You in Five Acts

by Una LaMarche

  “When should I tell my mom I’ll be home?” I asked, pretending to start a text.

  “I don’t know. When’s the latest they’ll let you stay out?”

  “I don’t know, that depends on what we’re doing.” You raised your eyebrows and I felt my cheeks redden. “Not like—I just meant, where we’re going.”

  “All the way,” you said.

  My neck got hot. “What do you mean?”

  “The last stop. Coney Island.” You paused, pulled back, and smiled suspiciously. “Why, what did you think I meant?”

  “Nothing. I’ve just . . . never been to the last stop before.” That was a lie; my dad used to take me to Cyclones games and I’d even gone to the Mermaid Parade once, with Liv and her mom, when I was eleven, before my parents had realized—because I had diligently reported back—that some of the mermaids went topless as part of their costumes. But I couldn’t admit to you that all I could think about as the pale blue sky flashed by in the windows was when it would happen. We’d been flirting all week, getting used to our new, different chemistry like cautious kids doing a science project, curious about the results but too afraid to mix anything that might blow up in our faces. But the tension kept on building, and it couldn’t hold forever. Sooner or later one of us was going to have to cross a line that would make it impossible to pretend that we were still just friends. The prospect was both thrilling and completely terrifying. I couldn’t stop looking at your lips.

  “You’ve never gone to Coney Island?” I watched them say, incredulously.

  I shrugged. “New York City’s a big place.”

  “Oh, man,” you laughed, clapping your hands together. “I can’t wait. This is gonna be the best.”

  It already is, I felt like saying.

  • • •

  Our first stop was Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs on the boardwalk, where you made a big show of buying two hot dogs twice the length of their buns, plus curly fries and giant sodas that dripped condensation onto the table.

  “A good, greasy meal is the foundation of the true Coney Island experience,” you explained, brandishing the squirt-top ketchup like a paintbrush. “If you don’t feel at least a little sick on the rides, you’re doing it wrong.”

  “Rides?” I shook my head, swallowing my curly fry half-chewed. “Uh-uh. Who said anything about rides?”

  You looked at me like I was crazy. “C’mon,” you said. “We have to ride the rides. At least the Cyclone. That’s the whole point.”

  “When I was—” I was about to tell you that when I was eight, I’d ridden the Cyclone and busted my nose on the safety bar (because I’d been hiding my face in my lap out of sheer terror, and the G-force during the descent had jerked my head upward). But then I remembered that as far as you were concerned I hadn’t been to Coney Island. “When I was a kid I had a bad roller-coaster experience,” I said, guiltily grabbing another fry.

  “Then let me”—you took an enormous bite of your hot dog and grinned at me through bun-filled chipmunk cheeks—“replace it with a good experience.”

  “On that rickety-ass thing?” I laughed.

  “It’s only ninety years old. Besides, you can’t really talk, gimpy.” You gave me a look like, It’s on, and it was a battle not to smile.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “That’s the elevation portion of the day,” you said. “It’s the most important part of the healing process. We can’t skip it.”

  “Mmmm hmmm.” I gestured to our fast food feast. “And what’s this supposed to be?”

  You picked up your soda and shook it. “Ice, ice, baby.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Flimsy, but I’ll allow it.” We toasted and knocked back the rest of our drinks. “What about compression?” I asked.

  “Wait and see. That’s the next stop.”

  “We going back to Times Square?” I laughed.

  You smiled in a way that made my stomach flip. The ice joke had been lame, but at least we had heat covered.

  “You’ll see,” you said.

  • • •

  The wind coming off the ocean was freezing, so we darted down the boardwalk, past an old man sitting on a folding chair under a beach umbrella, holding a boombox that was blaring “La Bamba.” You pulled me into a brightly lit arcade and led me by the hand to an old-fashioned photobooth.

  “Compression,” you announced proudly, opening the curtain. I slipped off my glasses and leaned Abuela’s crutches against the outside of the booth. Once we squeezed in, not knowing what to do, I perched awkwardly on your lap. I tried to make myself light and dainty by keeping as much weight as I could on my feet, like I was doing a static squat.

  “OK, what faces are we making?” I asked as you fed three crumpled bills into the machine. “Silly or serious?”

  “Let’s alternate,” you said, resting your hands on my hips.

  The first pose was silly; I crossed my eyes and made a fish face. For the next one, we tried to look tough, all cocked eyebrows and mafioso sneers. On the third one, you tickled my ribs, so I was frozen mid-laugh, my face contorted in giggles while I tried to swat you at the same time. Once you stopped, I turned to tell you off but we were so close our noses brushed and I could feel your body tense under mine. So in the last split second before the flash went off, I whipped my face forward. When the photos came out a few minutes later, the last frame was just me looking nervous and blank-faced while you stared meaningfully into my ear.

  “We definitely nailed it,” you said, tucking the strip into your pocket.

  • • •

  I put off the Cyclone as long as possible, but by the late afternoon we’d eaten enough popcorn and churros to fuel a small circus, and I was getting tired of swinging up and down the boardwalk on the crutches. After our tenth game of Skee-Ball, I could tell your heart was someplace else, so I screwed up my courage and lied and told you I was ready.

