by D'Ann Burrow
“Maybe I can get off early.” She rummaged in the drawer for a hot pad. “I might actually cook for y’all. I’m sorry Clarice needed me to stay late tonight.”
And last night. And the night before that.
I couldn’t complain. Overtime meant extra pay. And until Dad got on the whole child-support train, we needed every penny. Addy’s extra therapy didn’t come cheap.
“If you’re going to cook, you’re going to need to run by the grocery store.”
Mom paused, holding the tray of corn dogs half-in the oven. She looked like a statue. Even from behind, I could see her shoulders tense. I knew what kind of face she must be making. The credit card must be maxed out. Again.
“My lawn money’s in the cookie jar.”
She plopped the tray on the counter without looking at me. Her hand reached out and gripped the edge of the counter. “I’ll pay you back.”
“It’s okay.” I turned to back to the dishes in the sink. I didn’t want her to see my face either.
20
Cafeteria
3:42 p.m.
* * *
“I hate character studies.” Kennedy clicked her pen closed and tossed it onto the lunchroom table. Mrs. Whitmore said we needed space to be fully inspired while we practiced our partner work, so the classroom’s location basically below the cafeteria finally came in handy.
And as for being inspired to do our character studies, it seemed like it was mainly giving the other members in the class an excuse to close their eyes and pretend they were in deep thought, but the drool on the corner of one of the guys at the next table’s mouth kind of blew the illusion.
Not Kennedy, though. She hadn’t been dissuaded from the task of going question by question through the whole entire packet that we’d been given as we walked out the door. The girl was focused. I doubt she even realized there were clouds in the sky or that the lights had flashed five times since we’d been in the room. When she was given an assignment, she really did it.
Except for right now. It was the first time she’d said she hated anything theater-related, so I was immediately interested.
“Really?” I wouldn’t admit it now, but I kind of thought they were fun. Imagining who someone was and filling in the blanks about what their lives were like. It was kind of like you were writing your own version of their story.
“I never know what to write. I mean, how do I know what movie Juliet would like to see? They didn’t even have movies back then.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. And Kennedy shot me a death glare across the table. Since she was still the only member of the theater class who’d even talk to me, I quickly tried to apologize. “I think you’re taking things a little too literally.”
“I’m literal. That’s what I do.” For an actress, she definitely didn’t seem to know how to loosen up. “I like scripts that tell you about the actors. I like bringing meaning to the playwright’s words.”
I’d never met anyone who used the word playwright in a sentence.
She wasn’t done. “I like interpreting something that’s already written. But I don’t like creating a character’s backstory.”
“Why not?”
Instead of answering right away, she hesitated, thumbing her finger over the edge of her notebook, flipping through the corners of the pages. She sucked the corner of her lip into her mouth and bit down with the teeth.
“Because I’m not the writer. I don’t know what the character would do.” She leaned back in defeat, as if that single admission had taken all the life out of her. “That’s why I’ll never really make it.”
“But you do know the character. Heck, you practically have the whole play memorized.”
“But that’s not the point. To do a character analysis, you have to get inside a character’s head. You have to read between the lines. I can’t do that.”
She was about to hit the point of no return. I hadn’t known her very long, but I’d seen that same expression on too many defense players. They let a guy from the other team past them one too many times, and then they don’t think they ever have a chance of stopping him. So they don’t.
And I end up at the bottom of a very large and very heavy pile.
“Look. You’re stressing yourself out. We’re supposed to be thinking about names. Start with something easy. Your name.”
Her eyes still held a frightened-jackrabbit sense of terror.
“Okay. I’ll start. My name is Tanner Wyatt Shields. The Wyatt’s easy. My dad had a thing for Wyatt Earp, but my mom wouldn’t let it be my first name. She thought that everyone would have too much fun with that one. And then the week I was born, my mom’s little brother got into a wreck. A drunk driver killed him. And so they named me after him.”
She gave a hint of a nod. Something clicked for her. “Is that why you don’t drink?”
That wasn’t what I expected. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t drink. I saw you wandering around the party.”
“I don’t wander. I saw you and went over to bail you out.”
“Okay. When you came to help me out, you had a soda in your hand. The other guys on the team had beer. And when we got in the car, you said it was fine. I was safe. You hadn’t been drinking.”
“You remember that.” I thought she was way too drunk to remember what happened. Hell, I barely remembered it, and I was the one who said it.
“I guess.” She gave a nervous shrug. “It just kind of stuck with me.”
“I didn’t think anything would stick with you from that night.”
Her lips curled into a half-smile. She really was pretty when she smiled, something she didn’t do nearly enough. If she weren’t staring intently into a book or at her laptop, she typically had a look of almost being overwhelmed. Happy was a good look on her.
Her cheeks flushed pink. “I don’t remember much else, just that you said I’d be safe in the truck.” And the all-business expression settled back onto her face. “But is it? Is your uncle the reason you don’t drink?”
My stomach churned uneasily. Scarlett’s face flashed through my mind, and I pushed it back. This was not the time I wanted to think about her or that night. But this topic of conversation kind of made it unavoidable.
