Star-Crossed

by Luna Lacour

  When Tyler echoed Mr. Tennant, proceeding in a flurry of claps from the few students who were watching from their seats, Marius followed with a slow eye-roll.

  “Good,” Will said, smiling. His arms were folded; a bit of hair stuck to his forehead; his toes pointed in arrow formation. He wore jeans that afternoon; a pair of black Converse and a shirt comically covered in a slew of Shakespearean quotes. “Very good. You two can have a seat. I’d like to see Mercutio and Benvolio up here now.”

  Mr. Tennant snapped his fingers, and the two actors hurried up the steps. Tyler and I watched their banter with a light interest, sharing his headset (Snow Patrol’s Chocolate crackled through the ill-fitting ear-pierces) and occasionally twirling the red wires absentmindedly between fingers.

  After the song ended, Tyler gave me a sideways glance.

  “Hey,” he said, staring at the stage. His eyes were glued on Mr. Tennant. “Remember that time you came into chapel smelling like cologne?”

  My skin grew hot.

  “Yeah,” I said. “And do you remember what I told you? They practically bathe in the stuff here.”

  “I mean,” he paused, plucking the earbud from his ear and staring at the mindless piece of plastic like the fuzzy noise somehow held his missing puzzle piece. “I was walking through the hallway this morning, right?”

  “And?”

  “And,” he started. “I saw Mr. Tennant helping Mrs. Grier with a bunch of papers that she’d been carrying back from the library. Well, I knelt down to help her out, too, and I noticed something.”

  He stopped talking. Just like that.

  I looked at him, eyes narrowed, bile rising in my throat.

  “What did you notice?” I asked, vaguely sharp. “Is Mr. Tennant fucking Mrs. Grier? Because that would be only slightly revolting. She’s married.”

  He shook his head with a disarming softness; his eyes fell to the ground. It was then that I saw it: a mix of disbelief that seemed to be layered as his eyelids slowly rose. He had an inkling, that was certain; but there remained a part of Tyler that didn’t want to actually know. That wanted to believe that the little, lingering glances between Mr. Tennant and I were nothing more than moments easily summed up by fatigue and feeling muddleheaded. That the way we stood on stage, the way his toes were constantly pointed in my direction, was nothing more than a simple stance; a simple place to stand.

  “You smelled like him,” he said, looking at me. “The cologne. It was the same.”

  There are moments in life when you realize that your only option is to skewer the truth. To lie straight through your teeth in that jaw-clenching sort of way that leaves you with a hateful, pin-prickling realization that you are, inescapably, a liar. That in that lie, that single lie, you are confessing something greater and darker and deeper than even you might be willing to admit.

  I had only a second to decide what the right words to throw together were; did I altogether dismiss the notion of Mr. Tennant and I? Did I disregard it entirely?

  “You’re crazy, Tyler,” I shoved him playfully. “I mean, yeah, it was his cologne. He gave me a hug that morning; I was bent out of shape about my dysfunctional family and he was just trying to be empathetic.”

  “You never told me you guys talked about anything. And why not just come to me? He’s a teacher. That’s sort of weird.”

  Maybe. Maybe it was weird. But it didn’t feel weird; nor did it feel like any of the other listless number of ugly synonyms that others would undoubtedly pelt us with – a hot sting of bullets – if our relationship was discovered. The shame that slickened each forbidden word - each kiss and caress - only served to heighten the intensity of each encounter. It was a melancholic cocktail of lust and languish, and even in the constant awareness that I was teetering on the ledge of potential disaster, I had no desire to walk away.

  I was fine, really, with the idea that it might seem weird. But the truth is, nobody goes into these taboo affairs really caring about what other people think. Even when seeking out supposed advice, it’s never because the affected individual is really looking for a morsel of information. They are solely seeking affirmation; the notion that their actions are acceptable. That’s all it ever is.

  I thought about the check sitting in the drawer of my dresser, and how, if nothing else, I had the ability to make all of these temporary surroundings go away, anyway. Nothing really seemed to pose much of a threat.

