What You Always Wanted

by Kristin Rae

  She sucks in a deep breath and squeaks the air out between her lips. “Okay . . . yes, it’s kind of weird that my friend is dating my brother, but I’m not as completely scandalized by it as I thought I’d be. And that whole thing last month, me trying to steer you away from him, that was more about Dad than me.”

  “Uh, why would your dad want me to date Brian?” But as soon as the words come out of my mouth, I know exactly where she’s going.

  Angela flips over to face me, talking low as if someone might overhear. “Dad’s done more than a little hinting around, to both me and Jesse, for years now. Always telling us how we need to embrace our heritage, and I totally do, you know. He’s always halfway teased Jesse about how he needs to find a nice Latina who knows how to take care of him.”

  “Which I’m definitely not.” My lips push out in a scowl. He can’t just assume I won’t be a good wife.

  Not that I’m thinking about marriage. At all. It hasn’t even been a week.

  In my head I see Gabby, the girl Jesse brought to homecoming. The family friend Jesse used to hang out with as a “favor” to his dad. The naïve side of me thought maybe he meant “hang out” as in show her around, take her to dances, entertain her, or keep her out of trouble. But really, his dad was hoping there would be more.

  But . . . I’m not the only person in this house right now who is not Latina.

  “What about your mom?”

  “Her maiden name is Applegate. I think that’s Scottish, maybe? I don’t know, but her family’s lived in Michigan for, like, ever.”

  I have to force myself to keep my volume down. “If he’s okay with marrying your mom, why is he freaking out about who his son’s going to end up with? Especially now. He’s only seventeen.”

  “He’s not freaking out,” she assures me with urgency. “He likes you, he really does. You have nothing to worry about there, honestly. I’m telling you this so you can see what Jesse’s dealing with in his head. It’s not, like, the law of the land, but it’s a subtle pressure that’s been built up for years, so it’s there.”

  “And now it’s in my head too.” Here I was so worried about finding someone to meet my standards, I didn’t consider that I might fall short of someone else’s.

  “Don’t worry about it. Jesse likes you a lot or he wouldn’t have made it so official.”

  I don’t even want to know about the plethora of “unofficial” girls before me. One more thing to fret over.

  “So, do you feel pressure too? How come you never talk about any particular guys?” I ask, hoping this might be the moment she finally opens up about the tensions with Red. I don’t want to put any words in her mouth, so I refrain from mentioning him yet.

  “It’s more pressure I put on myself. I want to make Dad happy, and I see how excited he gets when I speak to him in Spanish. I like when he takes me to Mexico to visit his family, and they teach me family traditions and recipes. When it’s time for me to go to college, I’ll be proud to go where he went.” She pauses. “There’s a whole invisible list of things he wants for his kids and I’ve always seen myself as the one to check those off, you know?”

  Truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t have a specific culture like hers to latch on to and pass down. I don’t understand the inner battle between wanting something and feeling obligated to want something else. Or someone.

  I close my eyes and muster the courage to just flat-out ask, “So you like Red but you feel like you shouldn’t?”

  She hesitates. “Who said anything about Red?”

  “I’m not totally blind.”

  Angela’s hands cover her face. “Oh, this is so embarrassing.”

  “Why? It’s me!” I say in my best comforting voice. “You can talk to me about anything. I should have asked you sooner, but I wasn’t sure.”

  She brings her arms back under the covers, pulling the quilt around her until only her head sticks out at the top, like she’s suddenly freezing. “I’ve been crushing on him for two years. I thought it would go away as I got into high school and met new guys, but it’s just getting worse and I have no idea why. It’s just Red. My brother’s best friend!”

  An image of this dark-haired beauty and the bulky blond holding hands pops into my mind. It would be so adorable I can hardly stand it.

  “Judging by the way Tiffany acts around him, I’m guessing you haven’t told her how you feel?”

  A sigh. “There’s no reason to. I’m never going to make a move, so who am I to stop her from flirting with him?” Her tone says she’s still trying to convince herself this is a healthy idea.

