Charlotte chuckles, and my heart swells. I love making her laugh. I continue explaining. “When I was ten my grandmother died. She was always baking cookies. That’s kind of all I remember about her.”
I wipe my hand off on my pants and lean back so my face is tipped toward the sun. “Gram’s death shook me up. When people die in my books it’s sad, but I get over it, because I can just flip back a few pages and they’re alive again. It’s a safer world—in books.” I pluck a few rose petals from the flower beside me and set them like little boats in the water.
“Eventually everyone at school realized that no matter how hard they tried to be friendly, I wasn’t going to let them in, so they stopped trying. And that made it harder for me to change my mind and say, ‘Hey, everybody, now I’d like a friend, even though I’ve snubbed you since kindergarten.’ It just became the norm. Becca the recluse. And I had my books, so it didn’t bother me much.”
Charlotte suddenly bites her bottom lip, like she’s trying to keep herself from saying what’s coming next. “What will you do after I’m gone?”
My eyes feel too full, and I blink up at the sun again. “Probably just go back to being a loner. I’m good at it.”
“No,” Charlotte says, her voice loud and jagged. “That’s not acceptable. You’re too sublime to be alone.”
I smirk. “Ten points to Gryffindor for vocabulary.”
“I mean it, Becca.”
I nod. “I know.” And when I drop my head onto her shoulder to look at the sketch she’s been working on, I breathe deeply, holding on to the aroma of paper and roses and Charlotte’s familiar vanilla scent.
I open my eyes and find myself back in a crowded art studio. Did Charlotte think I was a quitter, too? Am I quitting if I go back to being the person I always was before I met her?
I take a breath, trying to hold on to the memory of Charlotte in the garden, but Dezi Herrera’s studio smells like turpentine and wood smoke.
“Not bad, old man,” Max says, entering and strolling over to examine the picture. His thick lips curve into a smile as he studies the sketch. I accidentally imagine kissing the corners of that smile, which makes my whole neck erupt in red splotches of heat.
Dezi tilts his head and squints at his sketch. “Unfinished.” He sighs, rubbing at a charcoal smudge on his thumb. “You’ll come back, eh? Sit for me again?”
My left foot is asleep, and I stumble when I stand. “Um, okay.” I wander the room, shaking out my foot and taking in all the work. There’s a stack of oil paintings leaning against a wall in one corner. “May I?”
Dezi waves for me to search through them and goes back to his sketch work. The first canvas is a busy city street, packed with bodies and movement. Sound and color seem to leap from the painting. The second is a portrait of Esperanza holding a little girl. I glance at Max, and he comes closer to inspect it.
He smiles. “Mom and my cousin Soledad.”
I flip to the third canvas, cradling the first two against my legs. This one is another portrait, and at first I think it’s Max, but the forehead is too long and the cheeks are too soft. Again I look questioningly at Max. But he isn’t smiling this time. His jaw is as tight as a prizefighter’s fist, and his eyes look as though he’s seeing something on the painting my eyes can’t see. Some invisible message I can’t read.
“Max?”
“My cousin, Benicio.” His voice is sharp, scythe-like.
I glance at Dezi. He’s no longer sketching. He’s still looking at his work before him, but his eyes are unfocused.
I look back at the portrait, at the light captured in the young man’s dark eyes—eyes very much like Max’s. The grief hits me between my shoulder blades, knocking the wind out of me. “He’s your Thestral?”
Max nods and looks away from the painting.
“I’m sorry—”
“No,” Max says. “We’ve already done that. Let’s not do it again—the whole sorry your heart got blown to bits thing.”
But I want to know. I need to know, like a cancer that won’t stop growing in me. Like being given a portion of his grief will somehow lessen mine, which makes no mathematical sense, because how do you add to something and get less? But Charlie’s not here to ask, and I don’t really care if it’s logical or not. I just want to know that I’m not the only one who wakes every morning and wonders if this is the day I will stop hurting.
Max nudges the first two canvases back into place. “I should probably get you home.” His hand hovers over my lower back without actually touching me. The phantom touch makes my spine tingle.
