“Well, can we pleeeease get this moving?” Amanda cried out again. “I’m not feeling well.” I half expected her to stomp her feet, the way I did in the grocery store. But instead, she gave a huge grimace and clutched her side.
“Are you okay?” Jill called out as Kayla ran up to the set.
“Is the costume too tight?” Kayla asked. She had just put the finishing touches on the gown today, which was cutting it close since the performance was tomorrow.
“No.” Amanda swatted her away, but she still had a look of pain.
I might have been concerned if it were anyone else, but in the last six days alone I had seen Amanda cry wolf about a dozen times. She had pretended to faint in front of Wes so he would dote on her, claimed that my voice gave her migraines and that I needed to be silent or leave the auditorium, and started weeping when she thought Jill was being too demanding and not considerate enough of a true artist’s sensitive feelings.
If I were the director, I would have fired her, but Jill was a perfectionist, and even though Amanda was a nightmare to work with, she was a really good actress. And considering I was the backup choice, Amanda was Jill’s best shot of winning best director, and Jill really wanted to win.
Amanda wrapped her arms around her stomach. “I’ll be fine,” she said.
“I can get you a ginger ale or something,” Wes offered. “It might help.”
“No, you need to stay and rehearse with me. Emily can go,” she said, volunteering my services. “It’s not like she has anything to do.” Amanda hadn’t let up on the idea that understudy meant personal assistant.
“Okay,” I said, and headed for the vending machines. Jill gave me another silent thank-you. It was probably her eightieth since rehearsals began. She knew I was doing this for her—not Amanda. And for Wes’s benefit. It would look awful if I refused to help a sick girl, even though I knew she was a total faker.
I grabbed the pop and headed back to the auditorium. At least this task took only a minute. Over the past month my Cinderella duties had escalated. Every time I said no, Amanda threatened to miss rehearsal, which freaked Jill out. So being a true best friend, I gave in. Although gradually the chores went beyond making dance posters. The past few weeks, I had the pleasure of taking Amanda’s shift in the keep-our-parks-clean campaign (two hours of picking up dog doo and trash), actually ordering the decorations for the dance (she was head of the committee), and taking photos of her so she could post them on GroupIt. Basically, whenever Amanda saw me talking to Wes or trying to work on the scene (I was her understudy after all), she found me a new job.
As I stepped into the room, Wes and Amanda were walking out, and he had his arm around her, helping her stay upright. She certainly was milking this act.
“Hey,” Wes said. “We decided to call it quits for tonight, so Amanda can rest. I’m gonna give her a ride home. You’re okay getting to the store, right?”
I nodded. “Definitely,” I said, but I was disappointed. Wes had been giving me rides after rehearsal. It was my favorite part of the day. Today he was going to drop me off for my shift at Northside Grocery. It was six minutes where I got to talk to him in an Amanda-free zone. My chance where he would maybe, hopefully, see that we were meant to be together. I handed Amanda the ginger ale. “Feel better.”
Instead of thanking me for the drink, she narrowed her eyes and glared at me. “Don’t get any ideas,” she said, resting her head on Wes’s shoulder. “I’ll be back tomorrow. There’s no way I’m missing this. Even if it means getting the whole school sick, I’m getting on that stage. You are not taking my place.”
“Wasn’t planning to,” I said.
“Good,” she answered, and started to walk off. Wes gave me a half smile and a small wave. There was nothing I could do but wave back as my Romeo took his Juliet and left me behind.
“Emily,” Jill called out. “Can you go up on the balcony? We want to work on the lighting. Kayla will stand in for Romeo. Okay?”
“Whatever you need.”
“Thanks,” she said. “You’ve really stepped up through all this. I know Amanda’s been hard on you. I really appreciate everything. We’re just going to do the blocking. We don’t need the lines right now.” Her expression got superintense. “But you do know them, right? Just in case?”
I gave her a thumbs-up. “Everything will be fine,” I assured her. And it would be. There was no way Amanda was going to miss her star performance.
10
“Emily. Emily. Em!”