  The music was stopped-short as Tyler pulled the plug from my ear, his eyebrows stark-straight.

  “Because I didn’t want to be all in-your-face with my problems, and he asked,” I said numbly, shaking my head. “Jesus. I don’t know, Tyler. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want this to happen. You questioning things when there’s nothing to question.”

  He raised an eyebrow, and I bit my tongue.

  “Don’t tell me you really think that there’s something between Mr. Tennant and I,” I said. “Because believe me. He’s not the kind of teacher that goes around fucking students. He’d lose his job. I’d lose everything.”

  Tyler’s features fell; a single hand swept through his shaggy head of hair. He nodded, his shoulders rising and falling with a dismissive heaviness.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I’m just feeling weirdly cynical about everything lately. Like, my life. My family. And Stanford – I mean, for Christ’s sake, what if I don’t end up being able to go to college? What if I end up working some bullshit service job for the rest of my life?”

  I stared at him, alarmed. Startled.

  “I’ll die poor, and lonely, and miserable like my mother.”

  He was silent after that. I reached over and touched his hand; he flinched, wincing and turning away. I knew that he wanted to cry; that there was still this throbbing, vulnerable animal that cowered inside his jail-cell ribcage.

  “I’m just scared, is all,” he added, barely a mutter. “I’m scared.”

  “Don’t be scared,” I told him. “I’m here for you, friend.”

  Tyler gave a weak half-smile. Friend.

  I smiled, too.

  We watched Mr. Tennant, who sat with his legs crossed on the single chair that was situated center-stage; the rest of the cast watched him intently; eager, each of them, to hear what he would have to say next. They hung on his words, smitten with his accolades and his accent.

  The only person who seemed utterly disinterested was Marius; he sat reclined in his seat, staring at the ceiling.

  “Would anyone care to laugh at a few videos of myself when I played a certain young Romeo?” Mr. Tennant offered. “I may or may not have brought some along. Strictly for aid, of course. Not to, you know, laugh at how terrible my 90’s haircut was.”

  We all laughed, myself included. There was a warm excitement that spread through me as Will went and fetched the television set, wheeling it in on a cart with one of those bum-wheels that spun in circles. He had a collection of old VHS tapes; each marked with black-ink scribblings; and after a moment of internal debate he selected one and popped it into the slot.

  What followed was a series of captured moments; Mr. Tennant, alive and living on the television screen. He was younger, of course. His hair, much as I had imagined it, was longer; his limbs lean, covered in a T-shirt that was slightly oversized; in jeans that hung loosely from his hips. He stood, reading the same lines that Tyler had read only minutes before. Every so often he would pause, crack a smile, and laugh as the director told him to re-run the line. Nervous fingers would comb through his hair that would, in return, only proceed to fall gracefully across his forehead.

  At one point, he took the camera in his hands, giving us a direct glimpse of his youthful face. A glowing, giddy smile. There was a sweet bashfulness to the way his cheeks flushed at all of the attention.

  “How does it feel to be playing Romeo?” The director asked. “Here at the Globe Theater, no less. This is your first performance, yes?”

  “Oh, I’m quite excited!” he laughed. “I’
m very honored. This is lovely. All of it is quite lovely.”

  Will chuckled at his own words. It was almost haunting, the contrast between the two faces. On one end, there was Will – Will Tennant – a young boy, a teenager, standing on a stage and playing the role of a love-struck Montague. On the opposing end, there was Mr. William Tennant; standing on the theater stage of New York’s most prestigious preparatory academy; a decade past the point where youthful dreams still rang true with the clenching hope that each of us sitting in our small spots were still scrambling to hold onto. The oncoming marks of age had since graced Mr. Tennant’s boyish face. Lines, albeit faint, had imprinted on the outer-corners of his eyes.

  On the screen, Will stepped back; his hands fluttering at his sides with an endearing anxiousness. The director laughed, and Mr. Tennant covered his face, embarrassed.

