by Emma Mills
“I’ve got AP English that way,” she said, and we started to walk together. “So you and Jamie work at the same place?”
“Uh, yeah. This catering company. It’s in our apartment building, so it’s pretty convenient. Don’t even have to walk outside to get to work.”
“Nice. You guys knew each other before, right?”
“Yeah, we kind of grew up together.”
She cut a glance over at me. “You know, I actually knew Jamie before the show too.”
“Oh. Really?”
She nodded. “Not well or anything. But we both worked on the musical last spring. Did you see it?”
I had seen the last six Meridian North musicals, courtesy of Sidney’s obsession. Last spring’s show was Bring It On: The Musical.
“Yeah.” I had no idea Jamie did theater. And I couldn’t remember seeing Sasha up there either, but admittedly the musicals were always jam-packed. I think it was a prerequisite of every high school musical that they had to cram as many people onstage as possible. In the production of Godspell my sophomore year, Jesus had no less than eighteen disciples. “I didn’t know you were into theater.”
“Nah, I just wanted an arts extracurricular. In case the sports scholarships didn’t pan out, I wanted to be as well-rounded as possible, you know? So I did a crew thing. Specifically, I ran lights. More specifically, I ran the spotlight.”
“Oh … cool.”
“Did you happen to see opening night?” she said ruefully.
I shook my head. We went to the weekend matinee. Dan came too and entered the silent raffle, bidding on and winning about five tons of kettle corn.
Aren’t you supposed to stop us from eating stuff like this? Sidney had asked.
I’m a dentist, not a monster, he’d replied with a grin.
“I was scared of messing up,” Sasha said now. “So scared, actually, that my hands were shaking really badly. To the point where I could barely keep the spotlight trained in the right spot, and when I did, you could still see it shaking. Like, violently shaking.” A pause. “You know Alyssa Charles, the lead girl? She had this huge solo song early on in the first act, and I totally messed it up. She apparently threw a fit backstage afterward. Said the show needed a seizure warning because of me.” She shook her head, expression a little bit sheepish. “Jamie was helping run the light board. He was up in the booth too. I remember being like, What do I do? What should I do? and he said, so serious: Pray for an earthquake.”
I couldn’t help but smile, and Sasha smiled back.
“He helped me hold the light so it was steady. He was there whenever I needed him for the rest of the night, and the rest of the weekend too—said he’d be standing by just in case.”
It was quiet.
“I know this whole … event thing is kind of risky,” she continued as we neared the World Lit room. “And I don’t like that. I don’t like messing up. But if it can help Jamie with his grandma’s charity thing, then that’s something, right?”
“Is doing a bad thing for a good reason still bad?”
Sasha shrugged. “Probably depends on the circumstances.” A smile. “Here’s hoping not?”
40.
SASHA AND I ENDED UP hanging out over spring break. One afternoon we met at the mall uptown and walked around, tried on some deep discount clothes that were clearly discounted for a reason, got overpriced frozen yogurt.
Sasha was really easy to talk to, easy to be around. I told her about Rose and Sidney, about Mom and the impending marriage. I heard about her friends on the volleyball team. Her brother Quincy, who was ten. Her potential volleyball scholarships—she had been recruited by a few schools, and had just committed to Notre Dame.
“That’s really cool,” I said, stabbing a strawberry with my spoon. “Must feel good.”
“Mm,” she replied.
“What?”
“No, it does. Definitely. But it’s also kind of scary?”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Makes it real, I guess. The stakes seem way higher. I love playing, but now it’s like, I won’t just be playing ’cause I love it, I’ll be playing to stay in school. I just hope it doesn’t put too much pressure on it.” She took a bite of yogurt, then a smile crept across her face. “You know like how it’s easy to flirt with someone if you don’t actually care, but as soon as you get feelings, suddenly it’s the hardest thing in the world?”
“Can’t relate,” I said. “I never flirt with anyone.”
“No, whatever you and Jamie got going on kind of transcends flirting,” she replied, giving me a look before going in for another bite of yogurt.
“What? We don’t—what?”
“Come on. There’s a little something there.”
“No.”
“A liiiiittle something.”
“Sasha.”
“Just a teeny, tiny, little itty bitty—”
“We kissed one time.”
Her eyes grew wide. “I knew it! When? Where? Was it at school? Was it at the studio?”
“Ages ago,” I said. “In junior high. It’s over and done. He would never—” I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”
“But—”
“I want to look for some sneakers.” I didn’t have the budget for sneakers—most of what I was earning at Pipers was going into the Dantist’s Camera Repair Fund. But Sasha didn’t need to know that. “Should we get moving?”
“Yeah, okay.” It looked like there was more she wanted to say, but she didn’t press further.
* * *
When I got home that evening, I could hear Rose’s voice coming from our bedroom and increasing in volume. I could only make out snippets—“didn’t want to make it a big thing” and “wasn’t hiding anything” and “kidding me right now?”
“What’s going on?” I said to Sidney, who was curled up on the couch watching TV.
