The Reece Malcolm List

by Amy Spalding

  She hugs me, but I just stand there because it’s like I forgot how to hug back. I can’t even savor it, like I was served my favorite meal but have a terrible stomachache. Why hasn’t she told me? Doesn’t that mean something? Maybe she didn’t have to tell everyone, but she should have told me, of all people. Right?

  “I like the boy, you know.”

  I shrug. “Me, too. But it’s pointless.”

  “I wouldn’t call it that.” She grins again. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  It’s a couple hours later than I usually go to bed, but it still takes forever to fall asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Things I know about Reece Malcolm:

  38. She’s pregnant.

  39. She didn’t tell me.

  Our show is good, if not quite as fresh-out-of-the-gate, on Friday night. Once I’m onstage it’s easy to forget about my mother and the baby, though I’d be lying if I said they don’t take up 90 percent of my thoughts up until showtime.

  I go out afterward with Travis, Mira, Brian, Liz, Jasmine, and Lissa and Elijah, who came to see the show. Nicole did, too. I saw her in the hallway waiting for Sai with a couple of her friends. And I still want to hate her (and, okay, maybe I do?) but it’s good Sai has someone who’s there only for him. I try to dwell on that instead of on how much more fun I’d be having if he were out with us, too. It’s easier to believe that lie than it is to pretend I’m not thinking about the baby Reece Malcolm is having. The baby who won’t be me. The baby she won’t run away from until the law demands otherwise.

  (Pretend to myself, though, is what I mean, because I’m great at faking it with everyone else.)

  Saturday night is our best show yet: no mistakes from anyone, louder laughs than ever before during all of the funny moments but especially all the lines I deliver like I’m drunk during “That Frank,” and practically deafening applause at curtain call. If I wasn’t so mad at my mother—wait, am I mad?—I’d be sad she and Brad missed it.

  We go out afterward again, and this time Sai comes along, too. Travis, for some bizarre reason, suggests bowling, so we end up at the place behind Jerry’s Deli where the lanes are lit up with black lights like it’s a disco and not freaking bowling.

  “You’re just mad because you can’t wear your cute shoes,” Travis tells me as we wait for Sai to set up the scoreboard.

  “Shut up.” I feel stupid that he isn’t entirely wrong. Weird red rented shoes don’t look nearly as good with my outfit as my silver flats do. But mainly I’m annoyed that we’re doing something stupid, and I hate that I saw my mother in the morning and between shows, two good opportunities, and she still hasn’t said anything.

  “Your boyfriend looks cute up there.” He nods at Sai, who’s very engrossed in keying in our names for the scoreboard. “So serious.”

  “Please don’t call him that,” I say. “If he hears you I’ll die.”

  “Like, literally? That would be a dramatic medical episode.”

  I elbow Travis. “I hate you.”

  Mira sits down on my other side. “Why do you hate him this time?”

  “I can’t believe we’re bowling,” I say. “It’s so Midwestern.”

  “It’s Rock ’n’ Bowl.” Mira points to the signs that pronounce it as such. “What’s lame about that?”

  We laugh as Sai heads over with his arms in the air.

  “Victory,” he says in a big boomy voice. “Dev, you’re up.”

  “He put your name in first,” Travis whispers to me. “If that isn’t love I don’t know what is.”

  I elbow him again, harder, before getting up to bowl a gutterball.

  “Devvie, this is pathetic.” Travis runs over to me. “Come on, you need a coach.”

  He demonstrates the right way to release the ball down the lane. I try again and knock one pin down, which feels pretty impressive, considering. Travis is up next, so I sit down in the seat he vacated, considering Sai is where I was sitting.

  “Nice work,” he says to me with a grin. “Good knowing you aren’t perfect at everything.”

  “I’m totally not perfect at anything,” I say. “But thanks?”

  We laugh and watch as Travis bowls a strike.

  “Who knew Kennedy had secret bowling talents?” Sai asks. “Man, not me.”

