You in Five Acts

by Una LaMarche

  That’s what you get for casting such a matinee idol in the part you wrote for yourself, dipshit.

  It was true—I’d originally written Boroughed Trouble as a way to make sure I got to kiss you before graduation, and to show the VIPs in the audience that I was a triple-threat writer/actor/director. I was planning to play Rodolpho myself, after holding a casting call just for show. But then you’d kissed me, and everything changed. I’d let my guard down, just in time for Dave Roth to enter on cue.

  “I think what Dave and I both feel,” you said, a segue that spiked my heart rate on its own, “is that it would be more . . . powerful for it to happen during the performance.”

  “Well, I’m the director and I disagree.”

  “It just feels weird, since—” Dave started, but I cut him off.

  “We’re not together,” I said. “I’m not an idiot, and it means nothing to me, so just kiss her!” Through my headset I could hear Faiqa and Chris breathing, but I didn’t care anymore. Let them watch, I thought.

  You and Dave looked at each other for a long minute filled with tense hesitation before finally, awkwardly, leaning in to peck each other quickly on the lips. It was the kind of kiss two fifth graders might do on a dare. It was even more damning than your previous refusals.

  “Once more, with feeling!” I yelled.

  I saw you shake your head at Dave, and then hunch over a little bit. It was only once you looked back at me that I noticed the tears glistening in your eyes.

  “What are you doing, man?” Dave asked, looking pained—probably because he couldn’t comfort you without blowing your carefully orchestrated cover of ambivalence.

  “I’m just giving you both what you want,” I snapped.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, with a straight face. No wonder he didn’t win that Golden Globe. “Don’t punish her, OK? She didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You wouldn’t call messing around behind my back doing something wrong?” My voice, high and trembling, was magnified by the Janus Academy Theater’s truly cutting-edge acoustics. That was when the house lights came up, and I heard Faiqa whisper to Chris, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “What was I supposed to do?” you cried, wiping your eyes and leaping to your feet. “I was drunk, and I made a mistake, and you acted like you owned me.” Dave stood up and put a hand on your back. You turned to him, folding into his arms, nestling your face in his neck. My brain buzzed with a furious static.

  What was she supposed to DO? Just tell you, and not be such a manipulative bitch. For once, the Director was on my side.

  “So it’s true,” I said, stating the obvious, just in case anyone had missed it.

  “We didn’t mean for it to happen.” That was Dave, bravely playing the Good Guy.

  “Now, that’s just bad dialogue,” I laughed. “Good thing you’re not a writer. Although I guess it’s actually kind of a shame, considering the state of your acting career.”

  Dave looked like I’d hit him in the face. It was almost as good as actually hitting him in the face.

  “Stop it!” you said angrily. “You can’t control this, and I know it kills you. But I’m sorry, you can’t just make someone love you, don’t you understand that by now?”

  Surprise, surprise. Another defense straight from the soap opera cutting room floor. But that one hit me in the gut. Because what you were saying, without saying it, was that you weren’t just hooking up with Dave Roth. You were telling me you loved him, when I’d loved you, worshipped you, for years. All that time you’d barely acknowledged me . . . and all he’d had to do was show up. My grand plan to show you how I felt about you had pushed you right into Dave’s arms instead.

  Despair started to dampen the anger, and I had the sudden, humiliating urge to cry. Luckily, that was when I remembered that I had the power to hurt you even more publicly than you’d hurt me. That was when I realized I could show you a thing or two about choices, and their consequences.

  “Kill the lights,” I shouted into my headset. “Kill the set, kill the play, kill everything.”

  Kill yourself, a familiar old voice suggested helpfully, as I stormed out of the auditorium.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  May 9

  4 days left

  UNFORTUNATELY, I’m not the one who died. I didn’t go jump off the Queensboro Bridge to complete some sad, artistic circle-jerk with myself. I could have—I’d be lying if I said the thought didn’t cross my mind, complete with a final, fuck-you text to you and Dave. But I didn’t want to kill myself so much as I wanted to kill any evidence that I had ever made myself so vulnerable to you. Or that you had subsequently stomped all over my insides.

