Summer Unscripted

by Jen Klein

  Marin heard her and grinned at me. “You seem happy.”

  Looking back now, I don’t know which one of them was right. I miss Milo. I miss being silly with him onstage during the show. This whole week, whenever we met in the Greek forest, we made awkward small talk. We were both…formal. I’m not sure how to get back to the way we were, when it was easy and good and fun. Maybe it’s because I don’t know how we got here in the first place.

  Meanwhile, Tuck is going out of his way to talk to me. Several times this week, he’s been hanging around the girls’ locker room when I arrive for the night. Once he split a grilled cheese with me at the kitchen counter. He hasn’t done anything romantic, and as far as I can tell, he and Gretchen are still together—but I’m seeing more of him than I used to.

  On Saturday it’s drizzling when we get to the theater. Backstage, everyone is on the wooden deck, speculating about whether we’ll go on tonight. Some people are perched on the railing separating us from the forest behind the theater. Those lucky enough to get here first have snagged places on the benches. Everyone else either stands or sits on the floor. Tuck—naturally—is on a bench next to Gretchen, which I guess answers any questions I might have about the two of them.

  I drop to my knees on the wooden planks and belatedly realize I’ve picked a spot next to Milo. He nods at me but doesn’t speak.

  “Hey.” I cast through my mind for anything to say, and come up with a safe bet, since it’s what everyone’s asking everyone else. “Do you think we’ll go on tonight?”

  “I don’t know. There are people in the audience already.”

  “Ridiculous people.”

  “The theater doesn’t like to cancel the show unless it’s raining really hard.” Just then, the drumming sounds on the tin roof above us increase in frequency and volume, setting off a chorus of exclamations all around us. Milo flashes me a wry grin, and my heart jolts at the sight of it. I give him a tentative smile in return. He holds my gaze for a second before nudging my knee with a knuckle. “Good news, we’ll still get paid.”

  His look, his touch, his grin…it all makes me want to fix things between us. I want us—whatever we are—to be okay again.

  I nudge him back. “I’m sorry. You were right to be mad.” Milo doesn’t say anything, but he ducks his head toward me, listening. “But just so you know, the thing with Tuck—it really did only happen once. It was…” I pause, trying to figure out how to phrase what I mean. “It was a brief moment of villainy.”

  Milo considers that before giving me the smallest of smiles. “Maybe you’re just well written.”

  “Huh?”

  “It is possible that the best heroines have at least one brief moment of villainy.”

  “To be fair,” I tell him, “I have lots of those. It’s just that only one of them is a tiny slipup with Tuck.”

  “Cool.” He stares at me for a long moment before taking in a breath, like he’s getting ready to say something. But before I can find out what it is, we’re interrupted by the sound of someone starting to sing the Dora the Explorer theme song in a high, sweet voice. After a second, I realize it’s Gretchen. Several other people join in, but even if I wanted to, I couldn’t, because I don’t remember the words. Across from us, I see Ella wiggle onto a sliver of bench beside Paul. She’s singing along.

  As the song ends amid a lot of giggling, I glance back at Milo. When he sees me looking at him, he puts his hands around his mouth in a makeshift megaphone and calls out, “Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?”

  The response is immediate and exuberant, and now just about everyone is singing the SpongeBob song. When it’s over, someone else starts up the Scooby-Doo theme, which is followed closely by the Meow Mix jingle. I clap along, and by the time we’re full tilt into the song from the Oscar Mayer commercials, I’m singing too. In fact, everyone is engaged in some way: singing, humming, clapping, drumming on the deck. We’re not even worried about those few ridiculous audience members in the house, or if anyone is seated close enough to the stage to hear what’s going on behind it. It’s absurd and ridiculous, but it’s also raucous and joyful and fun. In fact, it’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time. It’s the most fun since…

  Since the vagabond codes.

  I turn to look at Milo, but he’s not singing anymore. In fact, the singing is stopping all around us, people shushing each other and trailing off into silence as heads turn in one direction.

  Nikki is marching across the walkway toward us. Her face is very stern.

