Teen Phantom

by Chandler Baker

  I swallowed. Blood rang in my ears. This woman, this god-awful woman in my mother’s house, in my mother’s bed. And she was threatening me.

  I returned to my room, got dressed, packed enough clothes for a few days, and proceeded to untether myself from this house for as close to good as I could manage.

  ELEVEN

  Chris

  Mrs. Fleury’s admonitions must have been rubbing off on me because I was the first to arrive at the auditorium for today’s rehearsal. The lights were off. In the quiet, the heater thrummed, and the air was dark and warm. I was conscious of my body and how noisy even the swish of my jeans became.

  In every theater, no matter which one or where it was, I had a favorite seat. It was in the fifth row, on the aisle of the right wing. I liked it best because, there, my view of the actors was slightly off center. My preference for it was counterintuitive. But I liked to catch their profiles and the looks on their faces as they turned from the stage, moving, resetting, preparing, always exposing an instant in which I could catch the man or woman underneath the performance rather than the expression they were offering to the audience.

  I set my bag down in the fifth row, right-wing aisle and stared up at the darkened stage, wondering whether I would ever feel as though I belonged anywhere again.

  Soon, students began to stream through the door. The sound of books being dropped, zippers being unzipped broke through my thoughts. The houselights flickered on, and I craned to look back, sure that Lena was lurking behind the black glass of the sound room.

  To my immense relief, I felt normal with Lena again and had written my brief wariness of her off as a bad mood. She’d been a good listener. She had a kick-ass cabin. She was a bit of a lone wolf, sure, but so what? I wasn’t exactly crushing the popularity game in school myself.

  A chair bottom whined from the row behind me. “There are three openings.” Honor’s chin hooked over the back of the chair next to me. She held the edges of an application carefully between her fingertips, as though she was scared for it to wrinkle. Even though she’d popped up behind me, no warning, with her breath basically in my ear, I didn’t startle, and I realized I’d been hoping for her. “I saw the alert today,” she said. “I have my Google alerts set up so I would be sure to be the first to know and—”

  I twisted in my seat bottom so that we were nearly nose to nose. “Honor, I have literally no idea what you’re talking about. Which is not to say that I don’t appreciate your enthusiasm, of course.”

  “The Poncy Sebastian Studio.” She sat up pin straight, and I hooked my arm over the back of the seat. “They’re opening spots to their summer intensive. They haven’t opened up new student spots in years. Years.”

  “Yeah, still not following,” I said. “Is this, like, a Twitter thing? Because my aunt and uncle allow me very little time on the Internet.”

  Her eyes widened. “Poncy Sebastian is a visionary. No, he’s the visionary. He’s trained winners of Oscars, Golden Globes, SAG Awards, Tonys. He’s single-handedly created a super teaching method to incorporate not just Meisner and Method acting, but also the Alexander Technique and Stanislavski. He’s a literal legend and he’s taking three new students for his intensive in New York this summer and I’m going to be one of them.”

  “In New York?” It felt like somebody had rammed a thumb into my belly button. I tugged the application from her grip. “May I?” I asked. It asked for a résumé of roles, a video of best performance, and an essay.

  “I’m surprised you’ve never heard of it,” she said, taking the application back, a bit defensively.

  “Well, don’t be. I never thought about becoming an actor,” I said.

  “But you love the theater.” She hugged the papers to her chest. “I’ve heard you.”

  “Yes, as a spectator. Big difference.” I turned to face the stage where the pianist was warming up.

  “Six weeks in New York. Six weeks!” she said. “You’ll have to recommend all the best local places to eat. And coffee shops where famous people hang out. But not like this week’s reality TV star celebrity, the real old-school New York crowd.” Her fingers dug into my shoulder. “Promise?”

  “If you get in,” I said. I didn’t know why I said that because the moment the words were out I felt way worse than if I’d been jabbed in the belly button. Maybe I was a little jealous. Honor in New York. Me here.

  Her fingers released my shoulder. “Honor.” I turned. But her seat was already empty. I pushed my forehead into the plastic seat back in front of me. “Stupid,” I groaned.

