by Emma Scott
“Sure,” I said.
I still held her hands. She didn’t let go.
“So,” she breathed, still not moving.
“Yeah.”
I glanced down at our hands. I hadn’t touched something this soft and good in ages. The sleeve of her coat bunched up and I spied a black mark on the inside of her forearm, close to her wrist. Willow drew in a breath as I turned her hand over. An X, about the size of a quarter, was stark on her pale skin.
She tugged her hands away. “I really need to get back.”
Every instinct cried out to take her hand again, to ask her what the X meant. To lick my thumb and erase it off her skin. I didn’t know what it meant but the sight of it made my stomach feel heavy.
“Willow—”
“I doodle when I’m bored. I told you that.” Her voice was sharp but her smile wobbled. “Let’s go.”
We walked the short distance back to town wordlessly. Back in front of the theater, Willow shouldered her bag and glanced around. “Thanks for today. I think Martin would be happy with our progress.”
“I do too.”
God, would he, I thought.
“So, I guess I’ll see you Monday?” she said.
“You have a ride home?”
“Oh, uh…” She still wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I was thinking of walking.”
“To Emerson Hills?” I said. “That’s a mile and a half and it’s getting dark soon.”
She raised her brows. “I’m not allowed to walk in the dark?”
“You’re allowed,” I said, “but I don’t want you to.”
Willow’s expression softened. “Oh. Okay. If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t.”
As we walked toward my truck in the theater parking lot, every dent and scratch in the blue paint screamed for attention. Once inside, Willow sat with her eyes locked on the view outside her window. Her hands clutched her bag tight, her coat sleeves tugged far over her wrists.
We were silent on the drive to Emerson Hills, where the flatness of Indiana was broken by a few rolling hills. We passed a small overlook with a view of downtown Harmony. Most of the houses here were huge. No cottages or trailers allowed. Stables and trees in the backyards instead of piles of rusted, twisted metal.
Willow directed me down one street. “Right here is good,” she said with a vague wave of her hand.
“Which one is yours?” I asked, pulling to the curb in front of a house built in brown brick and gray stone.
“This is great, thanks,” she said. She grabbed her bag and reached for the door, then paused, her hand white-knuckled on the handle. “Thank you. Not just for the ride, but for showing me the amphitheater and for our talk. I think it helped.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Was it helpful for you, too? I mean, as far as what Martin wanted from us?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It was.”
I scrambled to think of something else to talk about, anything to keep her in the car for one more minute…
“Okay, then,” she said, grabbing her bag. “I’ll see you Monday night.”
“Yeah. See you.”
She climbed out of the truck and shut the door, then waved at me from the curb. And didn’t move.
She’s waiting for me to drive away.
Normally, nothing could’ve budged me from the curb until I knew she was safe inside her house. But I made an exception and flipped the truck around to head back to the western edge of town, to my shitty trailer. In my rearview, I watched as Willow fidgeted with her bag. Maybe she was digging around for her house keys, but I doubted it. And by the time I turned the corner, I knew the brown and gray house I’d pulled in front of wasn’t hers.
Willow
Monday morning in English class and Mr. Paulson was at his usual spot, rifling through papers. Angie was at her desk, wearing baggy jeans, Dr. Martens boots and a black T-shirt that read, I’m pretty cool but I cry a lot.
When she saw me, she pulled out her phone, shook it and put it to her ear with a perplexed look on her face.
“Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?” She let her hand drop and gave me a pointed look. “That was a rhetorical question, in case you were wondering. How do I know this? Because my real friends, Caroline and Jocelyn, called me over the weekend.”
“Sorry,” I huffed, slouching into my desk. “I didn’t feel like talking okay? I don’t always feel like talking on the phone. In fact, I hardly ever feel like talking on the phone.”
“I get that. Most people don’t like talking on the phone anymore. That’s what the text function is for.” She turned in her seat and leaned over her arm toward me. “You told me you’d call after I dropped you off downtown. I assumed that meant you would call me. But you didn’t. So I had to call you. You didn’t answer. I then spent the weekend thinking Isaac Pearce murdered you and dumped your body in a ditch.”
