Bad Romeo

by Leisa Rayven

  Well, I’m not, but when Ruby said she was, I just went with it. It was something for us to bond over. Plus, I knew most of the people at the auditions smoked, so it seemed like the thing to do. Also, my mother would have hated it.

  All good reasons to take it up.

  She lights me up, and I inhale shallowly, then cough. Ruby shakes her head.

  I’m the worst apprentice smoker ever.

  “So,” she says as she blows out a stream of smoke, “it’s your turn to cook, unfortunately.”

  “Hey. I thought what I made the other night was good, considering I’ve never cooked before.”

  “Woman,” she says with a sigh, “you screwed up mac and cheese. Seriously, if you fail at cooking that crap, we’re never going to survive the college experience.”

  “Then thank God you’re here to teach me.” I drag her off the couch, trudge into the kitchen, and get some steak and vegetables out of the fridge.

  The thing is, Ruby isn’t exactly a gourmet chef, either, so we end up with rock-hard steak, lumpy mashed potatoes, and green beans that are so limp I could knit them into a scarf.

  “I’m writing to the Cooking Channel to complain,” Ruby says as she pushes the food around on her plate. “Those bitches make cooking look easy. I’m suing them for false advertising.”

  That night we make a pact to purchase only frozen meals. It’s the surest way to prevent starvation.

  The next day is the first day of classes, and Ruby and I walk the short distance from our apartment to the main campus.

  In the three days since we arrived, we’ve spent some time exploring our new school. The campus isn’t huge, but it’s well laid out, and the buildings are a nice mix between traditional and contemporary.

  In the middle of everything is the Hub—a large, four-story building that houses the library, cafeteria, student lounge, and several large lecture theaters.

  Placed around the Hub, like petals of a flower, are the various arts buildings, one for each discipline: dance, drama, music, and visual arts

  This morning Ruby and I are headed to the Hub to hear the dean’s welcome speech.

  We walk into the huge lecture theater where there are about two hundred freshmen milling around. Everyone is introducing themselves and checking one another out.

  I hate this.

  So many new faces. New expectations to meet.

  It’s overwhelming.

  I can make out various cliques by the way they’re dressed. The dancers are all Lycra and layers, the musicians have a vague, retrogeek air about them, and the visual artists look like they were stealing stuff from a thrift store when a paint bomb exploded.

  The really loud, obnoxious kids are the drama students.

  I feel my chest tighten as I wonder if I’ll fit in here any better than I did in high school.

  It’s not like I didn’t have friends in high school. I did. But I was always careful to be the Cassie I thought they expected. Happy, easygoing, nonthreatening. Smart but not intimidating. Pretty but not desired. The one who acted as the go-between when someone liked a boy, but never the one the boy liked.

  I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. This is a new school, new people, new rules. Maybe someone here will see beyond my many fake faces.

  “Come on,” Ruby says. “Let’s get seats so we don’t have to talk to any of these fuckers.”

  In that moment, I love her.

  We walk to the middle of the auditorium and take our seats. A few minutes later, I see a familiar face heading over to us.

  “Hey, Cassie.”

  “Connor! Hi.”

  I’d met Connor at the callbacks. We’d been paired up for some scene work, and even though we didn’t have the same crazy intensity I’d shared with Holt, we still had decent chemistry. He’s also very cute and, as far as I can tell, straight.

  He motions to the seat next to me. “May I?”

  “Sure.” I introduce Ruby, who already looks bored.

  Connor folds himself into the chair beside me, and I give him a smile. Sandy-colored hair, brown eyes, open face I’ve yet to see frown. Definitely cute.

  “I’m so glad you got in,” he says. “At least I’ll know one person in the class.”

  “Yeah, I haven’t seen anyone else I know yet.”

  “I saw a couple of familiar faces.” He looks around. “But I’m bad with names. I saw that blond girl who talks a lot …”

  “Zoe?”

  “Yeah. And the tall guy with the cool hair.”

  “Holt?”

