“In my defense,” I say, standing up and lifting my chin, “it was a very nice cave. Spacious.”
“Right. Well, running is a lot harder than a leisurely half-mile walk through the woods.”
I shrug. “Tomato, to-mah-to.”
Derek winces. “Okay, I’ll try one more time to talk you out of this … Are you sure you don’t want to start more slowly? Like, walk for a few minutes, then run for a minute?”
I shake my head vigorously. “Derek! I don’t have time to build up endurance! I could be—”
I’m about to mention my possibly impending death when I remember that I’m not supposed to talk about this around Derek. But of course he knows what I was about to say.
He stretches his legs and says firmly, “Yeah, okay, but you’re not going to die. You’re just going to get surgery, eat smoothies for six weeks, and then be able to chew better.”
And turn into a completely different person, I add silently.
“Whatever. Let’s go. I’m ready to run!”
Derek bounces on the balls of his feet. “Just try to keep up with me, all right? I’ll take it slowly.”
“Don’t patronize me,” I say. “You’re not Usain Bolt. I’m pretty sure I can handle this.”
“It’s not really about speed,” Derek says. “It’s more about endurance—”
“Ugh, stop explaining! Let’s just go!”
And we’re off, running side by side down the sidewalk. It’s hard to explain to Derek why, exactly, I want to do this, because I don’t entirely know myself. I guess part of it is that I always thought I would become a runner. Like there was this ideal athletic version of myself inside, just waiting to lace up her sneakers and show herself. Never mind that I almost passed out when we ran the mile in gym class. Never mind that I wrinkled my nose in disgust every time pre-pregnancy Abbi attempted to get me to go to spinning class with her. Never mind that my favorite form of exercise up until now has been channel surfing.
I just know that there’s a perfect me out there, the one that wakes up with the sun and hits the pavement, coming home sweaty but refreshed, saying something like, Wow, it’s a hot one out there. And perfect me is also a make-out master, is brave enough to jump off cliffs, has read all the classics in the English canon, and feels comfortable when people look at her.
I don’t necessarily have all the time in the world to complete my goals. I think about when Derek’s dad died and his mom had to get rid of his stuff. Derek didn’t talk about it much, but I was over a lot so I saw how it went down. They wanted to keep everything, but it’s not like they could keep a closet full of his clothes or his bottle of contact solution. But the most heartbreaking part for me was all the reminders that he wasn’t finished. He had left a half-finished crossword puzzle sitting on the coffee table. There was an open container of yogurt in the fridge. When he went to work that day, he thought he’d be coming back to figure out twelve across and eat some Chobani. He didn’t think that hospital’s hallway would be the last thing he’d ever see.
I blink back tears as I pump my arms and feel the sidewalk under my feet. I just don’t want to have unfinished business before I go into surgery. You never know, do you? Maybe I’ll become beautiful and be able to achieve my perfect final form … but either way, I want to make sure I don’t leave behind any half-finished crossword puzzles. And I wish I could explain all of this to Derek, but I know he would just change the subject and start talking about climate change or whatever his latest podcast episode is on.
“Doing okay?”
I give Derek a probably not-all-that-convincing thumbs-up. My depressing reverie distracted me from running for a few blocks, but now that I realize what we’re doing … well, it kind of sucks. Actually, it really sucks. My lungs are burning, and I’m convinced my insides might be trying to make a break for it. My stomach is cramping, and I’m really regretting having eaten an entire plate full of Dad’s Sunday-morning blueberry pancakes. And my knees are on fire … are your knees supposed to hurt when you’re sixteen?
“Great!” I wheeze.
“Because we can slow down, walk, take a break…”
“No breaks!” I try to shout, but it comes out a little less persuasive. I pick up the pace. The faster I can do this, the faster we’ll be done, and the faster I can check this bad idea off my list.
I look at Derek through my labored breathing. He’s doing this easily—duh, he does cross-country, so a mile is like crossing the street for him. He’s staring straight ahead, his brows knitted in concentration, and I wonder what he’s thinking about. Derek and I are more about jokes than we are about having deep heart-to-hearts, so I’ve never spent all that much time thinking about what actually goes on inside his head while he runs.
