I sit in the front row watching everyone screw around on stage for twenty minutes. Last night they ordered pizza and we all sat around discussing Lawson’s teaching faculty and who we think is banging the new band teacher, the sexy-for-his-young-age Mr. Frances. Last night was fun. Margot and I flipped through prop catalogs and searched for things we could order for the play. Well, things we would order if we had any money. Principal Walsh has us on a thrift store budget—not a catalog budget, that’s for sure.
Tonight, I have this nagging feeling in my gut that we probably shouldn’t slack off. The play opens in two months and we don’t have all the props or costumes yet, and half the actors can’t remember their lines. And no one—actors and stagehands alike—can figure out how to work the stupid light board. Derek thought he had it figured out until last night when he accidently made all the spotlights green and Gwen and Ricky had to pretend they didn’t look like zombies while making out.
I find Margot texting backstage and tell her about my concerns. At least, I try to, but she won’t take her eyes off her phone long enough to hear me out. “Who the hell are you talking to?”
“This guy named Jordan. He’s twenty-one.”
“How do you meet so many older guys?” I ask, followed quickly with, “Wait, I thought you were crushing on Ricky?”
She makes a gagging sound and nods toward the stage, where Ricky and Gwen make goo-goo eyes at each other as they recite their lines. “Looks like he’s a little preoccupied with someone else.”
I nod in understanding, but don’t bother saying anything because she’s clearly moved on. Her phone beeps again and I slap my hand over it before she can read the message. “Listen, I need your help. Everyone is slacking off and we need to be practicing instead.”
“So make us practice,” she says as she pulls her hand away from mine, her thumb swiping quickly across her phone screen. “You’re the boss.”
Thinking that Margot has actually doled out some good advice for once, I walk out onto center stage and clear my throat. “Hey everyone,” I say, and unsurprisingly, no one looks at me. Probably because my voice was barely louder than conversational volume. I thought the stage and auditorium acoustics was supposed to make voices travel? “HELLO!” I call out, catching a few people’s attention. “CAN EVERYONE JOIN ME ON THE STAGE PLEASE?”
“Is it important?” Greg yells back from above my head. I throw my head back and see him crouched on one of the railings fifteen feet above the stage, ropes and pulleys in his arms. “Yes,” I say. “But you can stay and listen.”
Slower than freaking tortoises, and with more than a few groans, everyone gathers around me on the stage. Margot sits at my feet, prompting everyone else to sit and even though it’s totally weird like I’m some kind of children’s teacher or toddler TV show host, I appreciate that they are paying attention.
Ricky sits on a piece of set equipment, his cell phone balanced on his knee. It doesn’t escape my notice when Gwen yawns all casually, stretches, and sits on his lap.
“What’s this about, boss?” Derek’s voice hits the back of my ears, making me jump. With the knowledge that he’s right behind me, I can feel his presence in little tingles all over my back and shoulders.
I turn toward him and whisper, “It’s about how we need to work on this play and stop slacking off.”
He raises one eyebrow in that oh-so-ridiculously-cute way and if I didn’t know that Margot was giving me an icy glare right now, I’d probably melt into a warm goo right here on center stage.
I turn back to the crowd, my face flat and devoid of all mushy romantic feelings for when my eyes enviably meet Margot’s, and open my mouth to speak. I’m not sure exactly what to say to everyone, something that will inspire and motivate them would be best, but no quotes from heroic dead people come to mind.
Luckily, the door at the far end of the auditorium swings open with a loud bang that echoes throughout the rows of empty chairs and saves me from having to make my speech. It’s probably Principal Walsh coming to check on our progress, which means he will scare everyone into working today. My heart leaps for joy, and the butterflies in my stomach from the thought of giving a speech settle back into their houses.
Do butterflies sleep in houses? Doubt it. But that’s irrelevant.
“What the fuck are you doing?” someone—a guy—yells from the back of the auditorium. The anger in his words echoes off every surface, making its way on stage and sending a chill down my spine. The newcomer is definitely not Principal Walsh.
