He studies his hands, picking at his squared-off thumbnail. “I told you I’d help.”
Victor claps him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, Maximo. Owens thought she was brilliant.”
Max nods, but his chin droops down toward his chest, almost resting there.
Victor smiles at me as he backs out the door. “I’ll see you guys at the truck.” He waves and is about to disappear down the stairs when his head pops back in the doorway. “Oh, and Becky?”
“Yeah.”
A wicked half grin settles over Victor’s lips. “Shotgun.”
Max snorts, his head bobbing once before his eyes settle again on his knees. I smile and wave Victor off before swiveling my chair to face Max.
“Seriously, Max. Thanks.”
He lifts his chin up from his chest. “Sure.”
I try to unravel the language of his sloped shoulders, his guarded eyes, the way his fingers curl in toward his palms. I decide that if he were in a novel, the author would describe his posture as brooding. “Are you okay?”
He looks up at me, taking a deep breath that straightens his spine. His smile is so small, like the farthest star in the sky. “I’ll be fine.” He swivels back and forth in his chair. It’s clear by the furrow in his brow that he’s weighing his next words. “I just didn’t expect to feel so crappy about seeing you in that douche’s arms.”
“Romeo?” I thumb toward the stage.
Max looks like he’s eaten something sour. “His name is Thomas, and all the girls love him.”
I lean forward in my seat, closing some of the gap between us. “My name is Becca, and I’m not a typical girl.”
Max mirrors my posture and my instinct is to pull away, because now we are so close, too close. “You’re right, Becca Hanson. Typical is not a word that applies to you.”
His incisors, fully visible in the broad smile he’s giving me, wink in the muted light of the booth. The crooked one on the right seems larger than it should. Something about it makes me want to run my tongue over his teeth, feel the uneven plane they make.
Oh God! Is that gross? That’s gross. Except thinking about it makes my stomach flip and not in a vomit kind of way.
I turn back to the panel of controls behind me, hoping the glowing buttons will help hide the hot blush I feel pretty much everywhere.
Scene Eight
[A barn on the Herrera property]
The next Monday, after an only slightly rocky rehearsal (I didn’t have to work with Thomas, so there was less sweating and stuttering and general idiocy on my part), Max and I find ourselves in his truck without Victor as a chaperone. Victor’s staying late to help Kelli with costumes. His mom taught him to sew when he was in middle school. Kelli says he’s actually even better than her at sewing, but his design skills are for shit. Her words.
We’ve got the windows down, and the wind buffering through the truck is the only music in the cab. To borrow Kelli’s phrase, the truck’s radio is for shit. But I don’t mind. Sometimes, when Charlotte’s music was blaring, I’d find my heart racing along with the beat and lose all focus. Music can be a distraction, and right now, I don’t want to be distracted. Not from the warm silence between Max and me. Not from the way the wind blows his ebony hair into his eyes. Not from the way his fingers tap to the silent song playing in his mind.
“Do you have to go straight home?” Max asks. I shake my head. “Want to come do homework at my house? I want to show you something I made.”
“Okay.”
When we walk in the kitchen, Javier is at the table with a math worksheet in front of him. “Hey, man,” Max says, dropping his bag on the seat next to his brother and peeking over his shoulder. “How’s it going?”
Javier looks up with a glazed expression. “Math is dumb.”
I laugh, pulling out the chair across the table. “My brother would have a heart attack if he heard you say that.” Javier’s cheeks flush, and I quickly add, “But I personally think you’re right.”
Max chuckles and pulls the paper in front of him. “Let’s see what you’re working on.”
Dezi comes in from his studio in the back of the house. “Becca,” he greets me with warm enthusiasm. “You’re back.” He studies my face a moment longer than is customary, but I’m used to it. Charlotte did it, too, taking her time to memorize features she’d sketch later. I’ve noticed Max doing it in the past few weeks. Although, when Max looks at me like that, my insides liquefy.
