Playing with Fire_Shen

by Shen, L. J.

  Bzzzzzzzzzz.

  My phone danced across my nightstand, falling to the floor, forming a jerky circle like a bug on its back.

  I leaned down and picked it up, swiping the screen to turn off my alarm. A muffled shriek pierced my eardrum.

  “Honey? Is that you? Larry! Come here! He answered.”

  Fuck. My. Life.

  I’d been knocked out dead for ten hours, so it didn’t register the monotone, wake-the-fuck-up sound of my alarm was also my ringtone.

  For a split second, I toyed with the idea of hanging up then figured I’d filled up my asshole quota for this week yesterday by eating all of East’s pre-prepared jock food. Biting my own fist to the point of drawing blood, I pressed my phone to my ear.

  Here goes Nothing and its fucking asshole cousin, Calamity.

  “Mother.”

  “Hello! Hi!” Mom cried out desperately. “Westie, I can’t believe you answered.”

  Join the fucking club.

  “How’s it going?” I rolled sideways on the mattress, sitting on the edge of my bed. The clock on my nightstand said two in the afternoon. It also said I was a complete, goddamn moron who’d slept in again. Graduation was looming closer, and I knew I was going to get out of Sheridan University with my useless degree, but it would be nice to at least pretend I gave a damn.

  “Nothing, honey! I mean, everything’s good. Just fine. We wanted to check in on you. See how you were doing. Easton has been giving us updates, but we love hearing your voice.”

  “Is that him?” Dad sniffled in the background. I heard shuffling. Things knocked off a table. They were rabid with excitement. Guilt kicked in, followed by its loyal friend, Remorse. “Let me speak to him. Westie? Are you there?”

  “Dad. Hi.”

  “It’s good to hear your voice, son.”

  I pushed my feet into the Blundstones under my bed, dragging my ass to the bathroom. I took a leak and brushed my teeth as Dad launched into a story about how the guy who promised to help him fertilize his land still wasn’t back from Wyoming, and that he’d lost another contract as a result. I got the subtext—I needed to send them more money before their electricity got cut off.

  The sharp guilt I’d experienced a second ago dulled into numbness.

  “I’m guessing the bankers aren’t your biggest fans.” I spat mint toothpaste and water into the sink, splashing water over my face. I didn’t glance in the mirror. Hadn’t faced myself in years—why start now?

  “Oh, well, I mean … things aren’t looking great, I suppose. But—”

  I didn’t let him finish.

  “I’ll send some money by the end of the day. Speak soon. Bye.”

  I hung up on him just as he started saying something. I grabbed my keys, jumped on the Ducati, and hauled ass to school. Eight minutes later, I strode into Lawrence Hall, to my two-thirty sports management lecture.

  Late again, much to no one’s surprise.

  Luckily, Professor Addams (spelled with double-D, fitting for his man-boobs) was busy attempting to work this magical thing called an iPad. His head was down as he assaulted the screen with his greasy fingers, trying to make his slideshow appear on the white screen behind him. I slinked into the back of the room, sliding into a spot between Reign and East. Addams’ slideshow finally popped into vision, and he let out a relieved cackle.

  “’Sup.” Reign fist-bumped me. He was making out with a random. She was mauling his neck while his hand was shoved inside her skirt.

  East flicked the back of my head. “Late again. By the way, thanks for eating all my food.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Truly, it was.

  “Dare you to do it again.”

  “You know I never turn down a challenge.”

  Everyone had laptops and notebooks out. Not me. I didn’t bring a backpack. I showed up randomly whenever the threat of failing a semester seemed real. Professor Addams’ voice rose from the bowels of the lecture hall.

  “Mr. St. Claire, I see you decided to finally grace us with your presence.”

  I stared at him coolly, refusing to throw him a bone.

  The girl next to Reign had the good senses to slap Reign’s hand away from under her skirt as all eyes darted to us.

  Addams leaned his thick waist against his desk, oinking as he pushed his glasses up his nose.

  “Tell me, Mr. St. Claire, are you even faintly interested in gaining higher education?”

