes pierce into me. Normally there would be twenty-six pairs but I haven’t seen Derek all day.

  “So what are we doing here?” someone calls out from the front row.

  I flourish my hand through the air. “The show must go on.”

  “Wait,” Gwen says. “So we’re just going to put on a play without a teacher to tell us what to do?”

  I really want to say yes. To tell her that’s exactly what we’re doing and hope that we’ll all be able to self-govern ourselves and put on this play. But that would totally not work and everything would become a disaster. What’s the most tactful way to tell a group of your peers that you’re suddenly in charge of everything?

  I take a deep breath. “Principal Walsh said I have to direct the play now.” I expect them to flip out and refuse to comply. To laugh in my face and say I’m not the boss of them. But instead, no one seems to notice or care. Gwen shrugs. “Cool.”

  Ricky steps up on a cinderblock in the middle of the stage that is simulating what will be a fake bridge once Derek and I finish building it. He says, “Should we start from the beginning?”

  Pretty much everyone has their lines memorized, including Margot who I’ve never seen practice outside of school. I really have missed out on a lot in these last two weeks. Seems like the only thing I haven’t missed out on is the very distinct fact that Derek was at every rehearsal since the beginning. Every rehearsal except for this one.

  The next hour goes by smoothly, considering the actors have to step around imaginary sets that don’t exist yet, and some people still read their script for their lines. Everyone pretty much knows what to do though, and try to swallow back my annoying questions about Derek’s whereabouts and just enjoy watching rehearsal.

  Near the end of the last act, everyone is off stage except for Gwen and Ricky. Margot busies herself on her phone during this scene, making sure to ‘boy-scope’ toward Ricky every few seconds. This must be the infamous make out scene because every rehearsal right about this time, Margot usually slips off to see what I’m up to back stage. Now that I’m in the front row of seats watching, she endures it from the sidelines, her face glowing from her phone screen.

  Gwen and Ricky do a great job of pretending to be in love, despite the kind of lame way they’re supposed to fall in love in the play. Ricky grabs Gwen’s waist and pulls her close to him, his strong fingers tightening behind her back. It’s obvious why Margot hates watching this… she is crushing hardcore on Ricky. Or kind of talking with him? Hell, I’m not sure what she’s doing with Ricky. My stomach tightens a little as I realize that I’ve been such a crappy friend lately, I’m not even sure what her status is with the guy she likes.

  The auditorium doors swing open at the back of the room. Fear fills me as I turn around, expecting to see Principal Walsh coming to check on me. But instead of a portly man with a stern expression, I see a senior with shaggy brown hair and leather jacket that fits like a glove.

  Derek. I swallow when our eyes meet from across the room, and then turn back to the play, my play, as if I don’t care one bit that he’s finally decided to make an appearance. As if I don’t care that he never replied to my text message about rehearsal. As if he doesn’t matter at all.

  A few seconds later the sound of his footsteps tell me he’s close, but the scent of his body wash almost makes me melt into goo as he slides into the seat next to me. I look over at him, trying to be coy and so not caring—but the look on his face changes all of that. His eyes are pained, worried.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. I can feel his eyes appraising me as he shakes his head.

  “Nothing.”

  “You look like something’s wrong. Why were you late?”

  He reaches out and cups my cheek in his hand. My face flushes at his touch and my palms would be sweaty if I didn’t focus intently on keeping them flattened to my jeans. “Everything is better now.” He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “No worries at all.”

  My breath catches in my throat. Derek has never touched me like this. Why is he acting all serene and peaceful and… kind? I try to shake away these questions by looking back at the stage, but my eyes don’t focus on the actors right away.

  The first person I see is Margot, who is standing on the right of the stage, her cell phone lowered, her eyes glaring straight at me. I’m not sure what kind of wrath Margot will unleash on me when she gets me alone, but I am sure of one thing: I am so into Derek Hayes.

  Margot catches a ride home with me after rehearsal. I guess there is something that can take her away from spending time with Ricky—yelling at me.

  “I’m serious, Wren.” Margot’s eyebrows lift to epic proportions as she aims her death glare right at me. “What the hell was that?”

  My hands rest on the steering wheel of Mom’s Corolla. I brake for a red light and casually glance over at her. “What are you talking about?” I ask, although I know exactly what, and who, she’s talking about. “I can’t help it that Principal Walsh made me director. Trust me, I didn’t want the job.”

  “I don’t care about that. I care about your little lovey-mushy-goo-goo eyes at Derek!”

  “Wha?” I lift the corner of my mouth and make my best ignorant expression. “You’re imagining things.”

  She crosses her arms from the passenger seat of the car and shakes her head. “I know what I saw. You’re taking your stupid crush too far. He’s going to get you in trouble… or killed or something.”