  “Perhaps a little less time flirting with the lead, little more not sucking, huh?” I raised my chin just high enough to see Drake walking across the room to meet Mrs. Fleury, blowing the steam off his stupid mug of tea.

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  He lifted two fingers in salute. “Anytime, neophyte.”

  On stage, Mrs. Fleury was beginning to organize the chaos. She busied herself arranging her pupils. Honor wouldn’t look at me, which seemed fair since I’d for some reason decided to take up the mantle of resident buzzkill. It made me feel like an island. Population: one.

  It didn’t help when Mrs. Fleury made me go stand in the corner.

  As we began rehearsal, the houselights dimmed, turning the audience rows dark. Light bathed only the stage and suddenly nothing else existed. My mouth got dry right away. My heart rate sped up. It was go time. The music started, and it all happened so fast. The people around me began moving, and I realized that I was watching them while my feet stayed stuck in place.

  Shit. I scurried after them. I was guessing scurrying wasn’t a great look on stage. Yeah.

  Drake, cadaver white with his severe hair and uppity chin, made sure to say, “Not again,” into the microphone.

  “Cut, cut, start it over again.” Mrs. Fleury stood at the front of the stage waving her pink fabric at us. “This time, everyone please pay attention.” She fanned herself with the master script.

  The number began again. I started on time. A thrill ran through the arches of my feet. Step-step-step-grapevine and—thud. Drake’s shoulder slammed into my mine, and the momentum of our two bodies moving in opposite directions careened us each sideways. “Idiot,” he muttered under his breath, while dramatically nursing his shoulder.

  “That wasn’t me,” I insisted. I looked to Honor, but she quickly glanced away, her eyes skirting the edge of the light instead.

  Deep breath. In. Out. I clenched my fist and returned to my mark. Five, six, seven, eight.

  The next time, the same traffic jam followed, and Drake shouted out, “Christ almighty!” like he was in church, only angrier. No, that time I was sure I had come in right on my count. Drake slapped his script against the ground.

  Wait, was he coming in too early? I pressed my lips together, studying him. Again, I sought eye contact with Honor, but when she didn’t—or wouldn’t—look at me, I cupped my hand over my eyes and peered up into the black glass of the control room.

  The lights flickered. I cocked my head as if in question.

  By the fourth time through, I was certain Drake was having trouble with his eight counts, but did he know it? I couldn’t tell if the theatrical rage was a diversion tactic from his own mistakes or whether he truly believed that I or anyone else was at fault.

  By the way that he was barking at everyone on stage, though, I imagined he at least suspected that the problem was him and had therefore decided to go on offense.

  The next time he bellowed in my direction, I felt my teeth bare. As if in response, the biggest spotlight spun directly onto him. My eyes flitted up to the control room.

  Through the next run-through, the light followed wherever Drake moved. It took a few minutes, but before long he held his arm up to shield his face. “Hey, a little less light?” he shouted up in the direction of the booth.

  The light lowered obligingly. That was, at least until he was ready to gear up for his solo again. The spotlight had miracu
lously found its way back to his face.

  There were a few stifled laughs among the chorus members. Before long, Drake had begun to sweat so profusely that he had to keep wiping his eyes with his sleeve. He was getting angrier. It wasn’t making me feel as good as it should have.

  “Am I the only competent person in this production?” he snapped at no one in particular, but I felt his eyes casting over me, like a shark trying to decide whether to sink his teeth in.

  The next time he began his solo, feedback screeched through his microphone. He doubled over, covering his hands with his ears.

  Mrs. Fleury rushed over to him. “Not so close to the mic, dear,” she said, directing him. “You have to hold it away.” She demonstrated.

  “I know how to hold a mic,” he growled.

  Sweat glinted off of Drake’s forehead. And I could hear him murmuring quietly to himself, away from the mic, words that sounded a lot like chastisement.

  Whether because she truly believed it or was throwing a Hail Mary, Mrs. Fleury decided the cast was ready to try a song with the full background music and not just the piano. I was skeptical.

