by Mia Archer
Mom’s eyebrows shot up at being called ma’am, but she kept whatever she was thinking to herself. She didn’t stop the questioning though.
“And how old are you?”
“Sixteen,” Sarah said. “Just turned over the summer.”
“Young for your class then,” mom muttered. Then sighed. “I guess I can’t complain too much about the age difference then. Not like that matters once you’re out of high school anyways…”
I wasn’t sure what she was going on about, but I was glad to see her acting like this instead of blowing up. Sure she was embarrassing me and making me wish I could disappear into the pink fluffy sheets and hide there forever, but this was normal parental embarrassment and not the kind of parental embarrassment that would result in me being grounded until I graduated college.
Or maybe I spoke too soon. She rounded on me and she didn’t look happy. No, she didn’t look all that happy at all.
“Don’t think for a moment that this means you’re not in trouble young lady,” she said. “You still lied to me tonight.”
She held that gaze for a long moment, then sighed.
“But I remember what it was like being a kid, though I don’t know why you have to treat me like some ogre who’s going to yell at you for wanting to hang out with your friends…”
Now there was genuine hurt in her voice and I felt bad about lying to her. Not because it was going to get me in trouble, but because I’d hurt her feelings.
And I couldn’t really explain it to her either. How to explain that I’d always tried to be the good girl and do what was expected of me? That I assumed because she was the one always dragging me to church that she would feel the same way Pastor Dave did?
I was learning just how wrong I was though. So instead I just muttered a quick apology.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe we can both try to be a little better about this?”
Mom smiled. “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. You’re still grounded, but that sounds like a good idea.”
I sighed. I guess that was more than I should’ve hoped for, but who likes finding out they’ve been grounded?
23
Sarah
I felt downright giddy as I moved around backstage.
It was hard to explain. There was an energy to a production right before we put it on for the public for the first time. I could feel that energy in everyone moving around and trying to make sure everything was perfect.
Sure it was just a dress rehearsal and the only people we were performing for were some teachers and a couple of students who got invited to see the big show before we went live, but it was still a live audience and it was still enough to twist my stomach into knots.
It was showtime, and I could’t find my costar.
I’d started in the drama room. That was where everyone got together to put on makeup and everything. The stuff was positively caked on by the time we were done, but you had to do it that way if you wanted to look right up on stage under all the hot lights.
She also wasn’t anywhere to be found in any of the changing areas, though I did find Mike and Courtney sucking face. They’d been so preoccupied with making out that they hadn’t even noticed me peering in on them or quietly tiptoeing back out of the room when I realized what they were doing.
There was a time when I would’ve killed to be the person in that room sucking face with Courtney, but not anymore. Now all I could think about was Chloe.
Assuming I could find her wherever she’d disappeared to.
So now I was backstage in the theater and I still couldn’t find her.
“Something wrong?” one of the lighting guys asked.
“Trying to find Chloe,” I said.
“I think I saw her up in the lighting room,” he said. “Might want to check there or in the drama room.”
I didn’t bother to explain that I’d already been to the drama room and the changing rooms. Instead I made a beeline for the stairs that led up to the control room. The lighting guys called it the lighting room because that’s where they did most of their work, but it was really so much more than that.
I opened the door and saw a range of control panels that looked like they were from some scifi movie from another decade. Which was probably pretty close to the truth considering all of it hadn’t exactly been state of the art when the school bought it a couple of decades ago and time and technology had marched on since then.
Still, it was a way to learn for the lighting and tech people and that was something.
And sure enough there was Chloe standing in front of one of the panels staring down at the stage. For a surprise there was no one else in the room which was odd when we were this close to starting our dress rehearsal.
She was so preoccupied with looking down on the theater that she didn’t even notice me coming in. So I walked up behind her and wrapped my arms around her.
That felt good. About the only time we got together now was when we were rehearsing after school. Her mom had been surprisingly cool about finding out her daughter was dating a girl, but she’d also been totally serious when she mentioned grounding Chloe for lying to her.
I suppose you had to take the good with the bad. Even if that meant we couldn’t actually go on dates quite yet. Her mom promised she wouldn’t be grounded for much longer though.
I could hope.
Chloe jumped a little when I wrapped my arms around her, but then she seemed to realize who I was and she put her hands down over mine where they came to rest on her stomach.
This felt good. This felt right. I never thought I’d get to experience this before going off to college, and now that I was having this experience I never wanted to let it go.
I never wanted to let Chloe go. She was my goody-two-shoes church girl who’d really come out of her shell over the past couple of months and boy had I enjoyed drawing her out of that shell. It had been worth every frustrating moment in the beginning.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked.
“You,” she said.
“Really? What about me?”
