by Emma Scott
She shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time. Though I’ve never seen him defend a girl’s honor before. That’s new.”
Angie watched my gaze linger to where Isaac had gone. “Hey. For real, girl. You like him? Because…” Her words trailed off and she shook her head.
“I’m not interested in him like that,” I said. “And even if I were…”
“Yeah?”
“Nothing.”
“You sure?” Her face melted into concern. “Is there something you want to talk about? I keep getting this vibe…”
“No. There’s nothing.”
Nothing I could tell her with my own voice and words. The odds I’d actually get a role in Hamlet, never mind Ophelia, were slim to none. But I had to turn the nothing into something before I flickered out for good.
Isaac
“Well, Isaac?” Mr. Dillings, the principal, leaned back in his chair, fingertips drumming his chest. “As an educator, I’m not in the habit of encouraging students to forgo finishing the year and taking the GED…but aren’t we about done here?”
I met his gaze without blinking. It wasn’t the first time we’d had this discussion. When I turned eighteen in the middle of my junior year—and gotten in a fistfight with three members of Ted Bowers’ crew—Dillings proposed the GED. I could’ve gotten a full-time job to help pay the bills with Pops, and the humiliation of being held back would’ve disappeared with me.
But the GED wasn’t the same as graduating. It screamed “dropout.” Anyway, I wanted an education. My mother’s death had tossed me out of the stream of life to flounder and gasp like a fish out of water. I’d climbed back in with hopes of having a little piece of a normal life. Instead, poverty, a drunk for a dad, and being held back a year all compounded until acting was the only thing protecting me. Acting onstage to exorcise the demons that screamed in my heart. Acting like a criminal at school to keep from being torn to pieces.
My mother wanted me to finish school.
Stay in school, baby, she said, over and over. This world will try to take things away from you, but it can never take your mind or what you put in it.
I wanted to quit a thousand times, but her words kept me going. And I wanted to set a good example for Benny. What would it say to him if I became a dropout?
“It’s time, isn’t it?” Mr. Dillings said. “Only six months to graduation. You can still walk with the seniors if it’s important…” His words trailed off, leaving the truth dangling between us: We don’t want you here anymore.
“Yeah,” I said, standing up. “I’m done.”
Dillings eased a sigh of relief and rose with me. He straightened his cheap suit jacket. “I think it’s best. You’re a bright young man with a brilliant talent. I have no doubt—”
I walked out and shut the door, cutting off whatever piece of life advice he’d been about to lay on me.
The hallways were empty. No one saw me as I walked out of George Mason High, leaving all my shit in my locker, and crossed the parking lot to my Dodge. I started the engine but let it idle, not knowing which direction to go, which road to take.
Pops would expect me to work at our dying business, but there was no money there. I doubted Martin could afford a full-time guy at the theater. I could probably work for an auto shop in Braxton, make some decent money to grow my pathetic savings account…
I glanced back at George Mason.
“So fucking what?” I said, as if speaking the words could solidify them in my heart. “There’s nothing at that school I give a shit about.”
Willow Holloway…
Of course, a beautiful girl like that shows up three days before I get kicked out. I didn’t know her and she didn’t know me, but she was the first bright thing in my shitty world outside of the stage. There was never going to be anything there, but I’d started to look forward to sitting next to her in English class. My eyes followed her everywhere, and they immediately saw how Ted and his gang scared her shitless.
Fucking Ted Bowers. He’d looked at Willow like she was a meal he was going to devour. Was entitled to devour. I’d wanted to slug his obscene smile but I restrained myself until Ted made a comment about my mom and my control snapped.
I lit a cigarette and flexed my aching knuckles. Getting kicked out school made me feel like shit. But I punched Ted Bowers for both my mother and Willow Holloway, and that made it bearable.
I put the truck in drive and tore out of the parking lot.
