My Life After Now

by Jessica Verdi

  Together, we ventured to the massive basement prop room in search of swords. It took a while—we had to squeeze past large backdrops that seemed to have just been thrown into the first available spaces their set-strikers had found and toss aside sheets that were draped over the larger furniture pieces. But when we finally found the swords, we both went motionless, astounded by the sight before us.

  “We’ve hit the mother lode,” Evan whispered.

  Andre had warned us that there was a ton of swords down here because of a considerable prop donation after the local Renaissance Faire had gone belly-up a couple of years ago, but nothing could have prepared us for this. The prop room was stockpiled with swords in every size and variety imaginable, and they were everywhere. Propped up in rows five layers deep against the walls, sticking up out of large, cylindrical bins, even dangling from racks attached to the ceiling like silver chandeliers.

  “Where do we even start?” I marveled.

  A slow smile spread across Evan’s face. “Anywhere.”

  I seized a sword at random from the nearest bin and stabbed the air. It felt too light, flimsy. I tried another. This one was painted black and didn’t catch the light the way I wanted. I kept choosing swords and they kept letting me down. “How will I even know when I find the right one?” I mumbled.

  Evan looked at me in total seriousness. “The right one will find you,” he said.

  “What is this, Ollivander’s Wand Shop?”

  Evan stared at me, an unreadable expression on his face.

  “What, you’ve never read Harry Potter?” I said.

  He laughed. “Of course I have.”

  “So what’s with the—” But I was cut off by the sight of two swords lying side-by-side, individually sheathed in velvet, and resting in their own clear plastic case. I carefully took one from its wrappings. As soon as my palm closed around the silver handle I knew I’d found it.

  Evan picked up the other one, and I thought I heard a tiny gasp escape his throat.

  These swords were the real thing, with sharp edges, not the blunt kind usually used in theatrics. The weight of it felt good in my hands, made me feel strong. I thrust my sword out at Evan and he immediately responded in kind. The instant the glistening metal collided, an almost indiscernible spark ignited and a pitch-perfect clang reverberated in our ears. Evan and I met each other with matching grins. We were sold.

  We both thought it was weird that the school even had the swords at all, but they were amazing and we both loved them. So we agreed that we wouldn’t tell Andre.

  From that day on, for a half hour at the beginning of every rehearsal, Evan and I worked on choreographing the fight. I couldn’t have asked for a better sparring partner—the guy was a fencing genius.

  “I think he’s sexy,” Max said one day as he, Courtney, and I watched him from across the auditorium.

  “Sorry, Max-a-million,” I said. “I’m pretty sure he’s straight.”

  He sighed. “Of course. All the good ones are either straight or taken. Or both.” He jerked a thumb at Ty, who was up on the stage learning how to climb up Juliet’s balcony. His dancer’s body moved lithely, and a little shot of love radiated inside me as I watched him work.

  Courtney smacked Max teasingly on the side of the head. “You’re crazy. A lack of gay guys is one thing this drama club does not have. It’s not their fault you’re just not interested in any of them.” She sighed. “I, on the other hand, really do have a tragic shortage of romantic prospects. At this rate, I’m going to be a forty-year-old virgin.”

  I laughed. “What about Evan?” I asked, already plotting. “He’s kind of my friend now. Want me to ask him if he’s into you?” Short, shy, brace-face Courtney was entirely inexperienced when it came to guys. For as long as I’d known her, the only thing she’d ever wanted was to find her Prince Charming.

  But she shook her head. “Drama club relationships are way too incestuous. And knowing me, it won’t work out, and then we’ll be all awkward at rehearsal every day. No thanks.”

  “Hey, not all drama club relationships are a bad idea,” I said.

  But I soon understood all too well what she’d meant. Cue problem number two.

  It was a Sunday afternoon and I was sitting on my bedroom floor, attempting to pick out a Taylor Swift song on my guitar, when I got a text from Courtney:

  Look at Elyse’s Facebook profile ASAP.

  I signed on to the site for the first time in weeks, pulled up Elyse’s page, and tried to make sense of the words before me.

  ♥ Elyse St. James is in a relationship with Ty Parker.

  I called Courtney.

  “Did you see it?”

  “I’m looking at it right now,” I said. “You know, I actually feel kinda bad for her. She must have a major inferiority complex if she feels the need to lie about having a boyfriend.”

  “Lucy,” Courtney said slowly, “Facebook doesn’t just let you say that you’re in a relationship with whoever you want—the other person has to confirm it before the update goes public.”

  Wait. That was true. But it didn’t make sense—why the hell would Ty give her permission to post that? Slowly, a new picture formed in my mind. A more ominous one.

  “Lucy? You there?” Courtney asked.

  “I gotta go,” I whispered. I hung up and immediately called Ty.

  He answered on the first ring. “Hey, babe!”

  “Do you have anything you want to tell me?” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “According to Elyse’s Facebook page, you two are in a relationship?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Ty?” I said softly.

  “I didn’t think you would see that,” he said. “You’re never on Facebook.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  He let out a long sigh. “I swear I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he said. “I didn’t even like her in that way.”

  “You didn’t mean for what to happen?”