  “So what’s holding you back from making a move the most? The fact that he’s Jesse’s best friend or that he doesn’t match up to your invisible checklist?”

  She ponders this a moment. “Probably mostly fear that he’d never look at me that way. You hear what he calls me: ‘kid.’ That’s all I am to him.”

  “Impossible.”

  Another sigh.

  “Think about what would make Angela happy,” I say, hoping it’s not too much to ask that she make this monumental decision tonight, and that I may have helped.

  I reach for her hand and give it a squeeze, and when she squeezes back I realize I really did help. Her mood swings last semester had to stem from all of this; she just didn’t think she had anyone to talk to about it.

  And maybe I can help even more. Next time I get Red alone, we’re going to have some words.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  It kills me to admit it’s taking a lot longer to catch on to this tap-dancing thing than I imagined. Some of the numbers I have to memorize are super long, and I’m the youngest and least experienced of the cast, so it’s up to me to work my tail off to keep up. I haven’t verbally expressed any of my concerns to anyone, for obvious anti-whining reasons, but I’m starting to question how much the dancing-and-singing path is for me. As much as I love musicals, I never thought I’d say that I miss climbing inside a character’s head and poring over my lines. I miss acting.

  I’ve been practicing nearly every day in January, and Jesse’s helping me as much as his preseason baseball schedule allows, but I know he’s frustrated with me, which makes me frustrated with him. And today he’s withholding kisses, saying I need to focus. So I made up a game of my own with motivation worked into the reward: I get a kiss for every step I perfect. But we’ve been at it for over an hour, and I’ve only earned about two.

  “My lips are lonely,” Jesse says to the rhythm his feet tap out, once again showing me a tricky part from the last act near the end. “Think you can get it this time? For meeee?” He draws out the last word in singsong.

  My heart taps out a dance of its own at the strong sound of it. “Sing! Please!”

  “Nope.”

  “Come on, it’s just me. I want to hear you belt out some big musical number. Or maybe a jazzy standard. You’re probably a crooner, aren’t you? Like Dean Martin. I could totally see that smooth, buttery voice coming out of you.” I take in a deep breath and exhale slowly, batting my lashes and adding some sugar to my voice. “Please?”

  He laughs, resting a hip against the ballet bar along the wall and crossing his arms. “I haven’t seen any dancing from you worthy of a song.”

  “Rude!” I laugh and spread my arms wide, starting the combination with extra enthusiasm. Besides the extra flap I accidentally added somewhere in the middle, I’m pretty proud of myself. I turn my hands palm up as if to say “Ta-da!” but Jesse only cocks his head.

  “So, it’s not worthy of a song,” I say, “but I’m getting better, right?”

  “Yes, better.” He scratches his temple.

  “But?” I ask, afraid he’s about to be too honest with me.

  He exhales and wipes the sweat from his hairline. “You were behind the beat in a few spots.”

  “Which spots?”

  He bites his lip. “Most of them.”

  “Most of them?”

  “Ok
ay, all of them.”

  “All of them? The whole—”

  “The whole sequence is dragging.” His head is still tilted to the side but his expression is blank. “You’re too much in your head. You don’t feel it.”

  I clench my teeth together, inhaling through my nose.

  “Sometimes you don’t shift your weight quickly enough, and it makes you lean forward too much. Looks like you’re about to fall.”

  “Oh, is that all?” I ask, not without sarcasm.

  “Well, I guess while we’re talking about it, sometimes you get the heel drops confused on your Eleanor Powell.”

  “Which one was the Eleanor Powell again?”

  “You do realize opening night is tomorrow?” he asks.

  In an instant, my eyes sting and my throat tightens. “You’re being so mean,” I whisper through my quivering bottom lip.

  “Maddie, I’m not saying it to be mean. I just—”

  “You’ve just been dancing your entire life and all of this comes so easily for you, and you don’t understand how it can be so hard for me to learn!” I explode. And I don’t stop there. “Well, guess what? I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to learn either. There’s like a disconnect between what my brain knows I need to do and what my feet actually perform.”