Back at the trailer, I parked in the yard but didn’t get out. The idea of going inside and confronting Pops made me so goddamn weary. He’d been bitching at me to quit school and work more, but getting kicked out was just going to give him an excuse to vent his bottomless well of rage.
Instead of heading inside, I walked over dirty snow and slush toward the eastern edge of the property. At the semi truck tire, I tapped a fresh pack of Winstons on the heel of my hand. A low voice stopped me. It was only nine in the morning but Benny was under the overturned truck, rapping in a soft, sing-song tone under his breath.
I tucked the cigarettes away and whistled. Benny peeked out from under the truck, and took the earbuds out of his ears, his eyes widening.
“Yo, Isaac. What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same.” I fixed him a hard look. “Why aren’t you in school?”
He stared right back. “Why aren’t you?”
I jammed my freezing fingers into the pockets of my jacket. “I’m done. I’m going to take the GED instead.”
Benny came out from under the truck. “You’re dropping out.”
“I’m nineteen,” I said. “I’m an adult. It’s the right thing to do. You, on the other hand, are ditching and could get your mom in trouble for truancy.”
He scowled, but I saw the guilt in his eyes. “I didn’t feel like going.” He tugged at the hem of the jacket I’d gotten for him. “When you got no money, you can get ragged for wearing new stuff as much as for old stuff.”
“Uh huh. You do this a lot?”
“No.”
“That the truth?”
“It’s the truth,” he said, and I believed him. It was our thing—me and this thirteen-year-old kid and our weird friendship. We were honest with each other, no matter what.
I took a seat on the semi-truck tire. Benny sat beside me.
“So what happened?” he asked.
“I punched a guy.”
Benny’s dark eyes widened to show the whites. “You did? Who? Why?”
“Some asshole was giving a new girl a hard time.”
“Ohh, a girl?” He nudged my arm.
“Yeah. There are girls at GM.”
“Who is she? What’s her name?”
“Doesn’t matter. Probably not going to see her again. Or maybe I will…” I trailed off, remembering how Willow sat up straighter at Paulson’s announcement about Hamlet auditions, like someone had called her name.
“You want to see her,” Benny said, grinning. “You want to baaaaad. You like her.”
I shoved him with an elbow. “How the hell you figure that?”
“You got kicked out of school for her, for one thing,” he said. “For another, your face just got all soft and mushy.”
“It did not,” I said.
“What’s her name?”
“Willow.”
He wrinkled his nose. “That’s the whitest white girl name I ever heard.”
I chuckled. “She’s super rich too. And young.”
And completely off limits.
My smiled faded. “Why the fuck am I talking about her with you? You need to get your ass to school. Tomorrow, and the day after that. I’m going to be around more to make sure.”
Benny rolled his eyes. “Okay, okay.”
A silence fell.
“You going to miss school?” he asked.
“No.” I glanced at him sideways. “Yes. Some of it.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded. My hands twitched for a Wins
ton. Benny knew I smoked, but I kept it away from him.
“What part?” he asked. “‘Cuz I can’t think of nothing I’d miss.”
“You’d miss doing kid stuff. Being in a club after school or doing sports with friends. Going to dances.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Benny said.
“I’m not going to be hanging around all day doing nothing. I have to work now.” I tugged his sleeve. “And you have to go to school. Right now. I’ll drive you.”
“No way. They’ll call Ma at her work. I don’t have a note.”
“I’ll write you one.” I stood up. “Come on. It’s cold out.”
He sighed and dramatically hauled himself off the tire. “Hey, is your dad going to be pissed about you leaving school?”
“Probably.”
“Will he try to beat on you?”
“Maybe.”
“Isaac.” Benny stopped walking and looked up at me fearfully. “You’re going to leave Harmony soon.”
Honesty. Both onstage and with Benny. These were the talismans I held onto.
“Yeah,” I said. “I am.”
Benny swallowed hard, swiped a hand over his eyes, and then nodded. “Good.”
