Teen Phantom

by Chandler Baker

  “Chris! Chris!” I twisted and squinted my eyes to see into the darkness. “Chris!” There was a wave of pale skin. And then, only a few feet away, a pair of eyes outlined in thick charcoal liner.

  “Lena?” I hissed back.

  She nodded. “Come on.”

  I glanced back at the stage. “But I—”

  She disappeared into the darkness and moments later, a gust of wind, as though from a fan, came through and scattered the sheet music. I took one look and determined that it was going to be a while before Mrs. Fleury and her turquoise headpiece regained the floor.

  “Sure, why not,” I mumbled and followed in the direction Lena had gone, off into the wings, sure that nobody would miss my presence much. I was totally bombing out there anyway, and Honor had made sure that the whole cast thought I was making up theater connections to sound cool. How much worse could it get?

  “Snickers?”

  I nearly had a legitimate heart attack when the soft, ghostly voice of a girl came from behind me. Of course, when I whirled around it was only Lena, staring wide-eyed at me. “You have got to stop doing that!” I said.

  She tore at the candy bar wrapper and held it up again. “Doing what?”

  “Scaring me.” I had to physically shake the chill from the back of my neck.

  “Do you normally get scared when people offer you candy?” she asked. It was generally impossible to tell whether Lena was making a joke.

  “It’s one of the top five things my mom told me to look out for as a kid, so yeah, maybe,” I said, defensively. A small pang ricocheted through my chest at the mention of my mom. To compensate, I snatched the Snickers from her and took a big bite of peanut butter and chocolaty goodness. It improved my mood considerably.

  Lena smiled. She had a dreamy quality to her when she was pleased.

  She led me through the dressing rooms and to a narrow corridor that ran around the side of the auditorium, out of view of the audience. Maybe I should have stuck with gym class because I was breathing harder than Lena was on the incline. But we arrived at a door painted pitch-black. She twisted the knob and I found myself in a control room, the front half of which was a tinted window overlooking the stage below.

  “Hey, neat.” I strode over to stand in front of the window. A soundboard with an array of lights blinked near my fingertips. “You get to sit up here and watch everything?”

  “Yeah, I’m not much for the spotlight, I guess.” She took a seat in one of the chairs and propped her boots up on the edge of the soundboard. “It’s better for me here.”

  “You know,” I said, “you’ve got a lot of really good hiding places, Leroux.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but seemed to think better of it. I held out the half-eaten Snickers. She waved it away and pulled another out of her pocket.

  “Don’t feel bad about down there,” she said. “I’m pretty sure the inside of Mrs. Fleury’s head looks like a craft store after a tornado or something. She’s crazy disorganized.”

  I plopped hard into the seat beside Lena. “It’s that obvious I’m tanking?”

  “You’re too hard on yourself.”

  “Tell that to Drake.”

  “Now that girl.” She pointed to a girl who had snuck a phone on stage and was busy texting. “She’s not doing so hot. Missed her cue about five times in a row.”

  “At least she has an excuse.” But I felt better anyway. Even more so after Lena and I had passed the time poking fun at the various mishaps on stage. All these years watching as a member of the audience, a silent critic, an ardent fan, I’d never realized how hard it actually was to be up on stage.

  “You know, my dad’s a producer,” I said. “Of Broadway shows. He puts up a lot of the money, bosses people around, tells them whether their dreams will be a reality or whether they won’t be. But,” I mused, more to myself than to Lena. She kept quiet. “He’s not really a part of it, you know?” An image entered my head of my father in his oversized pin-striped suit and buffed shoes trying to follow the choreography, missing the eight counts, tripping over his feet. A snort welled up and burst its way out of my nose. I pressed my hand over my mouth and nostrils.

  “What?” Lena asked, removing her boots from the soundboard and leaning forward to listen. “What?”

  I shook my head. My lips still pursed tightly over a smile. My dad would never let himself try to be a part of something like this. I looked down at the stage. He was too proud, so afraid of damaging his image that he’d sent his only son halfway across the country. “Nothing,” I said. “Just thought of something funny.”