“Rose might lose her scholarship,” she said. “She got a thing from school. Mom found out, and they had a fight, and Rose told Dad, and now they’re having a fight.”
I moved into the hallway. Mom’s bedroom door was shut, but the door to our room was slightly ajar. When I pushed it open, I could see Rose standing by the window, her back to me. She didn’t turn around, her phone pressed to her ear, her posture tense.
“Yeah, I am,” she was saying. “Because I—no, listen—because you think, like, a ten-minute phone call every week gives you the right to suddenly parent us. When you’ve never done the job of actually being a parent. You only want to chime in when it’s convenient for you. You know, when we were kids, if something was wrong, if we needed help, we’d go to Mom, do you realize that? If we were sick on your weekend, we’d stay with her. Because you didn’t want to deal with it, and because we knew deep down that she would take care of us, that you couldn’t even—listen to me—you’re not even listening to me!”
She lowered the phone abruptly and hung up. When she turned around and saw me, her expression went hard.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she said.
“Hear what?”
“I don’t know. Whatever you’re gonna say.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You’re literally talking right now.”
Arguing with Rose in this moment was absolutely unproductive and I knew it. And yet … “So I can’t speak out loud? Is it okay if I think really hard?”
“Nina, I swear to god—”
Mom’s door opened then, and she stepped into the hall, noticed me there. “Ah, you’re home.”
“I’m going out,” Rose said, and then moved past me.
“Rose,” Mom called as Rose stomped through the living room.
“I’m going out,” she repeated, and the front door opened and slammed shut.
* * *
I got a text a little while later from Jamie.
Hey your sister is down at the playground
Two more messages popped up as I looked at the screen:
> Should I go talk to her?
I’m gonna go talk to her
I went to get my shoes on.
The playground stood about a block away from the Eastman, tucked back among the houses there. It had a blacktop with benches bordering either side, a basketball hoop, a swing set, a little jungle gym, and one of those metal roundabouts that turn in circles.
Jamie and Rose were sitting on one of the benches near the basketball hoop when I arrived.
“Hey,” Jamie said, looking over as I approached. “We’re discussing plot holes in Harry Potter.”
Rose smiled weakly at me. She looked like she’d been crying.
“There are no plot holes,” I said, just to be contrary. “That shit is airtight.”
“In book four, why didn’t they just make a portkey out of something Harry would encounter in a normal day? Why did they have to stage an elaborate festival that Harry had to win his way through just to get to the trophy portkey? Why didn’t they turn a pen or something into a portkey and then hand it to him?”
“It’s not worth thinking too much into. It’ll keep you up at night,” I said, and as I settled down on Rose’s other side, Jamie stood.
“I should, uh … I just wanted to … make sure you were…” He gestured around. “You know. It’s getting dark. Safety in numbers and all that.”
“You don’t have to leave, James.”
“I just thought maybe you’d rather talk about … Harry Potter plot holes … with Nina.”
“We’ll probably talk about the shambles my life is in instead,” Rose said. “And you’re welcome to join.”
Jamie sank back down, and it was quiet. The sun had dipped low, the sky that kind of watery twilight blue of early spring.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Rose said eventually.
“Trying to justify the Triwizard Tournament in your mind?” I said.
She didn’t laugh. Instead she just shook her head, and when she spoke, her voice was hoarse: “It’s like I’m at the point where I can’t even remember why I liked doing art in the first place. And I can’t even tell … like maybe I was only good at it before because it didn’t matter.”
I thought of Sasha, of her words in the food court today. “Like how it’s easy to flirt with someone if you don’t actually care, but when you’re like, legit interested, it’s really hard?”
“Can’t relate, I’m always good at flirting,” Rose replied.
I smiled.
“I think you’re an amazing artist,” I said after another pause. “But I think … if you’re not happy at school … if you’re having a hard time doing what you’re doing and you’re not enjoying it at all, then … why don’t you just do something else?”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” Jamie asked.
“How can I just give up on my dream like that? What if it’s supposed to be hard? And even if it’s not, what kind of message would that send to Sid? How messed up would that be?”
“What does it have to do with Sidney?”
“She wants to do the theater thing so bad. What will it say to her if I just give up?”
“It’s not giving up,” I said. “It’s just … admitting that what you thought you wanted isn’t actually what you want. What’s wrong with that?”
“But I told everyone! I made this whole big thing about following my dreams and living a creative life and all that, and what am I supposed to do now? Just say I changed my mind?”
“Yeah.”
“But—”
“But what? It’s not a crime, saying something you thought before isn’t what you think now. I actually think it’s a pretty decent thing to do, isn’t it?”
“I don’t want to have to say I was wrong,” she said sullenly.
“Well, that sounds like a Rose problem.”
She huffed a laugh.
“You could switch majors,” I said. “You could go to a different school. You could take a semester off, just work for a bit. There are lots of options.”
Rose nodded, and it was quiet again.
“What do you think, James?” she asked eventually.