  “Yeah. He’s right over there.”

  He points to the far side of the auditorium where I see Holt’s lanky frame slouched in a seat. He has his feet up on the chair in front of him and his head in the same book he was reading at the auditions. He must really love The Outsiders.

  I get a strange tingling in my stomach when I look at him. I’m happy he made it. Getting into this place meant a lot to him, and apart from his obvious personality disorders, he’s really talented.

  “He seems like a loner,” Connor says. I don’t miss that his arm is lying across the back of my chair. “But man, he can act. I saw him do Mercutio last year at the Tribeca Shakespeare Festival. He was amazing.”

  “I’m sure.” I get a crystal-clear image of Holt as a modern-day Mercutio. All leather and denim and dark, glowering eyes.

  As I’m staring at him, he looks up and catches my gaze. The corner of his mouth lifts and one of his hands comes away from his book as if he’s actually going to smile and wave. Then he notices Connor, and within a second he’s back to his book, like he hadn’t seen me at all.

  Connor raises his eyebrows. “Uh, did I just do something to piss him off? He looked like he wanted to kill me.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say with a sigh. “He’s like that with everyone.”

  Before long, the dean steps up to the podium and welcomes us. He gives a speech about how proud we must be to have made it into the most prestigious arts college in the country, and even though he’s probably given the same speech for years, his words make me puff up like peacock. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m achieving something for me and not for my parents. It feels good.

  When the dean finishes, the lecture theater empties quickly, and we all scurry off to our first day of classes.

  Ruby waves good-bye to me and Connor, and heads to her stage management class. When she’s gone, Connor drapes his arm around my shoulders and steers me toward our first acting class. Although it feels weird that he’s so comfortable invading my personal space when we hardly know each other, it also feels nice. I’m not used to boys putting their nicely muscled arms around my shoulders, but I could get used to it.

  We walk into a large, empty room with bare brick walls and a rough carpet. Following the example of those already there, we dump our bags at the perimeter of the room and sit on the floor.

  I look around at the rest of our class. So many new people to meet and please. My pathetic need to make them like me flares to life, and a sick sweat breaks out on my forehead.

  “You okay?” Connor asks, his hand on my back.

  “Yeah. Just a little nervous.”

  “Here,” he says as he moves behind me. “I’ll help you relax.”

  When he massages my tense shoulder muscles, I almost groan.

  Despite his talented hands, I’ve got Connor’s number. He wants to be the caring, supportive boy. Fine by me. I want to be supported. It’s win-win.

  The rest of the class chats and laughs, but I only see a few faces I know. A short distance away is Zoe and the strawberry blonde I saw on the first day of auditions. I think her name is Phoebe. True to form, they’re chatting loudly and saying “Ohmigod” a lot. In the corner are Troy and Mariska, a brother and sister who seem freaky and quiet.

  There’s a girl with spiky dark hair named Miranda, who I’m pretty sure hit on me at the callbacks, and a dark guy in a leather jacket called Lucas. He’s sitting next to a
curly headed jokester named Jack who had everyone in stitches at the callbacks. He’s cracking Lucas up by beatboxing using Disney character voices.

  As I scan the room, Holt walks in. When he sees Connor massaging my back, he rolls his eyes and takes a seat as far from me as possible.

  Whatever.

  I don’t get Holt. Usually I know what people expect from me within minutes of meeting them.

  You want me to laugh at your jokes? Okay.

  Oh, please tell me about your hopes and dreams! That’d be great!

  A shoulder to cry on? No problem.

  But with Holt … it’s like he wants me to not exist. That’s something I don’t know how to do.

  I should be hurt by his behavior, but I’m not. It just makes him a huge, moody, good-smelling puzzle that I’m determined to figure out.

  Before long, Erika sweeps into the room and everyone falls silent.

  “Okay. This is Advanced Acting, otherwise known as leave-your- bullshit-at-the-door-or-I’ll-kick-your-ass class. In here, I don’t care if you’re tired or scared or hungover or high. I expect one hundred percent of your effort one hundred percent of the time. If you’re incapable of that, then don’t show up. I don’t want to deal with you.”