So I ask him.
“What do you think about when you run?” I try to ask it casually, but it comes out as more of a gasp.
I expect him to think about it a little, but instead he immediately says, “SAT flash cards.”
I huff. “What?”
“I go over SAT vocab words in my head,” he says easily. “Aberration: a state that differs from the norm!”
“Are you serious?” I wheeze. “You’re even studying when you run?”
“Demagogue: a leader who seeks support by appealing to passions rather than logic! Expunge: remove! Munificent: generous!”
“Oh my God! You’re the world’s biggest nerd!”
“Fractious: easily annoyed!”
“I feel particularly fractious right now,” I say.
He turns his head slightly and smiles at me. My heart, acting of its own accord, skips. And not even because I have almost certainly overexerted myself and I’m going to be paying for it later. No, this was the sort of skip my heart does when it sees a hot guy, I realize with shock.
Which is understandable, I remind myself. Derek is hot now. It’s fine to admit that, to admit that his eyes are a very comforting shade of brown, that the firmness of his chest is not terrible, that his facial features aren’t unattractive. It doesn’t mean anything if I objectively deduce that my best friend is a good-looking guy. In fact, it would be weirder if I didn’t admit it.
“Your face is alarmingly red,” he says, not even struggling to catch his breath.
I don’t say anything back. Mostly because I physically can’t, but also because I’m afraid of what will come out of my mouth. I mean, what am I going to say? When did you get so cute?
But I don’t get the chance to wonder about it anymore because, while I’m distracted, the toe of my shoe catches on a crack on the sidewalk. My body launches itself into the air and hits the sidewalk, hard.
“Urrrrgggh,” I groan, slowly rolling over and sitting up.
“Jolie!” Derek skids to a stop and kneels beside me. “Are you okay?”
“Never better.” I wince. “What, does this look like it hurts?”
My knee is all bloody and I’m pretty sure there’s gravel stuck in it. Derek gently touches my leg, checking out the wound, and I feel an electric shock go through my body. Which is ridiculous … Derek and I have touched a million times before. Punches on the arm, hugs for pictures, my feet on his lap during movie night. A million little touches that add up to nothing but one lifelong friendship.
But there’s something about this. I watch his face as he looks at my knee. We’re so close I can feel his breath on my leg.
Stop it, Jolie, I tell myself. Derek would never like you anyway, even if this was some sort of alternate universe where it made sense for you to have a crush on your best friend. He wouldn’t ever like you and then you’d ruin your friendship right before your death and he’d have to give a really awkward eulogy, knowing you went to the grave having unrequited feelings for him. Is that what you want?
No, I decide.
Derek’s phone buzzes, and he pulls it out of his pocket. In the second before he picks up, I see Melody’s face pop up on-screen. I’ve seen the picture before and I’ve never really paid atte
ntion, but now it hits me: She’s pretty. Beautiful. Curly hair that cascades to her shoulders, flawless skin, a perfect smile. There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s certainly not having surgery to fix her face.
Derek answers, taking his hand off my knee and stepping away from me. “Hey,” he says with a softness in his voice. And, I hate to admit it, but I’m annoyed. Annoyed that phone calls from Melody, who I’ve never even met, are always interrupting us. And, okay, I’m also a little annoyed that he’s over there leaning against a tree talking to her all quietly about who knows what, and that there’s a whole side of Derek that I don’t get to see.
I push myself up off the sidewalk and try to hold in my groan. I certainly don’t want perfect Melody to hear the tortured screams of the girl who couldn’t run a mile without injuring herself.
But it doesn’t matter. Derek’s walked a few steps away from me and is talking in a low voice, so I can’t even hear what he’s saying. He hangs up and walks back toward me.
“So, I hate to say I told you so…,” he starts.
“This has nothing to do with my athleticism,” I say. “This was a freak accident. It could’ve happened to anyone.”
