You in Five Acts

by Una LaMarche

  “Nope.” I tried to swallow my smile, but it was pointless; my poker face didn’t work on Liv, who was the emotional equivalent of a card counter.

  “It’s OK to like him.” She looked at me for a few seconds, narrowing her eyes a little like she was trying to read something on my face. Then she nodded, took a sip of her drink, and set it down dramatically. “That’s your party goal,” she said. “It’s decided.”

  “No thanks,” I said. “I don’t want a goal for the party. I just want to have a good time.” (Look, would I have stopped him if he tried to kiss me? No. But I just thought he was beautiful and rare, like a hoodie-wearing peacock. Any feelings I thought I was catching weren’t real. And the last thing I had time for with the Showcase looming was a boy to distract me. Or so I thought.)

  “And what would be your definition of a good time?” Liv pressed, smirking. “I know you won’t get drunk, or smoke, or even dance, which makes no sense.”

  “I dance all day!” I protested. “And if I want to grind up against some wack people in a confined space I’ll just take the subway.”

  Liv let out an exasperated sigh. “You know I love you, but you honestly make it so hard sometimes.”

  “You forgot the Guatemalan nipple bowl,” I said, nodding at a piece of pottery covered in pink and brown concentric circles, which had been prominently displayed on the entry table since we were nine and had been making us laugh for just as long.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” Liv said, grabbing the bowl and stalking off down the hallway to her room.

  “I have fun!” I yelled.

  “Standing in a corner with the Tostitos!” she called back.

  I opened my mouth and then shut it again. She had a point—I generally liked to hang back with the snacks and avoid the foolishness, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy myself.

  Liv reemerged, reaching into her neckline to adjust her bra. “When was the last time you even hooked up with anyone?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, like I couldn’t remember, even though of course I knew, since there had only been one person in the entire past year, Caleb Cooper, who I’d dated for a hot second after the junior semiformal. And even then, all it amounted to was some kissing and awkward fondling in the orchestra pit that had abruptly ended when I sat on Caleb’s clarinet. Not a euphemism.

  “All I’m saying,” Liv said, reaching up to unhook a mask, revealing a perfect circle of emptiness three shades lighter than the rest of the wall, “Is that you could get Dave if you wanted him.”

  “Yeah, looking a mess, like I just climbed Mount Everest,” I said, gesturing to my outfit. “And besides, how do you even know he’ll be here?”

  “He is definitely coming,” she said. “I talked him into it. There was a lot of down time while Ethan, you know . . . orated. Most of the other girls were being so embarrassing, getting all up in his face, so I think he appreciated that I was just being normal.” She took the last mask off the wall and gathered them in her arms. “He’s really chill, actually,” she said, shuffling back down the hallway. “Not at all what you’d think.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Great.” I’ll admit it bothered me, the fact that Liv had already bonded with Dave. It made it seem like she was gifting him to me, but in a backhanded way, like someone handing you a jelly bean and telling you they didn’t like that flavor, anyway. Liv didn’t really date other actors—her boyfriends were always visual arts majors who did shit like graffiti abstract paintings on found pieces of plywood and hosted pot-brownie bake-offs—but I’d been with her the day we found out Dave was transferring, and she’d lost her damn mind. We’d spent an hour googling him. Something was up.

  “You really don’t care if I talk to him?” I asked when Liv finally reappeared, staring down at her phone.

  “Huh?” she asked. “Sorry, let me just finish . . .” She typed something quickly and then flashed me a smile. “I think I found a hookup!”

  “For you?” I asked. If Liv already had someone lined up for her “party goal,” it made more sense that she would relinquish the chance to get with someone famous enough to have been featured in a Huffington Post slideshow called “Child Stars Who Grew Up Gorgeous!”

  “No, for weed,” she said, rolling her eyes and drawing out the word into a singsong. “Jasper can eat a bag of dicks.”

  “Did Shakespeare write that?” I asked, and she laughed the way she had always laughed, since first grade, with her little nose wrinkled up like a rabbit.