  “I’m pulling the play,” I announced breathlessly to Ms. Hagen. I’d literally run from the theater and caught her just as she was closing up her office for the night. She already had a coat on and was tying a scarf around her neck.

  “Ethan,” she sighed. She had a flapper-style bob of stark white hair and a fine-boned patrician face that perfectly matched her status as a cultural grande dame. At that moment it was frowning wearily. “We cannot pull the play.”

  “But it’s my work,” I said, clutching the back of her leather guest chair. I could tell I was visibly sweating. “I already copyrighted it with Writer’s Guild East. So you need my permission to put it on.”

  “That is technically true,” she said, fixing me with a cold stare. “However it’s also true that you currently need it to graduate. So we may be at an impasse.” She had no idea that she was playing right into my hand.

  “Oh,” I said, trying to look deflated. It wasn’t too much of a stretch, based on the events of the last hour. “That does put me in a difficult situation, I guess.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, I was hoping not to have to tell you this, but one of my actors . . .” I swallowed, feigning nervousness so that I could draw it out and enjoy the schadenfreude. “. . . has a drug problem,” I finished.

  That finally made Ms. Hagen sit down.

  “That’s a very serious allegation,” she said, raising her eyebrows and folding her hands on her wide mahogany desk. “Are you certain you want to make it, now of all times?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” she said, enunciating each word in her low, lilting German-accented English, “that we have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to drugs at Janus Academy. Once a report has been made, the student in question is subject to a search, and if any illegal substances are found, the student in question is subject to suspension, with the possibility of expulsion. That suspension is immediate, which means that if you report this to me today, and your actor is found in possession of illegal drugs, then your play cannot go on.” She blinked and smiled tightly. “However, if you report this to me on Monday morning, after the play . . .” She raised her hands in a what-can-I do? gesture, letting the rest of the sentence float unsaid in the air between us. “I just wouldn’t want you to lose your spot at Tisch over someone else’s poor judgment,” she added.

  I was way ahead of her; I knew that if I sabotaged Showcase entirely, I would just be committing a different type of suicide. I didn’t want to blow everything to smithereens. I just wanted to take out two specific targets.

  “Believe me, I don’t, either,” I said. “But she’s barely lucid. I can’t put her onstage. I don’t think I have a choice.”

  Ms. Hagen took a deep breath. “She. All right. So I assume we’re talking about Olivia.”

  I nodded, as if it pained me to give you up. (It did pain me to give you up, by the way. Letting go of the image I had of you, of the pedestal I’d built brick by brick for you, and the hope I had for us, was agony.)

  “I’ll need you to write and sign a statement detailing exactly what you know or suspect,” she said. “Tomorrow I’ll meet with the dean, and
assuming he wants to proceed, security guards will search her locker, and then we’ll detain her and search her person pending the results of the locker.” She reached under her desk and pulled out a legal pad, which she pushed across to me along with a heavy fountain pen. “I should tell you,” Ms. Hagen added, “She’s entitled to know who reported her. This isn’t anonymous.”

  “That’s OK,” I said. “I don’t care if she hates me. I just want her to get help.” The first part was a given—you already hated me, I’d made sure of that. The second part was sort of true. I did want you to get help, but only after everyone at school knew why you needed it.

  “If evidence of drug abuse is uncovered, we do work with families on finding treatment centers.”

  “Great,” I said. I was already writing.

  “You know—” She put a hand on mine, halting me mid-word; the pen scratched across the paper in a jagged line. “It occurs to me that this doesn’t have to end your play. Couldn’t you find an understudy?”

