The Darlings in Love

by Melissa Kantor

  Colin nodded that it was, in fact, Gainsford’s Alison Jones, and Natalya, relieved beyond words that Colin had been telling the truth, said excitedly, “I know her! She’s in my class.” Still amazed and relieved by the coincidence, Natalya shook her head and said to herself, “That is so crazy.” Then she looked at Colin. “So, how do you know Alison, anyway?”

  As Natalya uttered the word anyway, the light changed. Colin answered her question while stepping into the street. “She’s my…well, she’s kind of my girlfriend.”

  IT WAS HARD for Jane and Victoria to focus on the Valentine’s Day cards displayed at Possibilities when both of them were wondering what was happening with Natalya and Colin.

  “This place is enough to make anyone boycott Valentine’s Day,” observed Jane, glancing around at the wall-to-wall hearts, flowers, and scented red candles.

  “Never!” objected Victoria. She glanced at her phone, which hadn’t rung. “Do you think she’s asked him about coming to the opening yet?”

  Jane checked her phone, but she was looking at the time. “I bet they’re still playing. I think chess games last, like, centuries.”

  Victoria rolled her eyes at a card with a photograph of a man and woman wearing matching his-and-her string-bikini underwear. “These cards are so gross.”

  “Get a blank one,” suggested Jane. “Then you can write your own message inside. That’s what I’m doing for Simon.”

  “You’re getting Simon a Valentine’s Day card?” Victoria couldn’t hide the surprise in her voice.

  Jane couldn’t not hear it. She whipped her head around to face Victoria. “You think that’s a bad idea?”

  “No,” Victoria answered quickly. “I mean, I don’t know. Seriously.” She smiled reassuringly. “Don’t listen to me. I’ve never even met him.”

  Tracing her finger along a row of cards without looking at them, Jane said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is weird.” She’d been so psyched about hooking up with Simon. But what if he just thought of her as a fun person to spend the evening with but nothing more than that? Suddenly she was ashamed of what she’d almost done. “I guess I should wait, shouldn’t I?”

  Quickly, Victoria put her arms around Jane. “No! I didn’t mean that. I just meant…I don’t know.” She hugged her. “I’m sorry I said anything.”

  Jane was a little sorry too, but all she said was, “That’s okay.” This was all so complicated. Last night when they were together, telling Simon her thoughts and feelings had seemed totally cool. But now, standing in the world’s cheesiest card store, she wasn’t so sure. “You’re probably right.”

  “It’s just…” Victoria shrugged. “Maybe you want to know for sure how he feels about you before you put yourself out there like that.”

  Suddenly, both their phones buzzed, and they reached for them, like secret agents expecting an assignment.

  “Nat,” Jane guessed.

  “Nat,” Victoria echoed.

  Simultaneously, they flipped open their phones.

  “Noooo!” Victoria wailed as soon as she’d read the message.

  “No way!” cried Jane, staring, outraged at the words on her screen.

  colin has a girlfriend. not me.

  “Ga Ga Noodle?” asked Victoria, still shaking her head in disbelief.

  “Totally,” agreed Jane, and she quickly typed the words into her phone and sent them to Natalya.

  “I FEEL LIKE such an idiot,” Natalya cried, jabbing at a shrimp with her chopstick. Why did it have to be Alison Jones? Alison Jones. The friendliest, prettiest, most perfect girl in her grade; the girl who was becoming her kind-of friend; the girl it was impossible to hate because she was so damn nice?!

  “Don’t say that!” Victoria chided her. “You’re not an idiot.”

  “Seriously. He should have told you,” agreed Jane.

  Natalya shook her head. “I think he thought I knew.”

  “How could you know?” Jane’s voice was indignant.

  “I don’t know.” In her head, Natalya replayed the conversation leading up to his revelation. “But he was so…matter-of-fact about it.” She repeated Colin’s exact words, trying to keep her voice as inflectionless as his had been. “‘She’s kind of my girlfriend.’”