“You did not think that,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Does it matter to you what I thought? My guess is no.” She whirled in her seat to face front, then she whipped back around. “Look, I don’t know how they do things in New York, but here friends don’t just go silent on each other whenever they feel like it.” She held up her hands, empty palms facing me. “I’m not a stalker, I’m not your mother, I’m not your babysitter. But you could’ve texted me. That’s all I’m going to say about it.”
She turned around. And that was all she had say to me for the rest of the class too.
So what? I thought, trying to find my protective layer of I-don’t-give-a-fuck. I’d stopped putting effort into friendships long ago. My New York friends told me the exact same things Angie did. Told me a hundred times until one by one, they gave up on me. Michaela, my best friend, stuck it out the longest. She suspected something had happened that summer, but I refused to talk to her at all, about anything, afraid the worst story would come tumbling out. By Thanksgiving, she stopped calling me. Her last text was the week before Christmas break:
Please talk to me.
I didn’t respond. When we moved to Indiana, we got new phone numbers and I cut off everyone who knew me before. X’d myself out of their lives.
Angie’s back to me hurt more than I was prepared for.
The bell rang and she hurried out of the classroom without a glance at me. I grabbed my stuff and followed her to her locker.
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I truly am. You’ve been such a good friend to me and I just… I forgot what that’s like.”
She gave me a funny look then turned to her locker to exchange one textbook for another. “You didn’t have friends in New York? I find that hard to believe.”
“I had friends,” I said. “Then I didn’t. And that’s the way it’s been for a while now. Until you.”
Angie shut her locker and turned to look at me, clutching her binder to her chest. “Why has it been that way?”
I couldn’t look at her. “It just had to be.”
Angie wilted with a sigh. “You know, if there’s something you want to talk about… I’m here. Okay? Whenever you want.” Her dark eyes met mine. “Or…whenever you’re ready.”
I started to tell her I had nothing to say. “Thanks, Angie,” came out instead on a low whisper of breath.
She nodded briskly, her long black curls bouncing around her shoulders. “Great. And if we’ve dispensed with old business, can we now move onto new business? Namely, the great non-date with Isaac Pearce?”
A small smile came over my lips without my permission as we started down the hallway together. “It was really good,” I said. “Isaac’s not what people think he is.” She gave me a look and I nudged her elbow. “I know how that sounds, but I’m serious. People around here paint him as criminal or acting savant and that’s it. But he’s actually a complete human being. He’s really smart and he thinks on different levels…”
“Sounds like you guys hit it off. Why do you sound so sad when talking about him?”
“We w
ere doing fine until two of the Plastics saw us having coffee together. I’m worried one of them was Tessa Vance and that she’ll tattle. If my dad finds out, he’ll pull me out of the play.”
“Sounds like a legit concern,” Angie said. “But we’re sad because…?”
“I can’t explain that to Isaac. He’d know I heard the gossip about him and Tessa. Worse, he offered me a ride home. When we got to my street, I told him to park half a block away from my actual house because I didn’t want my mom to see him. And I know he knew it wasn’t the right house. I’m making him feel like shit for all the wrong reasons, but I’m afraid he’d be more hurt by the truth. That my dad forbids me from associating with him outside of the play.”
Angie opened her mouth to speak and then nudged my arm. She leaned into me. “Tessa Vance is standing right over there,” she said through her teeth. “Reddish brown hair.”
I followed her eyes to the Plastics, standing together near the drinking fountain, and immediately recognized two of them from Saturday.
“Shit, that’s her.”
“And shit, they see us eyeballing them now,” Angie replied.
Tessa gave me the fakest of smiles and then pointedly leaned to whisper to her friends. They all turned to look at me with wide-eyed amusement and disdain.
“And I’m fucked,” I said.