  Truthfully, I wasn’t. But this hellhole was far enough from Maine to lie low and do what I needed to do to keep my family from going bankrupt.

  “Use your words,” he instructed haughtily. “You do know how to speak, don’t you?”

  I smirked. I wasn’t easily flustered. Came with the territory of being numb across the board. People couldn’t touch me if they tried.

  And they tried.

  Often.

  “Pursuing a degree seemed like a great excuse to leave the dump I lived in, and Sher U is pretty affordable for an out-of-state college. Jury’s still out on the educational staff, though.” I sat back, crossing my arms over my pecs.

  “Burn!” Someone cackled.

  “Holy shit,” another student bellowed. “St. Claire is handing asses in the ring and out of it.”

  Laughs exploded from every corner of the room. Professor Addams’ mouth slacked, and his cheeks turned flamingo pink. It took him a full minute to recover.

  “Give me one reason why I should let you get away with what you just said to me.”

  “Because you were transferred here from an Ivy League university under mysterious circumstances, which no one cared to explore. Guess what?” I opened my arms theatrically. “I have all the time in the world. How is that for a full sentence for you, Professor Addams?”

  “Pfft.” Reign raised his arm in the air, opening his palm, like he was dropping a mic.

  “Savage to death.” East chuckled.

  “You think you’re so clever, don’t you, West St. Claire?” Addams huffed.

  “Discipline me or let it drop. You’re drawing it out.” I yawned.

  He turned back to his slideshow, shaking his head. Idiot.

  Half an hour later, I strode out of class. Reign had his arm flung over the nameless chick, and East was scrolling through his phone, probably debating the girl he wanted to take out tonight. I decided to drop the bomb. Now was as bad a time as any.

  “I’m starting to work at That Taco Truck tomorrow.”

  Technically, I was starting today. That Karlie chick was supposed to teach me how to work the grill this afternoon.

  At first, there was no reaction. When I didn’t expand on the matter, because it was pretty self-fucking-explanatory, Reign proceeded to snort-laugh.

  “Umm, why the fuck?”

  “Strapped for cash.”

  “You don’t get enough juice from fighting?” He screwed up his nose. Reign had zero financial worries. When he wasn’t playing ball, he was chasing tail. College to him was a string of parties and games, with hookups and pregnancy scares crammed in-between for dramatic relief. I, however, was busy paying my parents’ loans, financing my own education, and saving up so I wouldn’t have to go back home once I graduated this year.

  Nameless Chick gasped. “That makes no sense. Everyone says you’re loaded.” I didn’t answer. Getting dicked by one of my frenemies didn’t make her a certified accountant.

  “Do what you gotta do, man. Let me know if I can help.” East hoisted his duffel bag over his shoulder, putting a lid on the subject.

  “Maybe he’s got the hots for Toastie,” Reign mused. “And he’s looking for leeway. I mean, she is smokin’ once you put a bag over that face.”

  “The burn victim?” Nameless Chick flattened a hand over her chest. “Isn’t it tragic? One of my sorority sisters knows her from high school. Heard she was in cheer and drama before she turned this way. She was real pretty, too.”

  I had no doubt I was going to knock every tooth out of Reign’s mouth a
t some point in my life. He was a mean bastard and picked on people constantly. Anything to make his idiot friends laugh. His choice in female companion was obviously just as poor.

  Reign cackled.

  “Seriously, man, shut up.” Easton collared him, swinging his body so he was an inch from crashing against the wall.

  We reached the double doors of the entrance and split. Reign and East had practice, and Random Chick was off, probably doing random shit. I was about to head out when I heard shouting coming from the crack of the door by the exit.

  “Fire! Fire!”

  It was coming from the makeshift auditorium, where theater and arts rehearsed these days while they built a brand-new theater across campus grounds.

  I burst through the doors.

  They were rehearsing. Phew.

  The door was ajar, practically inviting me to take a look. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do. I had half an hour to burn before I met Karlie at the food truck.

  I propped a shoulder over the doorframe, folding my arms. Tess was onstage, wearing a nightgown over a prosthetic pregnant belly, her hair pinned up, charging to the other corner of the stage, producing a wailing sound that could deafen a whale.

