Life After Juliet

by Shannon Lee Alexander

  Part of me thinks good! Karma’s a you-know-what. And the other part of me, the part that has sat in this very library this year and cried, can’t get behind that sentiment. And even though I know I’ll probably get my faced ripped off for this, I stop at the side of her table and gently clear my throat.

  “What?” Darby snaps, looking up and swiping at her eyes.

  My pulse steps on the accelerator. “Can I help?” I look down at the paper she’d been working on. It looks like an essay that she’s scribbled notes all over.

  “No.” She puts her elbows on the table, covering the essay as best she can.

  I should walk away. At least I asked. I tried to do the nice thing. Mom would be proud of me. Charlotte would be proud of me. Charlie would be proud of me. Three gold stars for Becca! Instead, I pull out the chair across from her and sit down.

  “Looks like you could use a fresh set of eyes.” I point at her paper. “I am your critique partner, after all.”

  “This isn’t for Jonah. You don’t owe me anything.”

  I shake my head. “That’s not true.” Darby blinks and sits back in surprise. “I kind of owe you a lot. You’ve helped a bunch with drama stuff. And the fact that you simultaneously scare and irritate me has actually motivated me to, I don’t know, put myself out there.” I reach my hand forward so that my fingertips are an inch away from her work. “I think I’d like to help.”

  She’s just about to give in and slide the paper forward when the bell rings. She swears under her breath and jumps up to start packing her stuff.

  “Darby?”

  “Maybe.”

  I smile, and I can’t believe I’m smiling, but whatever. “We don’t have practice after school. We could meet back here.”

  “No,” Darby snaps. She cringes and takes a big breath. “I have to be home. If I’m not at practice, I have to go home and help my mom. I have to watch the littles, my sisters and brother.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Practice and then babysitting again.”

  Mr. Davenport, the media specialist, calls out a warning. The tardy bell is about to ring.

  Darby rolls her eyes. “Can you come to my house? Today?”

  My racing heart goes subsonic. “No, I—really?”

  “It’s the only way.” Her voice is ragged, torn between hope and hostility.

  “Okay.” I nod as I answer. “Okay.”

  There’s a flicker of something deep in her gray eyes, but I can’t name it before she turns and leaves without another word.

  …

  Victor laughs at me as we walk toward Max’s truck. “I cannot believe you volunteered.” He chokes himself snickering and sputters, “Katniss Hanson.”

  “Shut up, Vic.” I say. And then realize he’s too busy making fun of me to call out—“SHOTGUN.” I shout it in his face and then run the rest of the way to Max’s truck.

  I open the door for Victor, smiling with as much saccharine sweetness as I can muster, and hold the front seat up so he can climb in.

  “Quit your grinning,” he mumbles. “I may have lost this battle, but you’re still going to war with the Queen of Hearts.”

  I’m maybe (definitely) not careful when pushing the front seat back, and maybe (definitely) I smile a little when the seat smacks him in the face.

  Max licks his lips. “It won’t be that bad. Really, Becca.”

  “It’ll be a disaster, but I said I’d help.” I turn in my seat to look at both of them. “She looked super desperate.”

  “She’s an actress,” Victor says, throwing his hands up in the air. “She has a thousand desperate looks for every occasion. She’s suckering you.” He leans forward, resting his chin on my seat. “She’s probably planning on kidnapping you and stashing you in a pit until after the play so she can be Juliet.”

  “Victor,” Max says, his jaw clenching.

  “I’m just saying there’s no way I’d be caught dead helping Darby.”

  Heat is creeping up my neck, and I’m trying to breathe normally. “Well then, lucky for you that you aren’t coming along. Max is just dropping me off.”

  Darby lives in one of the older homes just outside of town. It’s not in a subdivision like mine, where all the houses look the same, but on a street of homes set way back from the road with lots of space between them. There are storage barns and odd collections of rusting cars, tidy gardens lined with cinderblock, and a full canopy of mature trees all down her street.

  Max slows as we pull up to the address she gave me. He flicks his gaze between the house and me a few times, like he’s trying to decide if it will be safe to leave me here. Maybe he’s looking for a pit.