  “What does that even mean?” demanded Jane, repeating the words with a doubtful tone. “She’s kind of my girlfriend? Is that like, I’m kind of a sleazeball?”

  “Jane!” wailed Natalya.

  “I’m serious.” Jane surveyed the Darlings. “Tell me. What does it mean to kind of have a girlfriend?”

  Natalya dropped her forehead against her palm. “This is starting to feel like English class.”

  Shaking her head, Victoria said, “He’s been flirting with you all this time.”

  “No,” Natalya protested. “I think…I must have just misunderstood him.” She thought of her fantasy that life came with clear instructions. Now it turned out she needed instructions and an interpreter. “I guess he was just being friendly.”

  “Friendly!” Victoria slapped the table, enraged. “Friendly?! Colin was totally flirting, and that makes him so…so…yucky.”

  Jane laughed at the contrast between Victoria’s fury and her choice of epithet, but then her face grew serious. “I agree. I mean, his first e-mail? ‘I saw you.’ That’s like, Flirting 101.”

  Suddenly Natalya had an awful thought. Could it be that Colin had been flirting with her, only now that he knew she was at Gainsford on scholarship, he didn’t like her anymore?

  But that was impossible. It wasn’t like he’d asked Alison out after learning Natalya was on scholarship.

  Unless he’d been planning on breaking up with Alison, and then, when he’d heard Natalya was poor, he’d changed his mind.

  Was that crazy? She looked at her friends, wishing she could share her fear with them, but she knew exactly what they’d say. It’s not like you’re poor. And anyway, if Colin cares that much about money, he’s totally not worthy of you.

  But Natalya wasn’t just thinking about money. What separated her from a girl like Alison Jones wasn’t simply wealth. Girls like Alison and Morgan Prewitt were the product of generations of interbreeding that had created a rich, beautiful, confident race. They were girls who didn’t need instructions, because for them, life really was a magical chess game, one they won every single time.

  How could Colin choose some random scholarship girl over that?

  Why would Colin choose some random scholarship girl over that?

  Natalya pressed her lips together, overwhelmed by the impossibility of explaining why Colin might have changed his mind about her since his first flirtatious e-mail.

  “What did you say when he told you?” asked Victoria gently.

  “You should have hit him with your purse!” Jane mimed the gesture as she spoke.

  Victoria giggled, but Natalya didn’t even crack a smile. “I just…I pretended it was all totally normal and cool. Like, oh yeah, small world, we both know Alison Jones, gotta go, see you around.” She slumped down in her chair. “Then I waited till he was out of sight, and I texted you guys.”

  Jane’s phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen, then put the phone away without saying what it had said or who it had been from. But while she could hide her phone, she couldn’t hide the smile on her face.

  “What?” asked Natalya.

  “Who was that from?” asked Victoria.

  “No one,” said Jane quickly. “It’s not important.”

  “Jane!” Natalya warned. “Do not start hiding things from me.”

  “Trust me,” said Jane. She reached over and briefly squeezed Natalya’s forearm with her hand. “This is not a text you need to hear right now.”

  “No, I want to hear it,” Natalya promised her. “I’m your friend. If it made you smile like that, I want to know what it said.”

  Jane hesitated, then blurted out. “It’s from Simon. He said he had a great time last night and he can’t wait to see me on Mo
nday.”

  “Oh, Jane! I’m so happy for you.” For Natalya’s sake, Victoria tried to remain subdued.

  “I’m so happy for you too.” Natalya picked up a knife and mimed stabbing herself in the heart. “So happy I might have to kill myself.”

  “Stop!” said Victoria, taking the knife from Natalya. “Don’t say that. We’re going to get you a boyfriend.”

  “Yeah!” agreed Jane. “A better boyfriend.”

  Natalya shook her head and stared off sadly into the middle distance. She thought about all the dorky things she’d written or said to Colin, how he hadn’t seemed to mind, how he’d seemed to like her anyway. Like like her.

  But he hadn’t like liked her. And if a guy she had as much in common with and as much fun with as she did with Colin didn’t like like her, how could any guy like like her?

