The Law of Tall Girls

by Joanne Macgregor

  “Yes, but it’s going to take years. And that means that our whole family will be moving to Switzerland. My father says —”

  “Wait, Switzerland?” I interrupted. “You’re moving to Switzerland?”

  “Yes. To Geneva, to be precise.”

  “When?”

  “My mother takes up her position in November, but my father thinks it would be more sensible for my sister and me to finish the semester. So the rest of us will follow in December.”

  “But, but … December?” That meant that by April, by prom to be precise, Mark would be in Ge-freaking-neva.

  “Yes, there are implications for our relationship.” Mark frowned and gave my upper arm a consoling squeeze.

  “But what about school? Wouldn’t it be better for you to finish your senior year right here?” I protested. “They probably have a completely different school curriculum in Switzerland, you’d have to start from scratch.”

  I’d have to start from scratch — and there were only two more names left on the tall boys list.

  “I’ll finish my senior year at the American International School in Geneva, so the curriculums are perfectly compatible. Though, of course, I’m expecting a period of adaption to acclimate to the different culture and, naturally, I will miss my Wednesday dates with you.” Mark gave me a sad smile.

  “Will you at least be coming back for the senior prom?” I asked desperately.

  Mark chuckled. It was the very first time I’d heard him laugh, and I hadn’t been joking.

  ~ 15 ~

  The Tall Boys List:

  Jay Young

  Tim Anderson

  Mark Rodriguez

  Dylan Jones

  Robert Scott

  Wednesday nights were no longer date nights with Mark.

  I’d weaseled out of the relationship by suggesting that if we took it any further, it would only make the upcoming separation harder. I’d tried to do it gently, but maybe some of my relief at not having to date him anymore showed, because Mark looked hurt and asked, “But don’t you want to spend our remaining time together? Don’t you like me?”

  I felt like a complete cow. When I’d asked him out, I hadn’t stopped to consider what his feelings might be, or might become. It had been wrong to use him like that. Mark was a good guy. He deserved better.

  “Of course I like you. You’re a really likeable guy. It’s just that I think it wouldn’t be sensible or responsible to continue when we know this relationship will need to end before you leave.”

  “There’s truth in that,” Mark said, blinking away a tear. “Long-distance relationships seldom work out, my father says.”

  I’d given him a kiss on the cheek and slouched off, resolving that I’d give the next guy one date, and if I wasn’t interested in him, I’m come clean about the bet and take it from there.

  I gave myself permission to take a couple of weeks off from dating. It would seem heartless to ask another boy out when I’d only just ended “the relationship” with Mark, and besides, I had plenty of time to get a couple of dates in before prom. Also, my mind, my eyes, and other parts of me, were undeniably preoccupied with the feloniously filched number one. Because Wednesday nights were now dedicated to Romero and Juliet.

  At our first rehearsal, on the last Wednesday in September, Doug made us sit in a circle of chairs in the center of the stage.

  “Tonight, we’ll just do a read-through.”

  Not wanting Jay to think I was putting the moves on him, I took the chair farthest away from him, realizing too late that this put me directly opposite him, where I could avoid neither feasting my eyes, nor catching his. Wren, who had of course been cast as Juliet to Jay’s Romero, took the seat beside him — a move which Faye observed with narrowed eyes from the front row of the auditorium. Even seated, Wren was elf-like. Her tiny feet in their delicate pumps didn’t reach the floor, and the top of her head was only as high as Jay’s armpit. So now even Romeo and Juliet were breaking the Law of Tall Girls.

  Zack, who’d landed the part of Matteo, claimed the seat on my right and immediately began making cracks about how much he’d always wanted to sleep with a member of the clergy. Because I’d got the part of the friar.

  Of course I had.

  As soon as I told Chloe, she’d warned me that I’d have to be careful not to look longingly at Jay.

  “That would just be all kinds of wrong,” she’d said, pulling a face.

  The cast had a different reaction to me being cast as clergy. They got sidetracked on a debate as to whether the friar could be a female part.