  There are two storage barns behind Darby’s squat gray ranch house. A large trailer parked outside of one barn reads Jones Construction Company. The front yard is littered with bright plastic toys. As we pull down the long driveway, the front door opens and a little boy, maybe five years old, comes barreling out onto the lawn. He’s not wearing pants—or rather he’s not wearing pants in a traditional sense, since his pants are on his head.

  I look at Max, and he’s grinning his wide, crooked grin. He’s got a little brother. He must understand what’s going on.

  Max parks the truck by the house. Inside, someone is shrieking. Darby comes through the front door with a wild look on her face.

  “Been nice knowing you, Becca,” Victor mutters from the backseat.

  “Josh,” Darby hollers. “Get back in here.” Her face is a bright mahogany as she chases the boy around the yard. When she sees the truck, she stops in her tracks. Her mouth opens like she’s going to say something snarky, but instead, she shakes her head and stalks back toward the stoop.

  I get out of the truck, thanking Max for the ride.

  “Good luck.” He winks at me.

  Victor crawls out from the back to sit up front now. He pats me on the shoulder as he climbs in. “You’ll need it.”

  I watch them pull away. Standing in the drive, I look from Darby, who has lowered herself down to sit on the stoop, to her little brother, that snappy dresser, who is currently running in circles around a tree in the front yard. I make my way toward Darby.

  She’s barefoot. Her toenails are painted bright yellow. She’s pulling at a loose string in the hem of her shorts, twisting it around one finger like I’d twist hair around one of my fingers.

  “What’s his name?” I ask, nodding toward her brother. He’s now running back and forth between two trees. And he’s barking like a dog. “Josh, you said?”

  Darby grimaces. “He’s four.”

  I nod a few times, but then frown. “I don’t actually know any four-year-olds. The whole pants-as-a-hat thing—is that a big preschool fashion trend?”

  A smile—more like half a smile, but I’ll take it—tugs at Darby’s mouth. “No,” she exhales in a loud sort of way. “He’s a trendsetter.”

  Just then, Josh tips his head back and howls up into the sky. Darby gives a whistle, like she’s calling the family dog. His head swivels toward us, the legs of his hat-pants swaying out like long, floppy ears. “Come on, boy,” Darby calls. “Let’s get you a doggie bone.”

  The boy comes loping toward Darby, screeching to a halt at her feet, his whole body wriggling with four-year-old excitement. Darby opens the door, and he scampers in. She motions for me to follow and, while I don’t scamper, I walk right into the Queen of Hearts’s castle with only the tiniest of heart attacks.

  Charlotte, give me strength.

  …

  Josh refuses to take his puppy ears off, but does allow Darby to pull some shorts on over his Captain America underpants (but not until he’d explained, in detail, how he’d use Cap’s shield to protect his family if bad guys came to their house). He grins at Darby, a dimple in his left cheek, as she hands him a bag of dog bone shaped crackers.

  Her sisters, Mabel and Glory, come tumbling into the room as soon as they hear the wrinkle of snack packaging being ripped open. The smaller of the two g
irls screeches to a halt when she sees me and then quickly retreats to hide in the hallway.

  Glory, who is six and who assures me that she can tie her own shoes, snatches her snack and runs off. She has colored pencils poking out of the fuzzy bun on the top of her head. Mabel, Josh’s twin, looks like a tiny replica of Darby. Except she’s shy—painfully shy. She peeks around the doorframe with wide gray eyes.

  “May-girl,” Darby coos, crouching down and holding out Mabel’s snack. “It’s okay. This is Becca. You don’t have to be afraid. You’ll like her.” Darby peeks at me over her shoulder. “She’s a lot like you, Mabel. She’s shy, too.”

  Mabel blinks, her long lashes touching her cheeks. She steps into the doorway, but doesn’t come any closer. I step forward and squat next to Darby.

  “Hi.” I wave.

  She waves, her hand down by her waist, eyes on the ground between us.

  “Mabel has taught herself to read,” Darby says to me.

  I smile. “That’s wonderful. Have you read The Velveteen Rabbit, Mabel? That was my favorite when I was little. It still is, actually.”

