Understudy

by Cheyanne Young

Derek opens his mouth to object but I cut him off. It’s easy to feel like I should agree with him, but when I say it all out loud I realize how completely moronic it sounds. “Tell me who she is, Derek. Tell me now.”

  He looks down, shaking his head slightly.

  A delirious laugh escapes me. “That’s what I thought. We’re done, Derek. You can’t have two girls in your life. You can’t have both.”

  I slam the door closed and jump into Mom’s Corolla without looking back. My eyes fill with tears. He doesn’t deserve me if he’s going to keep secrets from me. My stomach hurts and my head throbs in pain. I know I did what was right by standing up for myself. But that doesn’t mean I don’t cry on the whole drive home.

  The musty smell of the auditorium makes my stomach churn. This is the last place I want to be. I’m starting to think I don’t really need a college education…I could just quit this whole nightmare right now and go work at Quilts by the Bay for the rest of my life.

  It’s Monday. Three days after my dinner with Derek and I haven’t heard from him at all. Not that I expected to, but I hate that I kind of hoped I would get a text from him. I made it perfectly clear that I didn’t want to talk to him and he’s respecting that. At least he can do one thing right.

  Part of me hopes he will skip rehearsal today. But he appears, five minutes late as usual, hair tucked under a beanie as usual, freaking apathetic look on his face—as freaking usual. I lift my glitter notebook and pretend to study my to-do list as he walks down the aisle and hops onstage.

  I want to take it as something that it isn’t but I must keep reminding myself that Derek isn’t doing this play for me, he’s doing it to fulfill his community service hours. Killing time backstage has to be better than picking up trash on the side of the road with a rusty pokey stick.

  A strong chemical smell catches my attention from my seat in the front row of the auditorium. “Gwen,” I groan, setting down my notebook and brushing glitter off my fingers. She’s sitting on the borrowed bed of Jeremy’s bedroom set, a bottle of clear top coat in her hand. “Why are you painting your nails? We should be rehearsing. Where’s Jeremy?”

  “You mean Ricky?”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Ricky may be his real name, but to me, he’s my Jeremy. The main character. The guy who is currently NOT AT REHEARSAL. “Why isn’t he here? He’s twenty minutes late.”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know, he hasn’t answered my texts.”

  I walk to the front of the stage and repeat the question loud enough for everyone to hear. The cast all gives me pretty much the same answer.

  I find Greg backstage, trying to rewire the speakers using his laptop and a Google search as his only instructions. I think about telling him to stop that because he could get electrocuted and die, but he’s getting so sweaty back there that he’s taken his shirt off and, well, it’d be an outrage to society if I made him put it back on.

  Oh, and he doesn’t know where Ricky is either.

  After making the rounds backstage, I find myself facing Derek for the first time since our argument, asking him the same question. “Where’s Jeremy?”

  “Ricky?” He looks out into the audience even though no one is out there because the crew is backstage and Gwen is still giving herself a manicure on the unmade bed. “Have you tried calling him?”

  With the buffer of twenty other students around, it’s easy to pretend that nothing is bothering us. Or maybe Derek really doesn’t have anything bothering him; it’s hard to tell with guys.

  I find my notebook and search for Ricky’s phone number. He answers on the first ring. “Dude, where are you?”

  “I’m suspended from the play. I thought I told you that?” I hear what sounds like a very violent video game in the background.

  “Suspended? What the hell, Jer-Ricky? No you did not tell me that very important fact.”

  “Sorry,” he says, and he sounds like he really means it. He probably misses Gwen’s super pouty lips.

  “Is this a forever suspension, or just temporary?”

  “Temporary, kind of. It’s that No Pass No Play bullshit.”

  “What class are you failing?”

  More loud video game noises. “Just math, I think.”

  I lean my head back against the cold concrete wall backstage. “You’re joking. Tell me you’re joking.”

  “Sorry, boss. I guess I can try to get a tutor or something.”

  “I hate you,” I say as I hang up on him.

  Derek and Gwen watch me, arms folded across their chests. I almost don’t recognize Gwen without her usual face full of makeup. She’s also wearing an oversized hoody and leggings which makes her tiny frame seem ten pounds heavier.

