I wish you were here. Dad’s got a new girlfriend and she’s hanging out in the house and you’d probably want to kill her. Or who knows? Maybe you really would kill her. I don’t know.
Don’t go so nuts that you forget about me.
Yours truly,
Lena
I folded the paper into three parts and flattened the creases until they were sharp. Then, I climbed off the bed, lifted the mattress, and carefully slid the note on top of a thick stack of letters. All addressed to Marcy.
Before bed, I ventured out of my room for a glass of water. The sounds from my dad’s bedroom had stopped and I tiptoed across the carpet. I saw Misty through the sliding glass doors that opened onto the block of cement we called our patio.
“Yeah, uh-huh,” I heard her saying into a cell phone. She sucked on the butt of a cigarette and blew the smoke from her lips into the dark air. “I’m still here.”
I padded across to the kitchen, where I pulled out a cracked glass and held it under the sink.
“The place is nice,” she was saying. “Enough anyway. Of course Bill could use some help with decorating, but…” She paused to listen, held the cigarette to her mouth, and took a drag until I could make out the hot glow of embers at the tip. “The daughter?” I turned off the sink. She groaned. “I guess I was hoping for the best, but no. Weird. And pig-nosed. No amount of decorating could…”
I accidentally knocked the glass against the sink. I shrank back from the counter. Misty looked over her shoulder, holding the hand with the cigarette over her eyes to peer inside. Seeing me, she waved. “Hi there, sweetie.” She smiled at me. Smiled. Smiled and waved as though I were as deaf and dumb as a dairy cow.
And I just waved back and wished it was her dead instead of my mom.
THREE
Chris
It wasn’t like I believed in fate. Not really. Not in the you-can’t-choose-your-destiny, I-am-the-chosen-one type way. Not even in the we-are-soul-mates version, either. What I believed in was never going back to PE again, which, in fact, made my stumbling into the theater department and meeting Lena feel at least the slightest bit fateful.
Thirty minutes standing at a desk signing my life away to a Mrs. Van Lullen with heart-shaped lips and an ugly blouse, and I was finally able to shed the psychological beatdown of dealing with school bureaucracy and strut out of that administration office with my hand held high. Because in it fluttered my revised schedule. Yep, I was feeling like a new man. I held the schedule out for Lena, who was skulking just outside the door to see.
Lena wore tights under her boots with holes and runs all the way up to where they disappeared under her black leather skirt. It was very grunge girl in the subway, and I kind of dug it from a purely fashion statement standpoint.
“Was she mad?” Lena asked. I’d seen this look twice now, a particular way Lena had of swallowing her smile so that you had to study her eyes to tell whether she was pleased. She was.
I retrieved the pen that I’d tucked behind my ear, clicked it closed, and dropped it into my satchel. “Well, she made a face like she’d just eaten a lemon.”
“What’d you tell her?” Lena’s voice was quiet under the din of the hallway. Since arriving this morning, I’d kept one eye out for the clothes thieves, unsure if their brand of assholery was strictly limited to menswear or if they were perhaps looking to expand.
I scanned the crowd again for good measure. It looked more manageable today. Not everyone seemed to be wearing the same dusty pair of jeans and oversized belt buckle. I spotted a girl with a guitar strapped to her back. Another wearing a lab coat and talking into a voice recorder. There was a guy in a suit. And a tall goofy dude spinning a basketball on his finger.
Although the feeling was almost certainly owed to the rushing high of successfully changing my schedule out of PE, plus the bonus that I had made my first bona fide Hollow Pines friend, by some small degree, I was starting to relax.
“That I forgot I had asthma and a sprained ankle and a very rare but acute case of cardiomyopathy,” I answered. “I think the vocabulary alone scared her on that last one.”
“Impressive.” She raised her eyebrows and the eyeliner swooping out from the corners of her dark brown eyes inched up. “It looks like we now have both math and drama together. Not bad.” She handed the schedule back to me.