  “Whoops,” Milo says, scrambling to his feet. He reaches a hand out to me, and I allow him to pull me up before—I think—either of us realizes what we’re doing. “They might have been able to hear us from the audience,” he tells me. “That’s not good.”

  Nikki’s gaze roves across our crowd, waiting until the last murmurs stop. “Announcement from the front of house: we’re holding the show for twenty minutes to see if the rain will break.” We don’t move, and I wonder how much trouble we’re in. After all, if we really screwed up by being so loud back here, the theater can dock our pay. But then Nikki’s mouth twitches upward, just a tiny bit. “As you were.”

  Milo and I and everyone around us bursts into laughter. As Nikki strides away, someone starts up the theme song from Fuller House, and we all join in with vigor. We’re out here on this damp wooden deck with warm rain showering down just past the railing, singing for no other reason than it’s fun. For once, I’m not censoring myself. I’m just going along with it. Pretending I’m not apart from it but rather a part of it. Because in this silly moment, that’s what I want: to be one of these people.

  By the time Nikki is back twenty minutes later, we already know what she’s going to tell us, because we’re practically shrieking the songs over the sound of rain pounding on the roof. “It’s official—we’re rained out.” Nikki waits for our cheers and applause to die down. “Be here at your usual call time tomorrow. You have the night off.”

  I rise to my feet and am about to trudge back to the dressing room when suddenly Paul and Ella are in front of me, both with wide smiles. “Onstage,” Paul says. “Now.”

  “What? But we’re rained out.”

  “The show is rained out,” he tells me. “We’re not.”

  I turn my gaze to Ella. She beams, grabbing my hand. “Come on.” I allow her to pull me toward the stage at a jog as, all around, others are doing the same. I risk a glance back to see Milo trotting after us.

  Onstage, the lights are on, so even though the rain is coming down in buckets, everything is lit up. The stage is muddy, and there are deep puddles in some areas, as I cleverly discover when I step into a particularly big hole. Water fills my shoe and sloshes up my shin. I’m thankful I’m wearing my most disposable Chucks, the red ones I’d probably be throwing out by the end of the summer anyway.

  I’m soaked within seconds. The warm rain plasters my tank top and shorts to my skin, and my hair to my face and neck. I let go of Ella’s hand so I can pull the ever-present elastic band off my wrist and twist my hair back into a messy, wet knot. When I’m done, Ella’s gone. I peer through the raindrops for her. Everyone’s here, splashing and jumping and running and screaming, so it takes me a second to locate her. She’s over by the rocks with Paul. He has her around the waist and is spinning in circles. I smile and head toward them, when I’m intercepted by Gretchen. “Red rover!” she yells, grabbing my hand. Her other hand is in Tuck’s, and his other hand is in Mandy’s. Gretchen looks past me. “Red rover!” she yells at someone else.

  Of course it’s Milo, and of course—after a brief pause—his hand is folded around mine.

  Moments later, we’re standing in a line with half the cast on one side of the stage in the pouring rain, looking at the other half, who are doing the same thing across from us. After some conferring among ourselves, Gretchen starts off the call “Red rover, red rover—” and we all join in for the end part: “SEND ELLA ON OVER!”

  Even throug
h the rain, I can see the comical look Ella gives us before letting go of Paul and Bianca and charging across the mud. Right before she reaches our line, she slips. She catches herself, but she’s lost too much momentum and can’t get through the spot she picked, right between Gretchen and Tuck. After some laughter and screaming, they unclasp their hands and each takes hold of one of Ella’s.

  Across the stage, the opposite line discusses among themselves before starting their own chant: “Red rover, red rover—” I feel a tightness on my right hand, but I can’t bring myself to look at Milo. Instead, I squeeze his fingers in return, right as the opposing line finishes their chant. “SEND MILO ON OVER!”

  And then he’s gone, splashing through the rain and mud to the other side of the stage, leaving me there in the line, where I can still feel the slippery, wet pressure of his fingers against my own.