  The song would begin with a solo for Drake as the strapping Mark Antony. The song blared into the theater and somehow, Drake seemed to have waited an eight count too long before starting to sing, and he was off, unable to recover. “Cut! Cut!” he shouted. “I said, cut! Christ, this is amateur hour.” But his forehead was crumpling in frustration.

  The next time, the same thing happened. Drake miscounted. He thrust his hands on his hips and tapped his toe, muttering curse words to himself. “Again!” he yelled up.

  Nobody was sneaking laughs anymore. Instead the chorus looked around at one another, unsure of what was happening.

  The third time the song played, he came in too early instead of too late, and he kicked a stack of papers positioned on the edge of the stage.

  Mrs. Fleury came in waving her winglike poncho. “Okay, okay. That’s enough for today, I think. Drake, be sure to practice your on-cues at home, will you?”

  All the blood was visible, pulsing red under his paper-thin skin.

  My chin drooped the way it did before I knew I was going to do something I’d probably regret. Drake was skulking off alone. I jogged over to catch up with him. “Hey, man, sorry about that collision earlier. You all right? I, uh, think that one might have been my fault after all.” I scratched the back of my head.

  Drake lifted his chin in my direction. “Get lost.” But there wasn’t any heat behind his words. It was all sadness and failure and loneliness. He shoved past me, making sure to jack me in the shoulder one last time.

  My hands dropped limply to my sides. That went about as well as I’d expected. The conversations on stage were muted, dejected. I stared across, landing on a pair of familiar eyes staring back at me. And this time, Honor didn’t look away.

  * * *

  A FEW CLASSES later, I quietly slid my textbook out onto my desk along with a dull pencil and a notebook.

  Honor would get into Poncy Sebastian. Honor would be in New York this summer. She was as talented as anyone I’d ever met. In fact, she reminded me of a home movie taken of a pre-fame celebrity performing in a high school musical, you know, one of those that years later would be played on Entertainment Tonight and the viewers would watch it and think how even then that she was so clearly a star. Honor was that but in real life. Why had I been such a dick?

  I rested my elbow on my desk and stared out the window at the sky. Sometime during the course of the day, it had turned a dreary gray with soggy clouds and a drizzle that hung suspended in the air.

  I felt my soul weighted down by the realization that what I was witnessing was the first change into fall and soon it would probably be dismal outside more often than not.

  The ghostly chill crept through the cracks in the windows and settled down over me.

  I was supposed to be paying attention to our math teacher, Mrs. Dolsey, who had started a unit on parabolas that I was making not even a halfhearted effort to understand. I hated math. I wasn’t good at it, and right now I was too busy feeling sorry for myself for being stuck in Hollow Pines with no way out to try to be otherwise. The truth was that I still kind of wanted to be a dick to Honor because she got to leave and I didn’t. I needed to stop feeling that way before the next time that I saw her.

  Dolsey, Dolsey, Dolsey.

  Pay attention, Chris.

  Mrs. Dolsey had a weirdly long and ropy neck made more noticeable by her chemically blond hair styled into short spikes on top of her head. Her thing was to dress in smart pantsuits and sensible shoes, a look that, if you asked me, didn’t make much sense with the hair.

  Ten minutes into class, I heard a rustle of paper, and then Lena slid a note onto my desk. You okay? it read.

  Great, so the stench of my foul mood was already wafting beyond the parameter of my desk.

  I pushed my glasses askew and rubbed my eyes, nodding.

  I thought you did better, came her next note.

  She was probably right, even though I had a few suspicions as to who helped make Drake’s day worse. Lena was being nice, but the thing was I wasn’t ready to be nice yet. So, I massaged my temple, raised my eyebrows, then shrugged.

  A few minutes passed and I felt bad for being unresponsive. I looked over and found that Lena was bent over her desk. Her tongue stuck out of the side of her mouth, and she was pressing down with her pencil so hard that bits of lead flaked off and made gray smudges on the paper. She ignored me and actually covered her paper with her forearm when I tried catching a glimpse.

  I worried I’d hurt her feelings when I felt a telltale quiet spread over the classroom and looked up to see that Mrs. Dolsey was prowling for someone to call on. My eyes flitted to the math problem on the board, which may as well have been written in Japanese, so I proceeded to slouch down in my seat.