Not bad at all, I thought. After a rough start, everything was beginning to fall into place. Sure, Hollow Pines High was a far cry from the Gershwin, but at least I’d be somewhat back in my element.
Even though my dad was a Broadway producer, I’d never actually acted before. If forced to think about it, I would say that perhaps I pictured myself becoming a critic one day. I’d seen everything from Fiddler on the Roof to Book of Mormon to Hamilton. Mom still got starstruck anytime she met Lin-Manuel Miranda, but I didn’t.
I had a decent singing voice when it came to old stuff like Sinatra and James, though. Lena had already informed me that I’d have to take part in the fall musical, and I supposed that wasn’t the worst thing. I would audition for something basic. Chorus Member Number Four, Five, or Six, something like that. No speaking roles, nothing crazy.
Lena walked me to the auditorium, but there were times when she was so quiet that I had to double-check that she was still there.
I mostly remembered the route to the theater and when we arrived, I opened the door. I was immediately met with the sound of singing. A girl’s voice, strong and yearning. The door whooshed shut behind me, and everyone turned to stare at me. The girl on stage faltered. She missed a note. The piano played on. But the melody of her song broke midnote.
Crap. It wasn’t just any girl; it was the girl. The one I’d seen from the track yesterday. Her auburn hair, parted down the middle, cascaded down either side of her face. She was lit up by spotlights, and I blinked through the darkness of the theater at the blinding beauty of her.
“Cut, cut.” The teacher waved her hands from the front row and stood up.
The girl’s eyes shot to me and then away, skittish as a rabbit. She ran her pale hands through her hair and toyed with the ends while she started to pace back and forth across about two square feet of space.
I checked my watch. I was only two minutes after the start of the period, but the entire class was looking at me like I’d just murdered a kitten, which for the record I would never do. Or even think about. Christ, it was just a thought. I scratched behind my ear, switching my weight from foot to foot and trying to think about anything other than murdered kittens.
“In the theater,” the teacher—Mrs. Fleury—said, “if you’re not early, you’re late.” She was a heavyset woman who wore drapes of hot pink fabric and a silk turquoise headpiece with a feathered plume that stuck out from a jeweled broach. I walked the decline from the top of the auditorium to where Mrs. Fleury waited. “A stray?” she asked, taking the yellow slip of paper I held out for her to see. She stretched it away from herself to read.
I tried hard not to look at the girl on stage. I tried and failed because I kept glancing up and then back at the floor like a big dope. In case I had forgotten, I was still a total idiot.
As for Lena, I glanced back and saw that she had miraculously managed to slink into one of the back-row seats unnoticed. If I were going to fly under the radar here at Hollow Pines, maybe I should be taking notes from Lena. She was something of a Jedi Master.
“Right. Not early equals late. Got it. I’ll keep that in mind.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets and tried to appear unassuming, but come on, she did know that didn’t make sense, right?
“And Miss Hyde.” Mrs. Fleury turned from me to the girl who had been singing. “In the theater, one stops for no man and for nothing. The stage may be going up in flames but still you sing on, my dear. Now from the top.”
The pianist trilled a couple of chords then began to play. Without missing a beat, the girl on stage started to sing again. Her voice was lower than I would have expected and more clear. Lon
ging rang out from her and pulled at my heart so that it left me both uncomfortable and wanting more all at once.
I melted back into an empty chair.
“She claims to have been at the original stage opening for Les Misérables in Paris. Personally, I’d be surprised if she’s ever made it past Oklahoma, but she does have a flair for the dramatic.” Lena’s voice was in my ear. I startled, snatching my elbow away from hers.
“Jesus!” I hissed and then rubbed the goose bumps off the backs of my arms. “Who are you talking about?” My attention shot to the girl singing.
“Mrs. Fleury.” She pointed at the drama teacher.
I rolled my eyes. “Do you always sneak up on people like this?”
Lena pulled her knees into her chest and sat with her boots on the spongy chair cushion. “I make a perfectly natural amount of noise for a person of my size.”
“That’s debatable.” I returned my elbow to the armrest.