  I don’t see Milo on our dark day, but I do see Ella. Mostly because she spends it up in my business. All I want is some me time, and Ella can’t seem to understand that. I try curling up on the sofa under a blanket to watch a show on my computer, but Ella keeps bustling through the room. Sometimes she plays music on her phone, and sometimes she sings a cappella (because that’s not annoying). When she’s not doing either of those things, she’s putting away dishes in the kitchen. Or maybe she’s putting away xylophones and wind chimes, because whatever it is, it’s loud and crash-y and bang-y. I try headphones, but they don’t help. I try moving to the bedroom. That doesn’t help either, because next thing I know, she’s in there, folding laundry and making her bed and putting things away. She asks if I want to go to lunch at Annette’s restaurant, and I decline as politely as I can, but she still scowls. She asks if I want to go to the library…and the grocery store…and on a hike…and I say no to everything.

  I just need some time to my damn self. Why is that so hard to understand?

  By the time Tuesday evening—otherwise known as my birthday—rolls around, I’m thrilled to go to work. I silently vow that next Monday I’ll leave the apartment for the day, even if it means I have to watch movies on my computer at the library. And even though Ella seems to get extra crabby when I’m gone on Mondays.

  I drive Ella to the theater as usual, but we’re both quiet on the three-minute ride, and we split apart as soon as we reach backstage. I head off to change into my costume and she heads…

  Actually, I have no idea where she heads.

  A minute later, however, Ella’s standing in front of me in the dressing room. “You should go out there,” she says.

  “Go out where? The stage?”

  “No, duh.” She rolls her eyes. “The deck.”

  “Why?”

  “Whatever.” She shakes her head. “I told you, okay? I’ve done my friend duty.”

  Whatever, indeed.

  Still, I drop my toga on the yellow bench and shove my flip-flops back onto my feet so I can circle back out to the deck. At first I don’t notice anything—just the usual cacophony of cast and crew getting ready for the performance. But as I move along the walkway, I see it: the corkboard hanging on the wall. With a big poster sheet attached to it. My name is written across the top in purple and festooned with tiny foil stars. Below, the paper is covered with notes and signatures.

  I stand in front of the corkboard, my smile huge. As people stream around and past me, jostling my body in their rush to get to the locker room or the pyro closet or the kitchen counter, I stay there. Smiling like a big dumbass. Names pop out at me: Paul…Bianca…Katrina. Gretchen’s greeting is—true to form—giant and splashy and right in the middle: “Happy birthday, gorgeous!”

  Milo’s message is also easy to find. It says “Happy birthday” above a crude drawing of a woman. Below it is the word “From” and then something that might be a tombstone or might be a top hat—it’s impossible to tell. I pull out my phone and, after a quick Internet search, discover it’s the vagabond symbol for “gentleman.”

  It makes me smile, both the drawing and the sentiment. It’s a tiny, coded act of friendship. Because that’s what this is. That’s what it has to be.

  Ella’s signature is small and at the bottom, but it’s there. Alongside it are two tiny stick figures that—judging by the long curlyish hair on one and the thick fringe of bangs on the other—are depictions of me and her. The stick figures are holding spoons on either side of a giant croissant—the McKay’s special, I’m sure—and are smiling out from the paper. They look way happier than either of us has been with the other in the last few days. A wave of gratitude surges through me. I don’t know if Ella’s the one who set up the poster, but it doesn’t matter. She got me here, to this place where someone set it up, and that’s pretty awesome.

  It’s only later in the dressing room—after I’ve found Ella and hugged her, and after her look of surprise and then her awkward “you’re welcome”—that I realize I have no idea whether Tuck signed my birthday poster. I didn’t even look.

  •••

  During the show, I make a decision to impart a message of my own. After the dirge march, I rush to change my clothes and bolt away from my locker. I trot down the walkway and stop by the entrance to the boys’ dressing room, lying in wait for Milo. My heart is thudding low and slow in my chest, which is about the stupidest thing in the world. This shouldn’t be a big deal. It’s nothing; it doesn’t mean a thing….

  And yet.

  When Milo swings out the door in his black T-shirt and rolled-up cargos, everything in me speeds up a little. It gets worse when he sees me and his eyes brighten. “Hey, thanks for coming by so fast.”

  “You’re…welcome.” I blink up at him, confused. “Wait, what?”