“Come on.” Angie hooked her arm through mine and pulled me down the hall. “Don’t look back.”
“I’m totally fucked. I don’t give a shit what they think, but if she tells her dad…”
“So what? Angie said. “Just tell your dad she’s a lying little bitch—” she turned to shout over her shoulder, “—who can’t mind her own business.”
My laugh degenerated into a groan. “What am I going to do? I need this play.”
“You need it?”
“I’ve just…grown attached to it. To the director and the actors.”
“And Isaac.”
“Yes, okay? But he’s leaving Harmony in a few months so we’re just friends. We can only ever be friends.”
Angie rolled her eyes. “Famous last words.”
As the day wore on, I became more and more convinced Tessa would rat on me. The silly paranoia fed on itself, fueled by my fear of Dad pulling me out of the play. I’d told Angie the truth. I needed the play. I still hadn’t found what I was looking for in Ophelia, but it was there, on the horizon, like a hint of dawn on a new day. An optimistic sun rising against my ever-present darkness.
And what about Isaac? Starting over with a new Ophelia might throw him off his game. I didn’t want to be responsible for anything disrupting his flow or whatever process he had. Talent agents were coming to see him. He already had enough to contend with. The last thing he needed was drama from my dad’s ridiculous prejudices.
As the last bell rang, I grabbed my homework out of my locker and shut it. I jumped back with a little cry to see Justin Baker standing there, leaning casually on a shoulder.
“Hey,” he said. “Missed you Saturday, but you’ll be at rehearsal tonight, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said.
Right after I recover from the mini-heart attack you just gave me.
“Cool.” He looked out over the hallway and the milling students going here and there. A lazy prince surveying his kingdom. “Listen, there’s a dance coming up in a few weeks. The Spring Fling?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “I’ve heard of it.”
“Cool.” Justin said again. “You think Martin will give us the night off from rehearsal to go?”
“I…I don’t know.”
I stepped back. My eyes took in Justin’s handsome face. Blond hair, blue eyes and an easy smile. There was nothing threatening about him, but then there’d been nothing threatening about Xavier either.
Over Justin’s shoulder I saw Tessa, Jessica and a couple the other girls watching us.
“So? You want to?”
“Do I want to what?”
He laughed, perplexed. “Go with me.”
It wasn’t even a question.
“Go to the dance…?”
A dance. Bodies writhing in the dark. Pulsating music. A hand on my hip. A voice in my ear, “Can I get you something to drink?”
I pushed the black memories away. The longing to be normal and have normal experiences was a hunger in my stomach. I wanted to go to a dance. I wanted to go shopping for a pretty dress and feel a tingle of anticipation in my stomach when my date came to the door, with a corsage in a plastic box.
But in my short-lived imagination, Mom opened the door and cooed over how devastating my date looked in a tuxedo. My father shook his hand and welcomed him inside his home. I came down the stairs, and it was Isaac who was waiting for me, and he smiled…
I blinked and came back to Justin’s expectant grin.
“Oh, I’m not really… I’m not looking to be with someone…seriously. Not that you’re asking me to be serious. I mean…”
His smile widened and he leaned deeper against the lockers, as if he were used to girls stammering over their words for him.
“Great,” he said. “We can go as friends, and just…see what happens.”
My stomach clenched at the momentary gleam in his eye, and the ceiling suddenly felt like it was an inch above my head.
“We need to ask Martin…”
“What’s up, guys?” Angie asked, sidling up beside me. She gave Justin a hard look, which he returned with his easy-going smile.
“Not much,” he said. “Just working out Spring Fling details.”
Angie’s eyes flared and her finger moved between us, pointing. “You guys are going to the dance together?”
I opened my mouth to speak.
“Yeah, we are,” Justin said. “We’ll talk more at rehearsal. I gotta go.” He jerked his chin at me in a kind of farewell. “See you tonight.”
“Yeah…see you,” I said.
“See you,” Angie echoed and dragged me outside. “I am so confused. Justin?”
