By the Book

by Amanda Sellet

  I expected laugher, or at least mocking looks. Had Anjuli been there, her worst suspicions about my backwardness would have been confirmed.

  “Well,” said the Contessa, “we were mostly looking for a quiet place to talk.”

  “You’re welcome to stay.” I pressed my lips together, worried that had sounded too eager. Was I already turning into a lonely recluse, desperate for any vestige of human contact? “Or there’s a Starbucks on the next block,” I added, in the interest of fairness.

  “We already tried there. It was packed. Not like this place.” The Contessa made Toil & Trouble’s lack of business sound like something that had been deliberately cultivated. “Hey, you know what?”

  I shook my head.

  “My cousin Stephanie’s geometry tutor was a barista.”

  “Ah.” I tried to pitch it somewhere between I see and huh?

  “She always brewed a bunch of shots ahead of time for iced drinks. It might be worth checking.” She nodded at the mini-fridge behind me, smoothing her fiery hair.

  Inside, I found a carafe helpfully labeled “coffee,” as well as several quarts of milk, a bottle of chocolate syrup, and a can of aerosol whipped cream. A few minutes later, following a steady stream of advice from the other side of the counter, I had filled three tall glasses with a murky brown concoction.

  The Contessa took a careful sip. “Delicious,” she pronounced, beaming at me. I flushed with pleasure as she nudged Madam CEO with her elbow. “I told you this place looked interesting. Very mellow vibe.”

  “In my defense,” Madam countered, “the name sounded like a really extreme CrossFit place.”

  “‘Double, double toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble.’” I realized a little more context might be required. “From Macbeth. That’s where they got the name. Because of the cauldron and, you know, coffee. Not that they brew it in a cauldron. As far as I know.” The name also reflected Noreen’s general outlook on life, but that seemed like inessential information.

  “Ooh,” said the Contessa. “Fancy.” She raised her drink toward the tiny seating area. “Okay if we sit there?”

  I shrugged. Competition wasn’t exactly fierce.

  She slid a ten and a five across the counter. “Keep the change,” she said, sparing me the shame of explaining I didn’t know how to operate the cash register either.

  After tucking the money into a drawer, I put away the drink-making paraphernalia and wiped down the counter. Even though I wasn’t an actual employee, the presence of customers made me self-conscious about twiddling my thumbs. Tantalizing snatches of conversation drifted from the other side of the room like a distant strain of music.

  —You had no idea?

  That sounds like something he would—

  —I would have died. You are so lucky.

  No, I know. He’s completely—

  It was frustratingly opaque, especially since the Contessa was so animated in her speech, face in constant motion as she leaned toward the other two. I was sure they must be discussing something scintillating. What I did manage to glean was that the redhead and the blonde had been friends much longer. They spoke over each other like siblings, whereas both took pains to be polite with the Beauty, drawing her into the conversation with a series of questions.

  Questions about what, though? I edged closer. My hands made a pretense of returning pens to the chipped mug next to the phone, straightening a stack of mail, brushing dust off a shelf. It wasn’t spying so much as trying to piece together a story. Nor was it only the mystery that drew me in. I was a moth to their flame, fascinated by the brightness they gave off. How would it feel to be part of a group of friends who were genuinely excited to spend time with you? To have things to talk about, and people to discuss them with who didn’t roll their eyes every time you asked a question?

  “Alex Freaking Ritter,” the Crimson Contessa sighed. Absorbed as I had been in a fantasy of hanging out with my own illusory friends, a second passed before I processed the words. My body went rigid as the Contessa spoke again.

  “Your first day at MHS and the hottest guy in school asks you out.” She raised both hands, fingers fanned, as she fake-bowed to the Beauty. “You are en fuego! Did I say that right?”

  I’d never thought of myself as a gasper, but I must have gasped then, because all three girls turned to stare. A sticky silence ensued, flooding the room with tension despite the soporific flute music still playing in the background.

  “Is everything okay?” the Contessa asked at last.