  “Margot, I know you’re just looking out for me,” I begin in a grateful voice. She nods all matter-of-factly like I’m an idiot for not figuring out her good intentions earlier. I want to explain to her how he’s not a bad guy and there’s nothing to worry about, but the words don’t come out. There’s no way I can tell her I know all these things about Derek without revealing how much time I’ve spent with him. She wouldn’t believe me anyhow.

  “Damn right I’m looking out for you,” she snaps as I pull into her driveway. “He is hot, I’ll give him that, but he’s a freaking psycho. You’re better than that.”

  My phone rings from the cup holder in the center console and I yank it out the second I see Derek’s name flash across the screen. Margot didn’t see it, luckily, but she gives me a weird look. “Who is that?”

  “My mom,” I burst out without thinking, swiping my finger across the screen to answer the call. “Hello?”

  “So I was thinking about the bedroom furniture situation,” Derek says by way of a hello.

  “What furnitur
e situation?” I ask, glancing over at Margot as she gathers her purse off the floorboard and puts it in her lap. We’re at her house now, I don’t know why she isn’t leaving the freaking car.

  “For Jeremy’s bedroom. I think I’ve got the perfect answer. Can you meet up with me Saturday?”

  “Sure,” I say, noticing Margot watching my every move with an expression on her face that isn’t exactly trustworthy. “I gotta go, Mom.”

  “Uh… okay,” Derek says with a laugh. “I’ll let you get back to whatever it is you’re doing.”

  I might spend a little more time than usual in front of my makeup mirror on Saturday morning. I also might have agonized a little too long over what outfit to wear before deciding on jeans and a shirt. Dressing up for a day of scouting the town for props doesn’t exactly send the message that I’m not interested in Derek. If anything, all the time we’ve been spending together lately just makes us really good friends. Good friends who get along well and make a great team for the play.

  But if my makeup happens to be applied professionally and meticulously, that’s not my problem, now is it?

  I climb in Derek’s car and tell him to step on it because the last thing I need is for Mom to walk outside and say hello. Seeing as how she was drinking coffee in her pajamas, the chances of that are highly unlikely but one can never be too careful when trying to avoid parental embarrassment.

  He hands me a coffee from Joe’s Diner and a bag of donut holes. “Since we have such a shitty budget for props, there’s no way we can get an entire bedroom set.” I look over at him as he talks, trying not to think about how cute he is when he’s driving. His tongue runs across his lip before he speaks. “I drive past this place on the way home every that sells antique furniture.”

  I interrupt him by holding up my coffee cup. “We definitely can’t afford antique furniture. We need like… dollar store furniture.”

  He wiggles his eyebrow. “What if we don’t pay anything for it?”

  “Tell me you’re not suggesting we steal it?”

  He takes in a deep breath and stares at the road, clearly annoyed with me. “No, Wren. I’m not going to obtain the furniture by illegal means.”

  He slows the car and turns into a gravel driveway. The antique furniture store is an antique itself; an old barn that’s been turned into a store. Derek reaches over and grabs a donut hole from the bag in my lap. “I spoke with the owner. She said we could borrow whatever we needed. For free.”

  My eyes light up at the mention of the word free. “You are awesome.”

  Derek doesn’t seem as amused. “If I’m so awesome, maybe you could not jump to the worst conclusion next time I suggest something?”

  Derek and I sit on the couch with a ginormous bowl of popcorn to celebrate a successful day of prop scavenging. Derek had insisted on pouring half a cup of melted butter on top of the popcorn, and as a result my fingers look like they’re coated in lacquer with the stuff they use on the gym floor. I lick my index finger, then my middle fingers before diving back in for another handful.

  “You know when you lick your fingers like that and then get more popcorn, it’s the same thing as if you’d licked all the popcorn,” Derek says.

  I shrug. “It doesn’t bother me because it’s my own saliva.”

  “And if I did it?” He slides his tongue across four of the fingers on his left hand and hovers them over the bowl in anticipation of my answer. The way his tongue lingers in the air makes my stomach flip.

  “It would be gross,” I say.

  He dries his hand on his jeans and turns back to the movie. “Women and their double standards.”

  “Get used to it.”

  Derek shoves a handful of popcorn in his mouth and then speaks, probably on purpose to annoy me. “I meant to ask you about the last text you sent out. Why aren’t we having rehearsal all next week?”

  “The prom committee has taken over the auditorium to sell tickets, and all the actors threw a fit about rehearsing in front of people,” I tell him. “They’re all doing pretty well, so they can have the week off. We’ll have to keep working on the sets though. We’re way behind.”

  “I wouldn’t say we’re behind.” He winks at me. “We have furniture now. We got this.”

  Derek grabs one of the half-popped pieces of popcorn—my favorite ones—and offers it to me. I open my mouth and he drops it in, letting his fingers touch my lips. “Do you want to go to prom?” He asks it like he’s asking if I’ve changed the oil in my car lately.