Dezi nods and fills a glass with water. “I’ll take over on homework duty, Max,” he says from the sink. “I know you wanted to show Becca what you’ve been working on in the barn.”
“What’s in the barn?” I ask.
Dezi looks like he can barely contain the secret. Max jumps up, holding a hand out to his dad. “No, don’t tell.” He looks at me with a crooked smile. “You’ll have to wait and see for yourself.”
The barn door squeals as Max slides it open. The orange light from the setting sun falls in a brilliant shaft across the dirt floor. Max motions for me to step in, where I can see more trickles of light bleeding through the knots in the walls.
The center of the barn is filled with the enormous iron horse, now finished, with gleaming eyes and nostrils that I swear I can see moving. Its ribs seem to expand and contract, as if this metal beast were sharing the air with us.
I step closer, my hand reaching out to touch the horse’s raised front leg and freezing mid-reach as my eyes adjust to the patchwork of light and catch sight of a new sculpture that wasn’t here last time. I leave the horse and walk into a back corner of the barn where there is a set of stairs that lead nowhere. Max is standing beside it, his hand resting on one of the steps.
“What is this?” I ask.
“It will be a balcony of sorts. This took me all weekend.”
“It’s the catwalk from the theater. The one in the sketch you gave me.”
Max shoves his hands in his back pockets and nods.
My eyes feel hot and full. “But why?” I walk around the structure, beautiful in its simplicity, touching the railing that leads up a set of four steps.
“I just wanted to see if I could do it.” His voice has a smoky quality, like driftwood in a bonfire. “Dad’s been teaching me to weld for a while, but this is my first solo project.”
“May I?” I ask, pointing at the steps and placing my foot on the bottom one.
I can see the crooked canine I’m beginning to love when Max smiles at me. “Of course.”
I climb the steps, stopping just shy of the top. From here, a streamer of golden sunlight falls across my face.
“Want to help?”
“Build it?” Max looks at me without answering. I smile. “I wouldn’t know how.”
His face is tilted up toward me, his black hair falling away from his eyes so I can see his entire face. “I’ll teach you.”
I think back to the list Charlotte and I made in Oh, The Places You’ll Go. “Would I get to use power tools?”
“Does a blowtorch count?”
I laugh, a sound that feels good and right and free. It brings a smile to Max’s face, wide and perfect in its imperfections. “In that case, I’m in.”
…
I spend the rest of the week at Max’s after rehearsals. We do homework with Javi (only his Sunday school teacher calls him Javier) and then go out to the barn to work on the catwalk balcony. Welding is sweaty, dirty, heart-pounding work—heart-pounding mostly because I feel like I’m one clumsy move away from incineration. By the time I get home each night, I shower, eat, and am so exhausted that I fall asleep within minutes.
On Thursday, I drag myself down to the kitchen for dinner. I grab the biggest cup we have and fill it with water, thirsty from sweating in the heat for two hours this afternoon. We’ve made great progress. The second set of stairs should be finished in a few more days.
“How’s the set building going?” Dad asks, carrying plates of enchiladas to the table.
&nbs
p; My stomach growls. “Good.” When I told my parents about helping Max, they assumed it was for the play. I didn’t correct them.
“We hardly see you anymore,” Mom says, sitting down with a bowl of tortilla chips. “It’s strange to come home to an empty house.”
Dad swallows a bite of his enchilada and moans appreciatively. “Well, I’m glad you’re getting more involved,” he says before taking another large bite. I do the same, stuffing in an oozy, cheesy mouthful.
We’re all quiet for a minute, and then Mom blurts out, “I wasn’t implying it’s a bad thing. I’m glad Becca’s branching out.”
I imagine branches sprouting from my head. It’s a silly image, and I giggle. They both stop, Dad’s fork midway to his mouth again, and look at me curiously, like maybe I really do have branches in my hair. “Sorry,” I mumble, pushing enchilada sauce around on my plate.
“What’s so funny?” Mom asks.