  “Where is this coming from?” He reaches for my shoulder, but I swat him away.

  “And you want to know what else I don’t understand,” I continue, ignoring his question, “is why even though everyone knows we’re together now, they still can’t know about this?” I wave my hands wildly to indicate the dance room as well as the playhouse as a whole.

  “They don’t need to know,” he spits out hurriedly, taking a step toward me. “Why can’t it just be our thing?”

  “I was fine with that at first, but it’s just a cop-out,” I huff. It’s like the plug on the drain has been pulled and my irritation’s gushing out. “You don’t want your friends to look down on you for dancing. You’re so scared of what people will think, it’s ridiculous.”

  “No, I’m not!” Lies.

  “But it shouldn’t matter, because you’re talented, Jesse. Like really amazing.”

  “Like you said, I’ve danced my whole life. Mom put Angela and me in classes almost as soon as we could walk. Angela just didn’t take to it like I did. But then I grew up. My goals changed.”

  “If you love something so much, why can’t you be who you are all the time, not half in public and half in secret?”

  “What makes you think I love dancing so much? I—”

  “Don’t act like I’m stupid. I caught you practicing, more than once. You wouldn’t keep up with it if you didn’t really love it. If it wasn’t in you deep down.” I step closer but don’t touch him in case it causes me to lose my train of thought. “Just own up to it. Be your whole self, all the time.”

  Backing away from me, he pulls down a chair from the stack and sinks into it. “You don’t understand because you can’t understand,” he says softly.

  “Then tell me so I can.” I sit on the ground near his feet, my shoes clinking the floor as I stretch out my sore legs. “I want to know about you. All of it. The good, the bad.”

  “And the ugly?”

  “Hey, he does know about old movies,” I mutter in monotone.

  He guzzles a bottle of water before his mouth perks up in a partial smile. “I know Clint Eastwood, anyway. Proud of me?”

  “Absolutely, but you’re changing the subject.” I cross my arms.

  I wait patiently for him to open up, but he only leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and looks me in the eye.

  “Please, just let it go,” he says, so close I can see the ring of amber in his green irises. “We’ve got to get you ready for tomorrow. I think if we work on getting each . . .”

  He keeps yammering on about how I dance too much in my head and that once the moves really click, my feet will do them without me forcing it, but I’m not completely listening. I can’t stop thinking about getting him to admit to the world that he’s not just a baseball player, he’s a dancer too. That it’s possible he can be both.

  I have to get him on a real stage again. I won’t rest until it happens.

  Opening night of Crazy for You is both a dream and a nightmare, all rolled into a big blur. A Jesse-less blur, as he’s playing a preseason tournament. I’m disappointed he’s missing my first real musical debut, but I’m not sure our budding relationship can handle much more of the coach/student dynamic. He takes perfectionism to a new level, enough so I can hear his voice loud and clear in my head, running through all my flaws. A voice that’s so irritated with me by curtain call, I don’t want to talk to the real Jesse when I get home because I’m afraid I won’t be able to separate the two.

  I take my place second to the end in the line of chorus girls, and the curtain cinches up into the rafters. The audience stands, applauding and cheering wildly. I scan their faces as the lights shine on them, but no one’s looking at me except for the few who breeze their eyes over the cast as a whole. No one is here for my first performance on the community theatre stage.

  Ma’s home in bed as usual, Dad’s taking care of her, Angela and Tiffany had to serve dinner at some booster club banquet, and Sarah has a tennis thing all weekend, so Ryan went along to watch with her family. I’m supposed to call Dad for a ride home when it’s over. The glamorous life of a song-and-dance girl.

  I take a few steps back and to the side to make way for the stars of the show, and I might as well be offstage. I keep the plastic smile just in case someone happens to be looking, but all I can think is how much I wish this were closing night rather than opening night. Then I could switch gears and start working on the talent show piece.