“Sure,” I say, choking down all the questions I want to ask. “Just let me peek at my portrait.”
Dezi’s eyes refocus as I approach. He frames his sketch with his stained fingers. I take a long look, and I feel like I’m washing out to sea. “It’s me.” The tide tumbles me over and over. “I look—” But I don’t want to say out loud what my look is. In a book my expression would be described as forlorn, lost, or maybe even condemned.
“When it is finished,” Dezi says, his voice like a funeral hymn, “then you will not look so—”
We nod at each other, knowing but not saying it.
Hopeless. I look hopeless.
Scene Six
[Max’s truck]
I read five hundred seventy-three pages this weekend. I helped Mom plant yellow and red mums and purple pansies for fall. I worked on revising my Would You Rather piece for Mrs. Jonah’s class, too. It’d be easier to just rewrite the thing entirely. Scrap the idea of changing my past and orchestrate some kick-ass future for myself. But I don’t want to give Darby the satisfaction. I may be afraid of failing in life, but right now, I’m more afraid of giving Darby any more ammunition.
Max said he’d pick me up before school today. It’s a beautiful morning, warm but not humid, so I wait for him outside. I sit on the top step of the porch and stare at the empty curb in front of my house. I hear Max’s truck around the bend in the road before I see it. The gears whine as he slows and pulls into the driveway.
As soon as he’s stopped, Victor hops out on the passenger side. “Max says you get shotgun this morning, and if I argue, he’ll drown me in hot tea.”
I look confused.
“I hate hot tea.”
“Got it.” He hands me a Dunkin’ Donuts cup. I thank him and hold the seat up for him as he climbs in the back. Then I slide into the front seat next to Max.
“I didn’t know if you liked coffee,” Max says, handing me a small bag, “but everyone likes doughnuts, right?”
I set my cup on the seat, securing it between my knees, and peek in the bag to find an old-fashioned cake doughnut. My favorite. “How’d you know?”
Max gives me a mysterious smile.
“Oh, please.” Victor snorts. “Don’t act like you just knew that shit. You agonized over that decision for five minutes.” Max shoots Victor a look in the rearview mirror, but Victor doesn’t slow down. “Seriously, Becky, the doughnut girl was ready to toss him out on his ass with the day-old doughnuts.”
I take a bite of my treat to keep from laughing.
Max clears his throat. “I realized I didn’t have your number, so I couldn’t ask.”
His phone is on the dash. “May I?” I ask, reaching for it. He nods. When I wake up the screen, there’s a picture of Max and his cousin Benicio. I peek at Max. His focus on the road ahead seems laser-like. I feel all the questions I have crowding up, like traffic behind a horrible accident. And I feel guilt, hot and sticky in my gut, because I want so badly to see into his pain, to compare it to mine, to discover if maybe I’m not alone in all this grief.
I swipe the screen, and the photo disappears, just like my unasked questions. I add myself to his contacts, pretending not to notice that I’d have to scroll down to see all of them—way down.
When I’m done, I dig my phone out of my bag. I’m going to ask a boy for his phone number. I’ve never actually asked anyone for a number. Charlie se
t up my phone when we got it, and Charlotte entered herself into my contacts, like I just did for Max. I know it’s a warm morning, but it suddenly feels too hot in the truck. “May I”—I clear my throat, thinking for the first time ever that old-fashioned doughnuts are really much too dry—“have yours?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Victor says. He leans forward and starts rattling off his phone number. Despite trying to look annoyed, Max laughs. “What?” Victor feigns innocence. “Oh, fine. I suppose you want Max’s number, too.” He gives me Max’s number and adds me to his phone as well.
Then he tells me to add Kelli, Miles, and Greg. “Now you’ve got us all at your fingertips,” he says leaning back to finish his breakfast. He hums to himself in the backseat as he eats his chocolate-frosted doughnut, careful not to spill any of his sprinkles.
I now have nine contacts. That’s almost ten. My insides squeeze together, like they’re in some happy group hug.
I put my phone away and pick up my coffee cup. I take an experimental sip of the coffee Max brought me.