  We all laughed. Mr. Tennant then fast-forwarded to a dress-rehearsal; Will standing, yet again, on stage. But this time, he was dressed a relatively modernized version of the Renaissance costumes; his hair styled; his face powder-white and beautifully shadowed by lighting. The stage make-up only served to highlight the bones in his cheeks, the rouge of his mouth. As he read his lines, there was an enviable fluidity to the way he spoke; an understanding flowed from him in the kind of way that made us all feel as if maybe, just maybe, he would have loved Juliet even if the two of them hadn’t ended in such an untimely matter; poison, a dagger.

  When Juliet appeared, taking her place at the balcony, my heart stopped. I watched her glide over to Will, dressed in forest-colored silk; her hair braided in white ribbons; long and flowing in russet-colored waves down to her waist. She spoke with the same intensity, the same passion. It was almost painful to watch.

  I recognized her. She was, unmistakably, the girl from the photograph in Will’s apartment. The girl who had since remained immortalized; perched within clear sight on a dusty shelf lined with books and other beloved things.

  She cupped his face in her hands, kissing him. I felt sick; my face burned with a petty envy. So much so, that when Mr. Tennant glanced at me, I averted my eyes; keeping them low and away from the garish, brightly-lit screen until the film cut, and it was over.

  Static hissed; Mr. Tennant stopped the video, ejected it, and there was a brief pause before he smiled tightly.

  “Well,” he said. “There you have it.”

  In truth, I should have known; and beyond that, I wasn’t angry. People are permitted to have pasts, after all. I had a past.

  Still, the emotions raged. It was unpreventable. I clamped my mouth shut, biting my tongue.

  When Mr. Tennant dismissed the group, I turned to Tyler.

  “Can I come over your house?” I asked. “I feel like watching lame movies. And I kind of miss your mom.”

  Tyler smiled.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That sounds nice, actually.”

  As we walked away, I could feel Mr. Tennant’s eyes follow me down the steps and to the door. It was a terrible feeling, actually; never had I wanted so badly to turn around and look at someone; to open my mouth and say something. But with Tyler next to me, walking with his arm draped across my shoulder, with absolutely no idea that Mr. Tennant was silently analyzing each movement of his body language, I couldn’t. All I could do was catch his reflection in the slit of window as the door was opening; a faint, small smile.

  I turned around, still tethered to Tyler, and waved goodbye.

  “You okay?” Tyler asked, kicking up a piece of stray paper as we walked through the parking lot. “You look a little sad.”

  Against the building, hidden only partially by the branches of a blossoming Dogwood, Piper and Marius were whispering to one another. Piper stood with her hands balled into fists; her face fallen to the sidewalk. Marius, whose arms were crossed, wasn’t looking at her.

  “I’m fine,” I assured him. He nodded, noting the silent scene between my step-brother and the girl he should have let go while there was still snow on the ground.

  “What’s it like?” Tyler asked. “Living with him. He’s kind of a bastard.”

  We got into his car, turned on the radio, and I pulled my coat tightly around my torso. As we sped on, the surroundings blurred like a photograph left out in the rain.

  “Probably as you would imagine it,” I muttered. “He’s a fucking bastard. There isn’t much else to tell.”

  There was an envelope sitting on the kitchen table when Tyler and I walked through the front door. Laura, still swearing her black serving apron, was finishing with the last spread of icing on a white-frosted cake.

  “I like to find any reason to celebrate,” she smiled, kissing the top of Tyler’s head.

  He grabbed the envelope. It was from Stanford.

  “It’s big,” he breathed. “It’s…heavy.”

  We sat down on the floor in the living room; a shared stare frozen between the two of us.

  “Should I wait?” he asked, turning to his mother. “For dad, I mean.”

  “Dad’s working late,” she smiled, though her expression – albeit faint - drooped ever so slightly. “Tyler, this is about you. Don’t wait. You’ve waited long enough.”

  Shaking his head, he tore through the envelope. I crept closer, practically unable to breathe, and was hit with the sudden rush of realization that I had never once, in my entire life, felt this much anticipation and anxiety for another human being.