  The curtain finally hides us and my smile dissolves into a yawn. I massage my cheeks, working up to my temples as I dodge giant sections of the set backstage on my way to the dressing room, where I change behind a partition in a very crowded and loud room of cast members shouting their congratulations and late-night dinner invitations. I’m sort of included in one group’s invite, but I decline because I can tell it’s an afterthought. Besides, I haven’t done the best job of trying to make friends here. It’s safer to imagine what they think of my substandard skills rather than hear it firsthand.

  When I finally make it out of the room with all my junk, Mrs. Morales places a hand on my shoulder as she passes by.

  “Maddie, you did a fantastic job! I’m so proud of you!” I can’t tell if she believes her words or if she’s just being nice.

  My eyebrows fly up, and I manage to squeak, “Oh, wow. Thanks.”

  “See you tomorrow,” she turns back to say. “Please be here no later than four thirty. We need to run through a few scenes we hiccuped on tonight.”

  I watch her disappear into her office just as an excited voice calls my name from down the hallway. I turn to find Brian waving a bouquet of fat red and pink daisies in the air. He pulls me into a hug as soon as he reaches me.

  His touch effectively melts the bitter ice that’s been forming around my heart the whole night. A friend actually came to support me.

  “You were amazing up there!” he says.

  I pull away from him but have a hard time meeting his eye. “Are you joking?” I choke out. “The door to the car prop closed on my dress and tore a hole in it, I confused my heel drops on the Eleanor Powell just like”—I stop myself from mentioning Jesse and our practices—“just like I always do, and if you looked closely enough you would have noticed I wasn’t even singing because I couldn’t concentrate on moving my feet and my mouth at the same time. I was an epic failure.”

  He laughs and cups a hand over my shoulder. “I’m not sure if anyone ever told you this, but the audience doesn’t really notice the little mistakes. You’re not supposed to point them out.”

  I try to laugh but it comes out a little blubbery because I’m suddenly holding back a sob. “Yeah, but if you did see my mistakes
and I said nothing about them, then you’d think I thought I was wonderful, and I can’t let you think that because it’s so far from the truth.”

  “You girls and your complicated minds.” Brian leads me to a less crowded space closer to the exit door at the end of the hall. “To me, you were wonderful. So chill.”

  My eyes water, and everything around me gets fuzzy. “But I did not think I was wonderful,” I continue in a higher pitch. I don’t even care if I sound whiny at this point; I just need to get it out. “I thought I was terrible and I had a miserably stressful time and I want it all to be over.”

  He takes a step back, likely frightened of my blatant honesty, and tucks the stems of the flowers under an arm. “You really didn’t have any fun?”

  I shrug and lean against the wall and calm my breathing so I can speak coherently. “Yes and no. I mean, I’ve always wanted to do a musical, so tonight was partly a dream come true. Back at my old school, I’d get so mad that my teacher didn’t like them. We always did straight plays, and I’d beg him to let us do just one musical, but no. Now I feel like I should thank him for saving me from premature disappointment and humiliation. I’m not sure I could have handled this before.”

  “Why not?”

  I shake my head. “Because I didn’t have the friends I do now.”

  He smiles and squeezes my shoulder.

  “I don’t know, I guess I thought this void inside me would be filled. That musical theatre was part of my ultimate destiny. But I feel let down. Betrayed.”

  “Betrayed by your ultimate destiny. Leave it to you never to feel anything halfway.”

  I dab at my eye with my sleeve and search for a distraction. “Are those for me?” I ask, nodding at the flowers.

  “Oh! Yes!” He hurriedly hands the bouquet to me and relieves me of my bag. “Sarah picked them out. They’re from all of us—me and Sarah and Ryan. They’re sorry they couldn’t make it, by the way.”

  “Sarah’s only apologized a dozen times.”

  “And now you have a dozen flowers.”

  “They’re perfect,” I say, fingering the bright petals.