  My heart thumped in that way when you were praying a teacher wouldn’t call on you because you didn’t know the answer. Or even what the teacher was talking about for that matter.

  My shoulders curled up to my ears protectively, and I flipped through the pages of my textbook trying to find what page we were on. I felt the hot stare of Mrs. Dolsey glaring into the top of my head and waited for her to say my name like I was waiting for a bullet to hit.

  “Mr.”—I swallowed hard as she took aim—“Jackson.” She finished. I glanced up. And I felt the near miss roll off me.

  Lena slid a piece of paper under my elbow as relief was busy untwisting the knots that had arrested the muscles at the base of my neck. On my desk was a drawing of Mrs. Dolsey, but depicted as a Medusa lady. The fact that it was Mrs. Dolsey was unmistakable given that Lena had captured our teacher’s eyes with their same wide-apart fishbowl stare, and she’d illustrated the modest shirt underneath her pantsuit buttoned up to Mrs. Dolsey’s long, giraffe-like neck. Dolsey’s pixie cut gone awry had been capped by Lena with snake heads sitting atop the unwieldy spikes and turning her into one of Lena’s Greek mythology monsters.

  Below, it read, If you listen directly to her, you’ll be so bored you’ll feel stoned. I remembered enough Greek mythology to know that anyone that looked directly at Medusa would be turned to stone. A short laugh burst out of me only because it was unexpected. Lena? Stoned? I hadn’t suspected her of pot humor, and it was so at odds with what I’d been thinking about before. I covered my mouth, trying to mask it with a rattling cough.

  “Yes, Mr. Autry?” Mrs. Dolsey trained her stare on me now. I felt Lena go still beside me, and my neck went instantly hot around the collar.

  She walked toward me, the clip-clop of her low, chunky heels like horses’ hooves. “Is there something you’d like to share with the class?”

  I wanted to groan in frustration, but instead I inched lower in my seat. “No,” I muttered, skirting my eyes to the window. The weather outside pulled at me with its dreariness.

  “Are you sure?” She was beside my desk now. Nothing was fun
ny anymore. Her finger tapped the edge of paper I’d stuffed underneath my textbook. Then she pulled it out using only that finger so that the suspense was slow and painful.

  My teeth clenched.

  She peered down her nose at Lena’s drawing. Mrs. Dolsey’s perfume had the false, sickeningly sweet scent of butterscotch hard candies. She raised her eyebrows. “I see.” Her lips pursed. “Why don’t you go see if Principal Wiggins shares your sense of humor, Chris,” she said coolly, folding Lena’s drawing by halves and stuffing it into the breast pocket of her blazer.

  “But—” But what? I wondered. Was I going to tattle? Was I going to out Lena?

  “Mrs. Dolsey.” Lena stood from her desk. Her bangs draped over her eyes. I had to lean closer to hear. My elbows dug into the desk. “Mrs. Dolsey, it was me. It was my drawing. Don’t blame Chris.” Her voice grew stronger for the last part, and she shook the fringe of bangs from her eyes.

  Mrs. Dolsey looked from me to Lena. “Is this true?”

  “Yes,” Lena jumped in before I could answer. I wasn’t sure what my answer was going to be anyway.

  “That may be,” said Mrs. Dolsey. I held my breath, waiting, hoping. “But Mr. Autry apparently thought it was humorous enough to disrupt class. I’ll see you both then”—she spun back to the whiteboard on one chunky heel—“for detention after school.”

  “No.” Without thinking I slammed my fist on the desk. “No!” My nostrils flared. “I didn’t—I don’t—” I started up again. This could not be happening. If I stayed for detention, if my aunt and uncle were called, I could kiss a quick trip back to New York with a “sorry, Dad, lesson learned” good-bye.

  “That’ll be two hours for you then, Mr. Autry. I’ve got plenty of papers to grade.”

  I swallowed hard. The blood pumped at the base of my throat. Thud thud thud. I couldn’t look at Lena. My legs and arms felt rigid. The eyes of my classmates bore into my back making me crazy. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t happening.