  “Everyone else is already cast in something,” I said. “Besides, there’s no way anyone could learn so much dialogue and blocking in two days.” I paused, preparing to deliver the masterstroke. “But there is another play I wrote. It’s a black box–style monologue, really easy to set up. And I know it by heart.”

  Ms. Hagen frowned. “I’d have to vet it before approving it,” she said.

  “Of course.”

  “And that’s bad news for David Roth. He won’t graduate either without the credit.”

  I shrugged, finished my statement, pushed it across the desk, and went back into the empty theater. The house lights were still on, and my bridge to nowhere filled the stage, looking more fake than I’d ever noticed before. Just like you, I remember thinking.

  It was all so stupid. I know that now, OK? But at the time, there didn’t seem like anything worse. I had basically forgotten about the drugs at that point. Substances could kill your body, but they couldn’t break your heart. What you’d done to me was the depths of human misery as far as I was concerned. All I wanted was to hurt you back.

  I didn’t mean to set the final act in motion. I didn’t mean to get anyone killed.

  Act Five

  Diego

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  May 10

  3 days left

  I’VE FELT THE WORLD slow down three times. One was the first day I stepped on a stage. For me, ballet was athletic, just another sport with less padding, same as what I did on the courts every weekend with the guys from my neighborhood, even if they gave me never-ending shit for the tights—which, I mean, come on. Dancers wore tights and lifted up beautiful girls, eye-to-crotch level, and that was “gay.” Wrestlers wore tights and pressed their faces in one another’s nuts, but that was legit. Okay.

  Anyway, most of the time dancing felt like hard work, all coiled muscles and springing steps and torque and sweat and effort, but once my feet left the ground? Man, it was like I was flying. Everything got still and soft for a second, just a second, but it was enough to hook me. It was a breath before I came back down to Earth. It was the only time the clock stopped. The second thing that made it happen was kissing you.

  “I can’t believe it’s almost over.”

  We were lying on a blanket in Fort Tryon Park, looking out at the silhouette of the George Washington Bridge as the sky lit up neon behind it. You sighed and splayed on your back, stretching your arms and legs out like a kid making a snow angel. “I can’t even imagine what it’s gonna feel like, after. Can you?”

  I shook my head. I really couldn’t picture it. In my mind, after the curtain call, everything just fell off a cliff into nothing, like a drawing that wasn’t finished. It was like I knew.

  I ran my thumb from your chin up to your temple, drawing it across your hairline to the other side.

  “You’ll go back to the doctor,” I said, leaning in to kiss you upside-down. “You’ll stay off that ankle. I’ll carry you if I have to.”

  You smiled with your eyes closed. “I bet you would. The one-handed commuter clusterfuck rides again.”

  “I’m serious, though.” I lay next to you, propping myself up on an elbow. “You can’t play around.”

  “I know that.” You rolled over and looked at me like Mr. T pitying his last fool. “I’m not playing. Which is why I’m still dancing.” Your eyes softened. “I just have to make it three more days. And then . .” You let the sentence trail off, knowing neither of us could finish it.

  I know I always talked about luck and fate and not thinking about tomorrow, but of course that was bullshit. Everyone who talks that kind of game is just talking to keep the panic at bay. I mean, look, I knew I was good, but professional ballet was one of the most competitive fields in the world, and my heartwarming barrio-to-Balanchine story would only take me so far. Even if I got invited to apprentice for a company, I would be competing for a contract against guys with more than a decade of training, guys who lived and breathed ballet, who were also the best in their (much better) academies. If I didn’t get a paying dance gig soon—like end-of-summer soon—I’d be cutting keys at my uncle’s hardware store. That wouldn’t even get me my own place, let alone the cash to keep taking classes.

  “You know what’s weird?” You shifted to rest your head on my chest. “Wanting something for so long you don’t even know if you could handle getting it.”

  “What do you mean?” I murmured into your hair.