  She looks up at me, her eyes scanning my face, reading me, and I know exactly what she’s doing, because how many times have I done it myself? She wants to let me in, but she thinks she needs to keep me out.

  Finally, she nods.

  “Yeah, it’s a good one,” I say, nodding, too.

  Mabel takes another step forward and reaches out to take the snacks from her sister. I notice that her fingers brush Darby’s when she takes the bag. She looks right in her big sister’s eyes, and there is so much trust there that it takes my breath away.

  Darby’s smile is soft as Mabel walks away, peeking at us over her shoulder once she’s far enough down the hall to feel safe. “We’ve got about ten minutes until Josh and Glory get bored. We’d better get to work.”

  “What happens when they get bored?”

  Darby purses her lips. “They get creative.”

  I follow her to the kitchen table, set in a bay window, where she quickly sweeps up crumbs and sippy cups to clear a space. I sit and take in the room while she digs in her backpack for the essay.

  The cabinet doors have been removed, and half of the cabinetry has been sanded. One small section has been painted a buttery white. The countertops are littered with more plastic cups and lunchboxes, stacks of papers and mail—standard stuff. But there’s also a plastic jug full of screws and a hefty cordless drill sitting beside the toaster.

  “Ever heard the saying about the cobbler’s kids?”

  I pull my attention back to Darby, who is now holding her essay.

  “The one about the cobbler’s kids always having holes in their shoes?”

  She nods, waving at the mess in the kitchen. “Same goes for the contractor’s kids. We always have unfinished projects around the house. Dad means well, but the business comes first.” She hands me the paper and flops in the seat beside me. “At least the pantry is full.” She points at the pantry, its contents fully visible because the doors have also been taken down to refinish.

  I don’t know what to say, so I look at the essay. It’s titled There’s No Place Like Home. I scan the first paragraph, and my stomach does a jumpy, twisty thing like wringing out a sponge. “This is an application essay, isn’t it?”

  She nods.

  “School of the Arts?”

  “The early admissions deadline for the high school program is soon. The applications and stuff are due, at least, and then there are auditions and interviews.”

  “Ambitious—the early deadline stuff. My brother did that, too.”

  “If I get in, I’ll need all the time I can get to convince my parents to let me go.” She drums her fingers against the table and looks out the window behind us.

  “Let’s get to work, then.”

  Darby is a decent writer, but she’s right to worry about this essay. There’s something missing. It’s about the place where she feels most at home. Unsurprisingly, it’s about the theater at Sandstone. But as I peek up at her, she seems more at home here, pushing crumbs around on the tabletop, bare feet tapping out a rhythm on the dark wood floor, than at school. She’s not being herself at school. She’s playing the role of the Queen of the Drama Club. How can someone be at home in a pretend role?

  My palms sweat as I try to find the words, words that are least likely to offend, to tell Darby she may need to start over on this essay.

  Thankfully, Josh buys me more time. He enters the kitchen at a gallop and plops himself down at Darby’s feet. He paws at her leg with one hand and whines like a puppy.

  “What, Josh?” Darby strokes his head, and I wonder if she even realizes that she’s petting her little brother like he’s the family dog.

  “Puppy palace.” He begins to pant, his tongue lolling to one side.

  “Not now.”

  He switches back to whining.

  “What’s puppy palace?” I ask, and then wish I could apparate to anywhere outside of this kitchen when Darby looks at me, her expression clearly trying to stab me in the face.

  “Nothing,” she says through clenched teeth. She looks down at Josh and points to the den where the TV is playing. “Go play.”

  But Josh is a persistent hound. “Puppy palace.” He looks at me, his brown eyes huge in his little brown face. How can she say no to this face?

  “Is it a TV show? Do you need me to change the channel?”

  He shakes his head. Darby sighs as she pushes herself up from the table. “You keep working,” she says to me. “I’ll build the puppy palace, Josh. Let’s go.” She pats her thigh like she’s calling a dog to heel and leads the way back into the den.