I jolted up. Huh? What was going on? Where was I? I looked around the room. I was still in bed, but Kayla was standing in the doorway.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, glancing at the clock. It was 10:43. Way too early to be up on a Saturday morning. Everybody, especially Kayla, knew I slept in ’til at least noon on weekends.
“You didn’t answer your phone.”
“Because I was sleeping!” I grabbed my cell. Fifteen missed calls. Four from Kayla, and eleven from Jill. “Oh my God. What happened? Is Jill okay?”
“She’s fine,” Kayla said.
“Then what’s going on?”
“It’s Amanda,” she said, scrunching up her nose.
“What about her?”
“Well, you know how we all thought she was just being a drama queen yesterday, complaining about that pain in her stomach?” Kayla waited for me to nod. “Turns out it was real. Her parents ended up taking her to the hospital. She had to have her appendix out.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yeah, but she needs to stay in the hospital.”
“That’s awful. At least she’s all right.” I threw my head back down on the pillow. I felt bad for Amanda, but I wasn’t quite sure why Kayla felt the need to wake me up just to tell me.
“This couldn’t have waited until noon?” I asked, trying to sound as nice as I could muster. But I was so tired, and I just wanted to go back to bed. Yesterday had gone on forever—first school, then rehearsal, then a late shift at the grocery store. “Or you could have just called the landline. I have a home phone, you know. You could have left a message with my mom.”
Kayla moved closer, pulled out her iPhone, and held it up to me, a sly little smile on her face. “Okay, I’ll admit it, I kind of wanted to see your reaction for myself.”
“To what? I mean, I’m sorry Amanda’s in the hospital. But what does it have to do with me?”
“Think about it,” Kayla said.
Amanda and me? The only thing we had in common was the …
“No, no, no, no, no, no!” I jumped out of bed. “This can’t be happening. She can’t be in the hospital! Not tonight. This is not happening.”
But Kayla’s face told me it was.
Amanda Andrews was stuck in the hospital. That meant she couldn’t perform her Shakespeare scene tonight. So her understudy had to go on in her place. The understudy who volunteered only to get closer to Wes, aka Romeo Capulet … or Montague … or whichever last name was his, and to get some extra credit. The understudy who didn’t learn any of her lines because (a) it was really hard, (b) she was too busy doing her other schoolwork, her part-time job, and all of Amanda’s chores, and (c) what was the point? UNDERSTUDIES NEVER GET TO PERFORM.
I was so dead.
“Yeah, that’s the reaction I was hoping for,” Kayla said, stifling a laugh.
“You’re not filming me, are you?” I swatted at her phone. “What’s the matter with you? If that ends up on GroupIt, I’ll kill you.”
“Okay, okay,” she said, putting the phone away. She probably realized one dead girl in the room was more than enough.
“What am I going to do?” I sunk down onto the floor.
“The show isn’t ’til seven. You still have time to learn the lines. It’s just one scene.”
“Yeah, one scene of Shakespeare!” I was shouting. “I’ve been trying. Nonstop. That stuff is impossible to learn.” I could barely remember the words to my favorite songs. And I liked those
! There was no way I could memorize Shakespeare in so little time—it’s like a foreign language.
“I’m just going to have to back out,” I said.
“You can’t do that. Jill will totally kill you. I mean, seriously, she’ll take the poison that’s meant for Romeo and shove it down your throat. Especially after you begged her for the part.”
It was true. Jill was going to throw a fit. I told her I’d be the best understudy ever. And I meant to, but every time I tried to learn my lines at rehearsal, I was sent on some stupid Amanda errand. I tried working on them with Dhonielle, but actual work kept getting in the way. And when I tried at home, my eyes just glazed over, and before I knew it time was up.
“Come on, she knows me. There’s no way she thinks I learned the part.” I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince Kayla or myself.
“Actually, she does.”
“Why would she think something so stupid?”
“Because you promised her,” Kayla said, leaning back on my dresser. “And you even reassured her last night.” She gave me the thumbs-up. The same sign I had given Jill not even twenty-four hours ago.