  “Fuck you,” she said, and I started to relax. Whatever she was doing, I decided, it was probably good-hearted. And even if the setup with Dave ended up being horrible and awkward, it was better than competing with her for his attention.

  I’d learned over the years that there was no competing with Liv. When she wanted something, she just took it. She didn’t wait around for a starting gun.

  Chapter Four

  January 6

  127 days left

  IN NO TIME, the party had taken on a life of its own. A few dozen people were packed into the living room, draped across the couches, clustered around the alcohol, leaning against every available wall space. Hip-hop blared from the TV, which Liv had hooked up to her laptop, and Eunice, Lolly, and Maple were dancing awkwardly in the space where the coffee table had been, swaying and half-heartedly ass-bumping each other while trying not to spill their drinks. In the kitchen, a bunch of art kids were sitting on the counters, playing some budget version of beer pong where they tried to toss grapes into cups full of malt liquor; the floor was already covered in a sticky film of booze and dirt. And Liv’s room had the door closed, with a towel stuffed in the crack underneath. She’d taped a sheet of paper outside, hand-lettered with the words smoking lounge in Sharpie. The Os had winky faces and cigarettes hanging out of their mouths.

  You and Ethan had been the first ones to show up—you took pity on him and brought him back to your house for dinner since he lived so far away and didn’t have time to go home first—but then it had started filling up and Liv had gotten distracted and you’d taken over door duties, hugging the girls and high-fiving the guys, showing them where to dump their coats and pointing them toward the makeshift bar. Since you and Liv were busy being Mr. and Ms. Hospitality for the night, that meant that I, by default, was Ethan’s new best friend. We stood by the pretzels on the kitchen pass-through, talking about his favorite subject.

  “She’s just so good,” he said, staring longingly at the hallway that Liv had disappeared down with Dave a few minutes earlier. After all of that cheerleading, she’d barely given me a chance to say hello to him before she’d whisked him away to introduce him to “the people you NEED to know.” Given the fact that Liv hadn’t brought him back yet, it seemed like I didn’t fall into that category. OK, maybe that was unfair—I knew Liv was already drunk, and she always bounced around during parties, trying to talk to everyone—but being flat-out ignored was slowly curdling my pent-up anxiety into anger. I sipped my warm Coke and nodded, more to the song that was playing than anything else.

  “She’s got this . . . depth, you know?” Ethan went on. “And real vulnerability. You can’t teach that stuff.” He tipped back his cup and swallowed, wincing. Behind his glasses, his eyes watered.

  “Do you even like that?” I asked.

  “Gin was Tennessee Williams’s drink,” he coughed.

  “And Snoop Dogg’s,” I said. Ethan pretended not to hear me.

  “Did she say anything?” he asked. “About the audition?”

  “Not really.” I looked across the living room to where you were hanging out with Theo and Dominic, some of the other ballet boys. I tried to send you a telepathic SOS.

  “Because we’ve never really worked together as director and actress,” Ethan said. “We’ve just been friends, so this will be like a whole different”—he took another painful-looking s
ip—“relationship.”

  Just then, Liv and Dave came back into the living room. She was beaming and a little off-balance, while he was grimacing self-consciously down at the floor, in that way people did when they were moving through a crowd and just wanted to get the hell out without anyone noticing. Everyone’s eyes followed him, and some people openly pointed and whispered as he passed by. This was the first time a lot of the Janus student body was seeing Dave in the flesh, so it was kind of like we were all on safari, catching a thrilling glimpse of him in the wild—wearing a knit cap indoors, no less, like some lost hipster DJ.

  I felt bad for Dave, and not just because of the hat choice. No doubt Liv had promised him it would be an intimate gathering (“a select group of dope people,” my ass), and now she was parading him around when he would probably rather be standing unobtrusively by the food, like any normal person.