  “One ride,” I said.

  “Seriously?” You picked me up and spun me around, and when we stopped, our bodies pressed against each other for just a few extra seconds too long. I tilted my face up and thought, dizzily, this is it.

  But it wasn’t; you broke away and handed our prize tickets to a couple of little kids playing a basketball free-throw game nearby.

  “Let’s go,” you said. “The line is probably insane.”

  The old man with the boombox was still in his spot under the beach umbrella, and as we walked by he started playing Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” I stopped cold. People like to talk about things being “their jam,” but most of the time they’re just posturing or trying to sound cool. But that song . . . that song was what I’d listened to in my room growing up, when I’d practiced my first “routines.” My mom had it in a box of cassette tapes she’d kept from high school, and I’d always loved the way Whitney looked on the cover, lifting up the bottom of her tank top with her hair all big and unkempt like she gave zero shits. That song was my jam.

  “What?” you asked, smirking at me. “You look like you’re about to toss those crutches in the air like Tiny Tim and bust out the Running Man.”

  “Shut up!” I said. “This is my favorite song.”

  You just smiled and shook your head. “Of course it is.”

  Half an hour later we were still in line, waiting under the shuddering support beams of the behemoth roller coaster, watching its little cars clatter and clack up and down a track that still looked to me, ten years later, like it had been built out of popsicle sticks by kindergartners as a joke.

  “I can tell you’re freaking,” you said, laying a gentle hand on my back. “You’re making that mad face.”

  “I don’t like heights,” I muttered, in between deep breaths.

  “You were fine yesterday with the presage lift.”

  “Yeah, well—that was because of yo
u.”

  You wrapped your arms around me from behind, resting your chin on my head. “Good thing I’m here now, too, right?” you asked, and I could feel the vibration of your voice in my whole body. “But if you’re really that scared”—you squeezed me gently—“we don’t have to.”

  I leaned back against your chest and thought about suggesting that we elevate on the much tamer Wonder Wheel instead, but then the ride was slowing to a stop and the last group was stumbling out, and all of a sudden I was handing your abuela’s crutches to the bored-and-or-stoned-looking operator, and then we were in. It was too late to change my mind.

  “You OK?” you asked, trying but failing to hold my left hand, which was gripping the safety bar like a vise.

  “Don’t ask,” I said as the ride lurched into motion. Immediately, we were inching up a steep incline that would send us careening down an 85-foot drop at a 58-degree angle. A sign at the top read, STAY SEATED! DO NOT STAND UP! For anyone with a death wish, I guess.

  “It will be fine,” you said, adopting your Mr. Dyshlenko voice again. “You just have to hold on, hold on”—you gripped the bar, making a grim, nervous face—“and let go!” You threw your arms up like you were doing the wave at a ball game.

  “I’m not doing that,” I said, closing my eyes, wincing, waiting for the drop.

  “Come on,” you whispered. “Just look. It’s amazing, you’ll see.”

  I shook my head and squeezed my eyelids shut even tighter. “That’s easy for you to say. Nothing scares you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  The car was slowing down, gravity pulling us back. We were almost there. I could barely get the words out. “Name . . . one . . . thing.”

  There was a pause, and then you said, “Kissing you.”

  “What?” Without meaning to, I let go of the bar and opened my eyes, just in time to see the world drop away. You grabbed my hand, and then we were in free fall.

  • • •

  Afterward, once I’d regained the use of my legs and vocal chords, I pulled you onto a bench and made you tell me again.

  “It scares me, too,” I said. We were holding hands, smiling shyly at each other, and then at the ground. I traced the life line curving across your palm with tip of my finger.

  “So, what, then?” you asked.

  “Well . . .” I turned my face up to yours. “You know what those motivational posters say: Do something that scares you, every day.”

  You grinned, pulling me closer. “Just once a day?” you asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, pushing the hair out of your eyes. “I think we can get away with more. I mean, we are making up for lost time.”

  “How much—” you started to say, but then you shut up, because I took your face in my hands and pulled it onto mine.

  We made up for lost time on that bench, warm, slow, intoxicating kisses that—once we got past the first, tentative, trembling ones—swelled like waves in no hurry to make it to shore. Later, we made up for lost time on the Wonder Wheel, our little boxcar swinging back and forth a hundred feet off the ground while we swayed together, our breath quickening, completely ignoring the view of the sun setting over the city. We somehow lost the crutches, but neither of us cared. More than a few times, I was overcome: my desire felt feverish, too big for my body. It escaped through my throat in halting sighs. I never wanted it to end.

  I didn’t want to get on the train to go home. I still wish we hadn’t. Sometimes I like to pretend we’re still up there on the ferris wheel, suspended someplace between heaven and Earth, preserved in a perfect moment in time when everything seemed like it was going to be all right.

  That was the first day I knew I loved you, Diego.