  Another pause. Ty didn’t want to continue this conversation—that was painfully clear—but finally he spoke. “Last Saturday we were at her house, working on the…more romantic scenes. And I don’t know how it happened, but at some point it changed from a stage kiss to a…real kiss.”

  You have got to be kidding me, was all I could think. I knew the difference between stage kisses and real kisses. “So you’re telling me there was tongue.”

  “Yes.”

  “And…emotions.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it just kissing, or was there anything else? I’m just trying to get the full picture here.”

  Ty hesitated again. “There may have been some…touching. Over the clothes only,” he added, like that made it somehow better.

  “Is it still going on?”

  “Yes,” he said quietly.

  “When were you going to tell me?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady, despite the tears that were silently running down my face.

  “I don’t know. I guess I was waiting for the right moment.”

  I hung up without another word.

  3

  Send in the Clowns

  One of the best conversations of my life, one year earlier:

  Ty: (floating on an inner-tube in his pool) My sister’s getting married.

  Me: (sitting on the pool’s edge, dangling my feet in the water) Really?

  Ty: Yeah. She announced it last night. The wedding’s gonna be on New Year’s Eve, in the city.

  Me: That’s amazing!

  Ty: Wanna go?

  Me: (blinking in surprise) With you? To your sister’s wedding?

  Ty: Yeah.

  Me: (giddy with excitement) Yes! Yes yes yes! But…are you sure you won’t change your mind? New Year’s is over five months away…

  Ty: (pulling me into the water, close to him) Of course I’m sure. I love you, Lucy.

  Me: *Gasp!*

  Ty: (kisses me passionately)

&nb
sp; Me: (grinning like a crazy person) I love you too.

  End scene.

  There were a lot of awful things about breaking up with Ty, but one of the worst was having to tell people. Because you can’t just tell them that you and your boyfriend of a year and half with whom you were never anything but happy are suddenly not together anymore and leave it at that. They want to know why. And it’s really embarrassing to admit to your parents and friends that you were cheated on.

  Word spread fast. I told Max and Courtney what happened, and they immediately told everyone else. They weren’t gossiping—they just wanted to make sure everyone was fully informed, so everyone would take my side. It did seem to work—I noticed people giving Elyse a wide berth and throwing her dirty looks during all nonperforming moments. But it was hard to feel victorious when I was being pitied. If one more person asked me how I was doing or told me what a d-bag they thought Ty was, I was going to scream.

  To make matters worse, Ty would not stop apologizing. But there was a caveat: he was only apologizing for the way I found out, not for having cheated. The distinction was not lost on me.

  I tried to believe Max and Courtney’s words of support—that I was better off without him, that I deserved better—but I couldn’t help holding out hope that he would realize his mistake and want me back.

  But then I saw them kiss.

  We were all gathering up on the stage at the start of rehearsal, and it was impossible to miss the way Ty’s face lit up when Elyse entered the room. They ran over to each other like they hadn’t seen each other in years, and I watched, powerless, as he cupped her face in his hands and leaned down to kiss her, the way he always used to do with me. The sting I felt at witnessing that was a hundred times worse than the hypothetical mental image of the two of them in her room that had been on a constant loop in the back of my head.

  After that, all hope was gone. I ran home and threw away every single memento of our time together. Pictures still in the frames, the favors from his sister’s wedding, the dried corsage from his junior prom. I deleted every photo of him from my phone and blocked him on Facebook.

  But I couldn’t delete him from my mind. Especially since I had to watch him and her being all Romeo and Juliet-y in rehearsals every single day. It was torture.

  Elyse herself never said a thing to me. But the smugness was seeping out of her pores. I’d never wanted to punch anyone as badly as I wanted to punch her right in her perfect little surgically-altered nose.

  • • •

  I came home after rehearsal Friday and went directly to the kitchen on a quest for comfort food. I deserved to overdo it on the calories—pressing pause on the actor diet was my reward for making it through the week from hell. Well, that and a glorious weekend free of Elyse St. Life Destroyer.

  I slathered two pieces of bread with butter and added three slices of artificial cheese product. The skillet sizzled and hissed, and I stood in front of the stove, hypnotized, as the flame warmed my face and the gooey orange stuff melted over the crusts. My mouth was actually beginning to water when I heard Dad’s voice coming from the living room. That was weird. My dads usually had their date nights on Fridays.

  “Lu?” he called to me. “Can you come in here for a minute?”

  I flicked the burner off and went into the living room. “What’s up?”

  And then I saw her. Problem number three.

  Lisa Williams was lounging in the big red armchair, legs crossed, looking like she actually thought she belonged there. She flashed a crooked grin at me. I glanced at my fathers over on the couch. Dad had a strained smile on his face, and Papa looked like his head was about to explode. I knew how he felt.

  “What’s she doing here?”

  “Aw, that’s no way to treat your dear old mum,” she said.

  “You are not my mother,” I snapped, refusing to look at her.

  If only that were true.