  “Right?” I lean against him a little, because he’s there, because he smells really nice, because sometimes my brain gets carried away with itself and urges me to do things I shouldn’t, because I need badly to feel safe with someone. We’re friends, though. It’s okay to lean against friends.

  (Okay, maybe it isn’t okay to lean against friends while wondering what it would be like to kiss them.)

  “You want to do this the rest of your life?” Sai asks, right into my ear. Basically the whole cast is here but it’s a private conversation suddenly, just for us.

  “Bowl?” I somehow manage not to jump as his hand rests on top of mine. It’s possible I just want this to be true, but it—combined with his voice soft in my ear—doesn’t feel like a friend gesture. “No, um, yeah. I’ve wanted theatre to be my whole life for a long time.”

  “You’re lucky to know what you want,” he says.

  I never know how to tell Sai I’m not nearly as lucky as he makes me out to be.

  “You could do it your whole life, too,” I tell him. With his hand still on mine.

  “Maybe. Maybe I don’t even want to. Got a lot to figure out first.” He leaps to his feet, and my hand is suddenly freezing without his covering it. “My turn up there. I’m gonna demolish Kennedy, wait for it.”

  Mira leans over and raises her eyebrows with a glance in Sai’s direction. It makes me feel sane because I must not be imagining things if Mira sees them, too. But what does that actually change? So I shrug and watch as Sai bowls under the disco lights.

  As much as I love basically everything about theatre, it’s always at least a little bit of a relief when days off roll around. I spend most of my free time making sure I’m caught up on homework, and then a little time studying the California Drivers Handbook. It’s a terrifying read. I don’t know how anyone keeps track of all these numbers and rules. And unlike getting a problem wrong on a math test, getting this wrong means maybe you’ll crash a car or kill someone or even die. And yet it feels like in L.A. alone billions of people drive every single day like it’s no big deal at all.

  Maybe I’m as bad as my mother because I’m totally pretending I don’t know anything about the baby, either. Yeah, partly because I can’t say what I know without admitting I’ve gone through her purse, but things are better. We make conversation constantly and she wants nightly details of my performances and if I forget about the vitamins life is maybe the best it’s ever been.

  And I should enjoy that while I still have it. That much I know. There’s no way this isn’t changing everything.

  My phone beeps with a text on Wednesday night, and I sort of jump when I see that it’s from Sai. Normally he just calls. Can I come over? Bad night. Need to talk. “Um,” I say aloud, causing my mother to look up from her computer. “Is it okay if Sai comes over?”

  “Of course,” she says, her eyes immediately back to her screen. If she still thinks something’s up with Sai and me, at least she’s shut up about it. Maybe she’s shutting up about a lot now.

  Sai is there in record time. He must have texted while driving, which according to the California Driver Handbook is a huge and deadly risk. His eyes are red-rimmed and he’s quiet, which shakes through me. I hate seeing him like this.

  He walks ahead of me to my room. “Sorry. Man, just a bad night.”

  “It’s okay.” I wait to see where he sits down (the bed) before sitting down next to him. Safe amount of space between us, of course. “Is it Nicole?”

  Why why why did I ask that?

  “It’s not,” he says. “Why’d you ask that?”

  “No, I just— Since you’re here. If it was something else I thought you’d—”


  “Right.” He nods. His hair looks like it’s wilting. “Just—my dad and I got into it, nothing new. Well, worse than usual. Last time it was bad I called Nic, but she was kind of . . . I dunno. Freaked? Just that I was so upset. I know it’s lame.”

  “It’s not lame to be upset,” I say. And the rest comes out before I can stop it. “And I don’t think I’d want to go out with anyone who couldn’t handle it if I wasn’t happy all the time. Especially since it’s not like you guys seem to have anything else in common.” Hopefully it’s fair to not include their shared hotness.

  “Man, you’re my friend,” he says in a perfectly nice way, but no one wants to hear the F word from the person they love like. “I needed to talk to someone. And you don’t know her. She’s smart and funny, even if she’s not into show choir and everything else.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. (I’m not.) “Anyway. Do you want to talk?”