“This is good,” I say. I think it’s better even than the Krispy Kreme coffee Charlotte and I drank last year.
“French Vanilla,” Max says, when I take a second, much larger sip. “Cream and sugar.”
“Thanks.”
“And as much as I hate to admit it, the doughnut was just a lucky guess.”
Scene Seven
[The theater]
Mr. Owens gives us the rehearsal schedule today. We have rehearsal after school every day from here until forever—at least that’s what it feels like. Even if I’m not onstage, Mr. Owens wants me there to “breathe in the full power and majesty of the theatrical process.” I could not make up a line like that if I wrote for ten years.
While Victor and Kelli set the stage for today’s rehearsal, I lean back in one of the red cushioned theater seats. The velvet pile of the cushion is threadbare along the edge. It feels like satin as I run a finger back and forth across it while I study the schedule, trying to piece together the reasoning behind why each scene is rehearsed on each day. I didn’t know this before, but scenes from plays aren’t always rehearsed in order. I flip from the schedule to the script to see what scene we’re doing today.
Act two, scene six is… I scan the pages until I find it. Act two, scene six is in Friar Laurence’s room and—oh crap—it’s the marriage scene.
I look to the stage where Thomas is leaning on a desk center stage. I swear that boy is always leaning. He’s wearing a blue polo shirt that makes his eyes stand out, even in the dulling glare of the spotlights. I’m getting married today.
Beside Thomas sits a sophomore boy who is half his size. He’s got soft brown curls and a deep dimple in his chin. I glance at my script where I’ve written everyone’s names. Marcus Zimmerman—Friar Laurence.
“Juliet,” Owens calls. I sink lower in my seat. “Where is the fair Juliet?” I worm my finger under the worn edge of the seat cushion and consider pretending I can’t hear him bellowing like a water buffalo.
“Hiding, fair Juliet?” Max sits in the row behind me and drapes his arms over the back of the seat next to me.
“Maybe.”
“Everyone has to start somewhere.” He’s holding an earpiece out to me. I pull my finger out, instantly feeling guilty about the hole I punctured in the fraying seat fabric. Max winks as he drops the earpiece in my open hand. “At least you’ll start with a bit of an advantage. I’ll be right here to help.”
I fit the earpiece in just as Owens shouts, “Where is my Juliet?” He punctuates each word with a stamp of his foot on the stage. He shields his eyes as he looks out over the audience and spots me. “Becca, get up here,” he says, dropping all pretense of grandeur.
Max squeezes my shoulder, and then he dashes off.
As soon as I step on the stage, Owens begins his directions. Thomas and Marcus mark up their scripts as Owens talks, and I try to follow their lead.
“Juliet, you will enter from stage right, cross to stage left, and sit in that chair there.” He points to a plastic desk chair set on one side of a folding screen. Thomas and Marcus will be on the other side of the divider. Until the crew finishes the sets, it’s meant to represent the confessional at the Friar’s church where Romeo and Juliet meet.
Once he’s finished, he takes his normal seat in the audience and then shouts in his biggest, most over-the-top theatrical voice, “And…scene.” Everything inside me goes berserk.
Marcus and Thomas begin the scene. I remind myself to breathe while I wait in the wings for my cue.
“Therefore love moderately; long love doth so…” That’s my cue to enter.
I release the lock of hair I’m tangling around my finger as I step into the warm circle of lights onstage.
“Here comes the lady; O, so light a foot,” Marcus says.
But I’m not light a foot. I’m Becca Hanson. I take four steps out onto the stage and stumble forward, my footfalls on the wooden floorboards too loud. There’s a ruffle of laughter from the wings. The ladies in Darby’s court are sniggering.
I glance up at the booth. Max is standing, looking down at me from over the control board, and I think I can see him nod his head. Across the stage, Darby glares at me, daring me to screw up again, proving her point—casting me was a mistake.
I fumble my lines, and I’m not sure what to do with my hands or how to arrange my face or what the hell is going on over on the other side of the screen where Thomas and Marcus are standing.