  Lena stared with her too-wide eyes at me. “After school today?” she asked.

  I ran my hand through my hair. “Yes, definitely. That sounds good. See you then.”

  And she left me with the dreamy, far-off Lena look that somehow made me like her, even if she was a little strange.

  * * *

  I WAS RIGHT.

  Nobody had noticed my absence. I joined the rest of the class, who were milling around between the seats. I fumbled blindly for my satchel between them when I felt a light tap on my shoulder. I turned expecting to see Lena, but it was Honor. Her spine was as rod-straight as a ballerina’s and she had her chin tilted proudly up again as if she were having a silent conversation with the rest of the room, one where she said, you can’t touch me, which wasn’t to say that it was haughty body language because I didn’t think that it was actually. But I couldn’t pinpoint what else it could be.

  “Why did you make me seem like a crazy person out there?” she demanded in a hushed but clear tone. Her eyes were steady on mine, green even in the dim light.

  My own eyebrows shot up. “Me?” I pressed my thumb into my chest. “I made you look crazy.”

  “Did I stutter?” She brushed strands of hair off her shoulders.

  I located my satchel and picked up the long strap, slinging it over my shoulder. The weight of it bounced against my hip. “Why did you make me sound like I thought I was better than everyone else?” I countered, taking a step back, deeper into the row and out of earshot of our classmates.

  “I was standing up for you.” She took a step after me.

  I looked over my shoulder and cracked my knuckles. “Did I ask to be stood up for?” I said, actually getting a tad bit righteously indignant, which okay, was my favorite form of indignation. Before class, I was only trying to be nice to her. I wasn’t trying to offer anyone else a reason to peg me as the stuck-up city boy.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” she asked with equal passion.

  I huffed. “God, okay, listen just because I’ve had dinner with…” I lowered my voice and looked around for any signs of Drake. “… Sutton Foster or—or anyone else for that matter, doesn’t mean that I will be able to do anything other than make a total fool of myself on stage. And you … you…” I flailed my hand in the general direction of the stage. “… sharing our private conversation up there, really isn’t helpful.”

  She twisted her mouth sideways and studied me. “I disagree.”

  “Oh, you do, do you?” I shoved my hands into my pockets, my shoulders hunching naturally up around my ears. “Good to know.”

  “What one can appreciate, one can replicate.”

  “Yeah? Great. Very wise. And who exactly told you that?” I said, not bothering to hide my skepticism. Although I’d spent most of my life surrounded by some of the world’s greatest talents, I’d also seen the flip side. Girls that sang barefoot in subway stations hoping to be discovered. Actors who quit their waitstaff jobs because their bosses wouldn’t let them take off for an audition, which they didn’t land anyway because they were good but not quite good enough. There were more of those stories than there were fairy tales. So many more and that was why, like my father, I found myself so magnetically drawn to talent. It was a much rarer quality than Hollywood would lead you to believe.

  She rolled her eyes. “I don’t listen to other people anymore.
I came up with it myself.”

  I narrowed my eyes, observing her. Despite her studied control, at her side I noticed one of her hands trembling. When she saw me noticing, she snatched it away, tucking it firmly behind her back and out of sight.

  “Right, okay. I’m not trying to replicate or whatever. I’m trying to fly under the radar, just make it through, you know?” I pushed my elbow in the direction of the far wall, a sign that I was finished. “So I better get going.” I tapped two fingers to my forehead in salute. “See you later, Honor.”

  “Wait.” She caught my shoulder, the force of her fingers much stronger than I imagined they’d be. “Wait,” she repeated. She wet her lips and took a deep breath. “Do you maybe want to run lines with me?” she asked in her clear-as-a-bell voice that was so obviously reminiscent of the way that she sang it was as though you could catch a melody in a simple question of hers. “After school, I mean.”