She shrugged and scratched at a spot on her wrist where I noticed a tattoo of three stars inked. I frowned, a little impressed. My dad would never let me get a tattoo.
“Who is she?” I asked. “The girl whose song I interrupted.”
“Audition,” Lena corrected, matter-of-factly. “You interrupted her audition. For a part in the fall musical. That’s Honor Hyde.”
“Audition? Great.” I slouched lower in my seat. “And, um, she wouldn’t happen to be the type of person that doesn’t care about auditions, would she?” I listened to the push and pull of her voice as she seemed to draw the notes out of her heart and press them out into the audience’s palms. Every ounce of her was filled with caring.
“She cares only about as much as if her life literally depended on it.”
“Oh, so on the off chance she’s a nihilist it’s fine.” I removed my glasses and rubbed the lenses on the sleeve of my open flannel shirt. In terms of fashion, I’d opted for somewhere between Rydell High and barista today, digging up the most unremarkable outfit I could find in my mess of a closet—checkered shirt and a slim-cut pair of blue jeans.
When I slid the glasses back onto the bridge of my nose, the girl came into clearer focus and I smiled, despite myself.
Honor.
I watched her intently. It was an unusual name, but it seemed to fit her.
“Subject change?” Lena said. While I was watching Honor, Lena, I realized, had been tuned into me.
I flinched. “You don’t like her.” It wasn’t a question. We hadn’t even been on the subject of Honor per se.
“I don’t care about her one way or the other.” Lena’s eyes were bright and shining in the darkness of the theater. “I used to be friends with her sister.” Which, frankly, didn’t feel like much of an explanation. I wasn’t sure whether to believe Lena. Was Honor one of those bitchy Queen Bee types? Or a theater diva? Or both? And why was I so interested?
I wasn’t. It was Lena who’d piqued my interest. I could blame her. I decided not to press the issue with Lena any further because I didn’t want or need to know.
Honor’s audition ended, and the room seemed to go unbearably still for a full fifteen seconds. I could feel the collective density of the bodies around me. On stage, her fists clenched at her sides. She stood there for a minute, eyes casting intently above the heads of the audience, before making some sort of internal decision, to which she nodded and walked off the stage.
There was a short spurt of applause from members of the front two rows, but it was halfhearted, like they weren’t sure whether it was appropriate.
Mrs. Fleury stood again, and the folding chair clapped shut behind her. “Very beautiful, Miss Hyde. Very beautiful indeed.” And I might have been imagining it, but she seemed to wipe at a wet spot on her cheek. The drama teacher flourished a clipboard and used her pen to scan through a list of names. “Mr.… Autry!” she declared. “You’re up next.” My heart came to a screeching halt in my chest.
“Up next?” My voice managed to crack like I was twelve. “Up next what?” I touched my ear and thought seriously about feigning hearing loss.
“Up next to audition. We’ll be performing a musical version of Shakespeare’s classic Antony and Cleopatra. It’s going to be resplendent!” She rolled her r.
“But … I just got here.”
“Yes, and late, if I’m remembering correctly.” Mrs. Fleury gave a tight-lipped smile and tapped the clipboard with one long nail.
I nodded slowly and reluctantly rose to my feet. I turned to needlessly dig through my bag, stalling for time. This was the price I was paying to get out of PE. I had to decide right then and there whether it was worth it.
I spoke to Lena through gritted teeth. “What—why don’t you have to—?”
“I work backstage,” she said, moving her head close to mine to whisper.
“Well, can’t I do that with you?” I said.
She tilted her head at me curiously. “Are you good with technology?”
“No—”
“Mr. Autry,” Mrs. Fleury’s voice rang out. “Are your feet working?”
I abandoned my bag. As far as stalling tactics went, it was a pretty lame one. “If they weren’t, could I stay put?” I mumbled. Then—“Coming!”