  “I don’t know.” He leans forward, drops his head into his hands. “Was it bad when you lived with your dad? You guys fight a lot?”

  “No,” I say. “He would have had to talk to me more to fight with me, so . . .”

  “That sucks,” Sai says. “But I’d take it over getting yelled at every goddamn day.”

  “Yeah.” I rub his shoulder with my hand. It feels like the right thing to do and not just an excuse to touch him. “I’m sorry you have to go through it.”

  “Dev, thanks.” He looks up at me, leans in kind of close, gets closer. I’m totally no expert on kissing, but it feels a lot like it’s about to happen. I lean in, too, smell his Sai smell (hair product and Altoids). It’s weird. We just pause there with eyes locked like someone hit a button on a remote control.

  I know it’s kind of taking advantage, too. He’s emotional and in my room. Okay, fine, I’m not kind of taking advantage. I am totally taking advantage. Wrapping my hand around the back of his neck, leaning in.

  “Hey, uh.” He’s suddenly in motion again. Ducking away from me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “No, it was totally me, I—”

  “You know why my parents got divorced?” he asks. “Because my dad was cheating on my mom and I caught him.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  He nods. “Now she says she can’t look at me without thinking about it. Which is why I’m stuck here with him. Like it’s my fault. And of course he hates me for it.”

  “You did the right thing,” I say. “Even if they’re being stupid about it.”

  He covers his face with his hands. “I just keep thinking it’ll start sucking less. And it doesn’t.”

  I think back to living with Dad and Tracie, and how anyone telling me it would be okay wouldn’t have mattered at all. So I stay quiet, just reach over and touch his hair. (It feels as nice as I hoped this whole time.)

  I should mention I’m pretty mad at the side of me using Sai’s total meltdown as an excuse to touch his hair and smell him and be sitting so so so close to him. Still, come on, of course that side is winning. That side is frustrated. I owe it something.

  He lays his head in my lap. Now it seems practically obligatory to run my fingers through his hair. I try to keep it from wilting completely.

  “Do you really think that about Nic?” he asks. “We don’t have anything in common?”

  I shrug because now it feels like kicking him while he’s down. “I don’t even really know her. I shouldn’t have said it. It’s just that—”

  “Yeah?”

  Shut up, Devan, shut up. “N—nothing.”

  “No, whatever you’re thinking, say it.”

  “Just that—I don’t know. You call me like every night and—I mean, you’re over here now.” With your head in my lap. “And sometimes—”

  “Sometimes what?”

  “Sometimes the way you act around me . . .” Oh my God, what am I saying? “You know what I mean.”

  “We’re friends,” he says again, but I believe him less this time. (It still stings.) “I don’t know why you’re saying this shit.”

  “Really? You have no idea?”

  He jumps up, paces the length of my room a couple more times before walking to the door. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Sai, don’t go, I—”

  But he’s gone. And then my words echo through me, and I think about accusing him of liking me, of me being better for him than Nicole, or a lot of things of course I think about all the time. You don’t just say that stuff, though.

  “Devan?” My mother leans into the room. “Everything all right? Sai took off without saying awesome, Ms. Malcolm five times, so . . .”

  I burst into tears and shake my head. “I’m so stupid.”

  “I doubt that, kid.” She pulls me into her arms, hugs me tightly. Tell me, I pray. For all that I don’t want to deal with the changes it’ll bring, at least I’ll feel like someone Reece Malcolm thinks worthy of the truth. “Want to talk?”

  “Not really,” I say, and not just because I don’t want some big emotional talk over the thing I can’t say.

  She wraps me into another hug, which is kind of weird. “Ooh, let’s go get milkshakes. All of a sudden I’m craving a milkshake. And guy drama always goes well with milkshakes, I’ve found.”

  “Okay,” I said, even though I feel all prickly at the mention of a craving. “Do you think it’s bad to tell someone the truth, even if maybe you shouldn’t say it out loud?” I mean Sai, but I guess I don’t not mean her, too.