  “Don’t get that look on your face,” Jane warned.

  “What look?” asked Natalya.

  “You know. That I’m-never-going-to-have-a-boyfriend look,” Jane interpreted.

  Jane knew her too well. Natalya’s frown shifted to a sad smile. But even though her expression changed, her thoughts didn’t.

  JANE HAD COME to really hate the word subtextual. Which might have had something to do with the fact that Mark used it about fifteen thousand times per rehearsal.

  Medea and Jason’s love is subtextual.

  Remember, you can’t show your love for Jason, Jane. It’s subtextual.

  Let’s keep that passion subtextual, okay, guys?

  Mark had explained at the first rehearsal that subtextual meant below the level of the text. It was what was beneath the words on the page. What an actor was feeling but not saying. Sometimes, when she and Simon were alone, they made jokes about it. In the library at lunch on Friday he’d said to her,

  “You’re doing your math homework, but what’s the subtext? That you want to go across the street and get me a cappuccino?”

  “Oh, is that the subtext?” Jane had responded. “I thought it was that you wanted to write my English essay for me.”

  The problem was, what was funny out of rehearsal was far less amusing in rehearsal. Every time Jane asked Mark how she should deliver a line, he gave pretty much the same response. Think about the subtext or Think about what Medea’s really feeling.

  Jane found herself longing for Mr. Robbins’s clear, concrete direction. You’re angry, so yell. Let’s see a little fear on that face of yours. According to the words on the page, you’re sad, but I don’t hear any sadness in your voice.

  The performance was still weeks away, but Jane was already getting nervous about making an idiot of herself onstage. She’d never realized before how much she relied on her directors to help her understand a part, but now that she was being given totally useless instructions, she appreciated too late what she’d taken for granted in the past: an actor, no matter how talented, couldn’t do it alone.

  “It’ll be okay,” Simon told her. They were in the black box waiting for Mark, who’d texted that he was stopping by the prop shop on his way to rehearsal. “Mark’s just feeling his way. We’ve got to trust him.”

  Jane shook her head and looked over at Simon sitting on the floor a few feet away from her. “No, you’ve got to trust him. I’ve got to tell him that he’s wasting our time.”

  “Okay, how about this?” Simon cocked his head and gave her an irresistible smile. “I’ll trust Mark and you trust me?”

  It was impossible not to smile back at Simon. “Fine,” she acquiesced. “But it’ll cost you.” She scooted over to him on her butt.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she said, and kissed him.

  Jane didn’t exactly have a lot of experience with kissing guys. She’d had a boyfriend for three nights at performing arts camp two summers ago, and they’d fooled around a little. Kissing him had been okay, but it had been nothing like kissing Simon.

  Simon’s lips were always soft against hers, and he didn’t keep trying to get to second base every minute like her camp boyfriend had. Also, with camp boy she’d sometimes gotten the feeling that when they were kissing he kind of had no idea who she was, as if she could have been any girl (or even just two lips with a pair of boobs attached to them). But lots of times when she and Simon were making out, he’d pause between kisses to tell her something or ask her something or to make a little private joke; it was as if he enjoyed talking to her as much as he enjoyed kissing her.

  Being with Simon was the most amazing feeling in the world.

  After they’d kissed for a long minute, Simon pulled away and pressed his forehead to hers. “We should stop before Mark walks in and starts teasing us mercilessly.”

  “You’re probably right.” Reluctantly, she moved away from him after stealing one last kiss. A second later the door to the theater opened, and Mark entered. “Sorry, that took longer than I thought it would.”

  “No worries,” said Simon as he and Jane exchanged a private smile. Jane felt her whole body glowing with the warmth of their connection.

  “Okay!” said Mark. He crossed the room and handed Simon a sword. “Poof! You’re a great hero.”

  Simon took the sword and danced it from one hand to the other. “I feel more heroic already.”

  “Jane, I’m still working on what your prop will be.”

