by Dahlia Adler
The room hadn’t been touched since he’d last been here. He shrugged off Hazem’s suspenders, trying not to remember the sweet shiver when Tegan had led him to those chairs by tugging on one. They were really good at not making Taron feel like an oddball for not wanting to grope everyone all the time like everyone else. They were really good at acting.
“Fool,” Taron said again. “Idiot. Dreamer.”
He crossed to the balcony and stepped out. Soon the company would be back aboard The Globe, voting on the next play, laying out the course for rehearsals and intergalactic travel. He wouldn’t be a lead next time; it wouldn’t be his turn. Maybe he’d take a break, leave them for a few months. Unlike the rest of the company, he had all the money in the universe. And unlike the lot of them, he knew intimately what money could never, ever buy. Maybe he’d go find an entire water planet to stick his head in and erase the too-pleasing memory of Tegan’s mouth and hands and words and wiles.
This time the hand on his shoulder was not Hazem’s.
He turned to find Tegan’s mouth tipped open, looking out from the balcony across the view that was the actual winning facet of this forgotten vacation home.
“Oh, wow.”
“It is something else.” He leaned on the railing, folding his arms over his exposed chest. “You need something? I have to admit I’m burnt out. Sorry we weren’t able to turn them inside out with regret.” Heavens, his voice was the piece turned inside out. He felt sure that Tegan could hear it.
“You do like me, don’t you?” they asked.
Taron looked away. He thought of about twenty things to say. He said none of them.
“Here’s our own hands against our hearts.”
Taron turned swiftly, puzzled. “That’s my line. And if it were true, you…”
“I would what?” Tegan was sort of smiling at him. “I could swear you off in the name of all the fools I’ve kissed in the past. I could ignore these feelings now and bring them out onstage, when it’s safe and convenient. Or I could tally up all the moments that have fashioned the seemingly inextinguishable truth that we are incompatible … and toss them out. I could kiss you right now. Not the way we’ve kissed a thousand times before, but a real kiss.”
Taron’s arms dropped to his sides. “You’re teasing me.”
“No,” Tegan said with a small shrug, hands slipping up his shoulders, his neck, cradling Taron’s face in both hands. “I’m not.”
They waited for him.
And it felt like a very long time indeed, from the moment he’d met them at theatre school years ago … to the day he’d agreed to make them a part of the company his parents had funded, despite their endless bickering … to the posting of the roles for this Much Ado and the scenes they wove together, which amounted to a love story almost against their wills. Almost.
Taron leaned down and kissed them.
And the sky rained diamonds in applause.
Authors’ Note
So many things in this story actually happened. But we can’t tell you which ones.
I BLEED
Inspired by The Merchant of Venice
Dahlia Adler
To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies—and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison
us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.
—SHYLOCK, ACT 3, SCENE 1
“Dude, I am so goddamn depressed.”
“First of all, Tony, you are not depressed,” Sebastian Denunzio says without missing a beat as the two sidestep way too many overeager freshmen in the halls of Venice High. “Are you ugly? Yes. Are you broke? Also yes. Did you bomb the physics midterm? Absolutely.”
“You give the shittiest pep talks.”
“You don’t deserve a pep talk,” Bas tells his friend, and this time, he does stop. “Your dad gave you a Benz for your seventeenth birthday, and you already totaled it. You know what my pop got me for my seventeenth birthday? A phone call. In February.”
“Isn’t your birthday in June?”
“Yup.”
Tony is Bas’s best friend (by default, as their last names, Devenzano and Denunzio, have had them placed together for years), and Bas practically has a degree in listening to his crap, but he’s also a walking disaster, and sometimes Bas’s patience for it wears thin.
For once, Tony takes note of his friend’s annoyance, wrapping his arm around Bas’s shoulders and changing the subject. “Message received. Enough about my troubles. Tell me what’s going on with you, and specifically what’s going on with The Girl.”
Bas winces. “You know nothing’s going on with The Girl. The Girl requires some expensive appreciation, and I’m broker than you are right now. Speaking of which…”
Tony holds out his hands dramatically. “I’m sorry, man. I know I still owe you for those tickets, but my old man is up my ass about the car. I mean, why even give me the machine if you’re gonna make me spend the money to fix it myself, right? Shouldn’t that be, like, part of the gift?”
Had Bas actually expected anything else from Tony, he might’ve been pissed off, but as it is, he knows it’s pointless. “I figured. So, yeah, nothing happening with The Girl.”
“Are you even gonna tell me who she is? This secret’s getting old.” Tony coughs. “I mean, I could probably help you figure something out, if I knew who she was and what she likes and whatever.”
“And whatever.” Bas rolls his eyes as they turn the corner to English and glances at his phone. They still have two minutes, so, what the hell. “Promise you’ll keep your mouth shut? And don’t you dare mention Scout’s Honor.”
“Swear on my entire collection of—”
“Stop. I know where this is going, and hard pass.” He tugs Tony a few feet from the classroom door and looks over his shoulder. “It’s Persia, okay?”