“That sidewalk had it out for you,” he says with a smirk.
“Exactly.” I brush some dirt off myself. “So I feel fine, but I thought you might need a break, so let’s walk back home.”
“Yeah,” Derek says, “I am exhausted from taking a leisurely stroll for not even a mile. I’d better walk back. Wouldn’t want to hurt myself.”
“Glad we agree.”
“Maybe we could even call Evelyn to pick us up,” he says. “I’m not sure I can make it.”
“Shut up.” I push him off the sidewalk, and it feels totally normal to touch him again. The electric shock was just a momentary lapse, I tell myself. A temporary delusion caused by physical exertion. It won’t happen again.
Chapter Twelve
The musical is May 13 and it’s already April 17, which means we have less than a month to make this happen. Rehearsal is fast and furious and pretty much constant, and I’m so overwhelmed by the thought of learning my lines that I even forget to panic about everyone staring at me. Well, for a little while, anyway.
I walk into today’s practice feeling at least slightly more confident. After all, if Mrs. Mulaney thinks I can do this, who am I to say otherwise? Even Peter apologized for doubting me. I’m not saying I’m going to take Broadway by storm, but at the very least I should be able to handle a low-budget, hastily produced high school musical, right?
We’re all milling around on the stage, except Toby, who is showing a crowd of girls how he can do parkour by leaping off the auditorium seats. Noah is sitting by himself looking over the script, Marla is casting a cool glare at me from across the stage, and Peter is talking my ear off about … well, I’m not sure. I’m not one hundred percent listening. In other words, it’s the normal I’m slowly getting used to.
When Mrs. Mulaney walks into the auditorium, she claps her hands to get our attention. But we all stop talking as soon as we see who is following her—a twenty-something skinny guy wearing a backward baseball cap.
“Do you think that’s her husband?” Peter whispers.
I turn to look at him slowly. “Peter, she’s in her fifties and that guy’s, like, barely older than us.”
Peter shrugs. “The heart wants what the heart wants.”
“We have a very special guest with us today!” Mrs. Mulaney says with a smile. “Johnny McElroy, BHS graduate and the playwright of To the Moon and Back!”
We all clap politely. So this is the guy behind Bobby and Prudie—in a way, he’s sort of the architect of my first kiss.
“Would you like to say a few words?” Mrs. Mulaney asks, but before she’s even finished the question, Johnny hops onto the stage and starts pacing back and forth.
“I’ll admit, when I wrote To the Moon and Back, I saw it being performed on Broadway. Maybe as a touring production, or a film adaptation starring a young Meryl Streep as Prudie.”
I laugh out loud, certain he’s joking. But no one else laughs, and his confused look lets me know he’s serious. “Sorry,” I mutter, eager for everyone to stop looking at me. “Something in my throat.”
“But after I sent the script to Carol for feedback—” he continues.
“That’s Mrs. Mulaney,” Peter whispers. I’m so glad she and Peter are on a first-name basis.
“—and she suggested putting it on as a high school production, I began to see the value in that. Why not work out the kinks with unskilled actors before it makes its way to some more prestigious stage?”
Uh, rude. I mean, I’m aware that I’m not a young Meryl Streep for a lot of reasons, the biggest one being that I don’t have a time machine, but still. This feels particularly insulting coming from someone who wrote a song that has a chorus of pigs singing about rockets.
“So I’m eager to see a beginner’s interpretation,” he says, smiling charitably. “And I’ll be here as often as I can to make sure that my vision is carried out. But, please, pretend I’m not here. I’m but a fly on the wall observing your artistic choices.”
And with that, he hops off the stage, bows with a flourish, and sits down. We all clap, and I feel like I’m looking at the Ghost of Peter Future.
“Thank you, Johnny,” Mrs. Mulaney says, standing up, and I can’t tell if I’m simply imagining the look of chagrin on her face. “So let’s go ahead and get started. I’d like you to have your lines more or less memorized by next week, but for now feel free to read from your scripts. Toby, Noah, and Jolie, you’re all in the first scene, so please stay on the stage. Everyone else, take a seat.”