  “Oh, I’m sure we’ll find something in the subtext,” answered Jane.

  “What?” asked Mark, distractedly.

  Simon shot her a warning look.

  “Nothing,” Jane answered. “I was just—making a joke.”

  “Oh,” said Mark. “Got it.” But he didn’t laugh. There was something so…uptight about Mark sometimes. It was almost like he knew he wasn’t doing a very good job. But if that were true, why did he give his directions with so much confidence, as if every word he was uttering was some golden nugget of directorial genius?

  “Now!” Mark rubbed his hands together and walked over to the wall to adjust the lights, talking to her over his shoulder. “I want to take it from ‘It was not that. No, you thought it was not respectable as you got on in years to have a foreign wife.’” He flipped several switches, then turned to look at the effect. Nodding at his work, he finished his instructions to his actors. “And remember what I told you last time, Jane. You’re furious, but you’re not furious. Because the subtext is L-O-V-E with a capital L. Got it?”

  “So am I yelling at him?” asked Jane. “Do you want me to yell these lines?”

  “You’re yelling, but you’re not really yelling,” was Mark’s answer.

  You’re yelling or you’re not yelling, thought Jane. It’s kind of an either-or situation. But as she walked past him, Simon whispered, “Trust me, baby.” Then he gave her a secret smile and a wink.

  Jane kept her mouth shut. Because maybe the scene was a disaster. And maybe she was working under the worst director in the history of theater.

  But Simon was winking at her. And that was better than a standing ovation.

  TUESDAY MORNING, VICTORIA could barely contain her excitement as she walked into school holding a box of Valentine cookies she’d baked the previous night. It wasn’t just that she was excited to give Jack the cookies. She was excited to give him the news.

  That morning her mom, who had a strict no-going-out-on-weeknights policy when it came to Victoria and Jack, had sat down at the breakfast table and slid a small box of chocolate hearts toward her daughter.

  “Be my Valentine?” her mom joked.

  Victoria had laughed before leaning over and giving her mom a hug and a kiss. “Sure, Mom.”

  “Thanks for your card,” her mother said.

  “You’re welcome.” Standing up and walking her empty cereal bowl over to the dishwasher, Victoria added, “Nice flowers.”

  Her mom smiled at the elaborate bouquet in the middle of the kitchen table. “Who knew all I had to do to get such beautiful flowers from your father was live in a different city from him?” She laughed at her own
joke. And then, out of nowhere, she asked, “So, who’s the nicest mother in the world?”

  “Um…” Victoria pressed her finger to her temple. “Could it be you?”

  Her mother pretended to consider Victoria’s guess. “Hmm…it could be. Because even without your asking, I spoke to your father about Valentine’s Day, and we decided if you want to go out for dinner with Jack tonight you can.”

  Victoria practically flew across the room to hug her mother. “Seriously? Are you totally serious?” She let go and spun around joyfully.

  Her mother nodded, then mimicked Victoria’s vocabulary. “Totally.”

  Victoria did a little dance as she exited the kitchen, barely listening to her mother remind her she had to be home by eight thirty because it was a school night and blah blah blah blah blah. “Okay, Mom,” she kept calling over her shoulder. “Yeah. Okay. No problem. I’ll remember.”

  She grabbed her phone to text Jack, but then she hesitated. It would be so much cooler to tell him in person, when she gave him the cookies. She would put her arms around him and say something sexy like, “Got any plans later, babe?” Or maybe he’d give her an opening by saying something like, “I wish we could go out tonight.” She shivered slightly, imagining the kiss he’d give her when he learned that she was free to go out on a school night, then slipped her phone back into her bag. Oh yeah. It was way better to announce good news like this in person.

  On the way to school, totally wrapped up in her fantasies of their evening together, she had to remind herself that it wasn’t as if Jack would have planned anything for them to do. How could he have, since he wouldn’t have had any way of knowing she’d be allowed to go out? Still, how romantic would it be to go out for dinner with Jack on Valentine’s Day, even if they just went somewhere boring like The Cottage?