“I think Nina’s right.”
“That’s an awesome thing that people should say more often,” I said.
Rose smiled a little brighter this time. A little more like normal Rose. “Maybe I think you’re right too.”
I held out my arms. “God, it’s like a drug.”
41.
THAT SATURDAY BROUGHT A WEDDING to the Eastman that was unlike any of the ones I had encountered so far during my time at Pipers. This wedding was themed. And not in the way that they usually are—vintage or romantic or rustic. This wedding was Shakespeare themed.
Sonnets or passages from Shakespeare weren’t uncommon for readings during a ceremony, Jamie told me as we filled pitchers with water that evening. But this wedding was next level, totally full-out, Shakespeare to the max.
“There are lutes,” one of the other waiters told us excitedly. “They’ve got dudes out there playing recorders, wearing doublets and shit!”
The bride and groom, the rest of the wedding party, and even the officiant wore elaborate period dress. The musicians indeed played instruments of the era. There were definitely sonnets, and while the best man and maid of honor speeches were original works, according to the enthusiastic discussion among guests they had been composed in iambic pentameter.
“If my best friend told me my speech had to be in iambic pentameter, I’d find a new best friend,” Celeste murmured to me at one point, and I snorted.
“Can you imagine?” I said to Jamie as we were getting cake service ready. “Being like, let’s get married, but it has to be Shakespeare style. Let’s spend all this money on a big fancy wedding, except it’s … I cannot stress this enough … Shakespeare style.”
“You know, it’s not even the weirdest theme I’ve seen.”
“What was the weirdest?”
“There’s been a bunch. Space cowboy. Hunger Games. Zombie apocalypse.”
“You’re lying.”
He grinned. “Maybe. One of them is real, though.”
“Which one?”
“I’ll never tell.”
“Jamie!”
We were bringing back our trays to transfer more plates of cake when Jamie said, “I think it’s nice, though.”
“What? Shakespeare style? Or the Hunger Games—for real, was it Hunger Games? I need to know everything.”
He began loading my tray with plates. “I just think it’s cool that they each found the, like, one other person who thought this was a great idea. They’re … on the same page. And that’s kinda what the whole thing’s about, right?”
He glanced up at me, and something about the moment—facing down the full force of Jamie Russell’s earnestness—was too much. I was afraid I’d do something stupid, like drop my tray and grab his face and press five or six dozen small kisses there.
Instead I just swallowed and looked away. “What would your wedding theme be?” I asked eventually, watching Jamie rearrange a few plates on his own tray to fit a couple more.
Jamie thought for a moment. “Big top circus.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh yeah,” he said, meeting my eyes once more with a small smile. “Peanuts, tiny car, red-and-white-striped tent. The whole nine yards.” Then he shouldered his tray and headed back toward the ballroom.
42.
TO OUR DISMAY, TICKET SALES for our event continued steadily over the course of spring break.
I had mentioned the event at one point over break and Mom had looked surprised—“Your dad is doing a school thing? And they’re actually selling tickets?”
“Yeah, I mean … a few.”
“We can get in for free though, right?” Sidney had asked.
“It wouldn’t hurt to buy them,” Rose had replied. “Support the station and all that.”
“No, we’ve got two people on the inside of this. We shou
ld get comps,” Sidney insisted, and I couldn’t help but smile.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
When Sasha sent an updated total to the group chat on Monday morning, I had to double-check to make sure I hadn’t read it incorrectly. It didn’t seem possible.
That first afternoon back, Mr. Tucker approached us before the start of class as people were still trickling in.
“I’m blown away,” he said. “Absolutely floored. I never thought…” He shook his head. “We’ve sold almost three hundred tickets. This is going to be amazing. And the thing is, because of the number of advanced sales, we obviously can’t have the event in any of the classrooms. Even the black box theater would be too small. But luckily…” He paused like he was about to drop something truly spectacular. “I managed to get permission for us to use the auditorium.”
I shook my head. “What about the middle school show? They open the next day. Don’t they need it for … dress rehearsal or whatever?”
“I was told they’d wrap up that afternoon with plenty of time for us to get in there. They’ll have their backdrops up, but that won’t really make much of a difference, right?”
“Right,” Jamie replied.
“I’m looking forward to this,” Mr. Tucker said with a smile. “It’s going to be great.”
That was definitely debatable.
* * *
We had just risen from dinner a couple of nights later when Sidney’s phone rang. She looked over at Mom:
“Technically, the forks are down.”
Mom waved a hand, consenting. “Go for it, you quibbler.”
Sidney grabbed her phone and disappeared into our room.
She came back a few moments later, her face stormy, and handed the phone to Mom.
“Hello?”
“What is it?” Rose said as Mom began on a series of Hm. Mm-hm. Yeah. Sidney didn’t answer, just threw herself down on the couch.
“What is it?” Rose repeated.
“Dad’s not coming,” Sidney said.
I blinked. “What?”
“He said he can’t make it. Something came up.”
My stomach seized.