Gwen jumps off Ricky’s lap like he’s suddenly infected with the plague, crawls off stage and runs toward the guy. As he gets closer, I can tell by the muscles bulging from his grey tank top that it’s Gwen’s boyfriend.
Uh oh.
“Blake!” She crashes into him, pressing her hands against his heaving chest. “Blake, calm down. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Sure as fuck looks like it.” He shoves her to the side and continues his rampage down the aisle and closer to where Ricky sits on the stage. Gwen bursts into tears, covering her face with her hands. Ricky sits back on his heels, his normally pale skin turning stark white.
“Um, Blake?” I clear my throat. “Principal Walsh will be here any minute so you probably shouldn’t—”
“I don’t give a fuck.” Blake doesn’t so much as look at me. He stops at the bottom of the stage and glares at my lead male actor, his chest heaving. The veins in his arms bulge as if they too are pissed off. “Who the fuck are you?” He asks Ricky. “Some theater queer?”
Gwen grabs his arm from behind him. She sniffles through her tears. “Baby, please,” she pleads.
Movement flickers to my right and a dark shadow leaps off the stage. His movements are quick and precise. Derek maneuvers himself between the pissed off football player and the stage, his back toward us. While Blake stands rigid and shaking in anger, Derek’s hands rest casually in the pockets of his jacket. Derek stands eye level with Blake. “You need to turn around and leave.” His words send chills down my spine.
Blake tightens his hands into fists at his sides. “Get the fuck out of my face.”
Derek’s reply is instant. “Get the fuck out of my auditorium.”
Gwen’s annoying sobbing is the only sound for a few seconds. Everyone on stage watches the scene in front of us. Derek doesn’t move. Blake’s eyes move from Ricky to Derek and back again, as if he’s weighing his options. Gwen tries unsuccessfully to get his attention but he shrugs her off his arm. Finally, Blake takes in a deep breath and lets it out in a huff. He glowers at Gwen. “We’re done, bitch.”
Gwen breaks into hysterical sobs and Derek places a comforting hand on her shoulder. Outraged at this small bit of affection toward the girl he just dumped, Blake yells obscenities at Derek. One second he’s shoving Derek toward the stage, making him tumble backward. The next second, Blake’s arm is twisted around his back and he collapses to his knees with Derek holding onto his wrist. Derek’s voice is a hiss through clenched teeth. “Get out.”
Derek helps me pick up props after rehearsal. I don’t say a word until I see Margot leave and ensure that the door has closed behind her. Only a couple cast members still linger in the auditorium, all talking to each other or cleaning up trash from food wrappers. We walk to the back of the stage and stack plastic chairs on top of each other. I glance around to make sure no one is eavesdropping. “That was interesting.”
Derek shrugs. “All in a day’s work, I guess.”
“Do you think he’s going to be a problem again?” I ask. Derek’s phone beeps with a new text message but he leaves it in his back pocket as we fold up the fake water fabric and tuck it into a box offstage.
“I don’t know. You better make sure all your lines are memorized just in case.” He snaps his finger and points at me with a smile. He’s joking, but—shit. He has a valid point. I haven’t even bothered memorizing my lines as Understudy. I guess it never occurred to me that Gwen might not be able to
act if her boyfriend throws a fit on opening night.
“You look like you’re going to puke,” Derek says as we walk to the edge of the stage. He hops down the four feet distance and holds up and hand to me. I don’t need the help, but I take it because, duh, it’s Derek’s hand.
“I feel like I’m going to puke. I have none of Gwen’s lines memorized.”
He shakes his head in a mocking way of being super disappointed at me. “Wren Barlow… tisk tisk.”
I roll my eyes but feel my cheeks flame at the way he makes fun of me. He is so freaking cute, even when I’m the object of ridicule. The auditorium lighting is dim, so when Derek’s phone beeps with yet another text message, I don’t look at his screen on purpose. I just can’t help but glance over instinctively because the tiny screen is so bright.
It’s a good thing Derek’s attention is on his phone and not at me. Because this time I really do look like I’m going to throw up.
