As if!
“One. You will be home by ten on school nights, and midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.”
“Are you kidding me? You have got to be joking. A curfew? Oh, please! I don’t need a curfew.”
My mother’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, considering the time you came home with Xiang the other night, young lady, I don’t think you have much of a leg to stand on.”
Damn it, they had heard us stumble in. Well, whatever, this was still outrageous.
My father’s voice grew louder. “Two. No phone calls longer than ten minutes. Three. We can’t monitor what you do online all the time, but we will be keeping an eye on you. Don’t ever forget that.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Oh, is that a rule? Great, yeah, that’s a good one. I’ll be sure to not ever forget that.”
“Four. If you do go out, we want to know where you are going, whom you are going with, and for how long,” he said. “You don’t leave this house without your cell, and you don’t turn it off.” Then he blushed a little as he added, “And five, if you have male visitors, you keep the door open the entire time.”
“What?” I was flabbergasted. “Like . . . Jimmy?”
“Well, yeah. Jimmy and his friends. Boys.”
“As if . . . me and Jimmy—I mean, seriously? You know he’s gay, right?”
This time it was my mother who rolled her eyes. “We’re not morons, Martha.”
My father cleared his throat. “From the looks of it, when he and his friends came here the other night, there are romantic interests brewing—”
“Romantic interests brewing?” I said/shrieked. “If you want to know, just ASK. Yes, Jimmy and Derek are a couple. So what? And now it seems you think me and ‘my friends’ are wild, sex-crazed hooligans.”
They just sat there, looking at me impassively, a black thundercloud of tension hovering over the room, crackling with electricity.
“See, this is the part where you say, ‘Oh, no, that’s not what we think at all. You’re totally right: You’re good kids! In fact, we’re lucky to have such a Goody-Two-Shoes for a daughter, with such upstanding gentlemen for friends! And you know what? Scratch everything we just said. We were just being jerks.’ ”
As soon as I spat out the word—with surprising venom—I realized it was a strategic blunder. They were clearly taken aback. I knew I was only confirming their unhinged fears that I was turning into a Bad Kid. But I was so mad at that point, I was so incensed, I couldn’t go back. And the only way forward was up a notch.
“Like, my friends are going to come over here to screw? Really?” I was dizzy with rage.
“This has nothing to do—” my mother began, but I would not be derailed.
“You know what?” I leaned forward on trembling hands. “I hate you.”
On that charming note, I got up from the table and flew upstairs to my room, slamming the door so hard that my ears hummed for a good five seconds afterward.
Oh, well, so much for dinner. I lay down on my bed, staring holes into the ceiling and replaying the blowup in my mind. I came up with about twenty better rejoinders that I wish I had said (and thrown my food! and knocked over my chair!) before my blood pressure started easing off.
I tossed and turned, then jumped up and paced the room, then grew tired and returned to the bed.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Eventually the anger started to subside, displaced by a heavy sadness that lay over me. I knew that even if this disastrous dinner could someday be smoothed over and forgotten, it would never be the same with my parents. This was just one more nail in the coffin around our relationship, a coffin they had started building by sending me to Our Lady of the Oaks. I’m a person. I have feelings and opinions and rights. But they just didn’t give a shit.
When I thought about how it was just one year ago, I could remember joking around with my parents like we were buddies, and I’d felt closer to them than any of my friends were to their parents. They were often lame and embarrassing, sure, but they could be fun! They liked me, and I liked them!
But now, more and more they were aspiring to be some kind of weird, enemy authority figures. Did they really want to be like Xiang’s parents? They thought I was changing—and maybe I was—but to my mind, they were the ones who were changing, for the worse.
The stereotype of a teenage girl, sullen and withdrawn, was something that had always seemed foreign and counterintuitive to me. But suddenly it seemed to be the only available option. The only leverage I had with my parents was myself, and that’s something they wouldn’t get to access anymore. They want to create rules and put up barriers? Fine. But I can build barriers, too.
Jerks.
