He nodded and flipped a page of my part of the paper and said, “Diana was here on Thanksgiving. Her mom made this amazing stuffing. I’d offer some leftovers, but it had oysters in it so you wouldn’t want it.”
“Oh. Well, I wouldn’t hold that against her. Or Diana,” I answered.
“Diana likes you, too, you know. All through dinner she kept talking about you, and how grateful she is that you helped her join the drama club, how smart and funny you are, how quick-thinking you are and handy with a bottle of soda, apparently … ”
I rubbed my eyes in case they started tearing up and said, “She’s a great person. She’d have to be pretty special to get you to agree to go onstage in a high school musical, right?”
He frowned, flaring his nostrils in mute confusion, then shook his head as if I’d said something hopelessly cryptic, then turned back to scrutinizing my paper.
“And thank you, by the way,” I added, “for helping out with the musical, if I didn’t say that before.”
“You did,” he assured me as he marked something on my essay with his felt-tip pen.
“It must be really hard for Diana,” I mused as Harry came in and wagged his tail for a good ear scratching. “At least, I’ve heard things don’t look good for her dad, legal-wise.”
Michael grimaced, put down his pen, and nodded. “She’s pretty mad at him. But no one wishes prison on their dad, I guess.”
Suddenly I wanted to talk about anything but Diana and blurted out, “So how are we gonna pull this off? Turning two papers into one, I mean?”
He gave me his most stern look and directed, “I need to keep reading yours, and you keep reading mine, and see if you can find any places where we seem to be talking about something similar so we can patch it together.”
After an hour focused on reading, we decided that he could write the introduction and a version of the transitions between our sections and I would add to that and do the conclusion. With that decided, there didn’t seem to be any reason for me to stay and since he didn’t try to convince me to, I said goodbye and left. He was so engrossed in his writing, he barely looked up from his paper when I walked away.
And yet, Sunday morning, when I left my bedroom and my English homework to grab a snack from the kitchen, I found Michael in the family room with Trey and Tori.“Hey, George,” he greeted me when I walked in as if he were often a fixture on our couch. “Trey was just commiserating with me about Regionals.”
“Uh, hey, everybody … ” I said.
Trey smiled and offered me a plate of the cookies I had just made earlier that morning. Then he turned back to Michael and said, “Last fall, the lacrosse team got destroyed at our regional match.” He took Tori’s hand in his and added to me this time, “If your sister hadn’t cheered me up … ”
What would he have done—OD’d on Scooby Doo vitamins? At least I didn’t say that out loud, but the idea of Trey Billingsley, the human endorphin, feeling suicidal was as ridiculous as my having to stand there next to Michael and witness the world’s most adorable couple in action, though Michael and Diana were rapidly giving Tori and Trey some competition for that prize.
I took a cookie and a seat in a chair across the room and commiserated, “No one likes to feel crushed, and no one is better at picking you up when you feel bad than my sister.”
Michael nodded absently and sat down on the edge of the chair next to mine, holding out some papers. He told me, “I wrote an intro and some ideas for transitions. I can look at your conclusion, too, before we copy and paste it all together if you want.”
“I can’t believe you’re done already.” I accepted the papers and kept my eyes on them when I admitted, “I didn’t add anything to my part yet.”
Michael sighed but said nothing. I was a pathetic slacker while Michael was always the kid in the project group who did all the work himself, including signing your name to it, rather than risking someone messing it up.
I made myself look him almost in the eye when I lied, “I thought it made more sense to write the conclusion after I saw what I was concluding, wrapping up.”
He actually agreed. “Oh. Well, that makes sense,” he conceded. It certainly made more sense than the truth, which was that I had been so tired of feeling bad that I spent the afternoon watching a Project Runway marathon.