  “Explain,” Derek says.

  “Ricky is failing classes so he can’t participate in extracurricular activities. My life is officially over.”

  Gwen puts her arm around my shoulder and I wonder if we weren’t in this play together if she would have ever actually touched me. We are on opposite sides of the popular spectrum. “Your life isn’t over, Wren.” I’m not sure why her voice contains a hint of distain. I’ve always been nice to her.

  “Yes it is,” I say, wanting so badly to be out of her grip but not bad enough to pull away and look like an asshole. “The success of this play is up to me, and if it doesn’t go off perfectly, then I’m not going to college.”

  “God forbid!” Gwen’s normally tiny voice blasts through the air making Derek and me jump. “There’s a chance you won’t get a freaking scholarship—big deal! Your life is not even close to being over, Wren Barlow.” Her thin finger pokes my chest. “Your life is not over.”

  My mouth hangs open as the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I’ve never heard Gwen speak so forcefully. All of the chatter in the background has gone silent and I realize everyone is staring at us.

  “I—I’m sorry,” I stammer. “You’re right. My life isn’t over, I was over reacting. Are you okay?”

  Her face crinkles up in confusion, although I’m not sure why, and a single tear falls from her eye. “I’m fine,” she mumbles through clenched teeth. Derek takes her hand and leads her to center stage, grabbing a script from a box of props. “Act one, scene one,” he says. “Screw it. I’ll be Jeremy.”

  Spotlights of all colors flicker on and off, dancing on Gwen’s puffy cheekbones and making Derek’s hair blue as Greg tinkers with the light board. He can now successfully place a spotlight on Gwen and move it across the stage in a fluid motion. He cannot, however, make the spotlight any color besides blue or green.

  I’m sitting in the front row center seat, clipboard on my lap, neck craned at a painful angle as I watch Greg hang from the rafters. I admire his stubborn willpower to figure out the lights, having long since realized he’s not doing it just to make me happy. Greg is a perfectionist and the smartest guy in school (not that I’d ever tell him that) and he won’t quit until he’s achieved the perfection he’s used to. Still, I can’t stop picturing the ways his body would go splat on the stage if and when he falls from those thirty-year-old metal beams.

  I can’t help but picture it. Face first, back cracking over the concrete blocks onstage. Feet first, leg bones shooting straight out of his shins as he crumples through the old hardwood floor. Maybe some kind of spiral, diagonal falling motion that makes his whole body explode on contact.

  Maybe he’d slam into Gwen and break her in half, too. I shudder at the gory images flashing through my corrupt mind, bringing myself back to reality where Greg is perfectly alive in the ceiling and Gwen and Derek perform Act 1, Scene 3 with such perfection, you’d think Derek was supposed to be Jeremy all along.

  Only this is the scene were Gretchen and Jeremy decide to be secret lovers and make out under an old Oak tree, (which in our case is a coat rack covered in brown paper) and I know Derek won’t be as good an actor as Ricky. Because this is the kissing scene. And no one can possibly kiss Gwen the way Ricky does, as her boyfriend can disparagingly attest to
.

  Gwen says her line about never feeling pretty since the car wreck that left a scar on her lip. Derek says his line about how she’s as beautiful as—some metaphorical crap, I can’t remember—and Gwen says her next line. I stop doodling on my notepad and watch the two actors on stage.

  Derek steps closer to her, gingerly touching her lip where the fake scar will be once it’s dress rehearsal time. A small knot forms in my stomach. Admittedly, I haven’t paid much attention to rehearsal lately, but right now every single fiber in my being is focused on Derek’s body moving closer to Gwen’s, pressing into her and drawing her close as he presses his lips to hers.

  To my absolute horror, he does not kiss her according to the plan—the plan HE invented—of lip smooshing. His lips touch her lips and they don’t smoosh at all. They intertwine. They move. They pull away and press together again. Gwen’s bony fingers slide around Derek’s head and tangle up in his hair, pulling him into the kiss.

  The kiss.

  Not the smoosh.