  A few hours ago I would have hesitated to draw attention to myself, but I was a different person now. World-weary. Battle-hardened. The sting of my own rude awakening was too fresh to permit another innocent to have her hopes dashed.

  My eyes met the Beauty’s. “You’re the one he was flirting with.” Really flirting with, as opposed to randomly glancing at while absconding with a chair. I should have recognized the back of her head. “Alex Ritter.”

  “And?” the Contessa prompted. “Is there a problem?”

  I let out a long breath. “You could say that.”

  Madam CEO frowned. “Meaning what, exactly?”

  “Trouble,” I replied.

  “What kind of trouble?” asked the Crimson Contessa.

  There was no point prevaricating. “The kind that ends with somebody getting run over by a train.”

  Dear Diary,

  I’m sure someone (maybe Van?) told me Anna Karenina was a love story. To which I say: thanks A LOT. If that’s what passes for romance, I’ll happily stay single forever. I’d describe it as a train wreck but that would be a really bad pun.

  Talk about a relationship that was doomed from the outset. As anyone with half a brain would have known. Poor Anna may be nice, but she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. And don’t even get me started on Vronsky.

  M.P.M.

  Chapter 4

  The blonde clunked her glass onto the table. “Excuse me?”

  The Contessa waved the other girl to silence, her eyes never leaving my face. “Do you know him—Alex?”

  Summoning my courage, I took a step closer. “Kind of. I know of him.”

  “Alex Ritter.” Madam CEO repeated. She looked me up and down, face taut with suspicion. “Who are you anyway?”

  “Mary Porter-Malcolm.” Whenever possible I gave my whole name, because Mary by itself was sorely lacking in gravitas. “But that’s not important right now.” I turned to the Beauty. “Alex Ritter may seem charming, but he’s dangerous.”

  “Oh,” the Beauty breathed. “One of those.”

  Madam’s frown deepened. “One of what?”

  “Like a gentleman strangler,” the Beauty replied. “Handsome but deadly.”

  That wasn’t quite what I’d been trying to convey. Clearly it was time for the gloves to come off. “I’m sorry to say that he’s a Vronsky.”

  The Crimson Contessa gasped, fingers flying to her mouth in a flurry of jade green polish.

  Madam looked from her friend to me. “A what now?”

  “Not what,” I corrected. “Who.” From their silence, I gathered they were having difficulty digesting the news.

  “Maybe you should sit down,” suggested the Contessa.

  Feeling only slightly more out of place than I had behind the counter, I pulled out a chair.

  “I’m Arden,” the Crimson Contessa informed me. “And that’s Terry.” She pointed to the Beauty.

  “Teresa Larios,” the dark-haired girl supplied, pronouncing it Te-RAY-sa rather than Te-REE-sa and rolling the r in both names. Teresa, I silently repeated. That was much more fitting. She needed a name that danced on the tongue, like Beatrice or Titania. I spared a moment to wish Mary had a longer, more mellifluous form.

  “Lydia.” Madam CEO extended an arm. Her small hand squeezed mine like a vise, but that wasn’t the part that surprised me.

  “Your name is Lydia?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why? Did you hear something about
me too?”

  “No, you just don’t seem like a Lydia.”

  “Meaning what?”

  Flighty. Gauche. Prone to ill-advised elopements. Something told me this wasn’t the right time to bring up Pride and Prejudice. “You were asking about Alex Ritter.”

  Lydia adjusted her headband, making it clear she was only accepting the diversion because it suited her purpose. “We’re listening.”

  I took a deep breath. “A guy like that is completely wrapped up in his own drama, all the Sturm und Drang, ‘have mercy, my heart is bleeding.’ He never stops to consider the other person’s needs. If you ask me, it’s the pining he cares about, not the pine-ee.”

  The pause that followed this speech gave me plenty of time to reconsider my word choices, not least because I’d made it sound like he had a thing for conifers.

  “And in English this time?” said Lydia.

  “Getting involved with a Vronsky is a recipe for disaster,” I replied, cutting to the chase. “You’re setting yourself up for misery.”