Willow
That afternoon, Angie helped me pore through plays and books of audition monologues. While she searched, I flipped through Hamlet itself, scanning Ophelia’s scenes. The words were English, yet I needed a translator. What the hell was Shakespeare saying? I couldn’t connect to anything in Ophelia’s lines.
“Focus,” Angie said, pulling the play away from me. “You can’t audition for Hamlet with Hamlet. It’s bad form. Find another Shakespeare monologue to show you can handle him.”
“I can’t handle him at all,” I said. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing or what this play is even about.”
Angie took on a fake Spanish accent. “Let me e’splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up: Hamlet’s the prince of Denmark. His dad, the king, died and though it’s only been two months, his mom married his dad’s brother, Claudius. Now Claudius is king. Hamlet thinks that’s whack.”
“Sounds just like Shakespeare.”
“One night, three guards see a ghost and they tell Ham. Ham sees it too. It’s Dad. Dad says Claudius poured poison in his ear and killed him. Hamlet’s mind is blown. But hold up, he’s been dating Ophelia, daughter of Polonius. Polonius is Claudius’ right-hand man. Polonius tells Ophelia that Hamlet’s losing his marbles and she has to break up with him.
“Ophelia and Hamlet are in love but, like, the fucking patriarchy, right? She caves to her dad’s pressure and agrees to break up with him. Ham’s devastated and rants that all women are traitorous bitches, and Ophelia should go to a nunnery and never reproduce. Then Ham confronts his mom while Polonius eavesdrops and—whoops!—Ham kills Polonius.
“Ophelia, having lost her man and her dad, proceeds to lose her mind. She goes nuts, sings a bunch of dirty, sexy-time songs, and drowns herself in the river. Then a bunch of other shit happens until pretty much everyone else in the cast is dead. Curtain.” Angie sucked in a breath, her smile bright. “Got all that?”
I stared a moment, then begun a slow clap. “Angie, I can’t even…”
“I know,” she said, laughing. “I amaze myself sometimes.”
Even with Angie’s verbal Spark Notes, Shakespeare still looked like a foreign language. I was certain to crash and burn if I tried to audition with one of his monologues.
I was ready to scrap the whole endeavor for the millionth time when I read a synopsis for a play called The Woolgatherer. The lead characters were Rose, a shy young woman and recluse, and Cliff, the lonely truck driver she brings home one night.
Tears stung my eyes when I read Rose’s climactic monologue, a recollection of a night at the zoo. She went there to watch the elegant cranes stand in the still, dark water. A group of rowdy boys came through the zoo one night, blaring music and talking loudly. They threw rocks at the birds, breaking their legs and killing them while Rose screamed and screamed…
I read it again. Then once more, my heart aching.
I had my audition piece.
Dinner silverware clinked against dishes. Dad held a fork in one hand, his phone in the other. Mom picked at her soufflé, then exchanged her fork for the wine bottle and poured herself a third glass. I ate more of my dinner than usual. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this hungry, not just for food but for the days ahead. I had something to look forward to, even if it were only making a fool of myself in front of the director of the HCT.
But I’m going to try. That’s something.
I smiled a little, thinking Grandma would be pleased. For the first time since X marked the spot, I wasn’t sitting in a block of ice, merely trying to get through dinner so I could make a half-ass attempt at my homework, then curl up on the floor of my room in my comforter and hope for a decent night’s sleep.
“So, I decided what I’m going to do for an after-school activity.”
My parents’ heads shot up with comical sameness.
“Really?” My dad chewed his food slowly and swallowed. “This is encouraging.”
“A tad too late,” Mom muttered. “College deadlines for the best schools have come and gone. The best she can do is community college—God help me—and try for a spring enrollment.”
“What’s so terrible about community college?” I asked. “Besides, I’m not sure I want to go to college in the first place.”
She looked stricken. “Of course you have to go to college. Why wouldn’t you go to college?”