  The knot in my stomach erupts like a volcano, sending searing hot pain into my chest. My whole body aches and I’m staring at them and I can’t look away. This is a million times worse than if Greg really did fall and snap his neck in the middle of the stage.

  Five hundred million light years later, Derek and Gwen pull away from each other to take a breath. The curtain is supposed to close now as the stagehands rush to change to the next set. But as I sit here with my fingernails digging painfully into the wooden armrest of my chair, nothing happens.

  Derek runs a hand through his hair and steps back, almost stumbling as if drunk on her disgusting kiss. Gwen lets out a sharp breath and shoves her hands in her front pockets. The smile on her face makes me want to punch it right off of her.

  “Curtain! Where’s the curtain?” I yell, waving my arms in a curtain-closing motion, wishing to god that the short freshman with the bad haircut who does the curtains would freaking DO THE CURTAINS like he’s supposed to.

  “I think we should do that scene again,” Gwen says. She glances at Derek and then back at me and it’s a good thing she can’t see me well through the stage lights. “I—I think I fubbed a few of my lines.”

  “Your lines were perfect, I promise,” I say, giving an obligatory glance at the script in my hand even though we both know she said every word exactly as they were written.

  “Oh. Okay.” Gwen shrugs and the sleeve of her oversized hoody falls off one shoulder and I notice how pointy her collarbone is as it protrudes from her small frame. Is that what guys like? Is that what Derek likes? I don’t even know if my collarbones protrude. She really is pretty, as much as I don’t want to admit it. And when I glance at Derek, he isn’t looking at me with a shameful regret painted on his face—no, he’s looking at Gwen. With that half smile he does so well.

  I’m not a crying person. I never have been. Crying does not come naturally to me, even at heavy crying events like funerals. So I don’t know why the inside of my eyes get warm. I don’t know why I make the horrifying realization that if I blink right now, tears will leak out of my barely used tear ducts and embarrass me in front of everyone.

  I turn around, drop to my knees and pretend to dig through my backpack, but all I’m doing is shuffling papers around. I know I can’t do this forever, but I have to buy some time. I can’t watch them rehearse together—not now. Not ever.

  “What are you doing, boss?” It’s Derek.

  “Nothing,” I call out without turning around. “I mean, just a second.”

  “Let’s move on to the next scene,” Gwen tells Derek. Then she says something else that I can’t quite catch from my close proximity to the ground. With reluctance, I zip up my backpack. Chill. Chill. Chill. You’re fine. Relax.

  It’s not as if Derek is my boyfriend anyway.

  I stand up and twirl around so quickly that purple stars fill my vision and the room starts to spin. As Gwen and Derek watch me from on stage, as well as a few minor actors who are waiting in boredom for their scenes, I know what I need to do.

  I need to get out of here.

  And I need to lie.

  “Sorry everyone.” I gesture to the paper in my hand that I had randomly grabbed from the bottom of my backpack. It’s last week’s math homework. I made an eighty-six. “I forgot I have an appointment. Rehearsal is over. You have an early day off.”

  It must be opposite day or something because everyone groans. So not what I was expecting.

  “It’s only been fifteen minutes,” Greg yells from somewhere backstage. “I’m not going home when I’ve already committed to staying late.”

  “Yeah me too,” Gwen says. “I’m committed to this play. And we must continue rehearsal.”

  For the first time since that abhorrent kiss, I look to Derek for support. He rocks back on his heels. “You can go, Wren. We’ve got this.”

  And just as quickly as he can flash me a smile, my massive, Earth-sized crush on Derek Hayes shatters into a thousand pieces. Without a word, or a second look at anyone, I heave my backpack off the floor and sling it around my shoulder, push my decrepit auditorium chair into an upright position and storm through the isle. Over the stained burgundy carpet runner, up the slight incline toward the back of the room, and out the double swinging doors, letting them slam closed behind me in what I know will reverberate throughout the whole auditorium.

  No one gets it. No one is supporting me in the play, not really. They’re doing it for their own reasons, not to help the school and definitely not to make sure my directing isn’t a total failure. And my biggest crush to date just made out with Gwen Summers in all of her beautiful, waif-like glory and didn’t even care that I was watching.