I kept wiping my sweaty hands on my jeans and glancing around at all the eyes trained on me. I climbed the five steps onto the stage like I was mounting the gallows. There were none of the calm feelings of solitude I’d idealized from yesterday while standing on stage now. It was just a stage, and it felt absurdly high up. The spotlights were probably giving my pasty complexion a sunburn. I felt droplets beading up on my forehead. I ran my sleeve across my face. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. As though that were any big surprise given that I was the king of bad ideas.
After all, I’d already gotten myself kicked halfway across the country by them.
Mrs. Fleury’s face in the front row was expectant. The longer I waited the more nightmarish this got. I turned to the pianist. “Right. Hi. Um, do you know any Eagles by chance?”
The pianist, a boy who was my age, but with an impressive start at a beard, shook his head.
“No?” My mouth lingered around the o. “Ooookay then. No worries.” I took a deep breath and started to snap, parsing out the rhythm. Five, six, seven, eight …
Then, softly at first I began to fumble through the lyrics of “New Kid in Town” by the Eagles. Sure, it was obvious, but I was put on the spot.
Halfway through the first verse, I worried that I sounded like a jerk. The song was about how everyone was watching the new kid and had great expectations. I peered out into the darkness and found Honor’s face. Her mouth was twisted to the side as she chewed on the inside of her cheek, lost in thought. I found my resolve in a split second, the change in lyrics coming to me before I had time to question.
“Honor, don’t hate me,” I belted out. Her eyes snapped to mine. “The new kid in town. Sorry I messed up your tune, but you didn’t let us down…” Not a perfect rhyme with the original, but it was close and a few chuckles sounded from the class.
At the next chorus, I did the same, and a small smile crept up Honor’s lips. She turned her cheek to me, but I could see the tautness around the cheekbone and knew I’d made my mark.
When the song ended—not a moment too soon—I got a solid smattering of claps, enough to give a short bow and a small salute to Honor. I mouthed, sorry, to her as I returned to my seat. And she mouthed back, it’s okay. Or it could have been, die today. But I was feeling optimistic.
A few snickers came from the front row. As I passed it, someone coughed—or at least pretended to—because I distinctly heard the words Naked Boy mixed in. Not exactly a Shakespearean-quality insult, but still not a nickname I wanted to stick with me here at Hollow Pines. I blew my cheeks out and dropped back into my squeaky chair. In the front row, one of the boys—I was betting the one with the spontaneous coughing fit—was whispering something into his friend’s ear. Then he glanced back at me. H
is blond hair was slicked back behind his ears. His lips were too pink when he grinned at me with as much warmth as an Alaskan winter.
I suppose it had been too much to hope for that John Mark somehow didn’t have any other friends in this school. Maybe die today would be more fitting after all.
I snuck a peek over at Honor. But she was focused on the stage, a contented expression on her face. I could understand that. Sometimes a darkened theater just before the lights came on felt more like home than our apartment to me.
That was how she looked now. At home.
And it made me miss my own home terribly.
FOUR
Lena
“You promised you’d keep it a secret.”
I lifted my head and peered through the slats of the handicap bathroom stall where I could make out the reflection of Ava, a girl I recognized, who now sported pink highlights in her dark brown hair. Her athletic frame—muscled shoulders and toned back—hid whoever was speaking from view.
Earlier, I had taped an OUT OF ORDER sign on the front of the stall door because nobody ever bothered to check whether it was true. I sat on the tiled floor with one of the library’s laptops balanced on my thighs. I didn’t have a laptop at home. I didn’t have one here at school, either, but I was good at making things go missing, at least for a little while.
“I only told Ashley,” Ava said.
The other girl turned. She was thinner and shorter with icy blue eyes and blond hair cut into a shoulder-length bob. “Do you understand what a secret is exactly?” said Paisley. Everyone at Hollow Pines knew Paisley. I found it to be a good gauge of character whether someone liked her. Sometimes I overheard hushed conversations between girls, barely acquainted with her, talking as though she were a celebrity. Oh, she’s so much nicer in person than you’d expect her to be! She buys all her underwear from Frederick’s of Hollywood! She doesn’t even have to diet to look like that! That sort of thing.
Teen Phantom Page 3