  “Like, I’ve wanted to dance since before I even had memories,” you said. “I don’t know how to function without that being the driving force behind everything. If I actually made it, I honestly don’t know what I’d do.”

  “Tough life,” I teased, and you swatted at me.

  “Come on, don’t act like you don’t know. When people tell you you can’t do something, don’t you just live to prove them wrong?”

  “Not really,” I said. “I don’t care what anybody thinks, I just want to get out. You know those people who want to go to Mars and never come back? That’s what this is, for me. A one-way ticket.”

  “Huh.” You looked up at the sky for a minute. “You better let me visit.”

  I kissed you again. “You’ll be there, too.”

  “You really think we’ll end up in the same place?”

  I leaned back. The sky was fading to purple, and I could even see a few stars through the haze. “Why not?” I said.

  “What do you think the chances are of us getting into the same company?” you asked. “One in a thousand?”

  “They can’t be that low.”

  “You’d be surprised.” You sat up and turned to me, pulling your legs up against your chest. “We’ll have to go wherever there’s work. We don’t get to choose.” I flashed back to you in the lobby of your building, when you’d gotten your acceptance letter. The day we’d gone upstairs and—“It’s not funny,” you said softly, and I realized I was smiling.

  “Sorry,” I said, trying to banish the impure thoughts. “I know. But we’ll see. I mean, there’s no point in future-tripping when we don’t even know what’s going to happen.”

  “You’re not worried?” You raised an eyebrow. “Not even about me?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “OK, fine.” You draped your arms around my shoulders and nuzzled your face into my neck. I want to live here forever, I thought. I still do. “I still just want to fast-forward to Sunday morning,” you whispered as your lips brushed my ear. All the blood left my brain.

  “Me too.” I smiled, pulling you down to the blanket. The world slowed.

  I didn’t know yet there wouldn’t be a Sunday morning.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  May 11

  Two days left

  “ARE YOU READY?” You rose up en pointe to brush my hair out of my eyes, and I instinctively grabbed your waist, lifting you to relieve t
he pressure on your ankle.

  “It’s OK, I’m on my left,” you said, taking my hands away and lowering back down. “Besides, only forty-eight hours. Then it can fall off.” You were trying to keep it light but I could see you grimacing in pain; you always looked so mad when you got nervous. You glanced out at the stage, where Mr. Dyshlenko and Ms. Adair were still arguing over one of the set pieces, a cardboard cactus that looked a little too . . . anatomical from some angles.

  “It will look more phallic in silhouette, not less!” Ms. Adair was shouting. It was only noon—way too early to hear that shit from anyone, let alone a teacher.

  I shook my head, trying not to smile, but then I looked at you and lost the battle. You were wearing your tailor-fit Kitri dress for the dress rehearsal, a fiery red flamenco number that Ms. Gaspard had reinforced with a tight, plunging black leotard top that left very little to the imagination. Not that I had to imagine anymore.

  “Don’t stroke out on me, Basilio,” you joked, threading your fingers through mine. “Forget my foot, you’ve got my life in your hands with that lift, boy.”

  “I got you,” I said earnestly. I meant it every way there was to mean it.

  • • •

  The dress rehearsal went OK. I wish I could say we tore it up, the way we had over break with Mr. D, but with Ms. Adair standing at the front of the stage and Lolly literally waiting in the wings, there was tension that was hard to ignore. It was the feeling of someone waiting for us to make a mistake. I knew if the screw-up was on me, it didn’t matter . . . but Adair was watching you like she was looking for a fight. So we were both too careful; we danced like we were afraid to let go.

  “It’s feeling a little stiff,” Ms. Adair said once we hit our final fish dive. “It feels like you’re holding back, Joy. Could I see it with Lolly, just for comparison?”

  “What?” you said. I set you back upright and you put your hands on your hips, still catching your breath. In the bright stage lights, I could see the beads of sweat on your temples, straining inward as your brow furrowed. “No, really; I’m fine. I can do it again.”