  As Liv started talking to one of Jasper’s friends—she’d shunned him but invited his crew, of course, since otherwise no one would report back to him on how good she looked—Dave glanced up and locked eyes with me, and I gave him a half-smile of commiseration. I knew from experience what it was like to follow Liv around all night. I was debating whether or not to take matters into my own hands and beckon him over when Ethan started up again.

  “Roth’s pretty good, too. He told me he hasn’t done anything lately except some failed pilots and commercials, but he’s got this really understated”—gulp, wince—“gravitas. I don’t know why he hasn’t been cast in more movies.”

  I watched Dave’s face as Liv thrust him upon a clique of drama girls, who smiled so hard it looked possible their cheeks might rupture. He seemed tense and uncomfortable, like he didn’t belong. Or didn’t want to belong.

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to be famous anymore,” I said. Ethan laughed.

  “Nobody here doesn’t want to be famous,” he said. In the middle of the room, Lolly tried to do a drunken pirouette and fell onto the couch. You rushed to help her up, and she held onto your neck longer than she needed to. Over by the TV, Liv was clutching Dave’s flannel shirtsleeve, pulling him over to the next group, whispering something in his ear. Liv needed attention like most people needed air, but it wasn’t like she couldn’t get it from anyone else; I would have bet good money that Ethan wasn’t the only guy standing around getting smashed and waxing poetic about her charms.

  “My only reservation about casting the two of them,” Ethan continued, as Dave said something that made Liv laugh with her head thrown back, tossing her black curls like she was selling shampoo, “is that they don’t have the right chemistry. Rodolpho and Viola have this very magnetic, push-and-pull, love-hate thing going on. It’s pretty intense, and it’s really key to the production.” I looked over at Ethan, ready to make fun of him, but then I saw the look on his face as he watched them, this sad stare that cut through all of his pompous showmanship. Ethan wasn’t worried they had the wrong chemistry; he could see, like any other non-blind person in the room, that they had too much.

  • • •

  You finally made it over to me when Ethan’s gin guzzling caught up with his bladder and he stumbled off toward the bathroom.

  “It’s about time,” I said. “I was getting ready to set off a flare over here.”

  “Sorry. Mr. Director seemed to have your full attention, and besides, you could’ve come to me.” You smiled mischievously and took a sip of your beer. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, since you seem to have a solid thing going with the pretzels, but there’s this social gathering happening right now called a party. It’s when people talk and dance and let loose and don’t act like they’re velcroed to the wall the whole time.”

  “Ohhhh, now I see.” I took a step away from the wall and twirled around, bowing. “Happy now?”

  “Very.” You grinned.

  “But seriously,” I said, gesturing to the chaos going on around us. “I don’t have anything to say to most of these people at school, so I don’t see the point of letting them pretend they’re my friends just because they’re drunk.”

  “No, no, no, drinking doesn’t make you lie,” you said, holding up your bottle. “It makes you tell the truth. That’s why they call it liquid courage.”

  “Mmmm hmmm.” I cocked an eyebrow; I wasn’t letting you get off that easy. “Since when have you ever needed liquid for courage?”

  You shrugged. “Hey, we can’t all be as brave as you.”

  “Ha ha.” I reached for your beer, and you gave me a sip. It tasted bitter and watery. I made a face.

  “For real, though.” You nudged me with your elbow. “What you did today . . . that was amazing.”

  “Thanks.” Shame bloomed in my chest for the first time in a few hours; as intense as Ethan could be, and as oblivious as Liv was being, at least they’d kept me from thinking about my audition. “But I’m pretty sure I just threw away my shot. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.”

  “No way.” You gripped my arm and looked at me, your eyes full of endearing—and maybe a little inebriated—sincerity. “You stood up for yourself. You stood up for all of us. And you’re right: Things are changing. Someday every ballet dancer is gonna look like you and Ms. Adair will just be some old bag of bones mumbling her racist bullshit in a nursing home.”

  I laughed. “You sound like my dad,” I said.

  Your cheeks reddened, and you dropped your hand. “Uh, OK,” you said with an embarrassed smile. “Not exactly what I was going for.”