“Nothing.” I take a big bite and chew. “I guess I’m just happy.”
Scene Nine
[The barn]
Victor joins Max and me on Friday. He pushes himself up on the workbench against the wall and keeps up a steady stream of snarky witticisms and long-winded stories. I’m measuring the iron for the railing on the second set of steps, while Max is cutting the supports.
“Hey, Max, remember that time Beni almost destroyed this barn with that pumpkin chucker he made?”
At Beni’s name, my head pops up, swiveling to gauge Max’s reaction. His shoulders tense—the muscles in his neck straining above the collar of his gray T-shirt—but he also grins.
“He’d have been better off putting a hole in the barn than crushing Mom’s vegetable garden.”
“Oh, yeah. She was pissed.” Victor’s legs are swinging like crazy underneath him. He’s looking at me when he explains. “Esperanza looks all sweet, but do not cross her. She’ll start yelling shit at you in Spanish and shaking her fist in your face, and I swear she gets like three feet taller when she’s mad.” He’s chuckling and shaking his head now, remembering the scene.
“What happened?” I ask, my curiosity crushing me.
Victor looks to Max to see if he wants to take over the story, but Max juts his chin at him, telling him to take the floor. Victor hops down from his perch and starts telling me about how smart Beni was and how his smarts were always getting him in trouble. I smile, thinking of the Virgin Mary glued to the dashboard of Max’s truck.
“So one October, Beni made a catapult, only he had a fancy name for it. What’d he call it, Max?”
“It was a ballista,” Max says, setting down the cutting torch. He grabs a rag from the bench behind Victor and wipes his hands. “It’s like a crossbow, only for throwing stones or lead balls—”
“Or pumpkins,” Victor says. He starts pacing and waving his arms around to illustrate the rest of the story about Beni building this medieval war contraption for fun. He’d dragged it way out into the field behind Max’s house to launch a pumpkin. “But he’d gotten some calculations wrong, and so when he launched the pumpkin it went way farther than he expected.”
I watch Max as he leans against the workbench, his smile so large his eyes are crinkled. He chimes in. “From where we were standing, we thought it’d hit the barn, but it sailed just to the left of it and crushed Mom’s garden.”
“Squashed the squash!” Victor laughs at his stupid joke.
I’m smiling, too. “That’s crazy.”
Max shakes his head. “Beni didn’t get those calculations wrong.” His look is far-off, remembering. “He was aiming for the barn. He wanted to see what would happen when an irresistible force collides with an unmovable object. I think he chickened out at the last second. I saw him nudge the ballista just before it launched.”
“He sounds so amazing. What happened to him?” As soon as I’ve asked it, I want to weld my own mouth shut.
Victor freezes, looking at Max. Max’s smile disappears as he tosses the rag back on the bench. “He wanted to see what would happen when an irresistible force collides with an unmovable object.” He grabs his welding helmet and gloves and nods at the metal he’s cut. “Better get back to work.”
I look at Victor, who’s wearing an expression that is one part grief, two parts protectiveness. I’m not about to ask anyone to explain.
Scene Ten
[The theater]
I read four hundred six pages this weekend. I also built a metal sculpture of a catwalk. Dezi complimented our work and pointed out places where the joints were too rough and needed finishing. Max looked crestfallen, but I didn’t mind. It just means I’ll need to spend more time in the barn studio working with Max.
I’m surprised at how comfortable I’ve become there. I never really left my house much before.
Near the end, when Charlotte was experiencing seizures and migraines big enough to take down a bull elephant, we spent more time at Charlotte’s, where her sister could look after her, but not much—not enough.
Just yesterday, I went all by myself from the barn to the Herrera’s kitchen to get water for Max and me. I made normal conversation with Dezi while he cooked dinner and even quizzed Javi on a few of his spelling words. And the whole time, my panic at being outside my comfort zone and with new people was barely palpable.