  My throat tensed. I could tell the question had cost her something to ask, but I wasn’t sure what exactly or why. I wished she wouldn’t look at me like that. It was a well-established fact that I was a nice guy, misguided, sure, but I was not an asshole in the traditional sense, and I didn’t want to be an asshole now, but nevertheless. “I can’t.” I forced the words out. I had costs to consider also.

  Her eyebrows, two shades lighter than her auburn hair, lifted slightly and stayed there. “Oh,” she said. I had turned back again, because, as I said, I’m not an asshole and so we stood opposite each other, the awkwardness stretching between us until it was something either of us could have reached out and touched. “Tomorrow?” she asked after the pause.

  I gritted my teeth. “Can’t,” I said. The muscles in my stomach folded themselves up origami-style. “You’re the lead of the play,” I added. “I’m sure you have tons of other friends you can ask to help you.”

  “Not really.” Her chin lifted another degree. I tried not to look surprised. I wasn’t sure whether I was surprised, in fact.

  This was where I was supposed to swoop in with an excuse. If I couldn’t, but I wanted to, then I was expected to offer up an alternative. No, I can’t tonight, I’m getting an emergency root canal, but how about the day after next? That sort of thing.

  I bit back the words, using my teeth as a gate.

  There were only three rules. Three. And I’d come up with my Three Rules to Avoid Being Shipped Off to Military School specifically because I thought any more than three and I’d be sure to break one. Here was my first true test standing in front of me in a cashmere sweater with seemingly credible taste in theater and a voice like a literal angel, but even more than I liked cashmere sweaters and girls who reminded me of real-life angels, I hated doing push-ups on command and detested being yelled at in public like a dog.

  And I really did look awful in cargo pants.

  So “sorry” was all that I added. The non-apology landed like a grenade between us.

  Her cheek twitched. She was still waiting, trying to work out the why of it all as if it were a particularly hard calculus problem. I blamed myself for laying it on so thick with the Sprite toast. I felt chips of my heart breaking off. Because she didn’t know what an idiot I was, and I hated the fact that sometimes my idiocy could hurt other people.

  Now she was busy trying to sew up the fleeting view of vulnerability she’d allowed me to see, but the seams were busting open.

  “Fine.” Her shrug was sharp and robotic. “Whatever. No big deal. Just don’t make me look crazy, okay?”

  I wrinkled my forehead and straightened my glasses on my nose. “What’s your obsession with looking crazy anyway?” I asked. “It’s, uh, kind of stigmatizing to people with real mental-health issues.” Stop talking, Chris. “Like, oh, I’m so OCD.” I waved my palms as if in a mild state of panic. “That kind of stuff. It’s a little, I don’t know, passé, isn’t it?”

  She rolled her eyes at me with such disgust. “Obviously, you’ve already been warned about me or something.” She tucked her script under her arm. “No big deal.”

  “You’ve said a version of ‘no big deal’ at least four times in, literally, the last, like, four seconds.”

  “Look who can count.”

  “That usually means it’s a big deal.” She was walking away, and I was following because this was all going wrong. “It’s not personal.” She let out a high-pitched breath. “It’s not personal to you.” She shook her head, making her way out of the auditorium. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you mean I must have been warned? Is that some kind of code for something?” This town was constantly managing to confuse me.

  “Forget it. The outcome is the same.” She shrugged her backpack higher onto her shoulder. She was piecing herself back together, battening herself up tight again. I felt a painful wrench in my stomach. I didn’t know whether it was for her or for me or for the part of herself that she’d seemed willing to give but was now taking away.

  “Hold up!” I called, jogging a few steps up the aisle after her. “Actually, I … would like that,” I said. A friend. I could have another friend, I thought. Maybe.

  She turned back slowly. “Like what?”

  “To run lines. I would like to run lines with you.” When I exhaled my cheeks puffed out, and I probably looked like a huge dork. “Why not?”

  She narrowed her eyes as though trying to sniff out the trick. Her mouth pursed, and I wondered if she’d been tricked by boys before. “You … would?”