But perhaps there was one tiny sliver of a silver lining in this shitstorm: This definitely called for a foray into my secret Twix stash. I grabbed one bar (OK, two) and flopped back onto my bed.
For a second, I considered running away. No, not like to New York or something—don’t be ridiculous—just slipping out of the house, heading through the woods, and crashing with Jimmy. But what would that solve, really? Nothing.
More to the point, this was one fight that I didn’t want to talk over with Jimmy; I mean, I didn’t want him to feel weird around my parents. They’d known him forever, and now all of sudden they apparently saw him as some sort of sex fiend.
Plus, it was raining.
I fingered my phone. I wanted to call Oliver, but that would have been weird, right? I really didn’t know him that well, to call up and complain about my parents.
Instead, I texted Xiang.
my parents r evil – ive SO joind yr club :(
I couldn’t wait to see Felix the next day. Mom and Dad think I’m bad? Oh, I can be bad.
I can be very bad.
You need to relax,” urged Xiang. We were walking to the rehearsal room from her locker, and she was lagging far behind.
Poor Xiang. From the moment I laid eyes on her in Mr. Dartagnan’s class, all throughout lunch, and in four long diatribes/e-mails sent between classes, I’d vented my anger about my parents. She was trying to be sympathetic, but since her own parents were even more crazy-strict, it was clearly a strain.
“I’m relaxed! I’m totally relaxed. Who isn’t relaxed?” I muttered, yanking open the entrance doors to Jerry Hall. I stalked through the lobby, pushed open the auditorium doors, and ran into Jenny McCafferty.
Like, literally rammed my forehead into her skull. Bangs to headband. There was a hollow knocking sound and a flash of white as I sank to my knees, but I managed not to pass out. I smiled stupidly at this accomplishment.
Jenny, on the other hand, chose to go with a different reaction: red-hot fury. “WHAT THE HELL?” she spat, rubbing her head and glaring at me.
Oliver had been following right behind her, and he dropped his clipboard and script to rush to my side.
“Oh, my God, Marty, are you OK? Does it hurt?” he asked, his big brown eyes floating in front of me, full of concern.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, wincing. “Just embarrassed, I guess.”
“WHAT THE HELL?” Jenny repeated, red-faced, although this time directing her rage at Oliver.
He cast her a sidelong glance. “Oh, Jenny. Sorry. You OK?”
She huffed indignantly, then turned and marched out into the lobby.
“I think that means she’s fine,” he said, gathering his things and standing. He offered his hand and lifted me up. He leaned in close. “Hey, if you feel like you want to fall asleep, don’t.”
Then he was off, ducking into the lobby—just as Xiang finally caught up.
“Jesus, you’re fast,” she heaved. “What’s with the noggin?”
“Noggin?” I asked.
“Yeah, your forehead is all red.”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Xiang pushed me toward the girls’ bathroom. “I can’t take you anywhere, can I? Look, I’ll do what I can, but I got
ta get going soon to my rehearsal.”
Five minutes later, with my bangs awkwardly plastered in vain over a sizeable bump, I was sitting in Rehearsal Room B as Sister Mary Alice talked us through the set design and what it would mean for how we moved around onstage. I tried to hold my script out in a way that blocked Felix’s view of me.
Typical. The plan for today was to take my flirtation with Felix to the next level, not have him confuse me with the Elephant Man!
Felix was wearing his St. Paul’s uniform, and his slim physique was perfectly served by his fitted charcoal pants and dress shirt. (He had taken off his tie, of course.) I mean, I don’t know what hair products that boy uses, but his dark locks are perpetually shiny without looking oily, and they’re wavy in a classic way that makes me think of ancient Greek sculptures.
We started blocking the first act, so I had a bunch of time to kill at the back of the room with Jimmy, Derek, and Oliver, pretending to memorize lyrics. I figured that as long as I stayed with them, Felix would probably keep a safe distance from my forehead. Then, when I had to go up and run through my scene, Sister Mary Alice was either too blind or too gracious to comment on my new head tumor, but I was convinced everyone else was staring at it. (Everyone except Jenny, who pointedly refused to look at me.) I managed to get through the act, and when Sister announced a break, I rushed into the girls’ bathroom. I needed to see what my second head had started to look like by this point.