  “Peyton’s not a friar in my version,” Doug pointed out. “She’s a priest.”

  This was met with a chorus of protests that there were no such thing as female priests, even in twenty-first-century Baltimore.

  “Fine. She’s the local community’s nondenominational religious-leader-type person. Happy?”

  “The local community’s nondenominational religious-leader-type person — that’ll fit easily in the program’s cast list,” I muttered.

  Doug, who was handing out scripts, didn’t hear, but Jay must have, because he snorted a laugh.

  The read-through went well. Jay was exceptional. He’d have every female — and a fair few males — in the audience swooning by intermission. Zack surprised us all by bringing a rough energy to his reading, which galvanized the character of Matteo into life. Liz, although apparently unable to resist sending me regular gloating glances, read the part of the maid with impeccable comic timing.

  Wren seemed set to play Juliet as a sweet and gentle victim of circumstances, rather than as a spoiled rich brat. She nodded and smiled prettily at Doug’s encouragements to inject more petulance into the character, and carried on reading precisely as before. I caught Jay’s eye after one of these charming refusals to take direction, and judging by his grin, he’d noticed it, too.

  At the end of the rehearsal, Doug said, “You guys are great!”

  He seemed relieved, but his pleasure faded when we tried to set a rehearsal schedule that didn’t interfere with anyone’s studying or SAT test dates.

  “Fine!” he said eventually. “We’ll meet three weeks from today, on the twenty-first of October, and we’ll be rehearsing both Wednesday evenings and Saturday afternoons from then on. Anyone who can’t commit to that had better quit now.” Doug stared at each of us fiercely.

  Zack answered for all of us. “Chillax, man, we’ll be there.”

  “Make sure you know your words for Act One.”

  At the next rehearsal, however, not a single member of the cast knew their words. Not even close. That was the first thing that irritated Doug. I was the second.

  He started the rehearsal by getting each of us to walk around the stage in character.

  “Slowly, Liz, the maid is an old woman.”

  “Lovely, Wren!”

  “A bit more snooty, Angela.”

  “Perfect, Jay, that’s great!”

  “Keep your hands to yourself, Zack!”

  Doug immediately disliked the way I moved. He had me stand, sit and shuffle about the stage for ten minutes, growing more frustrated by the minute.

  “It’s just that I imagined the friar —”

  “The nondenominational religious-leader-type person of unspecified gender,” I corrected.

  “Don’t start with me, Peyton.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I imagined him — her — being a bustling sort of character, always in a flurry of movement, scurrying here and there.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “But when it comes to hurrying and scurrying across the stage, you just look, I don’t know, wrong. I think it’s just because you’re too …” He twisted his mouth in an expression of dissatisfaction.

  “Tall?” I suggested.

  “Yes. Sorry. You’re just too tall to bustle about.”

  “Perhaps if I played it differently? I could be more serious and stalk about slowly. Less like a funny friar, more lik
e a grim and sober monk.” I adopted a serious, pensive expression and took a few slow strides across the stage.

  Doug’s expression lightened. “That just might work. Okay, you practice the monk-walk while I work with our lovers. Romero? Juliet?” he yelled.

  Jay and Wren were the third thing that ratcheted Doug’s mood from cranky to a state somewhere between this-cast-is-going-to-be-more-difficult-than-I-thought and what-the-hell-have-I-let-myself-in-for?

  As Doug blocked Romero and Juliet’s first scene, the rest of the cast sat in the auditorium, watching. And sniggering. Because now everyone could see what had been obvious to me, even when we’d all been seated for the read-through.

  “Man, Jay is ta-all!” Zack said.

  “You could say that Wren is short,” I replied.

  “Say it any way you like — they don’t fit, man.”

  That was because they were breaking the Law of Tall Girls. Which existed, as I regularly reminded Chloe, for good reasons.

  “It is a bit of a mismatch,” said Angela.