I waited for Michael to take off, our project business concluded, but he helped himself to a cookie. Trey asked him about some of the guys he knew from the lacrosse team last year and where they were applying to college. As the chatted, Tori half-listened while looking at me with big, sad eyes like she was waiting for me to do something.Since Michael seemed done with me and content to catch up with Trey, I was about to excuse myself to get to my part of the project when my mom appeared in the doorway, beaming at the sight of her daughters having healthy, co-ed fun, and announced, “Georgia? There’s another young man here to see you.”
All four of us turned to the doorway in surprise to see Dave standing there behind her, looking incredibly sheepish and wiping raindrops off his glasses with the hem of his hoodie. My mom was practically squealing with delight as she made her reluctant exit; imagine her most recalcitrant daughter having two gentlemen callers in one afternoon. She was probably off to get some lemonade set up on the veranda for them. Not that we have a veranda.
“Oh,” I heard Michael say and I turned to see him getting up stiffly from his perch. As he said to me, “Look over what I wrote and then email me your conclusion paragraphs and I’ll put it all together,” he leaned in close to me for a second, so close I could feel his breath on my cheek, but then just as suddenly pulled away without saying anything more. He said to Tori and Trey, “Have a safe trip back to school,” and, “See you tomorrow,” to Dave, who was standing there looking like a five-year-old who’s waiting to have his first cavity filled.
When Michael left, I led Dave out into the entryway of the house with its hideous floral wallpaper as Tori’s and Trey’s eyes followed us with great interest. I can only imagine what Tori had shared with him about my fracked up feelings for Michael and my date with Dave. They were probably waiting with cell phones poised to dial 911 in case my head or heart finally exploded.
I leaned on the front windowsill with the rain beating against the glass like it wanted to be let in and asked Dave as cheerily as possible, “So what’s up?”
Dave stuck his hands in his jacket and said, “I hope it’s okay to just come over like this. I didn’t know you had company.”
“Trey and Michael aren’t company, really,” I assured him. “Trey’s practically family, and … ” I trailed off at an utter loss to explain why Michael had been there and left so suddenly upon his arrival.
He looked confused for a second but burst with, “I just couldn’t stand it anymore,” and I felt my heart drop into my stomach with a splash. “I can’t take not talking about it. Not even mentioning the fact that we went out on a date a month ago—or I thought we did—but you haven’t even mentioned it since.” He paused to push his glasses back up his nose before saying, “You’ve been acting so weird and depressed for a while, I didn’t want to say anything, but I can’t take it anymore. I mean, was I wrong? Was that not a date? It felt like one to me.”
I choked back a big blob of self-loathing as I realized at last that while I had been plastering myself with Band-Aids for weeks, someone right next to me had needed a tourniquet. All the time I had been moping around feeling like life—and Michael Endicott—were torturing me, I had been inadvertently torturing Dave, the last person on this earth who deserved it.
“Oh my God, Dave—I’m sorry. I really am,” I said lamely as I sank to the floor, knees bent to my quivering chin.
“I should have known you weren’t feeling me when you didn’t kiss me back right away,” he sighed, which stamped the seal of approval on my application for Worst Human Being on the Face of the Earth.
“I tried to,” I flailed, but cut myself off as I realized that this assurance
was as hurtful as anything else I had done. “I’m a mess, and you shouldn’t want to be around me. Like, at all. I’m still not over Michael, and I should have told you that, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that it was a date we were on, so I didn’t say anything because I was afraid it would be awkward.” I tried to smile, but the tears came out anyway. “Aren’t you glad I avoided any awkward feelings?” I sort of wailed as I jabbed at my eyes with a fist.
Dave nodded sadly and shoved his hands in his hoodie pockets, asking, “So Michael was over here … because you guys are back together?”
“No.” I raised my eyes to the ceiling, hoping that meant the tears wouldn’t spill out of them, but it didn’t work. “He’s with Diana now,” I managed to say.
“Oh, Georgia,” Dave said so kindly it made me start crying harder, which was stupid and selfish because he’s the one who had been wronged. By me. I didn’t deserve his kindness. But he put his arms around me and I let him. He patted my head like I was a puppy or a little girl and let me sob into his sweatshirt.