  I go back to pondering what the hell I’m going to say to entice Darby to write about somewhere other than the theater. The sound of giggling coming from the other room distracts me. I investigate the strange sound.

  Darby has built an enormous blanket fort, using at least three different blankets. From inside, I can hear them all laughing, and each of their laughs sounds similar, but also distinct. Darby’s sounds like a church bell pealing in the distance.

  I peek in an open flap. Darby’s reading to her siblings. Glory is coloring while she listens, her pink tongue poking out as she works to stay in the lines in her coloring book. Josh is shaking his floppy pants-ears and belly laughing. Even Mabel laughs loudly, as Darby does a funny voice for one of the characters.

  Glory sees me and pats the spot next to her. “You can read the next one, Darby’s friend.”

  I glance at Darby. Her chest rises imperceptibly in a small sigh, and then she nods in the direction of the seat Glory is offering. “Her name is Becca, guys.”

  I sit next to Glory, and Josh immediately curls up next to me with a happy yip. We read book after book, Darby and I taking turns, until Darby’s mom calls from the back door when she arrives home. The little ones rush out of the fort, squealing for their mom, and Darby and I are left alone.

  I look around at the pastel walls of the blanket fort and the soft pillow floor. Darby is reclined, leaning back against a pile of pillows. She looks completely at ease.

  “This is your home,” I say, my voice soft like the fleece blankets around us. “You should write about this.”

  “How is this”—Darby points at the blanket ceiling—“going to get me into a drama program?”

  I play with the corner of the book in my lap. “Imagine you’re one of those admissions people. How many essays do you think they read from hopeful actors telling them that they are completely at home on the stage?”

  Darby looks a little like I’ve slapped her. “A lot. Most of them, I guess.”

  “Is it the truth? Is that where you feel most at home?”

  “The best I’ve ever felt was standing on a stage. I am powerful there. I’m heard. People see me. They—”

  “They see a character. If anything, being onstage is like taking a vacation. It’s not home.” Darby wrinkles her nose, considerin
g what I’ve said, which is huge and makes my neck feel prickly as I continue. “Be different. Be you.”

  I toss the book I was holding into her lap. “That’s the essay they’ll want to read. That’s how you can stand out from the rest.”

  Darby sits up. “Let me get this straight. Your critique advice is to scrap the whole thing and start over?”

  I nod. “You’re not afraid of a little hard work, are you? I may have only just started paying attention, but I certainly wouldn’t peg you as a quitter.”

  Darby snorts, which makes me laugh, too.

  I crawl out from the puppy palace, but stick my head back in. “Thanks for this.”

  “For what?”

  My brow wrinkles. “Um, I’m not actually sure.”

  Darby smiles. “You’re a piece of work. You know that, right?”

  “That.” I point at her. “Thanks for that.”

  Darby may not like me much, but at least she’s always honest with me. Then again, I did get to hang out in the puppy palace, so maybe she likes me a little.

  Scene Seventeen

  [The theater]

  On Friday, when I walk onstage, the place has been transformed into an opulent party hall. The crew has nearly finished all the sets this week. And even though Owens made Max build the traditional sets, they truly are beautiful.

  We’re rehearsing the party scene and the Capulet house looks warm and inviting around us, draped in rich reds and purples, blues and golds. I run a finger down the lines of a finely painted tapestry and wish I could walk straight into the booth and tell Max how beautiful it is, how talented he is, and how much I’d like to grab a fistful of his T-shirt and kiss that crooked smile off his face. I wonder what his face would look like if I did that?

  And then I realize that I’m thinking dangerous thoughts again. Thoughts that could get me in a position to have my heart annihilated, and that, I’m sure, is not what I want.

  Owens calls us to our marks, and I push Max from my thoughts.

  I take my spot onstage and close my eyes. I mentally step out of my skin and put on Juliet. It’s getting easier. In the two weeks since Thomas and I kissed, I’ve been able to more easily separate from Becca’s world, full of doubt and guilt and possible annihilation, to Juliet’s. And I have to say, that donning her singular mindset for a few hours each afternoon is easier than spending two minutes in my own chaotic one. When I’m Juliet, I can live by one simple precept: Romeo is my life.