  “Didn’t you get my text?”

  “No.” I scramble for my phone and there it is—a text from Milo.

  Got a question for you.

  I shove my phone away and look up. Milo seems bemused. “So then why are you here?”

  Dammit.

  But now I’m in it, so here goes nothing….

  “I talked to this guy a few days ago. Downtown, I mean. An old guy. Really old.” So this is going well. Babbling, just what I’d planned. “He told me about an abandoned train station just over the Tennessee border. He said you can’t find it with GPS, but he gave me written directions.”

  Milo looks thoughtful. “I wonder if it’s part of the Virginia Creeper. It was a line that closed forty or fifty years ago.”

  “I thought maybe we could go check it out.”

  Milo hesitates, and my self-doubt deepens. He thinks I’m asking him on a date. Worse, I might actually be asking him on a date, and now he’s trying to let me down easy or figure out a graceful way to say no—

  But then he shrugs. “Sure. I can always use more candids of you in a forest.”

  “No, I meant for the vagabond symbols!” God, if he thinks I’m looking for a wilderness photo shoot, this is really mortifying.

  Except that his eyes are sparkling, and his lips have tilted up at the corners. “I know. We should do that.”

  “Okay, then.”

  He doesn’t say anything else and neither do I, which might be because I’ve suddenly gotten lost in the sharp planes of his face and the golden-brown curve of his neck. I try to remember the moment I first saw him, back in Dobbs at Wendell’s party. At the time, did I notice how beautiful he was? I take it as a sign that I’ve matured drastically in the past few months….

  “Rainie.” Milo interrupts my thoughts. “I was going to ask if you want to do this thing on Monday, but it’s self-serving and maybe you’ll think it’s boring and…it’s a big ask.” I nod at him to continue. “Do you want to go to Greensboro?”

  That’s not what I expected. At all. “The city?”

  “Yeah. More specifically, do you want to drive? My cousin in D.C. has an art show there, but it leaves the gallery next weekend. I’ve been meaning to go all summer. I thought I’d go Monday, but I usually drive my mom’s car, and the air conditioning just broke. She
has an appointment to get it fixed. I can’t take Dad’s car, because they’ll need it. I feel like a dick if I don’t ever make it to his show and…”

  “I can drive you.” An art gallery? It’s so sophisticated.

  Milo doesn’t seem to realize I’ve already said yes. “I’ll fill up your car with gas—”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “And pay for dinner—”

  “You brought the picnics when we—”

  “It’ll be a reasonable dinner. None of this grilled cheese nonsense we’re always eating here.” Milo’s eyes are dark and earnest, trained onto my own. “Plus—and this is an added bonus—I promise to entertain you with witty comments on the way to and fro.”

  “Fro?”

  “It’s fancy for ‘from.’ ” He grins down at me. “So you’re in?”

  “You had me at ‘do you want to go.’ ” Getting out of Olympus for a day sounds amazing and, truth be told, doing it with Milo sounds even more amazing. It sounds…almost like a date.

  Or maybe I’m a bona fide crazy person. At this point, anything’s possible.

  •••

  The week goes by slowly. Really slowly. It drags on and on and on. Except for the moments when I’m onstage and Milo is near me and there’s this new electricity between us. Those moments go by like flashes of lightning.

  Of course, the last time I felt lightning, it turned out that I’d made it up entirely in my head.

  So maybe it’s nothing.

  Or maybe it’s everything.

  I have no idea anymore.

  •••

  Monday finally arrives. I have high hopes of sneaking out of the apartment without having to explain to Ella where I’m going, but I know the chances are slim, since I’m not meeting Milo until after lunch. It does occur to me that I could just get up early and head out to a coffee shop, but I decide that’s absurd. I’m allowed to have a life that doesn’t include Ella.

  Thus, I sleep in for most of the morning, which is delicious. When I finally roll out of bed, Ella is still a blanketed lump, so I’m able to tiptoe into the bathroom without encountering anyone. However, both she and Annette wake up while I’m in the shower, and by the time I’m dressed and heading out the door with my backpack, they’re sipping coffee on the sofa.