“No. That’s not why I don’t drink. And I’m not that good of a guy.” I rested my elbows on the table and shifted forward so I didn’t have to talk so loud. She didn’t need to put some kind of imaginary halo over my head. “I used to drink. Just not anymore.”
I shifted in discomfort. This conversation was my idea, but she’d started calling the plays and I didn’t like it. “How about you. Kennedy—where’d that name come from?”
She blinked at the sudden shift in topics, putting her front and center. For a minute, she dropped her eyes from my face and looked somewhere off in the distance. She licked her lips. I hadn’t noticed how small her mouth was before. Or that she seemed to like sparkly lip gloss.
“My name’s kind of a long story.”
I studied the people around us. The kid who’d been drooling earlier was now full-on snoring. Two girls appeared to be trying to see who could send more text messages during class. And a girl I honestly didn’t know even went to our school was doing some type of fairy dance next to the door.
“I think we have time for it.”
She cleared her throat like she was preparing for some kind of lecture. “My father’s British. Like British British. Boarding school. Lord Thatcher. That kind of British.”
British. That explained some of her uptight tendencies. I nodded so she’d know I was paying attention.
“When he was preparing for his A levels, he happened upon a film of John F. Kennedy. The ‘ask not what your country can do for you’ one?” She spoke the last question as if she wasn’t certain if I’d heard of it.
“I know about it.”
“Well, he really took it to heart. His family had never really done anything for their country. Instead, they
seemed to be more of the ‘what can everyone else do for them’ approach to life in general. He liked the idea of being able to do something for a country that needed him.”
We stayed quiet a while. I don’t think either of us could face another run-through of the script or think about our character’s motivation for another second. Kennedy idly ran a pencil up the leg of her jeans, and I tried not to think too much about the contour of muscle I could make out beneath the just-tight-enough denim.
“You know.” I cleared my throat. “It could have been worse.”
“We could have to do two character studies?”
“No. I meant your name. So your dad liked JFK. What if he’d liked Ford or Lincoln?”
She giggled, her cheeks turning a faint shade of pink. The students sitting closest to us looked momentarily in our direction before getting back to their serious acting.
“Really, Kennedy’s not so bad.”
Her face took on an uncomfortably serious expression, and I was pretty sure I’d said the wrong thing. “You didn’t ask me what my middle name is.”
Crap. “Please tell me it’s not Kennedy Reagan Thatcher.”
She shook her head, falling into full blown laughter that even drew Mrs. Whitmore’s attention. “I’m just messing with you. It’s Margaret.”
“Your name is Kennedy Margaret Thatcher?”
“Properly British.” She gave a very royal nod of her head.
“You were made for politics. Have you thought about that?”
“All right class, gather your things.” Mrs. Whitmore interrupted before Kennedy could answer. “Your performances begin next Monday. First up, Griffin and Eades. Diaz and Flynn. Thatcher and Shields.”
“Um, Mrs. Whitmore, we can’t be first. We’ve only been working a week. Everyone else has had almost three weeks. We’re not ready.” Kennedy’s face was masked in a look of total horror.
“Then you’d best get ready.” Mrs. Whitmore’s eyes flicked to me. “I don’t think there’s a game tonight. I believe it’s been rained out, isn’t that correct?”
“Yeah. Can’t play when the field’s under water.”
“Ready?” Kennedy hadn’t moved on to thinking about tonight’s football game that wasn’t happening. Fixated on our new deadline, she spun to look at me. Her breathing was speeding so fast it was like she’d been running a race. “How can we get ready?”
“Come to my house tonight. I’ll pick you up after practice.”
21
Rule #134 - Red and blue makes Scarlett green
12:25 p.m.
Cafeteria
* * *
I clutched my lunch bag as I walked into the cafeteria, seeking out Mary Jo. For a moment, I’d forgotten she hadn’t been in English or French. The likelihood she’d be making an appearance halfway through the day was slim. But that didn’t stop me from looking around. For who, I didn’t really know. I just knew that I didn’t want to eat alone, and my only friend—or my only friend who was still my friend in public—wasn’t there.
I was going to be eating solo. I didn’t even have a book with me.
I started walking to our traditional place at the back table. The freshmen who typically sat around us had conveniently left it empty. They didn’t know Mary Jo wasn’t there, and they weren’t going to violate senior privilege or risk ending up being moved when she glared at them. For someone who was voted Most Likely to be a Librarian when she grew up, she was kind of scary. Of course, that could be her inner librarian coming out. Maybe it was in their genetic code or something.
“Kennedy.”
I stopped short and looked around while trying not to be obvious about looking around. I was in a high school after all. Someone could be quizzing someone for an upcoming history quiz. Wouldn’t be the first time that happened. No one would be calling my name.
“Kennedy.” This time it was louder and stronger. More insistent. “Kennedy, over here.” Tanner’s voice was tainted with an edge of exasperation.