  A few people look around nervously, including me.

  “You’re all here because we saw something in you that deserved to be developed, not babied and coddled. If you think because you can say a few lines with a modicum of emotion this class is going to be easy, think again. In here you’ll find exactly where your weaknesses lie. I’m going to strip you down to your bones then build you back up, layer by layer. If that sounds painful, it’s because it will be. But in the end, you will know every person in this room better than your own family. And above all, you will truly know yourself.”

  She looks at me as she says this, and I have a sudden, irrational urge to run from the room and never come back.

  “Right. Everyone on your feet. It’s time to get to know each other.”

  She orders us into two lines.

  “The rules are simple. The line nearest the windows asks their partner a question, and the partner must answer honestly. Then you switch. You’ll continue the pattern until the time runs out and you move on. The challenge here is to get to know as much about the other person as possible in the time given, and I’m not talking about name, age, and favorite color. At the end of this exercise, you should be able to tell me one interesting personal fact about everyone in this room. Your time starts now.”

  I turn to the person opposite me. It’s Mariska. She has dead-straight, pitch-black hair that hangs around her face. Her eyes are just as dark. She’s looking at me expectantly.

  Oh, right. I’m supposed to ask a question. It’s difficult to think of something. She’s kind of off-putting.

  “Uh … what do you do for fun?”

  “I cut myself. You?”

  I blink for a full five seconds as I process that. “Uh … I read. Why do you cut yourself?”

  “I enjoy pain. Why do you read?”

  “I … well … enjoy words.”

  For the next two and a half minutes we talk about books and movies, but I’m still hung up on the whole, “I hurt myself for fun,” scenario. When the time is up, I gratefully move on to the next person.

  The cycle continues, and I learn lots of interesting things about my new classmates. Miranda has known she was a lesbian since she was eight and thinks I have beautiful breasts. Lucas was arrested for armed robbery when he was sixteen because he was addicted to crack, but now he’s off the hard drugs and only smokes pot. A tall, ebony-skinned girl named Aiyah emigrated to the United States with her family when she was twelve after her grandparents and two uncles were massacred in their village in Algeria. Zoe met Robert De Niro in a deli two years ago, and she’s positive he hit on her. And Connor has two older brothers in the army who think he’s a fag for wanting to act. They beat him up at every family get-together.

  I feel like an idiot. A useless, vanilla-flavored waste of space.

  Before today, I’d never met a lesbian. Or a drug addict. Or someone who’d lost half their family. I’d been too busy being safe and comfortable in my tiny hometown, thinking I had it tough because my parents expected a lot from me.

  God, I’m pathetic.

  By the time I stand in front Holt, my mind is pounding from my new-and-improved inferiority complex. I look up. He’s frowning. Maybe his head hurts, too.

  “Does your head hurt?” I ask with a sigh.

  “No. Does yours?”

  “Yes. Why do I seem to have zero verbal filter around you?”

  “I have no idea, but feel free to fix that. Are you freaking out because compared to most of these people, you feel like a spoiled whiner?”

  “Uh … yes. That’s exactly how I feel, and thanks for putting it so eloquently. Is it that obvious?”

  He gives me a small smile. “No. But that’s how I feel. I just hoped someone else was, too.”

  For a moment, we’re united in our freakish normalcy. Our remarkable unremarkableness.

  “So, no deep, dark secrets you want to share with me then?” he asks.

  “No. Apart from accidentally stealing a Pooh Bear pencil sharpener when I was five, I’m completely average in every way. Haven’t you noticed?”

  “No, I haven’t.” His eyes are doing that annoying intense thing again. “I did notice one remarkable thing about you.”

  I cock an eyebrow. “Really? And what might that be?”

  He takes my hand, then pushes our palms together while he aligns our fingers.

  The same heat we shared in the auditions flares, and for a moment I think he’s going to say something about our amazing connection.