“Well I was thinking about how lucky I was that I’m about to get to be the lead in a play and my job is pretty much getting up onstage and making out with my girlfriend for a couple of hours.”
I giggled. I couldn’t help it. I knew there was so much more to this play than that, but when we were blocking the thing and after Mr. Thompson gave us a little more control in improvising we had worked in an awful lot of kissing into the performance.
“Y’know we could always revise our performance,” I said. “Wave politely to each other from opposite sides of the stage instead of kissing all the time.”
Chloe wheeled around in my arms. A neat little trick and even more of a distraction because now she was facing me and her face was inches away from mine and boy was that a distraction.
It always was a distraction. There were times when I thought it was a miracle I ever managed to remember my lines. There were times when I’d been tempted to keep right on kissing her and who cared what the next line was.
I’d always resisted, but the temptation was there.
“Yeah,” she muttered, wrapping her arms around my neck. “I don’t think I like that idea at all.”
“Me neither,” I said, and then I pulled her in for one of those kisses that had been such a distraction over the past month and a half while we were rehearsing this thing.
We came up for air a little while later when I heard someone at the door. I’d made sure to close the thing so I’d at least have a little bit of warning before someone came in.
I’m sure we looked guilty as hell regardless. Mike stepped in and paused for a moment. Then he looked at me and rolled his eyes.
“You don’t say anything now and I don’t say anything about you helping Courtney in the changing room,” I said.
He paused. His face went red. Not from anger, but from obvious embarrassment.
“You saw that?” he asked.
/>
I took Chloe’s hand and breezed past Mike. Patted him on the cheek as we breezed past him.
“Maybe next time lock the door before you decide to suck face in one of the back closets?”
His mouth worked but he didn’t say anything. Not that he was going to necessarily say anything anyways, but I wanted to make sure he knew I’d caught him.
Chloe giggled when we were out of the control room. “Did you really catch him sucking face with Courtney in one of the changing rooms?”
“I mean is it really all that bad?” I said. “Think of all the times we almost got caught.”
She blushed, but she didn’t look away. That was one habit she’d gotten better and better about avoiding as she came out of her shell and got less shy.
I was going to turn her into an out and proud drama geek before this was all done.
“I guess you have a point there,” she said.
We walked to the stairs in a comfortable silence. Chloe kept her fingers lightly against mine, but I sensed there was maybe something going on there.
“What are you thinking about now?” I asked.
There was a pause. Long enough that I knew she was thinking about something that I might not like. I’d come to know a lot about how she acted in the short couple of months we’d known each other.
I turned to face her. “Come on Chloe. Spit it out. If there’s something going on then it’s better to have it out there before the performance so it doesn’t screw things up.”
Chloe blushed. Looked back towards the control room.
“You really saw Courtney kissing Mike? You’re sure?”
“Well yeah. They’re sort of dating now. You knew this.”
“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “I just thought maybe she was doing the same thing as Colin and…”
I threw my head back and laughed. That was rich. Especially considering the history I had with Courtney. The thought of her using someone like Mike as a cover because she was secretly gay was pretty damn funny.
“What are you laughing about?” Chloe asked. “I’ve seen the way she acts around you, the way you act around her.”
And then it hit me exactly what was bothering her. I suppose I should’ve been surprised she was bothered, but I could also understand it.
“Chloe,” I said. “You’ve got completely the wrong idea about what’s going on with me and Courtney.”
She blinked a couple of times. “I do? You mean the two of you didn’t date or something back before…”
She trailed off. It was clear she didn’t know what to think now. It was clear the answer I’d just given her wasn’t what she was expecting.
I sighed. “Come on. We need to get down to the stage, and I’ll fill you in along the way.”
“Okay,” she said, still sounding unsure of herself.
And so as we made our way down to the stage I told her everything. How I’d realized I was gay and that I thought I was in love with my best friend.
It made perfect sense to me at the time. I had a feeling it was an experience shared by a lot of gay kids judging by stories I’d read online. And it usually ended about as well as my story had ended.
Well, except for the times when it ended a lot worse than my story with Courtney. There were a couple of people who talked about their crush lashing out. Hitting them. Hurting them.
I shivered as I thought about it. Nothing like that had happened to me so I suppose I should count myself as lucky.
No, the worst thing to happen to me since coming out was asshole Pastor Dave doing his best to ruin my life and some of the preppy kids acting like I was dogmeat.
To be fair to the preppy kids they probably would’ve treated me like that whether or not I was out about the whole lesbian thing though. They seemed pretty equal opportunity in their disdain for drama kids.
I finished by telling her about the day I confessed my love to Courtney. How she’d made it clear we were friends but she wasn’t into girls and there’d never be anything more.