“You saw that?”
Kayla nodded.
I only did it because I knew Miss Theater-Is-My-Life Amanda Andrews would never miss a performance.
“Jill wasn’t even planning to have an understudy,” I argued. “So what would she be doing then?”
“Freaking out even more than she already is. I spoke to her this morning, Em,” Kayla said. “She’s totally counting on you. She wanted to come over here with me and review all her notes with you. She would have, too, if she wasn’t stuck babysitting her sister until her mom gets home from the gym.”
“Ohhh.” I doubled over, holding the lower left side of my stomach. “I think I may need to go to the hospital. I’ve never felt a pain like this,” I moaned, channeling my inner Amanda.
“Ummm, you know appendicitis isn’t catching, right?” Kayla asked.
“Whatever. Stranger coincidences have happened than two people having the same disease.”
“Know what’s even stranger?” Kayla didn’t wait for my answer. “That somehow your appendix wound up on the wrong side.”
Shoot. I moved my hands to my right. “The pain is everywhere. Left, right, up, down.”
Kayla shook her head. “You really are an awful actress.”
“No kidding,” I said, dropping the act. “Another reason I can’t go on tonight.” An awful realization set in. “You know, I wouldn’t just be ruining everything for Jill. I’d be ruining everything for Wes, too. They’re both going to hate me. I have no choice. I have to tell them the truth.”
“Then you can kiss the extra credit good-bye.”
I bit my lip hard. I desperately needed to cash in on that offer. “I know, but there’s nothing I can do. Even if I go up there with the script in my hand, I still won’t get the extra credit. All the actors are supposed to have their lines memorized.”
Kayla got one of her sneaky little smiles again. “What if we just call up the lines on your phone, and you can just read them? It’ll be perfect.” She was practically shaking with excitement.
“Except for the fact that it’ll be superobvious.”
“It won’t be. The sleeves on the dress are huge and drape-y. I’ll sew in a pocket. You can keep the phone there.”
“Won’t it be weird that I’m staring at my sleeve the whole time?” I asked.
“It’s your first time on stage. Everyone will just think you’re nervous,” she assured me.
“I will be nervous.” As much as I wanted the extra credit and to make Jill happy, I couldn’t do it. Even if it meant sharing a stage with Wes. “Forget it. The odds of throwing up or fainting are just too high. I don’t need to become known as the puke princess of Shaker Heights. I’ll just have to pull all As for the rest of the semester.”
“In English? You say that as if it were something you knew how to do.” Kayla could be a real downer sometimes. She paused for a second. “Look, if you’re not going to do it for yourself or for Jill, do it for me,” she said.
“You?”
“Yes. I made the Juliet dress. It’s a shoo-in for best costume. But if you don’t do the scene, it won’t even be entered.”
I’d forgotten all about that. “Kayla, I can’t.”
“Please?” She put her hands in a little steeple and shook them at me. “Just think how hot you’ll look. Wes won’t even know what to do with himself.”
It was a gorgeous dress. A gold corset top and satin skirt with a sheer flowing fabric overlay. I’d been so jealous that Amanda would get to wear it.
“I don’t know.”
“Come on,” she said. “This is the answer to everything. Jill. Wes. My costume. Your English grade.”
I was pacing my bedroom floor like a madwoman. “You really think I can do it?”
“Absolutely. It’s just one scene, and if anyone can pull this off, it’s you. You built me a whole website for my designs in one day. This is nothing. We’ll practice all the way up until the performance, and you’ll have the phone for backup.”
Maybe she was right. I just needed to get up there and read the lines. I did it at the audition. I could do it now. “All right. I’m in.”
“You won’t regret this. You’ll see.”
I just prayed she was right.
11
The dress was at school, so Kayla and I headed over there so she could add in the pocket. We sat up on the balcony built for the Romeo and Juliet scene, and I ran through my lines while Kayla sewed. The balcony wasn’t very high up, but it still helped set the stage. I actually felt comfortable up there, and as the hours passed, I was getting more confident that this ridiculous plan of ours was going to work! She finished sewing, and I tossed my phone in the pocket for a test. It totally camouflaged it. As I stood up to do a happy dance, Wes walked into the auditorium. I froze midmove.