  I didn’t even notice how uncharacteristically awkward you were being because I was too busy getting worked up about whatever Dave and Liv were doing off on their VIP living room tour. I could have thanked you, or hugged you, or asked you what you meant, but instead I turned away, and so I’m left replaying our conversation over and over . . . like I’m a director watching a movie I made and know by heart, hoping that this time when I watch, the plot will change course.

  I think I fixate on that moment now because it was the last one when it wasn’t too late. It was the last second before the countdown was set in motion, to the end of life as we knew it.

  To the end of a life.

  Chapter Five

  January 7

  126 days left

  THE FRONT DOOR OPENED, and a cluster of art girls who had been sitting on the floor in the entryway building a pyramid of empty cups quickly scattered to make room for two thick, wannabe-hard-looking older guys I didn’t recognize.

  “Oh, shit,” you whispered.

  “What?” I was clueless, until I saw Dante behind them. I’d met your cousin before, once or twice at your house. He called me Joyride, which made no sense, but which he seemed to find hilarious. He spotted us and grinned, sauntering over with a cocky, amused look on his face that immediately gave me goosebumps. It was the kind of this-should-be-fun look of someone about to start something.

  “Well, now the party’s here,” you said with a grimace, taking another drink. You’d gone from charmingly off-guard to rigidly on edge in the span of seconds. It was like you knew we’d passed some point of no return.

  “What up, cuz!” Dante cried, embracing you in one of those back-pounding bro hugs. He stepped back and looked between us, his smile widening. “Am I interrupting something? I hope?”

  “No,” you said quickly. Standing side by side, you and Dante looked like brothers. He was shorter and skinnier, and he’d shaved his hair down to a shadowy skullcap, but there was no mistaking the family resemblance.

  “Nice to see you enjoying yourselves.” He nodded at my cup and winked. “A little party never killed nobody, right?”

  “It’s soda,” I said, gritting my teeth. Over by the door, one of the big guys kicked over the cup pyramid and laughed.

  “That sucks.” Dante threw an arm around you. “At least Little D got the real stuff.”

  “Don’t called me that,” you said. “A
nd what are you, stalking me? I thought you worked Fridays.”

  “I am working,” Dante said, taking your beer and finishing it in one pull. “I told you I’d get your fancy-ass school, with or without your help.”

  Liv. I felt my jaw tense. Dante was the hookup she had been so excited about. She’d gone behind your back. I took an angry swallow of Coke that just made me cough.

  “Easy there, Joyride,” Dante laughed, and I glared at him.

  “She called you,” you said. It wasn’t a question.

  “What can I say? Your girl knows what she wants.” Dante smiled in a way that made me want to punch him. “Know where she’s at?”

  “Who are they?” You asked, nodding across the room at the guys by the door. They kept their hands in their pockets, and not in a laid-back way.

  “Those are my associates,” Dante said dismissively. “Don’t worry about them. Just point me toward the lady of the house.”

  Liv and Dave were still standing by the TV, talking close, crushed together by the swell of people crowded around the speakers. He looked a lot more relaxed than he had a few minutes before. He might not have wanted to be at the party, but he wanted to be close to Liv.

  “Just give it to me, and I’ll get it to her,” you said.

  “You got a hundred bucks for me?” Dante held out his palm for a second and then burst out laughing. I wanted to move but there was nowhere to go except the kitchen, which had suddenly become the setting for a game of spin the bottle. Across the pass-through, I watched a junior girl with chin acne and electric pink braids make out with Matt Fareed, one of the senior actors, their eyes closed, their chins moving in long, slow ellipses. It gave me a flashback to sixth grade, at our first middle school party, when Liv had kissed Kris Harris like that, on the rug in his basement, while all of our parents ate pasta salad upstairs. Kris Harris, the boy I used to slip poems to under the desk when the teacher’s back was turned, the one I’d asked her to talk to about me. I wondered if she ever had.