As I hovered over the sink, trying out different angles to see if I could find one that didn’t scream, “Freakish! Misshapen!,” someone said, “You know you’re the only one who sees anything there, right?”
The voice belonged to Kate O’Day. Remember her? She’s Cinderella, the beautiful senior who sang “Popular” at the auditions. I had pretty much steered clear of her up to this point, so this was the first time she had ever spoken to me (excluding times like games of Freeze at auditions, but social rules don’t apply when you’re acting). She stood at the sink next to me, both of her hands flicking pointlessly at her thick auburn hair, as if it weren’t already perfectly arranged.
“Yeah, well,” I said lamely, not sure how to answer.
She sighed and said, “I’m so glad we’re doing Into the Woods. And I think we have a pretty great cast this year, don’t you? Like, better than normal.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding my head like a bobblehead doll.
She caught my eye in the mirror and broke into a sheepish grin. “You’re a first-year, aren’t you? So you wouldn’t even know.” I stopped nodding. “But, anyway, trust me, this cast is way better than last year’s.”
She was being kinda nice and really patronizing at the same time. It was very confusing.
“I mean, think about it. There’s Maria, who is amazing, right? I wish I could sing like her. And you’re really good. And Felix—I mean, he has to come all the way down from St. Paul’s to get here, so we’re really lucky to have him in the show.”
“Oh, he does?” I said, trying to make it seem like I hadn’t really given Felix much thought.
She nodded. Then her eyes, pale blue like sea glass, rose to refocus on my forehead.
“Honestly, I can’t see a thing.” With that, she turned and sauntered out of the bathroom.
I went back into the rehearsal room in a fog. Jenny was talking animatedly to Jimmy and Oliver in a corner. Oliver said something, and the others cracked up, Jenny’s whole body heaving in exaggerated spasms. God, she was annoying.
Oliver caught my eye and gave me a chin-lift acknowledgment, so I reluctantly started to make my way over. I mean, I wanted to hang out with him but not her.
And then Felix stepped into my path.
“Hey, you.”
I stopped, very close to him, and instinctively adopted a coy slouch, meeting his eyes with a sideways smile. Where on earth had I ever learned these things?
“Hey,” I said.
“You were really good earlier,” he said slowly, his dimples appearing and disappearing in rhythm as he spoke. My mind raced: “earlier”? The kiss from last week?
Oh, he must mean earlier in the rehearsal. My hand instinctively flew up to my forehead to pull at my bangs and hide my probably gargantuan bruise.
“You weren’t so bad yourself,” I said, wondering if I was smiling too hard, like a baboon baring its gums.
Then there was this weird moment when Felix and I just stared at each other. It was almost like déjà vu or something, since it felt a lot like . . . remembering? I know this makes zero sense, but it’s as if I was recognizing Felix from some time before, that we really knew each other. I mean, I look into people’s eyes in conversation all the time, but with him it just felt incredibly intimate. My face grew hot.
“I mean,” I sputtered, “you must have been acting for a long time.”
“Yeah, I love doing this,” he said. “Even though we have all these lines to say and places to stand and timing to follow, for some reason it’s incredibly freeing. Liberating. Y’know?” I nodded eagerly, but he looked down, suddenly bashful. “I don’t know what I’m saying,” he said. “I probably sound crazy.”
“No, not at all,” I replied quickly, thinking about how our earlier discussion of his craziness had led to . . . kissing. And suddenly we were looking into each other’s eyes again. How can something so simple and commonplace as looking suddenly be so amazing?
Then the spell was broken by Sister Mary Alice clapping her hands to quiet the room down. “Let’s get back to business,” she said.