“Hey,” he said, running his hand through his light brown hair.
“Hey,” I repeated, and pulled my iPhone back out of the pocket. “You’re early.”
“Jill wanted us to run through the scene a few times. She should be here any minute.”
I glanced at Kayla. I didn’t want Jill to know about the phone plan. She’d get extrastressed, which would make me extrastressed, and my performance definitely didn’t need that.
“It will be okay,” Kayla mouthed to me.
Wes jumped on stage. He was so cute, and his gorgeous brown eyes were totally focused on me. Normally I’d offer up my soul for some extra time with him, but not today. This was just asking for trouble.
He looked up at me on the balcony and smiled. “You’re going to make a great Juliet.”
“Thanks,” I said, smiling back. My mind raced. What did he mean by that? Was he just being nice? Was he flirting with me? Did he know about my massive crush on him and think it was appropriate that I’d play some lovestruck girl?
Did he maybe like me, too?
No way. I couldn’t let myself think that … at least, not without checking in with Kayla and Jill. Although I knew exactly what they’d say—that I needed to stop overanalyzing every little thing Wes Rosenthal said and did. I just needed to talk to him like I’d talk to anyone else. I just needed to be calm. To be breezy.
I could handle that. I’d been doing it every day at rehearsal and in our car rides. Well, as best I could, anyway. “You’re going to make a great Romeo, too. I mean, you already are. I mean, I’ve been watching you perform.” Wait, that sounds creepy. “Not just you,” I quickly added. “I’ve, y’know … been watching everyone. That’s what an understudy does. Watch. Well. They learn the lines, too. And watch.” Oh, please stop talking, Emily. “I mean, an understudy can’t just watch a performer. They have to do more than that.” Why can’t my mouth stop moving? Or at least start saying something smart? “And it was a good thing I was cast. With Amanda getting sick and all. She wanted to be here so badly. But I’m
here. Well, obviously.”
I could tell all my talking was making Wes uncomfortable. That’s what it seemed like anyway, but then he just laughed. I couldn’t tell if it was real or not. Either way, it was my cue to shut up.
I could feel Kayla’s eyes on me in horror. Why hadn’t she stopped me? Stomped on my foot, stabbed me with a sewing needle, tossed me off the balcony. Friends were supposed to keep friends from babbling in front of guys they liked.
“She’s doing okay, though,” Wes said.
“Huh?”
“Amanda. I stopped by the hospital before I came here.”
He stopped by the hospital? To see Amanda! I bet he took her flowers, too. Did he have a thing for her? She had been flirting with him ever since she and Cody broke up, and he seemed to enjoy it. His feelings were probably even stronger now that she was some damsel in distress. Why couldn’t I have been the one with my appendix taken out?
“That’s cool,” I forced myself to say with a smile.
“Yeah, I got a card for everyone to sign. I’ll pass it around at the cast party.” A card, too? He really was a nice guy.
“That’s really sweet of you.”
He shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”
Maybe not to him. But to me. And I’m sure to Amanda, too. They would definitely be a couple when she got back to school.
The sound of a clap got my attention. It was Jill. “Great, you’re both here!” She power walked to the front of the stage. “Em, thank you, thank you, thank you for making me add an understudy. I don’t know what I’d be doing right now without you. You totally saved me.”
I gave her a small smile. I could do this, I could do this, I could do this.
“Okay, how about we run through this baby?” she asked.
I looked at Kayla in panic. I wasn’t wearing the dress. How was I supposed to look at my phone without Jill noticing?
“I still need to have her try on the costume, so I can make adjustments,” Kayla said, trying to buy me more time.
It didn’t work.
“Do that after. We need a run-through.” Jill had that don’t-mess-with-me voice going on, and her green eyes stared at all of us so intently that it was clear we had no choice.
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