Moments later, I got a grip on myself and sniffled, “This is stupid,” as I pulled away from him. “Diana and he make so much more sense together than he and I do. And you shouldn’t be nice to me. I don’t deserve it.”
Dave leaned against the little fireplace with its chipped white molding and said, “This whole ‘liking’ people—it doesn’t always make sense, though, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t,” I agreed, then tried again even though it was hopelessly inadequate, “I’m really sorry, Dave … I am.”
He sighed and held up a hand like a stop sign, saying, “I know. And you didn’t do anything. You just weren’t feelin’ it. It happens.”
I snorted all of the snot back into my nose and pulled myself together.
Finally, he said with the ghost of a smile, “You know, I’m not going to say anything to them, but Gary and Shondra would never believe this, that Georgia Barrett was crying.”
“Shondra’s seen me looking pretty pathetic before. Believe me,” I said, recalling the non-double movie date that fall and all the times I’d whined this summer about having to go to Michael’s family’s houses on the Cape and my dragging her to Cameron’s party so I could throw myself at Michael one more time.
“Well, more people should see it. It’s kind of nice, actually.”
“Nice?” I snorted, dislodging more snot, which I had to wipe with the back of my hand, making Dave laugh, and then I laughed a little, too, because it was all so awful and pathetic.
“Nice, yeah,” he said as I stepped into the living room for a tissue and returned. “It makes you human.”
“You guys know I’m human. You know I’m fallible, at least. I fuck up all the time, after all.”
“Yeah, but you never crack. I mean, you get angry, sure, but you never … break. The shell is always solid.” He ducked his head for a second and then looked at me with a small smile. “It’s nice to see the gooey center inside Georgia Barrett.”
“You should be honored. Do you think I do this with every young man who drops by the house?” My voice cracked through the tears and mucus.
Dave barked out a short laugh and shook his head.
“And she’s back. Good old snarky Georgia. I’ll see you in school tomorrow,” he said as he opened the front door and turned back for a second. “But the real, not-so-solid Georgia is pretty good, too. You should let her out sometimes.”
I watched him walk out to his car in the rain and started crying again, so ashamed of myself, because he was just about the nicest person on the planet and he deserved so much better than me. I walked outside then, despite the rain, and thought about all the nice people I actually knew. I sat on the front step and made a wish on the rain that Dave found someone worthy of him. It shouldn’t be too hard to find someone who deserved him more than I did. He could pretty much open up the phone book.
I sat outside for a long time, hoping to get pneumonia so I wouldn’t have to go back to school after break and see the boy I should love and the other I couldn’t stop loving.
18 Emotionally Naked
Back at school after break, Michael and I were the first to give our presentation in history class and it went well. He spoke first to set up our two approaches to social and political revolution, within and outside the system, and he did as well as I knew he would. And if I wasn’t as eloquent as he was, I at least made sense and didn’t bore the crap out of anybody. When we got back to our desks, Michael tapped his fist against mine and said, “See? We make a great team,” and I nodded but I felt sort of sick because we weren’t a team. Not really. Not anymore. Not ever again.
At lunch, Michael was telling Diana about how well our presentation had gone when she gasped as Monica Summers, the junior playing the Baroness in The Sound of Music, stumbled in on crutches.
“Oh, no! There’s no way she can play the part with a broken leg!” Diana worried.
“Maybe the theater techies can set her up with a really blinged-out, elegant wheelchair,” I suggested, but after school at rehearsal Ms. Duval announced that Monica’s understudy, Alicia Price, would take over the role, and everyone clapped politely but I heard some groans, too. Alicia had been diva-ing her way through rehearsals as if she were a one-woman show unto herself, even though she really had a part only if someone else lost theirs. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that she had pushed Monica down a flight of stairs, but Diana was sure it was a skiing accident that had done the damage. Either way, the production was in trouble. In the stage version of the show, the Baroness doesn’t have a huge part, but it’s important to the story. She has to be beautiful, shallow, and charming; all in a pretty comical way, and the only comical thing about Alicia’s performance lay in its unintentionally robotic qualities.