  A fuckboy from theater was chasing her, clad in a wife beater, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his pinched mouth. He tried to sound Southern, but it came out like he had blisters the size of my balls on his tongue. I didn’t know anything about theater, but I could recognize shitty acting when it hit me in the face with a shovel. No shade to Tess, she was a perfectly good lay, but I would buy the Hitler-is-still-alive-and-lives-with-2PAC conspiracy—logic and math be damned—before believing their acting.

  My eyes drifted around the auditorium. The blonde girl from the food truck was there. Greer or Gail or whatever. Toastie. I spotted the back of her head. She sat in one of the back rows. Her white FILAs were propped on the back of the seat in front of her. Her long legs were clad in faded skinny jeans. She had the same pink hoodie and gray ball cap I saw her sporting at the truck. Her long, golden hair spilled across her back and shoulders, making her look like a Gothic angel.

  Reign was about as perceptive as a can of Spam, but he wasn’t off base. Greer-Gail was fuckable to a fault. Not that I was about to touch her. It had nothing to do with her face. Scar tissue never bothered me—my heart was 100% made out of that shit. But she had an attitude the size of Mississippi, and I had a strict no bitch-porking policy in place.

  I’d left her the ballet shoes as a little ‘fuck you.’ Honestly, I had no idea what I was trying to convey with the shoes. I’d felt like an idiot when I bought them, and even worse after I’d left them on the food truck’s stair. Whatever. Who cared if it was lame to put them there? I wasn’t trying to woo her ass.

  The director of the play, Cruz Finlay—another student who thought wearing a beret and a scarf in the Texas heat made him look artistic, as opposed to a complete moron—asked the actors to start the scene from scratch. I stepped deeper into the room so I could check out Greer-Gail-Whatever’s face uninterrupted. All this talk about her scar, and I barely saw it, but she was so self-conscious about it, I was inclined to believe it was a sight.

  I only got the right side of her face. The so-called “normal” side. Her eyes were glued to the stage. She mouthed all the words along with the actors, both Tess’ lines and the dude’s. Crazy thing was, they were reading from the pages, and she knew everything by heart.

  It was pretty obvious Greer-Gail had a boner for acting, but I doubted she’d pursue it. Didn’t take a genius to see she was all tangled up in her I’m-a-victim narrative.

  “I don’t want realism. I want magic,” Greer-Gail mimed, echoing a third actress onstage, and I had a feeling the line applied to her more than anything else in the play. She seemed hella bitter about her own reality.

  I was so fascinated by Greer-Gail reciting an entire goddamn play without anyone taking note, or even realizing she was there in the room, that it took me a second to notice the rehearsal was over.

  “First run-through under our belt, and it is a complete and utter train wreck. Tomorrow. Same place. Same time. God.” Finlay threw his hands up, peering at the ceiling like Lord Almighty had better shit to do than watch this crap. “Give me actors.”

  Or a punch in the face, I thought. You can give him a punch in the face, too, and nobody will fault you for that, his parents included.

  “West!” Tess cried, hopping from the stage and charging toward the double doors. She discarded her fake belly on one of the seats, not breaking her pace. My stance was lax, lazy, and unflappable. Everyone’s eyes turned to me. Tess made it sound like I’d just come back from a tour in Iraq. Greer-Gail swiveled her head. Our eyes met as Tess flung her arms around me, peppering kisses over my neck and cheeks.

  I’d told Tess a one-time lay was the only thing on the table, and we’d had our first and last hurrah last weekend. She said she understood, but women rarely did. I removed her from my body, making a mental note to remind her we weren’t a thing.

  Greer-Gail offered no reaction as she watched us, but she didn’t stop watching either. Her face was blank. Her eyes were a shade of blue I hadn’t seen outside psychedelic paintings. Pale and arctic, like a snowflake. I had a feeling she allowed herself to look because she wasn’t used to anyone noticing her.

  Well, I did.

  I noticed she was fucking glaring.

  My eyes asked, Did you get the ballet shoes?

  Hers answered, Drop dead, asshole.

  I may have been paraphrasing, but whatever her eyes said, there was profanity in it.