It was one of the more embarrassing moments in my life. I blushed as I told her about it. I’d never told anyone the full story before, but I felt like it was something I needed to tell Chloe. I needed her to be okay with me hanging out with my best friend. I needed her to know Courtney wasn’t a threat.
“Wow,” Chloe said. “It sucks that you had to go through with that.”
“Yeah, it did suck at the time,” I said. “But I came through it stronger than before so I guess it wasn’t the end of the world.”
I sighed thinking back on it. Confessing my love to Courtney and having her gently tell me it wasn’t ever happening had felt like the end of the world at the time.
“I guess I didn’t realize how lucky I was though,” I said, giving her hand a squeeze.
“How is having your heart broken lucky?” Chloe asked.
“If Courtney didn’t break my heart then I wouldn’t have been single when I met you,” I whispered.
Chloe blushed. Looked down and away. It looked like the moment had overwhelmed her to the point that she was going back to some of her old habits.
That look used to irritate me. Now I just thought it was the cutest thing ever. I reached out and touched her cheek. Ran a thumb along her face. She leaned into the touch and closed her eyes.
“It’s true,” I said. “The more time I spend with you the more I realize my crush on Courtney wasn’t the real thing. She was around and I thought it was love because she was my best friend, but that’s because I didn’t know what love was until I found you.”
Her eyes flew open at that. Not that I could blame her. It was something of a big moment, after all. Neither one of us had dared to use the L word up to this point. I’d been feeling it for awhile now, but I hadn’t breathed a word of it to her because I was afraid of how she’d react.
Her hand came up to mine. Then she leaned in and kissed me. Not an intense kiss like what we might do if we were sneaking off to some secluded part of the theater, but it was full of passion regardless.
“I think I’m starting to feel the same way about you Sarah,” she said. “I had no idea my life could be like this, and I have you to thank.”
Well she hadn’t exactly said the L word back to me, but it was a start. I’d take it. Besides, that was a big step. I knew what she was admitting now was already a pretty big deal without trying to push things.
“So do you feel better about me and Courtney now?” I asked. “Sure she can come across sort of bitchy, but she’s really nice once you get to know her.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Chloe said. “I didn’t realize the history there, is all.”
I grinned. “Well now you know and you know you don’t have to worry.”
“Right,” Chloe said, her grin confident now where it’d been unsure before. “So how about we get up to the stage? We have a dress rehearsal to go through!”
I grinned right back at her. “Time to break a leg!”
Chloe frowned. “Break a leg? Don’t you mean good…”
I put a finger to her lips. “I know the two words you’re about to say, and I’m going to tell you this once. Don’t ever utter those around a production. Ever.”
“But…”
“You say break a leg. Always. I’ll explain while we’re going backstage.”
And with that we were off to our first starring role as I explained to her why you never uttered the GL phrase and always told people to break their legs instead.
24
Chloe
“Break a leg!” I said cheerfully as I watched Mike walk past.
He nodded and grunted something that might’ve been a response, but he looked too busy with last minute preparations to really acknowledge anything happening in the world around him.
That was just fine. He had a lot of work to do, after all. I’d be better off leaving him to it.
The whole “break a leg” thing still felt weird. Like you wished the worst possible thing that could happen because
if you wished someone good luck it would make something bad happen.
It all seemed like a bunch of superstitious nonsense to me, but everyone else said it and so I figured it was all in good fun.
I moved over to the edge of the curtain and looked out over the theater. The lights were still up in there so I could see people pouring in.
There were a lot more people in there than I would’ve imagined. It looked like there were a bunch of students in there, and parents, but the seats were a lot more full than parents and siblings coming out to support people in the play could account for.
I guess that was one of the nice things about living in a small town. There were people out there who didn’t have anything better to do on a Friday night but go out and support the drama club.
Heck, with the way some people stuck around the town there were probably a lot of people out there who were in the drama club once upon a time.
I turned around and looked at the semi-darkness behind the stage. People were rehearsing their lines one last time, though if they didn’t have them down at this point it was too late.
Still, I could understand the nerves. Looking out at that crowd somehow made this more real. It was different than the small crowd for the dress rehearsal. It was different from giving a monologue in front of a bunch of bored classmates in the drama room.
This was the real thing. This was the public, and they were going to see me out there kissing another girl. Acting like I was in love with another girl.
Not like there was much in the way of acting going on though. I took a deep breath and let it out.
I’d already come out to my mom. That was the big thing. She wasn’t going to be out there in the audience and get the surprise of a lifetime when she saw her daughter kissing another girl onstage.
No, that surprise had come a couple of weeks ago at that party. Oops. I guess it was for the best that she found out then considering how she’d reacted since.
It still sucked being grounded for a month, but that grounding didn’t include school activities so I was okay to keep going to rehearsals, at least.