As the rest of our cast files down the steps and sits down on the creaky auditorium seats, I gulp. I guess I didn’t realize things were going to be quite so … performance-y … so soon. Every set of eyeballs in the room is looking at me, and my shoulders start to hunch on their own.
Toby plays an omniscient narrator who’s sort of like a carnival barker. This is a perfect part for him because he’s extremely loud and, for reasons that don’t make any sense, almost childishly charming.
Toby goes through his spiel introducing the musical and the characters through rhyming couplets. I watch Johnny, in the front row, mouthing all the words, his hands tented under his chin.
And then Toby jumps offstage (Mrs. Mulaney: “Toby, next time would you mind using the stairs? The audience may find your leap distracting.”) and it’s just us, me and Noah, with everyone watching us. The spotlights aren’t on, but the regular auditorium lights feel hot on my skin. My mouth goes dry, and I anxiously lick my lips. I can hear the auditorium chairs creak, and someone sneezes.
“Sure is a beautiful day out here on the farm,” Noah says, adopting a drawl.
“Sometimes I think I could live here forever and never get tired of this view,” I mumble.
“Jolie?”
I look down at Mrs. Mulaney.
“Try tilting your body more toward the audience. And lift your head a bit. That will help you project more easily.”
I can tell Mrs. Mulaney is trying her best not to make me feel uncomfortable, but it’s too late. There’s no way I’ll ever feel comfortable up here. And tilting my body toward the audience? I have to fight the urge to say, But then people will see me!
I guess that’s kind of the point.
I clear my throat, turning myself toward the audience and trying to lift my chin, which feels magnetically drawn toward my chest. “Sometimes I think I could live here forever and never get tired of this view.”
Mrs. Mulaney doesn’t interrupt, so I assume I did if not great, at least okay. I find her face and she gives me an encouraging smile.
But before Noah can launch into his monologue about the simplicity of farm life, Johnny stands up.
“If I may,” he asks, hopping onto the stage. He leans toward me and in what I think is supposed to be a whisper but is definitely loud enough to
be heard by everyone, says, “Do you really think that’s the best accent to go with?”
“I—I wasn’t using an accent,” I say. My eyes dart back and forth between him and Mrs. Mulaney. “Should I?”
Johnny shakes his head in frustration, like I’m willfully misunderstanding some great point he’s making. “No, I mean the lisp. Is that a deliberate choice? Because that’s not really how I saw Prudie.”
“You know what, Johnny?” Mrs. Mulaney calls loudly from the front row. “Why don’t we just let them get through the scene, then we can give our notes later.”
He nods at her. “Good idea. Carry on.”
He hops off the stage, and Noah restarts his monologue, but I feel like all the wind has been knocked out of me. Because I wasn’t doing an accent—I just have a lisp. It’s because of the way my teeth don’t meet in the front, and the whole situation is only made worse by my braces. Honestly, by this point in my life I’d pretty much forgotten about the lisp—it’s kind of the least of my problems, you know? And given that I avoid putting myself in the spotlight and talking to other people whenever I can, it rarely comes up.
But now, all of the self-consciousness I usually reserve for my appearance transfers itself to my voice. I remember how I was so embarrassed about my lisp in the sixth grade that for the entire year, I tried to avoid saying the letter “s” at all (which was, unsurprisingly, pretty difficult). I remember the shame I felt when kids would snicker at me when I had to read out loud from the textbook in science class. All of those terrible memories come flooding back, and I remember that I don’t just look weird—everything about me is weird.
Noah’s done talking, and the last thing I want is for Mrs. Mulaney to have to prod me to say my line so that even more attention is drawn to me, so I hurry through what I have to say. I would do some on-the-spot rewriting to avoid the letter “s,” but I know Johnny has this thing memorized and he definitely wouldn’t appreciate the improvisation. I feel my shoulders up near my ears again and I know I’m talking to my shoes, but Mrs. Mulaney doesn’t say anything.
Things Jolie Needs to Do Before She Bites It Page 10