  There won’t be a last.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  April 24–29 (last week of Spring Break)

  14 days left

  LIFE DOESN’T HAPPEN IN MONTAGE, with newspapers spinning, or calendar pages falling off one by one. Dance sure as hell doesn’t happen in montage, although I’d be the first to admit that it looks good on screen to see beautiful people go from lead-footed to flawless in the span of two minutes. But that second week with you—after you dropped me off on my corner, pressing me up against the graffiti-covered lamppost I’d Sharpied my name onto in fifth grade, and whispered, “Promise this will still be real tomorrow?”—felt like a flip book of best moments, lived in real time.

  There was Monday: Coming up out of the subway into one of those impossibly beautiful Manhattan spring mornings, like God had Gershwin on surround sound, still tasting you on my lips, my whole body humming as I took the stairs two at a time, barely feeling my feet (you were right: adrenaline is a crazy drug). We flew across that stage, nailed the lift, and could barely keep our hands off each other, which Mr. Dyshlenko and the pianist pretended not to notice. “I will tell Sofia she has nothing to worry about,” he said with a wry smile.

  After rehearsal, we got lunch and walked to Central Park West, up to Sheep Meadow, where we lay for hours in various states of entanglement. With your head resting on my stomach, gazing up at a cloudless sky, you rewrote history, telling me everything you’d thought but hadn’t said for the past four years. I was especially shocked by the fact that Caleb—who you’d been so nice to—had inspired various revenge fantasies in which you unleashed some crazy capoeira on him in the orchestra pit.

  “Maybe you should double major in drama,” I teased.

  “What, you weren’t jealous?”

  “Of your lady friends?” I thought for a minute. You flirted with so many people, I never really knew who you were just talking to and who you were actually talking to. “No.”

  “Not even a little?” You sounded disappointed, and I wondered if I should tell you that whenever Liv or Ethan would start telling me about one of your hookups, I would stop them and change the subject. Liv always thought I was being a prude, and Ethan acted pissed, like I was robbing him of a valuable storytelling opportunity, but really I just never wanted to think about you, like that, with anyone.

  “I mean, I guess I’m glad you never had anything serious.” I ran my fingers through your hair. “That would have been weird.”

  “Actually,” you said, “I did have something kind of for real with—”

  A stab of envy tore through my gut. “I don’t want to know!” I cried.

  “I knew it!” You sat up and grinned, then leaned down and kissed me. “Don’t worry,” you whispered, your lips still grazing mine, your thick lashes fluttering against my cheek, “I was just waiting for you.”

  • • •

  There was Tuesday: sitting in the locker room with ice on my ankle and heat everywhere else, as you gently explored the territory under my thin cotton tank, your mouth on my neck. Things were moving fast, but then again we weren’t exactly starting from the beginning; it felt all of a sudden like we’d been dating for years and had only just realized we were allowed to touch.

  On the uptown train ride I asked you, vaguely, if you’d ever had sex. I didn’t really get the words out, but you could tell where I was going and saved me from having to get too detailed about the most intimate act two humans could share while we were squished next to an enormous sleeping construction worker.

  “A few times,” you said. “I’m sorry I didn’t wait. I didn’t know if—”

  “No, I’m relieved,” I said, leaning over to whisper the next part: “One of us should know what we’re doing.” Your ears turned red.

  “Girl,” you murmured, “Stop it. You’re going to kill me.”

  We had dinner at your house, crowded around the tiny dining table with your mom and little brothers, eating pork and plantains while the Yankees game played on the radio. “I’ve given up,” your mom laughed. “I’ve surrendered to chaos!” But I loved how noisy and homey it felt, and how playful and loving the fighting was (except fo
r Miggy and Emilio, who seemed resolved to do each other serious bodily harm through a series of post-meal couch-wrestling matches). In my family, I was used to silence, passive-aggressiveness, or the classical station on NPR. Deep belly laughter was not a Rogers-Wilson household specialty.

  There was no chance I’d be staying over—a triple threat of Catholicism, a shared bedroom, and my parents’ curfew policy made that abundantly clear—but your mom pulled me aside before I left, both to send me home with extra food and to tell me how happy she was about us.

  “This just fills my heart,” she said. When she smiled, she looked like you—or, maybe, you looked like her—all dimples and bright, dancing chestnut-colored eyes. “Between my job and his rehearsals I barely see him, and it’s hard not to worry. But now that he has you . . .” She laughed and waved at her face, blinking back tears. “You lift him up, that’s all.”

  “Actually,” you said, coming up and giving her a half sincere, half shut up now hug, “I lift her up. If we’re being technical.”

  “We’re not,” I said dryly, and your mom burst out laughing.

  “Don’t let this one go,” she told you.

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” you said, just as Emilio beaned you in the face with a throw pillow.

  • • •

  And then there was Wednesday: Mr. D emailed us to say that he was sick, but you quickly texted that we should rehearse anyway, since we had security clearance to be at school and the whole stage to ourselves, so I dragged myself out of bed (oh, who am I kidding, I leapt. Leapt! Despite the lightning rod of pain in my leg), showered, and threw on my warm-up clothes, skipping coffee since I was already running strong on what felt like a battalion of butterflies madly flapping their wings inside my chest.

  The first clue that something was up was Coach, who greeted me at the back entrance with a big smile and an envelope.

  “I always told you,” he said. “I said from the beginning, Joy, you need to give this boy a chance. Can’t you see he loves you?”