The early-spring afternoon was brassy and cold, bringing me around.
“Well…sure. Why not?” I said, fighting for my equilibrium. “Now there’s nothing for Tessa to blab about. Right? And…when Justin shows up at my house, my dad is going to hump his leg, he’ll be so happy. I won’t have to worry about him pulling me out of the play. Yeah. Perfect cover.”
Angie looked doubtful. “I guess, but for a second there it looked like you got railroaded—”
I stopped walking. “I did not,” I said, too loud. “I get to say. I can go to the dance with whomever I want.”
Except Isaac.
I fought for calm. Isaac flat-out told me he was done with high school. If I wanted my normal, I’d have to go and take it. Just like he said.
“Okay, okay,” Angie said. “But Willow—”
“We’ll just go as friends. All of us. Together. You and Nash, and Joc and Caroline, right? We’ll all go together, okay? Please?”
Angie’s brows came together. “Yeah, sure,” she said slowly. “If that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want. Yes, of course it is.”
To be normal. That’s what I want. That’s all I’ll ever want.
“Willow, dear,” Martin called from the stage. “Come up here?”
Rehearsal hadn’t started yet. The cast milled in the audience, chatting in low voices. Isaac stood onstage with Martin. As I took the steps to join them, my eyes took in Isaac’s tall body, slender yet packed with lean muscle. He stood with arms crossed over his chest, his long legs in jeans and scuffed black boots. His biceps strained at the sleeves of a white T-shirt.
Why do I notice these things about him? Why can’t I stop looking?
“I was just chatting with Isaac about your outing on Saturday,” Martin said. “Not too torturous, I presume?”
“I survived,” I said and ventured a small smile for Isaac.
He returned a faint, disinterested nod but his gray-green eyes were
intense as they looked me up and down. His lips—always pressed together—parted slightly. Then he abruptly tore his gaze from me. “Yeah, it was good,” he said. “Really good.”
“Really good?” Martin said, his eyebrows raised in comical disbelief. “You hear that, folks? On this day in history, Isaac Pearce found something to be really good.”
“Knock it off, Marty.”
Martin winked at me. “I have a good feeling about this.” Louder, he said, “Let’s run your dialogue for Act Three, Scene Two.”
Thanks to afternoons in the library with my script and a Spark Notes translation, the play was no longer blocks of vague poetry. I was familiar now with every Act. The scene Martin wanted to run was a play-within-a-play—Hamlet’s scheme to have a troop of actors reenact his father’s murder. During the performance, Hamlet tortures Ophelia with bawdy jokes and sarcasm.
Two rows of chairs were set, facing stage left and cheated out so they weren’t in profile to the audience. The King and Queen were to sit in the front row. I sat behind, beside an empty chair. Isaac waited offstage for his cue.
I was off-book for this scene, as was Isaac. Dialogue committed to memory, it was the first time we’d be acting without the buffer of scripts in our hands and I didn’t know what to do with mine.
“From your entrance, Hamlet,” Martin said. He’d slouched into his usual pose—one arm across his middle, the other elbow resting on it, fingers over his mouth.
Isaac slipped out of the shadows of backstage. Eyes wide and with a loose, jangly smile he never wore in real life.
Martin cued him with Gertrude’s line, “Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.”
Isaac’s manic gaze fell on me and softened. “No, good mother. Here's metal more attractive.”
He rushed toward me and slid to his knees at my feet. His expression was pretended innocence, and his eyes storm-tossed and wicked.
“Lady, shall I lie in your lap?”
I startled and sat up straighter, face forward, hands folded. “No, my lord.”
“I mean, my head upon your lap?” he said and did exactly that, resting his cheek on my thigh.
A shiver rippled out from where he touched me. Half danced down my calf, the other rest rocketed between my legs and settled there warmly. My first intimate male touch since X. Instead of tensing up or shutting down, my body liked the weight of Isaac’s head in my lap. The dark brush of his stubble so stark against the white of my jeans.