Tony snorts. “Persia Belmont? Like, ‘my dad is a cop’ Persia Belmont? Good luck with that.”
“You see why I can’t exactly take her on a date under the pier. So, yeah, if you’ve got a surprise influx of cash coming and can pay me back, maybe I’ll have a shot. If not, you can chill on mocking me for not making a move.”
“Sorry, bro. But someone’s gotta have cash you can borrow.” Tony squints and scans the room, and Bas watches his eyes land on a slight, bespectacled boy and light up as if Tony’s seen God Himself throw down a spotlight. “Get some from the Heeb.”
“Who?”
“Lauchheimer. The Jewish kid who gets a nosebleed every time we play basketball in gym.”
“That’s because you throw the ball at his face every chance you get, you dick.”
Tony laughs. “Yeah, because it’s hilarious. Anyway, kid deserves it, hiding his horns under that little Jewfro, acting like he’s some poor ‘minority’ when he could probably buy and sell all of us.”
“Man, I think you might be spending too much time watching Fox News
with your dad.” Bas looks at his phone again, wincing at the cracked screen he can’t afford to replace, and slides it back into the pocket of his shorts. “Come on, we’re gonna be late.”
* * *
It isn’t watching Fox News with his dad, is the thing. Well, he does that too, but mostly his dad sits and yells about how the Jews and the Chinese and the Mexicans are destroying the economy. He doesn’t do anything about it, though, and Tony’s tired of not doing anything. The White Knights—they do things. They understand the power of threats and violence, and the fact that they respect and embrace Tony in a way his father doesn’t makes him powerful too. That said, considering the last thing he did with them was scratch swastikas into Lauchheimer’s car, he knows it’s probably gonna require a gentle approach to get the Heeb to cough up some cash so he can finally pay Bas back.
But it’s either Lauchheimer or Tony himself, and since Tony just dropped a month’s worth of allowance at the Ink Parade, getting tatted up with the other Knights, it’s gotta be the Heeb. He knows the guy is loaded, not just because he’s a Jew and they all are, but because his parents are both doctors, which seems to be another thing they all are. Charlie, his favorite Knight who also scares him a little, says it’s because they want access to your organs so they can do weird medical stuff. Charlie’s the one who taught him Jews mess with vaccines, when it was way too late for him to stop him from getting his own. Now every time he can’t figure out the answer to a homework problem or the right way to talk to a girl, Tony knows exactly whose fault it is.
And he’s done everything in his power to make sure the Heeb knows it too.
Clearly, Bas is gonna have to be the face of this request.
Then again, maybe a threat is all that’s really needed here, and Tony definitely knows how to administer those. While Mr. Browning goes on with his useless lesson about whatever quadratic equations are, Tony rubs the new ink on his bicep through his shirt, his fingertips grazing the straight lines of numbers one and four, the smooth curves of the eighty-eight. For now, it’s easy enough to hide it or to pass it off as something sentimental when it’s found. Not like Charlie’s matching version, written right across his knuckles.
Clearly Charlie’s not planning on becoming an investment banker.
They’ll corner Lauchheimer at lunch. Tony knows exactly where he sits with his paper bag of Jew food, too good to eat the cafeteria food because it’s too “unclean” for his precious Chosen blood. Meanwhile, Tony’s stolen it enough times to know it’s just tuna sandwiches half the time like everybody else, and he’d laughed so hard and loud the first time he’d realized it.
Now he doesn’t even check—it just goes straight in the trash.
Come to think of it, he hasn’t seen Lauchheimer in the cafeteria in a while. Maybe he’s cowering in the bathroom to eat his sad sandwiches.
The thought makes Tony laugh his ass off. Wherever Shai is, he’ll find him.
* * *
Shai isn’t in fact in the bathroom. Nor is he in the cafeteria, because he learned his lesson about that a long time ago. It’s the library that’s his solace, and the librarian, Mx. Tubal, who provides his salvation in the form of an office to eat in every day. “It really never gets less brutal out there, does it?” was all they’d said the first time Shai had shown up with his bagel and cream cheese under the pretense of needing a quiet space to finish an assignment. Now the two have a nice thing going, and it almost enables Shai to forget why he’d had to seek refuge in the library in the first place.
Almost.
Still, it’s been protecting him well, which is why when he steps out from his lunchtime cocoon into the hallway, he feels a false sense of safety—disappearing from the cafeteria had become something of an invisibility cloak. But, no more than two minutes after emerging from the library, he hears his name called in a voice that is both unfamiliar and too familiar all at once.
He has never heard Tony Devenzano use his actual name before, and it’s what makes him halt in his tracks for just a moment, and it’s a moment too long.
“Lauchheimer!” Tony says again, clamping a meaty hand on Shai’s shoulder, and it’s all Shai can do not to violently twist out of his grip. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“I already ate my lunch,” Shai manages through gritted teeth.
Tony laughs, as if his continued trashing of Shai’s lunch is nothing more than a joke between friends. Never mind that if Shai’s mother knew of the food being wasted, she would unleash a firestorm of intergenerational trauma–induced rage that would burn Venice High to the ground. Never mind that it’s been mental torture for Shai every single day. Never mind that Shai’s been subsisting on vending machine fare and his belt can’t be cinched any tighter. “No, no, I’ve just got a small favor to ask. See, you know Bas, right? About yea high? Great basketball player? General lady-slayer?”