  “Bit of a mismatch?” Zack sniggered. “Only couple that’d be more mismatched would be, like, Hagrid and Dobby, man.”

  Everyone laughed at that, earning a glare from Doug, who was directing proceedings from right up close to the stage.

  “Would you lot keep it down? I’m trying to direct here,” he snapped, then turned back to the couple on stage. “Wren, why are you looking up at the sky on that line? It doesn’t work.”

  “I’m not looking at the sky, I’m looking up into Jay’s eyes.”

  “Only time she’ll be able to look directly into Romeo’s eyes is when she’s on the balcony and he’s on the ground,” Angela said.

  “Will you shut up?” Doug barked in our direction, but his face appeared more worried than mad. We’d all seen the set that was being cobbled together backstage, and the balcony was low enough to make Angela’s prediction a distinct possibility.

  “You’ll just have to cheat the sight-line,” Doug told Wren. “Look at his chest and maybe take a step back from him so it’s not so obvious.”

  “Hmm. A pair of star-crossed lovers that can’t come within a yard of each other,” Liz whispered. “This should end well.”

  “How are they going to, you know, kiss?” I asked.

  “Maybe he could sit and she could stand?”

  Angela shook her head. “It’s not just that he’s taller, it’s that he’s so much bigger. She’s tiny as a fairy next to him.”

  “Yeah. If they got some action on, he’d crush her,” Zack said.

  Liz nodded. “And she looks too young.”

  “Juliet was only thirteen or fourteen years old in the original,” Angela said.

  “Yeah, but Wren’s so tiny that she looks even younger than that,” Liz replied.

  “Bottom line, Jay looks like a man, and she looks like a little kid,” Zack said. “We ain’t careful, we gonna have us some real controversy.”

  We all stared at the couple on stage. Faye, sitting across the aisle from me, leaned forward in her seat and glared at Wren as Romero and Juliet snuggled in close, rotating on the spot in a romantic slow dance. They were each supposed to speak their lines over the other’s shoulder every time they faced the audience, which — in theory — was a great staging idea. In practice, it just didn’t work.

  Wren’s lines were completely muffled because her face was nestled up against Jay’s sternum, and even on tiptoes she couldn’t speak over his shoulder. Worse, every time Jay’s back was to the audience, Wren was completely masked by his body, so that it looked like he was dancing alone. Everyone cracked up laughing again, sending Doug into a frenzy.

  “Shut up! SHUT UP! It’s not an effing comedy — why are you all laughing? It’s not funny.”

  “Not funny? I am sorry to inform you, Mr. Director, but you have a serious case of the wrongs,” said Zack.

  “The thing is,” Angela said, her voice all tactful, “they don’t really fit together.”

  “That’s often a problem when really tall guys hook up with short girls,” I added, unable to resist the opportunity to educate the cast about one of the basic laws of the universe.

  “So, it sometimes looks a little, well … funny,” Angela finished.

  Jay and Wren had stopped their revolving and stood, staring down at us.

  “Any ideas?” Jay asked Doug.

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Zack. “We need to shuffle the cast a little. First off, you should make me Romero, man, I’d be a much better size for our Juliet.” Zack leered at Wren and added, “I’d be the perfect size for you, babe. I’m getting a tent in my pants at the thought of it.”

  “Would someone just get this boy a leg to hump already?” Liz said, smacking the back of Zack’s head.

  “So, if you’re Romero, where does that leave me?” Jay asked.

  “You can be Mr. Capi, and then Peyton can be Mrs. Capi — you and the Big P are a good height match, so you won’t look funny as a couple.”

  Well, yes, my feelings exactly. So exactly that I could feel my cheeks going pink. I studiously avoided looking at Jay.

  “What about me then?” asked Angela.

  “You can be the nurse,” said Zack, on a casting roll now, “and Liz can be the holy woman. There you are — sorted!”

  “Zack, you’re making me crazy,” said Doug.

  “You’ve gotta admit, recasting would make it look better, man.”