When she took the stage with the force of a Category 3 hurricane, I did my best to ignore her paint-peeling vocals. I was focused on helping Leila, Andy, Peter, and Amanda finish a fake night sky backdrop, showing them how to make stars look twinkly in the hall outside the auditorium, when Michael and Cameron and three other guys from the cross-country team came through.
“Look!” Leila stage-whispered to me. “Your boyfriend’s here!”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I told her at one-tenth of the volume, my face as hot as a car hood in the desert. “He’s Diana’s boyfriend.”
“Oh,” she said, looking at me with pity.
The team looked as lost as if they had been dropped blindfolded into the Amazon. So Michael led them over to our painting party and said, “Uh, George, we’re supposed to find somebody named Violet Newsome. The wardrobe person? We’re supposed to be fitted.”
I had to smile because they looked more like they were being herded together to offer slices of their brains to a lab rather than to be measured for tuxedos and uniforms.
“Violet’s in the room down the hall. And I promise it won’t hurt,” I said, and he saluted before leading his squad to Violet’s lair.
“He’s cute,” Amanda whispered to Leila, who shrugged and said, “I like the blond one with the mole on his cheek,” and I didn’t know whether to be amused or disgusted that little girls were ogling and rating older boys the way construction workers check out women on the street.
“Whatcha guys working on? Oooh, so pretty!” Diana exclaimed as she came by and bent to admire our work.
Leila informed her, “Your boyfriend is down the hall.”
“Do you mean Rolf? Curt?” she asked, confused and blushing. “Curt’s onstage.”
“Noooo, your real-life boyfriend,” Leila explained with some exasperation, and Amanda giggled.
Diana turned the color of a pickled beet and I told them, “Curt is not her boyfriend. Curt should not be anybody’s boyfriend. Curt has cooties.”
“There’s no such thing as cooties,” Leila informed me, disgusted by my ignorance.
I suggested then that she and the other kids go watch the rehearsals while the paint dried, so w
e observed Alicia, in a fake mink stole and platinum-blond wig, thrash around onstage like she was in a roller derby but forgot her skates. She was so off-key most of the time it made me wince, and I had to shush Leila and Andy because they couldn’t help but laugh at her. I could see Dave and Gary cringing in the orchestra pit every time she mangled a note, but Alicia seemed pretty pleased with her performance. She was up there with Spencer and Todd, the boy playing Max, the Baroness’s charming but parasitic friend, and they were singing about how difficult it was for the Baroness to get Captain von Trapp to love her because, ironically, there were no obstacles preventing their love.
“‘Two millionaires with a dream are we, we’ll make our love survive,’” Alicia screeched, and Andy clapped his hands over his ears, but as awful as she sounded, even with Todd doing his best to drown her out, the song presented an interesting point of view. All great romances in literature and movies are about two people who are so different—one is poor, one is rich, for instance—they face huge obstacles that threaten their love but cling to each other despite the odds. And that’s what makes the stories so romantic: the struggle. In real life, though, as I learned this summer, it’s not like that. In real life, serious differences just make you doomed. And miserable, even if the Baroness sings about how there’s no real love without drama. She complains that she can’t “go out and steal” for the captain, or “die like Camille” for him, so how could he ever know she loved him? I wondered if real-life love required big gestures like that. I also wondered if Michael could hear the song from wherever he stood, bravely facing Violet’s tape measure. I could only imagine that if he could, he was categorizing his objections to the Baroness’s thesis. Because Michael does not like drama. That’s why he was with the sweet-tempered Diana now.
Snark and Stage Fright (Snark and Circumstance Book 5) Page 17