  See, Dad, aka Adam Moore, went through a bit of a “finding himself” phase his last year at Columbia, where he was studying Art History. He had a brief affair with his female best friend, Lisa, and bam, Lisa got pregnant. She was on a student visa from the U.K., planning on becoming a traveling rock photographer, and not too keen on the idea of having a kid. But Dad, his hetero experimental period all but over, knew it might be his only chance to have a biological child without employing a surrogate. So they made a deal—if Lisa carried me for nine months and gave birth to me, Dad would take over from there. They both upheld their ends of the bargain. For three years, while Dad got his art dealing career started, he and I lived with his parents in Brooklyn. Then Dad met Papa, aka Seth Freeman, attorney-at-law, we moved to our five-bedroom house in Eleanor Falls, Seth legally adopted me, and our family was complete.

  I never wondered “where I came from” like most adopted or single-parent kids. My dads were always so forthcoming with information about Lisa that I rarely had any questions. One of my earliest memories was of a much-smaller me sitting on Dad’s lap, looking through pictures of the beautiful woman with hair so red and long that it looked aflame, and realizing for the first time that my auburn hair was an exact blend of Lisa’s red and Dad’s brown locks.

  But being fully informed about my mother’s identity didn’t prevent me from missing her. Every year, we sent Lisa holiday cards and my school photos. I loved going to the post office and telling them we were sending the letter overseas. It made me feel important, special. I always hoped the mail lady would bring me my very own letter from England, stamped with the Queen’s face, but that never happened. The first time I heard anything from Lisa was when I was eight years old and she showed up, unannounced, on our doorstep.

  At first I didn’t believe that she was the same woman from the photos. She was incredibly thin, her hair now a dull orange, her face hollow. She said she’d been back in New York for about a year, and she needed money. She said she had nowhere else to go. She stayed with us for two days. She slept in our guest room, ate our food, used our shower. She didn’t hug me or ask about my best subject in school. Her blue eyes darted around nervously, never resting on anything, even me—especially me—for longer than a second. And then she left, with cash in her purse and a promise to stay in touch. We didn’t hear from her again for five years.

  The second time she turned up, she again materialized at our house with no warning. But this time she seemed a lot more put-together—she was wearing makeup and looked a lot healthier. She didn’t ask for money—she said she just wanted to get to know me. This time, my dads deferred to me—did I want Lisa to stay with us again? This was my chance—I was thirteen and growing breasts and had recently gotten my period, and the idea of having a mother around was incredibly appealing. I nodded shyly, and Lisa moved in. And it was great. I took her to see my favorite Broadway shows and played her the songs I was learning in my guitar lessons. She told me stories about traveling around Europe and Asia and North America with rock bands. We went shopping and got pedicures. I even introduced her to Max and Courtney.

  And then one day, after she’d been living with us for about a month, she was gone. She left a note on the kitchen counter saying that this was all too much too fast and that this life was not what she wanted for herself. I cried myself to sleep for weeks.

  And now here she was, sitting in my living room for the third time in my life.

  “What is she doing here?” I asked again.

  “Lucy,” Dad said, “why don’t you sit down?”

  “Just answer my question.”

  “Well,” Dad said cautiously, “Lisa has asked if she can stay with us for a little while, and I think we should all sit down and discuss our feelings on the subject.”

  I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. I couldn’t deal with this right now.

  “I’m going to spend the night at Courtney’s,” I said, and ran upstairs.

  I logged onto my laptop and three-way Skyped Courtney and Max. “We’re going out tonight,” I declared.
r />   4

  Out Tonight

  “I’m going method, guys. For the rest of the night, Lucy Moore will cease to exist.” I held up my fake ID. “Tonight, I am Samantha Porter, twenty-two-year-old college student from Philadelphia.”

  It was nine p.m., and we were on the Metro-North train, barreling toward New York City. Max and I both told our parents that we were sleeping at Courtney’s—which we did plan to do eventually, but not until close to dawn. Courtney’s mom worked nights at the hospital.

  “What brought on this sudden sense of adventure, Luce?” Max asked. We were more of a play-going, movie-renting, coffee-shop-frequenting kind of group. We weren’t exactly clubbers. The only reason we even had fake IDs at all was because, continuing with a long-standing Eleanor Drama tradition, last year’s seniors had passed them down to us after graduation.

  “Are you talking to me?” I asked pointedly. “My name isn’t Luce. It’s Samantha.”

  Courtney and Max rolled their eyes in unison. But it got them off my back. They had no idea that Lisa was back, and I wasn’t about to talk about it. Tonight I was vacating my life.

  “Whatever you say, Samantha,” Max said.

  We got to the club in Chelsea at ten o’clock, ready to dance our feet off, only to find out that they didn’t even open until midnight. My heart sank. Probably should have done my research a little better.

  “Now what?” Courtney asked.

  I held my head high. “Now we just find someplace better to go.”

  We walked for a while, until we came upon a place that looked promising. There was a velvet rope and an enormous bouncer outside, and there was live music escaping through the open door. I took the lead and confidently flashed my Pennsylvania ID. The bouncer looked at it, chuckled, and shook his head. He knew it was a fake. But I couldn’t let him send us away. At this rate, the night was never even going to begin.

  I stuck out my boobs and flashed him a coy smile. “Is there a problem, sir?” I asked sweetly.