Owens stops us. “No, no, no.” He scratches the bald spot on top of his head with his stubby fingers. “Remove the screen,” he barks at no one in particular. “I need you to see each other, know each other like true lovers before we can replace the screen.”
Oh, dear Dark Lord, this is going to be unpleasant.
No one moves the screen. I guess that’s techie work, so I grab it and heft it back. I jog back to my mark, ignoring the strange look Marcus Zimmerman is giving me, like I’m some mixed-breed dog with an overbite.
Meanwhile, Owens is hefting himself up onto the stage and motioning for Thomas and me to stand closer together.
“This is an old technique called mirroring,” he says, positioning us so we’re facing each other. I can feel heat at my cheeks and know my eyes are darting around like I’m some criminal brought in for questioning, but I can’t figure out where to look. “As you say your lines, I want you to mirror each other’s motions. So if Juliet raises her left arm, Romeo would raise his right just so.” Owens flaps his arms, ballerina-like.
“But won’t that look dumb?” I ask. Max chuckles in my earpiece.
Owens pushes us even closer together, so that we’re standing only a foot apart. “It’s an exercise to help you connect.”
My back breaks out in a sweat.
“Begin with your line, Romeo. ‘Ah, Juliet…’”
Thomas rolls his shoulders before he begins. I glance at Owens, who is standing beside us rolling his own shoulders and nodding at me to do the same. I try to pay attention to what Thomas is doing while he’s speaking, but I can’t focus. It’s so unnatural to be standing this close to him, to be mimicking his every move. He’s mostly waving his arms in ways that make his biceps flex into hard knots.
Ah, fair Romeo, thou dost slay my heart with your beefy muscles.
Any shred of concentration I was holding onto has slipped away. I snort at my own stupidity, which stalls Thomas’s speech. He looks stunned for a second, eyes wide, mouth open. I mimic his expression like I didn’t just make a sound like a farm animal. He finishes his lines with his hands fisted by his sides.
But now that it’s my turn to speak, I’ve got no idea what to do. I feel guilty for making fun of Thomas’s stupid movements, because what the hell are you supposed to do with your hands when you speak in Shakespeare’s convoluted tongue?
“Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,” I begin, the words falling dead on the stage between us because I’m so w
rapped up in thinking about movements.
In my earpiece, I hear, “Touch his face, Becca.” My breath catches with the sound of Max’s voice, only a whisper in my ear.
My fingers reach out, following Max’s command of their own volition. They trace their way down the stubble of Thomas’s jaw. His eyes widen, but his own hand reaches out and draws a line down my face. His fingertips are rough with calluses, and I wonder if he plays an instrument. The thought is distracting. I want to step away from his touch to remember the next line, but Max is back.
“Step closer. Wrap your arm around his waist.” His voice frays on the words, like the edges have been hacked at with a rusty ax.
I glance at Thomas, who is studying my face intently now, waiting for my next move. Closing my eyes, I grab the fabric of his shirt at his waist and pull myself into his chest. I immediately feel Thomas’s hand at my waist and have to fight to get my last line out.
“But my true love is grown to such excess I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.”
I feel Thomas’s cheek resting on the top of my head, his arms around me, and the warmth from his chest on my own cheek. I remind myself. This isn’t real.
Loud clapping erupts from where Mr. Owens and Marcus are watching.
“Brilliant, dear Juliet,” he says.
Thomas drops his arms and steps back, but he doesn’t look away from my face.
Owens stands, still clapping, and says, “And to think, I discovered you, a hidden gem. Brilliant. Just brilliant.”
I tangle a finger in my hair and look to the wings, catching only a fleeting glimpse of the back of Darby’s purple boots as she slams open the backstage door. Looking up at the booth, I find Max’s silhouette behind the glass.
When Owens dismisses us, I jog up the aisle and take the steps to the booth two at a time. Victor gives me a standing ovation. “Brilliant, dear Juliet,” he says, his voice a horrible imitation of Owens.
I feel heat on my cheeks. “You should be applauding Max,” I say to Victor and join in the applause. I flop in the chair beside Max. “Thank you.”
Life After Juliet Page 10