  “What’s the deal with the train?” Arden asked in a hushed voice.

  “You know—like Anna K.”

  They looked at me blankly.

  “How she abandons her family to carry on a torrid affair with him, and they have a baby, but slowly the weight of society’s disapproval chips away at her sanity until one day she’s at the train station and that’s it.” I walked my fingers to the edge of the table before plunging them over the side.

  Lydia held up a hand. “Are you saying his baby mama offed herself?”

  I endeavored to conceal my surprise. How could they forget that part of the story? It was one of the most famous endings in literature. “Yes.”

  Arden shook her head. “I can’t believe I never heard about this.”

  “Maybe your school read War and Peace instead?” I suggested, trying to make her feel better.

  “Instead of what?” Lydia asked.

  “Anna Karenina.” I paused to look around the table. “The Tolstoy novel. With the famous hay-mowing scene?”

  Lydia squinted her eyes into slits. “What does that have to do with Alex Ritter?”

  “Or hay,” Terry put in. “Does someone get mangled by one of those big machines with the spinning blades?”

  “Ah, no. The mowing part is more about ‘isn’t it great to live in the country and commune with nature.’ No one dies.” I turned to Lydia. “As for Alex, what I mean is that Vronsky is the archetype. Alex is a modern version of the same kind of bad behavior.”

  “Except one of them is made up,” Lydia countered.

  Arden put a hand on the other girl’s arm. “That’s not what she’s saying, Lyds. The point is we don’t want Terry to end up brokenhearted at the train station.”

  “We don’t have a train station. She’d have to go Greyhound.”

  “You know what I mean.” Arden smiled encouragingly at me. “Tell her, Mary.”

  “It’s about certain universal truths of human nature. You can’t trust a person who never gives a second thought to the consequences of his actions because no one’s ever going to blame him for anything.”

  Lydia pushed her empty glass to one side. “Based on what evidence?”

  “She’s going to be a judge,” Arden told me, holding her hand in front of her mouth as if it were a soundproof barrier. “Not the cheesy TV kind.”

  I thought of the scene I’d witnessed at lunch, Alex giving that come-hither look to all and sundry. Flirting for tater tots, or his own twisted amusement, while the wreckage of my friendship with Anjuli smoldered in the background. He was what he’d always been, a destructive force wrapped in a deceptively appealing package.

  “Here’s the thing about Alex Ritter,” I began.

  “The one in real life?” Lydia cut in.

  “Yes. Two years ago—”

  “When he was a sophomore,” Arden supplied.

  I nodded, accepting her math, though he’d seemed much older to me at the time. “It was during rehearsals for Antony and Cleopatra. The play,” I added, to forestall the possibility of further confusion.

  “He was Antony?” Arden guessed.

  “He would have been, but everyone was worried he’d upstage Cleopatra in the looks department, so they made him the understudy. Unfortunately, that left a lot of free time for him to hang around backstage.”

  “Uh-oh.” Ice cubes rattled as Arden swirled the dregs of her drink.

  Lydia gave her a look. “Like you know where this is going.”

  “Hush.” Arden put a finger to her lips. “Go ahead, Mary.”

  “First the stage manager and the girl playing Octavia got into a huge screaming match. The next day it was the attendants, Charmian and Iras. Every time he talked to someone, they came away thinking Alex was in love with them. It was madness. Even the Clown got involved, despite the fact that she had a very serious boyfriend. Who happened to be running lights for the show.” I raised my eyebrows, letting them imagine the fallout from that little wrinkle.

  “Wow.” Arden rested her chin in her hand. “What else, Mary? I can tell there’s more.”

  She was right, but part of the story involved me being foolish and ignorant, which was not the image I wanted to present. Even the fact that I remembered the whole thing so clearly was probably a sign I needed to get out more, and yet the mental snapshot stubbornly refused to fade.

  Let me guess, you’re Juliet. That had been his opening line.