  I need to get this pain out of my system. I need a long talk with a best friend who will let me vent my heart out and fill the hole in my heart with a pint or two of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Margot is my only friend who would do that for me and we’re not even talking right now.

  And even if we were, I couldn’t tell her about Derek. As I walk out the east hallway doors and into the student parking lot, I realize another pathetic truth about my situation right now. Derek is normally my ride home on Mondays because Mom has girl’s night on Mondays. I completely forgot to arrange something else. The hot feeling wells up in my eyes again, only this time when I blink, real tears fall down my cheeks. I take out my phone and call Mom, tell her no I’m not crying and yes I’m fine, and please just come pick me up.

  And then, just because I can, I throw my backpack on the concrete and kick it as hard as my leg muscles allow. It moves a few inches, so I kick it again and again until my toes hurt.

  Real, wet, sad little tears fall out of my eyes now, intensifying every time I picture Derek kissing Gwen. And all I can think about is how completely unfair this is, and how I knew Derek was too good to be true, and how Margot isn’t really a good friend but she’s all I have, and how I need a damn car.

  My stomach hurts and the pain grows with every minute that goes by without Derek running outside and saying, “Hey Wren, you forgot that I’m taking you home.” After ten minutes, I pretty much know he’s not going to do that.

  I groan and sigh and yell and wipe my eyes with the back of my sleeve. Life totally sucks. This is exactly what they meant in seventh grade when they said high school was going to be hard. I should just run away and join a circus.

  As I visualize myself as a crappy circus performer, I realize one more thing: that I’m acting exactly like Aunt Barlow.

  Derek’s lips press into Gwen’s for what is the start of our third rehearsal with him filling in for Ricky. I’m convinced I deserve an award of the highest caliber for my own acting right now. Because I’m here, and I haven’t quit like my aunt, and I’m not making a big deal about anything. I’m being calm and collected, at least on the outside.

  I’m sitting here holding back my vomit not even because I’d be too embarrassed to throw up right here in front of everyone, because I’m not, b
ut because I had pizza for lunch and everything with tomatoes in it tastes absolutely horrid coming back up.

  And it happens.

  I get an idea. I can’t call it a eureka moment because it’s so much more than that. It’s the solution to my problem.

  And no, it doesn’t involve accidently murdering Gwen.

  “STOP,” I yell, shooting up from my seat. Several actors are on stage now but none of them notice me. I cup my hands around my mouth and use the proper director term to get them to break the forth wall and listen to me. “Cut!”

  “Who knows which math teacher Ricky has?” I ask to everyone in the room. Gwen glances around as if waiting for someone else to say it, but when no one does, she takes out her cell phone. A quick text later and her eyes light up from the glow of the screen. “He said he has Math Models class with Mrs. Nolan.”

  “Thanks Gwen,” I say, not really liking the words as they leave my mouth but knowing it’s not Gwen’s fault I’m totally jealous of her.

  “Wait, Math Models?” Derek says, the disbelief in his eyes matching my same reaction to the class name. “He’s missing rehearsal because he’s failing Math Models?” He emphasizes the last word like it’s an insult.

  “Hey fuck off,” Gwen snaps, giving an icy glare to Derek that sends a chill of delight up my spine.

  “Sorry, but I don’t know how you could fail that class.” Derek is unfazed by her gutter mouth.

  I shake my head a little to take my focus off their quarrel and back on the more-than-a-eureka-moment I’m having. Mrs. Nolan. Math Models. I gather my backpack and shove my directing equipment-a script, clipboard and video recorder—inside. Derek’s eyebrow goes up as he watches me prepare to leave. “You guys go on without me,” I say in my Authoritative Director voice. “I’m going to fix this.”

  Classic rock plays at a dull volume in Mrs. Nolan’s classroom. She sits at her desk bobbing her head to the music as she grades papers. She’s wearing hot pink glasses and her acrylic nails are so sparkly, they are the first thing I notice when I look at her. I knock on the doorframe and clear my throat.