  Greer-Gail turned her head back to the empty stage, rearranging her feet on the seat in front of her. I was about to walk over and ask what the hell her problem was, but my phone buzzed in my pocket, just as Tess tried to pull me into the auditorium, blabbing about her role in the play.

  I took my phone out of my back pocket.

  Mother.

  Seriously? Twice today? I hit decline, turned around, and charged over to my bike without a word. Tess knew better than to follow me. I got into my bank app and transferred whatever money I had in my account straight to my parents before heading off to see Karlie.

  I’d live off ramen for the next couple weeks. Wouldn’t be the first or last time.

  I spent the ride resenting my parents and Tess and Reign and Professor Addams and even Greer-Gail-Genevieve.

  And with every turn I took, the temptation to lean to one side, to throw myself off the bike, to veer off a cliff, was there, scratching at my insides.

  A part of me still wanted to die.

  To cease existing.

  To stop taking care of my parents.

  To stop pretending anything about this college experience mattered.

  I just got real good at hiding it.

  Even if it cost me everything.

  Grace

  “Grace, my dear, we need to talk.”

  Professor McGraw took a sip of her coffee from her Eat. Sleep. Theater. mug. I crept into her office the day after our first rehearsal, head down, shoulders hunched, ready for my verdict. I dropped my phoenix-themed JanSport under her desk, offering my best innocent, don’t-know-why-I’m-here smile.

  I did know why I was there.

  “Have a seat.” She pointed at the chair in front of her. I did. Professor McGraw was a willowy, fifty-something redhead with funky, polka-dotted reading glasses and fifties-style dresses. I adored her and wanted to believe she liked me, too. I was definitely among her more dedicated students. My theoretical grades were great, I was always happy to put in extra hours to tidy up after rehearsals, and my love for theater was genuine.

  She began sifting through a pile of documents strewn on her desk, licking her thumb as she separated the pages. Her office was filled with posters of Sheridan University productions over the years. The university was known for producing classic plays and attracting people from neighboring towns. The profits went toward city council and
improving the college facilities. A twinge of jealousy stung my chest as I scanned the posters while she searched for whatever it was she wanted to show me.

  The Phantom of the Opera.

  Chicago.

  To Kill a Mockingbird.

  My mouth watered as I stared at the pictures of the actors and actresses, smiling to the horizon, mid-act. They looked electric. Glowing. Happy.

  Professor McGraw’s voice pierced through the green cloud of envy surrounding me. She tapped a piece of paper with her fingernail. “There we are. I’ve been looking at the list of actors in A Streetcar Named Desire. I noticed your name was notably absent. Care to explain?”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course.” I shifted in my seat. The actors in the posters stared directly at me. Their judging gazes warmed my skin. “Lauren got Blanche and Tess is Stella. The other smaller parts were cast on the days I took my grandmother to Austin for an EKG. I did sign up for design and assistant stage manager. That’s two roles.” I stuck two fingers up, like she didn’t know how to count.

  Professor McGraw removed her reading glasses, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose. “We’ve discussed it, Grace. I cannot bend the rules for you anymore. Every student needs to get on that stage and show me what they’re made of.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But I was hopin’—”

  “I understand your circumstances, and I tried to cater to them for a couple years, but a part of earning a BA in Theater and Arts is practical acting. You haven’t gone onstage since you started studying here. Exhibiting your ability as an actor is mandatory, not optional. No one expects you to be Meryl Streep, but you do need to show us something. I don’t want you failing this semester, but I think if you don’t take on an actual role in the play, you just might.”

  “But the play has already been cast.”

  “Ask Mr. Finlay to include you.”

  “Someone else will be losing their role,” I argued.

  “Someone else is not in danger of failing the final semester of this year,” she volleyed back.

  I knew Professor McGraw was right. All the other sophomores in theater and arts had already shown off their acting chops. Not me. I was going to be a junior next year, and I still hadn’t set foot onstage. My legs wouldn’t carry me past the threshold on auditions day. I tried but always ended up puking my guts out in the restrooms, or having epic meltdowns in my pickup.