  Instead he says, “You have freakishly large man hands.”

  Excuse me?! “I do not have man hands!”

  “Yeah, you do. I noticed them when we did the mirror exercise. Look at them.”

  I examine our hands pressed against each other. His fingers are only slighter longer than mine, and that’s saying something, ‘cause if he picked his nose with those suckers, he could give himself a lobotomy.

  “Maybe your hands are just girly,” I say.

  “Taylor, I’m six foot three and wear a size twelve shoe, and your hand is almost as big as mine. You can’t tell me you don’t find that bizarre.”

  I snatch my hand away and glare. “Well, thank you for pointing that out. Now I’m going to be super self-conscious about my mutant hands.”

  “Don’t be. Some guys might find it sexy. Mostly gay guys of course, because those hands are kind of butch—”

  “Shut up!”

  “Fine. I won’t mention them anymore. And I’ll try not to stare. No promises, though. They’re like giant attention-drawing satellites.”

  He thinks he’s funny. He’s so not.

  “Why do you hate me so much?” I ask.

  He looks at me for a moment, and blinks his crazy-pretty eyes. “I don’t hate you, Taylor. Why would you think that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because when you’re not getting off on annoying me, you’re either ignoring me or scowling at me. And at the auditions you told me we weren’t going to be friends. Why would you say that?”

  He sighs and rubs his eyes. “Because we’re not. Why, do you want to be friends?”

  “Not particularly, which is really strange because usually I’m desperate to be everyone’s friend.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He waves his hand dismissively, which, I conclude, should give me free rein to punch him in the stomach. “Nothing. Forget it. Whose turn is it to ask a question?”

  “No, I won’t forget it. What do you mean by that?

  “I think it’s my turn,” he says, ignoring me. “So, are you dating that Connor guy?”

  The question takes me by surprise. “What?”

  “Did I stutter? Are you dating him?” />
  “Dating him as in … ?”

  “Oh, Jesus, Taylor … as in going on dates. Seeing him naked. Fucking him.”

  “What?!” I’m so angry, I can barely breathe.

  “The point of the exercise is to answer the question,” he says calmly. “Honesty, please.”

  “It’s none of your business!”

  He leans in and lowers his voice to a whisper. “Do I need to get Erika over here and tell her you’re not completing the exercise she assigned? She wants us to share, remember?”

  The thought of Erika thinking badly of me makes me want to vomit. On him. “You are such a butthead.”

  “And you’re being evasive. Answer the question.”

  “Why do you care if I’m"—I want to shock him by saying the “F” word, but I just can’t push it past my lips—"dating him?”

  “I don’t. Just curious. You two looked pretty friendly earlier. In fact, it looked like he was going to feel you up in front of the whole class.”

  “God, you’re disgusting.”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “No!”

  “‘No,’ you’re not dating him, or ‘no,’ you won’t answer the question.”

  “Both.”

  “Well, that’s impossible. If it’s ‘no’ to the first you’re automatically saying ‘yes’ to the second.”

  “Stop. Talking.” My face is white-hot.

  “So is your answer to my original question ‘no’ or not?”

  “No, my answer isn’t ‘no.’”

  “No?”

  “No!” Dammit, now I’m confused as to what exactly I’m saying “no” to.

  By now, I can feel a blush crawling down onto my neck. I almost want to laugh about his assumption that I could be “dating” anyone, let alone someone as charming and good looking as Connor.

  I’d kissed a few boys at various high school parties, but that was it as far as my experience went. Their sloppy mouths and probing tongues never gave me the urge to take it any further. If sex were baseball, I was still on the bench. The only action my bases had seen was courtesy of my own curious hands, and even then, I’d never achieved a homerun.

  Of course, Holt doesn’t know that.

  I open my mouth to tell him I’m riding Connor like a rodeo bronco, but the look in his eyes stops me. Amid all his hard edges and stony stares, there’s something fragile about him, and I can’t do it.