  He held up the letter, his eyes widening.

  “I got in,” he choked. “I got into Stanford.”

  The envelope was filled with paperwork that he hadn’t yet looked at; a booklet, an award letter. A full ride to the university that Tyler had spent the past months tearing out his hair and crawling the walls over.

  He placed the letter down, took me into his arms, and wept. It was also the first time, and the only time, that I had ever seen someone cry tears of joy.

  “I did it,” he said. “I can barely believe that this is actually my life.”

  When his father arrived, I watched them hold each other for what felt like a solid eternity. We ordered pizza and used paper napkins for plates; afterwards, our fingers were covered in grease. We ate slabs of cherry-vanilla cake and drank out of paper cups filled to the brim with Ginger Ale (because Tyler’s mom, while cool, was still a mom). We watched 500 Days of Summer on their little tube-box television, and every so often Tyler would stop to sob into his arm, cover his mouth, and echo for the thousandth time how absolutely overwhelmed he was.

  It was the single most precious thing, I think, I had ever seen.

  During the ride home, we listened to generic radio pop and rambled on about class and practice and whether or not the girls at Trinity Prep would still think Mr. Tennant was as attractive if he lost the British accent.

  “Probably,” I said. Tyler nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Probably.”

  When we pulled into the driveway, stopping by the gate, I noticed that all the lights were off; not a window was even faintly illuminated.

  “I’ve decided that I want to be a teacher,” Tyler said, eyes narrowed as he gazed through the windshield and past the gate. “I want to teach English. I want to be one of those teachers that hangs venue posters on my classroom walls, and plays music before class starts, and talks to my students like they’re actually people.”

  He smiled.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked, glancing at me. “We never talk about it.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know we don’t.”

  “Do you have a plan?” he asked. “Are you going to Yale? What would you want to study?”

  I shrugged my shoulders heavily, my throat tightening.

  “I don’t really know.” There was no way I could tell him about the bet, or the check that was hidden away beneath unworn fabric. “I’m sort of not certain about anything right now. Sometimes I worry.”

  “That’s not a bad thing,” he said. “If each of us was always aware of what existed at every turn
, there wouldn’t be any excitement. I think sometimes it’s good to be uncertain. It makes you think.”

  I smiled, brushing the stray hair from his face. When I gathered my backpack, I hugged him tightly.

  “Don’t be scared, Kait,” he said. “Alright?”

  “Alright,” I said. “I’ll try.”

  I slammed the door shut, and he was gone before my feet reached the gate.

  Inside, Marius was waiting at the dining room table. Vivian stood next to him. My father, arms crossed, was waiting by the entrance. Each of them was blanketed with a ghostly pallor; all color had drained from their skin.

  “Why is everyone sitting around a table in the dark?” I asked, glancing at Marius. His eyes were fixed, dead frozen, on the centerpiece - a bouquet of white Peonies. “What’s wrong?”

  Marius took in a deep breath before speaking. “Have you bothered checking your phone?”

  I pulled it out. Seven missed calls; two from Marius, and five from my father.

  “What happened?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

  Marius turned away, covering his face. Vivian showed not even the slightest hint of emotion. Her lips, a thin plum line, were slack. My father didn’t say anything.

  I looked at him; the desperation crawling over me like the dead, strangling vines the crept up the walls of our palatial prison.

  “What happened?” I repeated. “For the love of God, somebody say something.”

  My father looked at me, then Marius, then to the floor. It was then, for the first time since my mother had left, I heard him cry; it came crumbling from him without any restraint. There was a terrifying quake to the way his entire body shook; like someone who had been harboring every single emotion into some hidden reserve so deep that once it was finally found - unlocked, unleashed - there was nowhere to go but out.

  Inside me, every organ and bone went cold.

  “Your mother’s dead,” he said, wiping his face with the sleeve of his shirt. “She’s gone.”

  The words punctured through me like a rusted nail punched through calloused skin. My father, a stranger in that moment, took me into his arms and held me there for a very long time.