  Most afternoons that fall had seen me hanging around the theater, fetching and carrying for my sisters. It was inevitable our paths should cross; what I didn’t expect was for him to engage me in conversation.

  Naturally I lit up like a candle. It was the first time a boy had paid attention to me in that playful, noticing way. He thought I was not only an actress but Juliet? The thrill dimmed slightly when it occurred to me why he might have singled me out. It wouldn’t be the first time an actor had attempted to improve his casting by currying favor with the twins—or a member of their immediate family.

  “I’m afraid you’re not the right kind of Romeo,” I gently informed him. It was no secret the next Baardvaark production was going to be Romeo and Juliet. Fewer people were privy to the fact that it was slated to have an all-female cast.

  He pressed both hands to his chest, mock groaning. “Stabbed in the heart.”

  “Actually, Juliet’s the one who stabs herself. Romeo takes the poison.” I mimed drinking from a vial.

  It was only after I’d been called away on an errand that I realized he’d meant something else. By then it was too late to explain that a) I hadn’t meant he was the wrong kind of Romeo for me personally and b) I was a glorified stagehand, not the leading lady. And while the twins sometimes solicited my opinion on casting decisions, I would never throw my weight behind someone just because he’d tried to butter me up.

  The next time I saw him, he was bantering with my sister Addie. I passed within five feet of them and he looked right through me, without so much as a flicker of recognition. Like maybe I’d imagined our whole interaction, or else he chatted up so many girls it was impossible to keep track of them all. The whole thing was so mortifying I’d never spoken of it to another soul—until now.

  But how to convey all of that in a few nonembarrassing words?

  He’s the kind of guy who has the effrontery to act like he’s going to sit with you when all he really wants is to steal one of your chairs.

  He’s the kind of guy who flirts for personal gain then drops you like a rock.

  He’s the kind of guy so indiscriminate in his attentions he’ll trade one sister for another in the blink of an eye.

  “He hit on my sister,” I said in a rush. “I think maybe he thought she was my other sister. The one who directs.”

  Arden made a tsking noise with her tongue. “That’s just rude.”

  “Why would he think your sister was your other sister?” Lydia asked.

  “Face blindness?” Terr
y suggested.

  I shook my head. “They’re twins.”

  “Aha,” Lydia said. “Then it doesn’t mean he’s for sure a player.”

  I made a vague noise in the back of my throat, privately resolving to ask my brother Jasper about the precise connotations of the term, since he was the most au courant member of the family when it came to slang. Although fairly certain I got the gist, I’d been wrong about such things before. (In my defense, “twerking” did sound like a rude gesture involving teeth.)

  “Wait a sec.” Arden studied me intently. “You’re talking about the twins who put on the plays?”

  I nodded.

  “They were in my brother Morrison’s year! He had a huge crush on one of them, Allie or something—”

  “Addie.”

  “Yes!” She slapped the table with her palm. “I used to hear about them all the time. Super smart and artsy, which is completely Morrison’s jam. Apparently one of them came to school in thigh-high boots—”

  “Part of a costume,” I said quickly. “For Baardvaark. That’s the name of their troupe. All Shakespeare, all the time.”

  “Isn’t this great?” Arden squeezed Terry’s wrist. “You’re getting so much background info. She just transferred from Sacred Heart, so I’m helping her get up to speed.” The last part was clearly for my benefit. “It’s hard when you don’t know many people.”

  I tried to smile as though I had a vague and largely theoretical understanding of such a predicament, but the result must have looked more like a grimace.

  “Freshman year is awesome,” Arden assured me. “Totally low-stakes. I miss those days. It’s not like tenth grade, when everyone expects you to have it all figured out. Seriously, can we talk about the SAT after I get my license? One thing at a time, people.”

  “I’m actually a sophomore.”

  “Hey!” Arden shoved me in the shoulder. “Us too. How come I haven’t seen you before? Did you just move here?”

  She seemed so intrigued I was loath to disappoint her. “I’ve lived in Millville all my life. I just haven’t gone to public school until this year.”