I shuffled to the right, craning my head in the direction of the table owned by the football team and their respective crowd of followers. A hand beckoned me toward the table—a hand that was attached to a muscular, well-tanned arm. And that arm belonged to the captain of the football team. And Tanner was grinning at me. “Come on. I saved you a seat.”
A hush came over the cafeteria. People spun in their seats to stare. They might not have noticed when Tanner was calling out a random name, but they heard him say that he was saving a seat for someone.
Tanner—the guy every girl wanted to date. The guy who I’d never seen with a girl. Tanner, the guy who had a reputation for dating everyone who wore a skirt at school…he saved a seat for me.
Part of me wanted to pretend like I hadn’t heard him. I could just walk to the empty two seats, one of which I always claimed. I could eat my sandwich in solitude and apologize later, saying I had never seen him.
But I had. He knew it. Our eyes had connected.
He shot an eyebrow up, waiting for me to move.
And my feet came unglued from the floor, seeming to operate independently from my brain, which was probably a good thing. Because if I gave this too much thought, I’d back out. I’d run to the nurse’s office and feign some type of not too dangerous but still difficult to diagnose disorder.
So I climbed the two stairs into the little half walled-off area at the back of the cafeteria. Here, status was determined by which level you sat at. I’m sure the architect never really thought his series of raised sections of seating was going to turn into a popularity hierarchy, but in high school—isn’t it all about status anyway? Hence where I sat with Mary Jo. We were in the very bottom section, not too far from the curtained-off entrance to the theater classroom. I didn’t mind. I liked being close to the stage. I didn’t mind that we were predominately surrounded by freshmen.
Neither of us even had enough status to make it into the band section. One level above our standard seats hosted the band, the cross country team and most of the girls in the choir. After the first day of school when a guy wearing a shirt decorated with musical notes ended up with a tray-full of spaghetti dropped on his head because he sat in the wrong section, I’d never figured out where the choir guys were. Maybe they hid in a hallway or something during the lunch hour.
One level up was filled with the entire drill team. They’d probably truly belong with the football team and the cheerleaders, but there wasn’t room. With over fifty members on the team, they needed every single seat the largest section of the cafeteria had.
I’d never even set foot in this top section before. In our brief tour of the school, Scarlett had made a point of making sure I understood I had to earn the right to step onto this section of blue tiled floor.
Now I had.
Tanner stood up and reached out for me, pulling my messenger bag off my shoulder and settling it on the floor next to his. With that single move, any question anyone had about why I’d crossed the invisible wall was gone.
I was there with Tanner.
I didn’t miss Stacia’s look of shock as she reached down and seemed to squeeze Brock’s leg. Her eyes immediately flew off to the left. I didn’t need a map to know that’s where Scarlett was sitting. I didn’t turn to look at her, but I could feel her looking at me.
She’d been trying to hook up with Tanner since the first day of school. If I had to guess, she’d been doing it last year too. And now I was sitting next to him.
This was so far beyond come-to-my-house-tonight-to-practice-for-the-play that my head was spinning. How had I gone from drama partner to someone sitting at his table in the cafeteria?
And Scarlett noticed too. Whether she was trying to send me a signal or not, the fact that her head shook from side to side couldn’t have been clearer. I’d entered an area of the school that was supposed to be off limits to me, except Tanner wanted me to be here.
Tonight I’d probably find my teddy bear with his head cut off in my bed.
A Little Night Rehearsal
September 8
8:15 p.m.
* * *
“Ugh.” I slammed my notebook closed. If I had to talk about death or dying or teenagers dying for five more minutes, I was going to explode.
“What is it?” Kennedy looked up from her spot on the living room floor just as she tossed a piece of popcorn in her mouth. I tried not to notice the way the edge of her shirt slid up, revealing just a hint of skin. Damn. Even her stomach was tan.
My mom must have liked her. She didn’t break out the popcorn popper for just anyone. “I mean, I didn’t think it went too badly that time.”
“It didn’t.” And that was the only thing I was certain of. The scene was great. But that was all Kennedy. When she was playing a part, she was a total different person. Real Kennedy was cool. But Kennedy-being-Juliette was absolutely amazing. “I mean, you were great.”
Her fingers scraped the bottom of the bowl of popcorn, digging through it like there was some buried treasure inside. “Most people hate Shakespeare, but I kind of like it. I know—it’s silly.”
“No. It makes sense.” I reached down and stole a handful of pieces out of the bowl on her lap. “I mean, I always said I hated it, but when you’re acting it out, it makes sense.”
“I had a great drama teacher.”
I almost choked on my popcorn. No one in the history of Piney Bluff had ever called Mrs. Whitmore great. Weird, yes. Strange, certainly. Great—not a chance.
She quickly added, “Back home. Mrs. Kirby was amazing. We made the state finals every year.”
She shifted on the floor, looking away, but not before I saw the overwhelming sadness that covered her face. I’d suspected she wasn’t here because she wanted to be, and I knew she never mentioned her mom, but this was the first time I saw through the carefully-constructed performance she’d been giving.