“Anyway,” Felix said, “I’ll see you around.” He gave me a two-fingered salute—a metaphorical tipping of the hat—and walked over to where he had left off blocking before the break. I sank into a nearby seat, smiling stupidly.
Suddenly I felt a pressure on top of my head. It took a second to realize that it was two hands, gently resting there. I leaned my head back to see Oliver’s face above me, upside down. His eyes were closed, and he was softly humming a single, sustained note.
“Um, are you having a stroke?” I whispered.
“Au contraire,” he said quietly, eyes still closed. “I’m healing you.”
Oh, Oliver. What a cutie. “What, no kiss to make it better?” I teased.
“When duty calls,” he said and then laid a soft kiss upon my forehead.
“Much better,” I said. “I think I might just pull through and live to see another day.”
“You’d better,” he said. “I’m not sure I’d be a particularly good Little Red Riding Hood stand-in. That, uh, Wolf scene would take on a whole new angle, wouldn’t it?”
“Now, that I would like to see,” I said, giggling. “You and Felix would make such a cute coup—”
But before I could finish, Jenny suddenly appeared and hissed at me, “Marty, you really need to keep it down. Some of us are taking this rehearsal kind of seriously.”
My ears flamed hot with shame, and she snapped at Oliver, “I need you in the other room.”
Oliver, mugging a terrified expression, trailed after her.
Whatever. I sat back and contented myself with watching Felix. He was working on the scene with Sister Mary Alice and Kate O’Day in which the Prince discovers Cinderella. With his classic smile and baritone intonation, he was doing a great job—I mean, who could ever resist him?
But after a few minutes of watching Felix act and interact with Kate, my forehead bruise started to pulse with a dull pain, then edge toward a full-fledged headache.
Stupid crash with Jenny.
Felix tucked a lock of hair behind his ear, and it struck me that, actually, his ears are kind of weird; they stick out. His mop of wavy hair totally hides them.
No disproportional ears on stunning Kate.
Felix fumbled a line, and Kate laughed loudly. No honking horse laughs with that girl, either; this was a melodious, lilting, pretty laugh. The mistake wasn’t even that funny, but she sure was giggly around Felix. And she had just told me five minutes before that she th
ought we were lucky to have him around . . .
I stared hard at him. Was he acting, or was he really hitting on her? I shook my head and took a deep breath. As funky as I was feeling, I knew I was being nutso. I mean, it sounds really cheesy, but Felix and I really were, like, love at first sight. Instant chemistry.
I wondered what Xiang’s reaction to Parker was the first time they met. Was that how it normally happened for everyone? One day you meet, and—BAM!—two magnets slamming against each other?
Jimmy rolled his eyes at me as he hustled by, carefully balancing a dusty stack of colored gels for the spotlights. His connection with Derek had been pretty immediate.
I turned to watch Derek pacing by himself in the back, muttering, trying to memorize lines. I don’t think he realized that the lyrics would be a million times easier to remember when set to music; we’d start singing everything at Thursday’s first music-only rehearsal with Mrs. Murray. Derek should at least be listening to the sound track on his phone. He was so nervous, though, I figured I’d leave him be. Where nerves are concerned, whatever helps.
Then I looked back at Felix and Kate working on their scene with Sister. Felix caught my eye and broke into a grin.
A genuine “Man, it’s great to know you” grin.
I scrunched my nose in smiling acknowledgment.
I had nothing to worry about.
After rehearsal, as everyone dispersed, I walked reluctantly toward my dad’s car. I still hadn’t spoken a word to either of my parents since last night. They, in turn, had regarded me frostily, like I should be apologizing to them for something.
As if.
“How was rehearsal?” asked Dad as I climbed in.
“Fine,” I replied tersely, staring out the window.
He sighed heavily, and we didn’t speak another word the whole way home.
The next morning I was drinking from the water fountain when I felt someone sidle up next to me. I assumed it was Xiang, so I snorted some water up my nose when I turned to see Maria Kilkenny instead, beaming at me.
Beyond Clueless Page 11