  “I don’t know.” She pulls me down the stairs after her. I really hope we’re going to a drive-through, because my face is bright red and tear-stained. “Sometimes honesty is by far the honorable choice, but I believe people lie to protect each other all the time. And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that.”

  “Then I think I messed up,” I say while wondering if she’s protecting me right now. And if the baby means I need to be protected, is that bad news? Is it everything that eats at me when I stop to think about it for more than a moment?

  “We all mess up,” she says as we walk into the garage. “Don’t make it more than it is. I mess up more with the people I care about than anyone else, and luckily they tend to forgive me.”

  I bite my lip hard not to say anything.

  The garage door opens, and Brad’s Jetta pulls in. (He hasn’t gotten a new—presumably baby-friendlier—car yet.) I know technically Brad isn’t anything to me. Not my stepdad, definitely not my father. But I keep thinking of how he’s going to be someone’s dad and that someone is never going to have to wonder if his or her dad will someday forget how to talk to his own kid.

  “Hey,” my mother greets him. “We’re getting milkshakes. Are you in?”

  Brad glances at me, probably appraising my post-cry face. “We could stay in and I could make milkshakes.”

  “No, I want a milkshake I pay for, ordered from a drive-through speaker.” She grins at him and holds out her hand. “Come on.”

  They’re always so polite about romantic stuff in front of me but it’s not like I can’t see the way they look at each other. Normally it makes me really happy to see, not just that they’re in love but that love like that is possible.

  Right now, though, I just kind of want to throw water on them.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Things I know about Reece Malcolm:

  40. She still hasn’t told me.

  41. She’s had chances.

  Sai doesn’t speak to me the next day during school, which I guess is expected, but as we gather backstage before the show, he still refuses to make eye contact. Almost all my scenes are with him, but once I’m onstage, I’m not really myself, so it’s a safe time for anything to go wrong in a part of my life that isn’t the show. And—no matter how much I maybe want to—I can’t hate Sai. I can’t even really dislike him. When he sings I still hold my breath hoping he’ll get everything right.

  I’m not sure if that makes me mature or pathetic.

  If anyone else notices, the
y don’t mention it. Not even Travis, who seems to follow us like a soap opera. It’s not our best, but it’s still a good show. And so is Friday’s, and so is the Saturday matinee. But I don’t want to close out our whole run with just a good show. I want it bigger and better and so full of energy you’re convinced it might burst. As easy as it is to put everything out of my head during a performance, I don’t want to, especially with the cast party looming afterward. The first cast party I feel completely wanted at. Spending it avoiding Sai sounds more awful than worrying if I should be there or not.

  I go home between our matinee and evening shows mainly as an excuse to get Sai advice, but also because my mother offered to order in Thai. She isn’t my favorite person right now, but I can’t deny that she understands boys.

  “So, um,” I say while she chomps on a spring roll, “Sai still totally hates me.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “I just don’t want to spend another show knowing how mad he is at me—”

  “Unfortunately, that’s life,” she says with a little shrug. Not what I want to hear.

  “Sai’s not just—” I cut myself off because it takes a moment to figure out how to say it. “He’s not just some boy I want to kiss.”

  “I’m running to the bathroom.” She gets up and heads out of the room. “And I know how many spring rolls are left, and I will count when I get back.”

  I shoot a glare at her as she walks away. Her acting like spring rolls are more important than something big in my life probably shouldn’t surprise me—considering she’s been pretending something big in hers isn’t going on at all—but it still pisses me off.

  Her laptop is lying open on the coffee table, and I swivel it around to see how many of her emails I can get through before she’s back. I lost a lot of chances to investigate thanks to the show—and to thinking things were fine—and, seriously, now is more important than ever.

  The most recent emails are from Kate and Vaughn and unimportant, but then I strike gold, because she and Brad apparently never shut up about the baby in their emails these days. I can’t believe I let the hunt get away from me like this. I would have known so much sooner if only I hadn’t gotten so complacent.