The text on his phone was from someone whose name is saved in his phone as Lexie.
With a heart next to it.
Margot’s next two weeks of dashing off after rehearsal to visit Jordan turns out to be a great thing. It means I get to hang out with Derek after school and not have to make up lies as to why I can’t sit on Margot’s pillowtop mattress and watch reruns of Supernatural with her.
I’m sitting on Derek’s futon which is so far from a pillowtop mattress, I don’t even know how he sleeps on it, but that isn’t the point. The point is that I’m sitting. On. Derek’s. Bed. His mom didn’t even care when he suggested that we go to his room because his dad’s poker friends were making too much noise from the den.
The pink glittery spiral notebook I purchased from the bookstore sits in my lap. It’s half-full, not with poetry like I had originally intended for it, because that’s what you write in a notebook that costs ten bucks, but with notes for the play. My finger fumbles with the sticky note I’d pressed into a blank page during first period.
Derek clears his throat. “So we have a problem with our lead actress.”
“Is she leaving us for America’s Next Top Model?”
“Not quite that bad.”
Derek’s sprawled out on his side of the futon with his head lying across the back so he can gaze at the ceiling. He runs his arms down his knees and fumbles with the rips in his jeans. I watch his fingers as they play with the denim frays; it makes me forget what I was about to say. His head flops to the left and our eyes meet. “What’s the problem?” I ask.
“Her boyfriend has forbidden her from doing the make out scene with Jeremy. Well, not Jeremy but that guy who plays Jeremy. I can’t remember his name.”
“Ricky,” I say.
Derek shoots a finger gun at me. “Yeah, Ricky.”
I pull off the sticky note and start folding it into a paper crane—anything to distract me from staring at Derek. Because when I see him and the little things he does, I go crazy. Like how he runs his tongue along the bottom of his teeth while he’s thinking about something, or the way his biceps bulge in exactly the right places as he tucks his hands behind his head with his elbows in the air. It’s like everything he does is sexy to me. And I can’t think like that, because his sexy mannerisms aren’t for me to enjoy. That girl who texted him—Lexie with a heart—flashes in my mind. She gets to hug him and hold him and laugh at his stupid jokes, not me.
“Unfortunately for Gwen’s boyfriend, I think Ricky is pretty psyched to make out with her.” He shudders. “I don’t know why, the girl looks sticky.”
“Rude personal observations aside,” I say, finishing my paper crane with a bend of its beak, “What are we supposed to do about it?”
“You’re the director. I am but a lowly stagehand.”
“You’re my only ally,” I say. “And you’re better than a stagehand. You’re the Top Stagehand. That’s like being Assistant Director. I need your help.” And it’s truer than he knows. Especially since Margot moved away to Jordan-Land and my aunt refuses to speak a word to me about the play.
“Can I have that?” He points to the pale yellow crane I just finished folding. I hold it back out of his reach. “Only if you help me figure out what to do.”
“Easy,” he says, holding out his hand. “I already have the perfect plan for that.”
I place the paper crane in his palm, keeping my fingers away from his skin. I know from experience that a single touch from Derek will send chills up my arms, and I so don’t need that right now.
“Here’s what we do.” Derek leans forward like he’s a coach telling me a football play. “You dress like Gwen and I’ll dress like Ricky. And right before the make out scene, we’ll switch places with the real Gretchen and Jeremy.” He claps his hands together. “Bam. We make out, and then switch back. Problem solved.”
“Shut up, Derek.” I shove him with my elbow. I take the way his voice said the words we make out and save them in my mind to be played over and over again for a later day. “I’m being serious here. We need to alter the script or something so that they just church kiss.”
“Church kiss?”
“Yeah you know. Like a sweet peck on the cheek.”
“So you want to turn the make out scene—the total climax of the play—into a churchy peck on the cheek?”
My shoulders fall and my hands slide between my knees as I slump over and stare into my lap. “You’re right. We can’t cut that scene.”