“Regina,” Dad said in a warning tone. He looked at me. “We can talk about college later. First, tell us what you’ve decided to do. Debate? You were always quite good at debate.”
“I’m going to audition for the play at the HCT.”
My Dad stared harder, his jaw working in a way that meant he had a lot to say on the matter, though I couldn’t imagine what.
Mom sniffed as if smelling something distasteful. “Acting?”
“Yes.”
My father slowly chewed a bite of green beans almondine from side to side, then wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Hmm. That’s not exactly…academic.”
“It’s what I want to do,” I said.
“Why?” Mom asked, as if I’d said I wanted to join a circus.
“I just told you why,” I said. “As an after-school activity.”
My father held my gaze with his hardest stare. “It’s not because of that boy, is it?”
I froze.
He knows. He knows about X. And the party. And what happened…
Mom gaped between us. “What boy? Who…?”
My dad set his napkin down, my petrified silence seeming to confirm for him the truth of everything he was about to say.
“A fellow at the office has a daughter at George Mason. When he found out I did too, he gave me an earful about a boy named Isaac Pearce.”
A sigh of relief loosened my tensed limbs and I sagged in my chair a moment. Then indignation flared through me, making my hands strangle my napkin under the table. My father, who would’ve been hard-pressed to name a single one of my friends from New York, now pin-pointed Isaac Pearce. Why should he interfere in my life now when it was too late? Why the fuck didn’t someone at his office give him an earful about Xavier Wilkinson?
“Who is Isaac Pearce?” Mom demanded.
“He’s a guy at school,” I said. “I hardly know him—”
“Gary Vance, my coworker, says Isaac’s a senior, but much older than the kids. He was held back a grade and there’s talk about some trouble with the law—”
“He was held back because his mother died and he stopped talking for a year,” I snapped. “You make it sound like he’s a moron or a degenerate. He’s neither.”
My father pursed his lips, and nodded to himself, as if I’d just confirmed his worst suspicions. “Gary says he lives with his alcoholic father in a trailer in a junkyard, and worse—his father i
s one of our franchise owners. Gary says his station is a disgrace.”
My mother’s hand flew to her throat. “Jesus, Willow.”
“What?” I gaped at my father’s smug expression. “Judgmental much? So he’s not rich off dirty oil money like we are, so what?”
“Dirty,” my mother said with a sniff. “Who’s being judgmental now?”
“Business aspects aside, the boy has a reputation,” Dad said, as if he were the official Pearce Family Historian. “Apparently, he’s something of an actor. He does plays at the community theater.”
He deals drugs to small children, would’ve sounded the same in my dad’s mouth.
Mom whirled on me. “Is that why you want to act? To follow this boy around?”
“That’s the first thing you think of?” I cried. “Guess what? Isaac Pearce isn’t a criminal. He happened to defend me today from some meathead jock, and even so, even so…” I was shouting over their knowing looks now. “He’s not why I’m auditioning. Jesus, give me some fucking credit, why don’t you. You wanted me to do something, so here I am, doing something.”
“You watch your language,” Dad said, his voice hardening. “And let’s keep in mind you’ve never acted a day in your life. Suddenly you want to be on stage in front of the entire town?”
“Is Isaac Pearce going to audition too?” Mom asked, saying his name like it was a dirty word.
“Yes,” I said, fighting to control my anger. “Probably he’ll get the lead because he’s brilliant. And back to the point, I probably won’t get a part. Because, quote, I’ve never acted a day in my life. So just forget I said anything.”
“We don’t want you hanging around boys like him,” Mom said, deaf to everything I’d just said. “We came here so you could get a fresh start, but of course, you immediately latch on to the worst elements—”
“Oh my God,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Do you hear how ridiculous you sound? Assholes come in all shapes and sizes, Mom. City or country. Poor and rich, alike.”
Sons of CEOs especially.
“And I’m not latching on to anyone. I’m trying to…”
Find myself in the dark.