  “No,” I say, a sudden uncomfortable feeling settling in my stomach. “Plus there’s an interior decorating exhibit on the same day.”

  “You’d rather see a bunch of furniture than go to prom?”

  “It isn’t furniture,” I say. The butterflies that had woken up at the mention of prom sink back down where they belong. “It’s interior decorating. It’s fancy and it’s professional and it’ll be great experience for my future career.”

  “It’s fancy, eh?” He adjusts an invisible collar on his shirt and straightens an invisible tie. “Can I come too? I’ll dress all dapper and shit.”

  “Sure.” I almost leave it at that, but then I can’t help myself. “But only if you wear a tie.”

  We drift back into watching TV for a few moments. Derek straights up and turns toward me. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to prom? Or is that just something you’re saying when what you really want is to go?”

  “No, I’m sure.” I say it like when you’re thirsty but you’re at a friend’s house so when they offer you a drink, you just say no because it’s easier. But I don’t exactly want to go to prom either, right? I mean, yes. I don’t want to go.

  But I would if he twisted my arm about it.

  I drop my handful of popcorn back in the bowl. I’m not hungry anymore. “I want to go to the exhibit. Plus you don’t seem like you’d want to go, so I don’t know why you’re berating me about it,” I say, letting my words trail off.

  Derek eyes me suspiciously. “I’d go for you.”

  “Oh, Gosh!” I say, in a high-pitched tween girl voice. “Aren’t you just the sweetest guy, evar!”

  He laughs at my crappy juvenile impression. “Okay, okay, we won’t go. I really don’t care for the selfish materialism that is prom.”

  “Look at you,” I say, poking him in the ribs. “All full of moral fiber.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go?”

  “I’m sure. I hate dresses.”

  “Okay, because I don’t want this thrown back in my face later.”

  “I shall throw nothing in your face.”

  Derek sets the bowl on the coffee table like it’s no big deal. Like he didn’t just remove the one thing that’s keeping us from touching each other. With the melted butter smell gone, I can now smell his cologne, but just barely. And the faint scent of man makes me wish I could dive across the couch and bury my face in his chest. The small space between us feels like the Grand Canyon. Derek chuckles at something on the TV. His elbow is on the back of the couch, right next to my head. When he catches me staring at him, he rests his head in his hand and stares back.

  “I don’t want to be blamed for making you miss an important high school rite of passage.”

  “A what?” I hope he doesn’t notice how my voice cracked. It’s not what he’s talking about that causes my brain to short-circuit, it’s the fact that he’s right here, inches away from me.

  “Prom. It’s a rite of passage.”

  This subject again? I roll my eyes. “Yeah well so is losing your virginity and I didn’t check that one off either.”

  “Aww,” he says, like he feels sorry for me, but in a sarcastic way. He drops his hand from behind the couch and puts around my shoulders and squeezes me to him in a quick hug. And for a moment, my face is pressed into his shoulder and I inhale his scent and close my eyes. It only lasts a second, but it is everything I had imagined.

  When the hug is over, he leaves his arm around my
shoulders and goes back to watching TV. I become astutely aware of every muscle in my body and it’s hard to breathe. His fingertips rest gently on my arm, like he’s putting an effort into not just resting his arm on me, but holding me. I concentrate on my breathing, trying to slow my racing heartbeat. His arm is around me. His ARM is AROUND me.

  A shudder of excitement ripples through my body. Derek clears his throat. Panic consumes me as I start to freak out and wonder if he can read minds and is about to tell me that I’m a psycho loser. “I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “But I can’t stop thinking about the fact that you’re a virgin.”

  My face flushes red. “Shut up.”

  He sits up straighter but keeps his arm around me. “I tell you what. Let’s go to prom and dance to some lame songs, and then we’ll come back here and lose that virginity.” He taps his finger on his chin like he’s some kind of genius. “We’ll knock out two birds with one stone. Because I’m such a good friend like that.”

  “Oh my God.” I bury my face in my hands. “We are so not talking about this.”

  He laughs and leans his head over to rest on mine. “I guess it was worth a try,” he whispers. I close my eyes and do everything I can to stop myself from dropping dead from this lethal combination of mortification and hot boy.

  So the first rehearsal directed by yours truly was a fluke. It’s now day three of the younger Barlow directing LOVE & SUICIDE and no one is rehearsing a damn thing. Plus I think Gwen and Ricky have mutual crushes on each other, so much so that she’s quit dressing like a model every day and now wears baggy sweatshirts and leggings with hardly any make up. I wouldn’t care that the two lead actors are falling for each other if my best friend wasn’t secretly in love with him and Gwen’s boyfriend wasn’t the only football player in the school whose beat up more people than he can count.