The futon squeaks as Derek slides closer to me. “The play is one month away and that’s years in teenage dating time. Gwen’s asshole boyfriend will probably be long gone by then.”
“We can’t count on that.” I take a deep breath, trying to pull my brain out of the million directions it’s headed, reel it in and force it to follow one thought path: solving the play problem. Not thinking about how Derek just got closer to me, not remembering how he joked that we should make out, not thinking about how I might have forgotten to put deodorant under my left armpit and I can’t lift it up for the rest of the day.
“We need to focus,” I say, both to my brain and to Derek. “Unlike the dilemma with the speakers in the back of the stage, this is a serious problem.” I look over at Derek to make sure he’s listening and notice that not only is he looking directly at me, his arm is now draped across my part of the futon, almost begging me to lean back into it.
“I agree,” he says, his eyes going wide for a second as he looks at me through slits of hair across his forehead. “Have her grab his face and pull him to her all passionately.” Derek reaches his hands out, miming what he’s saying. Our eyes meet, and he takes my face in his hands. “Like this.”
A chill that’s both scalding hot and freezing cold zips down my spine at his touch. His thumbs rest on my cheek as his fingers curl around the sides of my neck. I stay right where I am, afraid to move under his hands because if I do, he might stop touching me. He swallows and it’s loud in the silence. His bottom lip curls under his teeth. “And then they can just smoosh their lips together like they’re kissing. But they won’t have to open their mouths or anything so it’s not really a kiss.”
I raise an eyebrow. “That sounds stupid.” Derek moves his hands away from my face and I have to resist the urge to reach up and touch the skin where his hands had just been.
“It would work.”
I cross my arms. “You are the worst problem solver ever. I’m demoting you back to Lowly Stagehand.”
A smile spreads across his lips and his eyes seem to be watching something insanely entertaining. Something far away that he can see straight through my head. He can’t possibly be looking at me with such an amazed expression on his face. “What?” I ask tentatively.
He tucks his hair behind his ears and leans forward like he’s about to tell me a secret. “Tell me if this is convincing.” His hands are back on my cheeks and before I realize what’s happening, he presses his lips onto mine. No, smooshes them onto mine. My hands dig into the sides of my jeans and my heart races. But a
fter three seconds, I realize we aren’t really doing anything. He’s just sitting across from me, his hands on my face and his lips smooshed rather unsexily on my own lips. I guess from far away this would appear to be a passionate kiss, but from my view, it’s nothing more than being really awkward with a guy I barely know. A criminal with a girlfriend, no less.
I can’t help but smile under Derek’s lips. He pulls away from the kiss, but keeps his hands on me and lets his forehead rest on mine. We look at each other but his eyes are so close they form into one Cyclops eye. “What’s so funny?” he whispers.
“That was weird.”
“It kinda turned me on.” He gives me an evil grin. I stick my tongue out like I’m just totally disgusted and it’s the biggest lie I’ve ever told. I reach up and take his wrists in my hands, sliding my hands up his until our fingers line up. My body is alive with energy, all scrambled and unreadable like a static channel on TV. He closes his eyes and I close my eyes and then his lips press into mine for real this time. My breath catches in my throat as I let him tilt my head slightly to the right. His lips are warm. His breath tastes like spearmint.
I slide my arms around his neck and kiss him again, harder and longer this time. Derek’s arms wrap around my back and lower me slowly on the futon. I feel every one of his fingers pressing into my spine and it sends a chill through my legs and out my toes. His hair falls down, covering our faces and making our own little world inside of his room.
And this is when I realize what’s happening. I’m in Derek’s bedroom and we’re making out. It’s such a simple concept but it has a ton of baggage with it. Derek is exactly what I want. He’s always been what I want, ever since that day in woodshop. But he’s some crazy guy with an anger problem and Margot would kill me if she knew I liked him. Plus he has a girlfriend and now he’s cheating on her. Cheating on her!
I shove him off me. He sits up, runs his fingers through his hair and looks around his room as if seeing it for the first time. “Whoa,” he says finally looking in my direction.
Understudy Page 7