  I held my hand across my heart. “Scout’s honor.”

  She tilted her head. “You don’t look like much of a Boy Scout.”

  “Wait till you see me build a fire.”

  EIGHT

  Lena

  This was the shot I liked best of Chris: where he smiled to himself, not the crooked smile that gave him a dimple in his right cheek, but a slow and easy one, something funny crossing his mind that neither I nor anyone else was privy to, and yet here was the evidence right in close-up, frame tight on the lips so that the camera lost the eyes, the nose, the whole rest of the face, but the moment, that single expression, was caught on film, memorialized by me because I cared enough to do it.

  I fast-forwarded through the stray footage in my camera, past the sounds of classroom bells and stomping feet while I sat alone on the stairs leading up to the school, the viewfinder propped open on my knees. It was the end of the week, and the parking lot had long since emptied with no sign of Chris. Instead, I’d received only a text to say that something had come up and that he wouldn’t be able to make it.

  And now I was stuck piecing together a version of Chris from film that I’d taken in a few stolen moments over the last few days. I had first gotten the idea to video Chris while watching drama class from the auditorium’s control room. It was an easy way to pass the time, zooming in on him, zooming out. And then when I pressed record, I realized it was even nicer to be able to play the video back, particularly in quiet moments, when I was stuck in my room while my dad and Misty sprawled across the sofa.

  Chunks of Misty’s hair had burned off from the bleach I’d put in her shampoo bottle and she’d had to run her scalp under the faucet because of all the stinging. She was more stupid than I thought, though, because she hadn’t seemed to figure out it was me. I’d even heard her calling the number on the back of the bottle complaining to the shampoo company about how their product had ruined her hair. I sat on my bed trying to figure out whether I felt guilty. But Misty’s hair hadn’t looked that good in the first place.

  So I flicked through the images and video until I lost myself in the world outside my home. Once I had enough footage, I decided I’d make something of it and give it to him as a gift.

  I was sure he’d love it. I’d seen graduation montages before, a rolling story of pictures and video set to music. I’d seen full-page collages put together by best friends in the yearbook. These things made everyone feel close and like they belonged. Now it could be that way for Chris and me, too, I wa
s almost certain.

  Especially if I gave it a really good soundtrack.

  From the school steps, I studied Chris’s text. I’d been silly to think that Chris would blow me off without a word. The text had come fifteen minutes after school, so I’d been waiting, alone, my fingernails mindlessly working at the dry skin around my wrist, picking and picking until it was pink and raw. My nerves frayed so that the ping of the text made me jump.

  I read it. He’d gotten tied up. He was so sorry but would catch up with me later.

  Lena, Lena, Lena, I thought and nearly thunked myself in the forehead. I had been so silly. Just look at his text. Relaxed. Friendly. Intimate. Nothing amiss.

  I could laugh at myself, even at the ragged patches of picked-over skin on my hands. Because of course I could be like that—intense and a tiny bit paranoid when I didn’t have any place to focus my attention.

  Chris said I was his best friend, though.

  I was his best friend.

  That meant something.

  That was why it was no big deal he canceled our after-school plans. Something came up. And really what did it matter? Chris wasn’t going to disappear. He wasn’t going to be gone tomorrow. Chris noticed me. He saw me. He talked to me. He liked talking to me.

  My mood instantly buoyed, I played another piece of footage. The back of Chris’s head appeared on screen as he walked down the hall. I’d noticed in the videos that Chris had good posture when he thought no one was watching but became slouchier around others, and I wondered why that was.

  After I’d played through all the captured film, I clicked shut the viewfinder of my camera and tucked it into the pocket of my oversized cardigan. My car was the last left in the lot. It beeped twice when I unlocked it, and once when I locked myself inside. The foam stuffing that poked out of the cracked leather scratched the backs of my legs as I drove the two miles down Poe Creek and took a right at the corner of Havelock.