Today, Mrs. Jonah sets the class free to work with our critique partners. We turned in our Would You Rather pieces on Monday. We’ve been working all week on what Mrs. Jonah calls genre bending, taking poems and writing them as either prose or dramas. I brought my Emily Dickinson collection from home. I’m thinking of writing “Because I Would Not Stop for Death” as a short story for my final project.
Max gives me a small wink before he joins his partner. I think he meant it to bolster me before working with Darby, but it pretty much makes my insides go mushy.
I gather my things and meet Darby by the classroom door. Since, according to Mrs. Jonah, we’d both come back unscathed from our last work session in the library, we are to conduct all of them there.
Unscathed? I marvel at people’s inability to understand there are some scars that cannot be seen by the naked eye. I am terrified to be shut in a tiny study room with Darby again. What horrible realizations about my general ineptitude as a human will I have to face today?
When I follow Darby out, she makes a wrong turn at the end of the hallway, taking us away from the library.
“Where are we going?”
“A place to work.”
“Does Mrs. Jonah know?” I ask, catching up to walk beside her.
Darby looks sidelong at me. “Why do you care?”
“Well, I just wonder if she’ll know where to look for my body, or what’s left of it, after you eat me alive.” I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but then, I hadn’t meant to audition for the school play, either.
Darby stops and turns to face me with this incredulous look on her face, all eyebrows up and mouth a bit open. “What?”
“Sorry.”
She doesn’t get mad. Instead she starts laughing. “Don’t be,” she says through her laughter. “That’s the best thing you’ve ever said to me.”
She leads us to the empty theater and then up the stairs to the booth. I feel suddenly possessive. This is Max’s territory. “What are we doing up here?”
Darby leans over the control panel, searching for and immediately finding what she’s looking for. The footlights come up, and she dims them so they are soft halos of light along the front of the stage. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.” She sits back in Max’s chair and stares out at the empty theater below. “Up here, I am the master of the universe.”
I swallow a snicker. “You’re He-man.”
Darby freezes as she’s pulling her notebook from her bag. “What?”
“Masters of the Universe is He-man. You know, She-ra, Skeletor, those big, weird cat things…any of this sounding familiar?”
Darby looks away, toying with the corner of her notebook.
/> My insides feel fluttery, watching her squirm. I should feel great, putting her in her place, but it feels hollow instead. “My brother is a dork. Adorable, loyal, kind, but a dork. He has the action figures.”
I look out at the theater. It is beautiful from up here. I’ve always thought that. I guess I just figured someone like Darby would only like the view from center stage.
“You’re really great down on that stage, Darby.”
Darby rolls her eyes. “I know that.”
I nod. “Of course.”
We’re silent in the dim booth. I get out my work, figuring we’re done talking. Time to get some writing done. I open my notebook and stare down at a blank page.
Darby sighs into the stillness. “You’re not all that bad at it yourself.” She glances at me. “Did you know that?”
I shake my head, afraid to look up from the blank page. There’s no way I can make words. I’m too stunned.
“I mean, you’ve got plenty to learn, but the stage likes you, you know?”
“The stage what?”
She swivels her seat so she’s looking at me. “Acting is a web of lies, but those lies are strung together with truths.” She takes a deep breath, like it pains her to let me in on these secrets. Why is she being so decent? So human? “Obviously, you know nothing about boys and that kind of love.” She pauses to give me a pointed look, allowing me a chance, maybe even begging me, to argue with her just so she can resort back to standard operating bitch procedure. I listen carefully instead.
“But it’s not like you don’t know what love is, right? I mean you were pretty wrecked without that friend of yours, Charlotte. You’ve got the pain and anger, confusion and passion inside of you—you’ve lived that truth—and all you have to do is channel it into Juliet. I think the stage knows, feels, the weight of all the crap you’re carrying around. You’re a medium, and the stage can use you to tell amazing stories.”
“That’s kind of creepy.”
Darby smirks. “Do you want my help or not?”
“Of course. I need all the help I can get.”
Life After Juliet Page 11