  “Maybe it would look better, but …”

  I knew what Doug was thinking. Either he had to put the best actors into the lead roles, but risk the audience rolling in the aisles at the physical mismatch and awkward staging, or — having finally found a high-school boy who could bring energy, poignancy and freaking epic acting skills to the role of Romeo — he’d have to waste him on a bit part.

  “I’ll discuss it with Ms. Gooding,” Doug said. “See what she thinks.”

  Faye didn’t look enthusiastic about anyone playing next to Jay, as either his star-crossed lover or his wife. I figured she’d have preferred the play staged in real Elizabethan style, with boys playing the parts of girls. As soon as rehearsal ended, she latched back onto Jay.

  “Let’s go. Now.”

  She grabbed his arm and steered him down the aisle, no doubt wishing they were in a church rather than a theater, all the while whispering urgently into his ear. He pulled away from her when they reached the exit, and shoved the door open much harder than was necessary.

  I may have been deluded by wishful thinking, but it looked a lot like they were fighting.

  ~ 16 ~

  The Tall Boys List:

  Jay Young

  Tim Anderson

  Mark Rodriguez

  Dylan Jones

  Robert Scott

  Life’s for learning — that’s what Chloe says.

  What I learned that Saturday morning doing my mother’s and my laundry at the Wishy-Washy down the street from our house, was that the cheap fabric of my newly sewn garments didn’t stand up too well to the rigors of machine-washing.

  “You should’ve used cold water. And a handful of salt to set the color,” the woman who worked in the laundromat said.

  “Right, thanks.” For the super helpful tip given half an hour too late.

  The black dye on my rose-print jeans had run, so that the pattern was now merely an indistinguishable series of gray smudges, and my blue cotton top had shrunk so much that I doubted even Wren would be able to fit into it.

  “I’ll remember that for next time,” I said, not looking at the woman. She had a tuft of hair on her throat that always drew my eye, and I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable by staring.

  She, however, had no such reservations. Every time I came to do laundry, she stared at me as if I was a giraffe in a rabbit hutch, and commented on my height.

  “Are your parents tall?” she asked that day.

  “Sure.”

  “Are you a model?”

  “No.” I was ne
ver flattered by the question — people leapt to the idea only because of my height.

  I bent over double to shove the wet laundry into the dryer. While the clothes tumbled about inside, probably shrinking even more, I eeny-meeny-miny-moe’d over the two names remaining on the Tall Boys list. I should probably have chanted a spell or sacrificed a baby goat — anything to improve my dating luck. Catch a tiger by the toe. My finger landed on Dylan Jones.

  Dylan was a skinny, slouchy junior who always looked so surly that I gave myself permission to ask him out over the phone, rather than in person. I got his number from information, crossed my fingers and dialed. Then hung up as it started to ring. I cursed myself and called again.

  “Yeah?” The voice on the other end radiated surl.

  “Dylan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is Peyton Lane.”

  “Who?”

  “Peyton Lane? I’m a senior at Longford High?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I wanted to know if you’d like to go out sometime.”

  “What?” Could this guy even string two words together?

  “Like on a date. You, me, maybe a movie?” A movie would be better than any setup where we’d need to talk. Dylan was no chatty-Cathy. “A date.”

  “Hah.” It wasn’t a laugh. More like a sneery, surly exhalation of breath.

  “Well?” Now I was doing the one-worders. Perhaps it was contagious.

  “Huh?”

  “Would you. Come out. On a date. With me?”

  “Yeah?” Was he agreeing, or was he just falling back on his default-setting utterance?

  “Yeah? You’ll come?”

  There was a rustling sound down the line, then, “Who is this?” The words — three of them in one go — as well as the female voice were a clue that Dylan had been relieved of the need to make more conversation.

  “Who is this?” I countered.

  “I’m the person who wants to know why you’re talking to Dylan.”

  “Date,” I heard Dylan mutter in the background.

  “She’s asking you out on a date?” Then loudly, right into the phone, “You’re asking him out on a date?”