“If you mean Sebastian Denunzio, yes, I know him.” Not much more fondly than Tony. He never does the shoving, the yanking, the punching, but he’s always there, laughing.
“Bas is in a little bit of money trouble, and being the incredible friend that I am, I’ve agreed to help him out of this particular jam.” Tony begins steering him toward the corner by the garbage can, his grip tightening on Shai’s shoulders for their leisurely stroll. “Unfortunately, I’m a little tapped out, which is where you come in.”
Shai’s eyebrows shoot up. “You want money.”
“Yep.”
“And you think I’m just going to … give you money.”
Chutzpah isn’t a remotely strong enough word for what Shai’s hearing. It’s shocking enough to root him into place, even though the idea of entertaining Tony’s demand is so preposterous, it would make him laugh if he weren’t programmed to be utterly terrified of the boy standing in front of him.
“Not give—lend! Isn’t that what your people do? You lend money to poor suckers and then charge a million percent interest? That’s all I’m asking for here. You lend me … let’s say, three hundred bucks now, and I’ll pay it back with interest.”
“If you can afford to pay back a loan with interest, then why don’t you just lend Sebastian the money?”
“Well, I don’t have the money right now. But I will. I’ll get it.”
It’s then that Shai understands: he is in the position of power. It’s a position he’s never once held over Antonio Devenzano, and it’s exhilarating and daunting and makes his mind race with possibilities.
His heart pounds as he tests out this theory, sliding out from under Tony’s grip and facing him. It requires tilting his head up, confronting for the millionth time the fact that Tony looks like he could crush him with one hand and eat him for breakfast with room for a couple of waffles left over. But Tony doesn’t grab him back, doesn’t threaten him. He can’t, if he expects any cooperation.
For the first time between them, size doesn’t matter. And even though Shai knows he should tell Tony to eff off, that he doesn’t have the money and that he and Bas will have to go squeeze someone else for cash, he can’t bring himself to say the words. This is the kind of control he’s dreamed of for years. And while he knows there’s no way in hell Tony would respect any kind of financial arrangement, it occurs to him that maybe there’s a way to take this power a little further.
He conjures a silent prayer for the bar mitzvah money he’s been stashing away for college, for the favors he’ll have to call in for the plan taking a messy shape in his brain, and says, “Okay.”
Tony’s eyes widen in surprise, and it makes Shai feel a foot taller. “Okay? You’ll give me the money?”
“I’ll lend you the money,” says Shai. “I just need some time to draw up a contract.”
“A contract? What the hell? I just told you I’ll pay you back with interest.”
“Yeah, and what happens if you don’t?” Shai folds his arms over his chest. “I’ll write up the contract, complete with repayment terms, and when you sign, the money’s yours. Deal?�
��
Tony grins the careless grin of a boy who thinks he’s getting away with something, because he always has. “Deal.”
* * *
“‘If the Borrower should fail to deliver the promised sum by the appointed time, the Borrower shall forfeit the tattoo on his right biceps to the Lender, by surgical means to be agreed upon—’” Tony shoves the packet of paper away and glares down at Shai, who, much to his extreme irritation, doesn’t so much as blink. “This is insane. I’m not signing this.”
“Wait, what?” Bas reaches for the contract Shai took three days to draw up, but Tony slams down on his hand. “Ow! What the hell?”
Tony ignores him, fixing his ice-blue eyes on Shai’s calm brown ones. “You’re crazy. You’re literally crazy.”
“Not crazy enough to permanently scar myself with hate,” Shai replies with a calmness that feels like fire ants on Tony’s skin. “You want to borrow money? That’s the deal.”
“Okay, I have to see this.” Neither Tony nor Bas is quick enough to stop Persia from reaching for the papers. Of course, neither of them had wanted her to be aware of this deal to begin with, but naturally, Shai had come marching up just as all three of them were hanging out, and Tony had no doubt it was to make him look like a dick. “Well, that’s a first,” she says, her eyes scanning the pages. “So if you don’t pay the money back in a month…”
“I get to cut that 1488 out of his skin,” Shai confirms, as if it’s totally normal. As if he isn’t talking about mutilating Tony. “Seems fair to me.”
“I don’t get it,” says Persia, wrinkling her nose. She looks up at Bas as if he holds all the answers in the world. “What’s 1488?”
“Yeah, I actually don’t know either,” Bas admits slowly. “What am I missing?”
“Nothing.” Tony’s eyes flash danger at Shai, but the very same kid who used to tremble as he handed over brown paper bags of pita bread and homemade chocolate chip cookies is completely expressionless. Clearly the Heeb has forgotten who he’s dealing with, and there’s no way Tony would show an ounce of fear to that loser. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter, because you’ll have the money, and this stupid-ass contract will be completely irrelevant. But you know what? If I’m putting my body on the line, I want more money. Make it a thousand.”
