Likely Story!

by David Levithan

  She wasn’t the only one. That afternoon, I ran into Dallas in the parking lot.

  “That was pretty crazy with your mom and Alexis today,” he said.

  “Were you there to see it? And if so, did you take pictures?”

  “I pulled the pillow out of Alexis’s hand. Not before she accidentally clocked me with it. She’s got an arm.”

  “Here’s hoping she puts it to better use at her softball game. I do not intend to lose anything more than an Emmy to Tropical Hospital.”

  “You’re going?”

  “Damn straight. Starting pitcher. Don’t look so surprised. There’s more to me than soap operas and square dancing.”

  “Believe me, I know. Wait a sec. Square dancing?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it.”

  “I have. I just didn’t think it was what the cool kids are doing.”

  “You think I’m a cool kid?” I was strangely flattered. Somehow I’d thought that people stopped using the word cool when they hit eighteen. Maybe it just meant something else when you got out of high school. I’d have to remember to ask myself that when I graduated. “Maybe you’re just out of touch,” I said. “Think about it and let me know what you come up with. I have to run.”

  “Oh.” Dallas teetered on the brink of having something to say.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” By which he meant the opposite. “I was talking to Richard a little while ago.”

  “You know that no good can ever come of that, right?”

  “I’ll remember that for next time. Anyway, he told me something, and I thought he was joking, but I can never tell with him. Is it true that you’re going to go through with making me Vienna’s son?”

  I couldn’t tell if he was still trying to form an opinion of the story or if he hated it but was just heroically polite.

  “Nothing’s set in stone.”

  “But it’s a possibility?”

  “One of several,” I lied. “You don’t like it.”

  He backpedaled. “I’m just confused. I kind of thought from our conversation at the poker game that we were going to …” He slowed to a stop. “Truth is … no, I don’t like it. And you can tell I don’t like it. Have you ever met an actor who can’t lie?”

  “No, but I guess I wouldn’t really know.”

  “Feel free to hate me now.”

  Yeah, right. “I’m glad you said something. You could’ve just told Richard you hated it and he’d have squashed it. You didn’t tell Richard, right?”

  “I wouldn’t do that to you. I learned my lesson the last time I interfered.”

  I had to reward good behavior. Not that he was a dog or anything.

  “I swear we’ll talk about it. Right now, I have to get to school.”

  “I’m sorry. Whatever you write, I’ll act.”

  “You can’t act if you have questions. And I can’t write for an actor who doesn’t know what he’s doing. Even though my mother’s performances might tell you otherwise. Let’s figure this out. But I do have to get to gym. Want to take me? We can talk on the way.”

  He grinned at me. “Only if I get to see you square-dance.”

  “Sure you’re cool enough?” I challenged.

  Before I got into his car, I looked around to make sure nobody saw us.

  Even though we weren’t doing anything wrong, you could never be too sure. Not with a gossipmonger in sight.

  When not zipping around on his motorcycle, Dallas drove a Prius. Great for the environment, bad for me—the silent engine only amplified my inarticulateness.

  “Let me see if I have this right,” he said as we neared Cloverdale. “Vienna gave up her son—”

  “Was forced to give him up,” I said. “By pirates off the coast of Somalia.”

  “Somali pirates forced Vienna to give up her infant son, who was later sold to human traffickers, until the day he was rescued in a raid by the American navy?”

  “A destroyer, specifically. The USS Santa Barbara.”

  “And the captain decided to keep the baby?”

  “And name him Ryan. Voilà. Instant origin story.”

  We turned into a space in the student parking lot. Dallas didn’t let go of the steering wheel. His knuckles were white. “Or … maybe she just gave him up for adoption when she realized she couldn’t care for a baby,” I said. “I told you we had a bunch of ideas.”

  “And terror on the high seas was the best of them?”

  Ouch. “I was joking.”

  Dallas relaxed his grip. “That could have come out … softer.” He looked at me and smiled.

  I wilted. It was the smile of the defeated. I’d never seen such a look on him before. It gave me the shivers.

  “Aren’t you under threat of expulsion or something if you don’t get to gym?”

  I told Dallas to forget about school for a minute. “I had to scrap the Ryan/Vienna affair.”

  “You make it sound like you didn’t have a choice.”

  “I didn’t! It had disaster written all over it. In permanent marker.”

  “Do you really think the audience would run screaming from their televisions if we tried it out?”

  “I think Girls Aged Twelve to Seventeen would sooner take a cheese grater to their eyes than watch you lock lips with my mother.”

  “Is that the opinion of the head writer or of a Girl Aged Twelve to Seventeen?”

  “A little of both. But it’s also the opinion of a concerned party. I’m only thinking of you, you know.”

  “Hold up.”

  What did I say?

  “You’re junking a network-approved story, risking an Emmy, alienating your co-workers, and declaring war on your mother and Richard because of me?”

  He was waiting for me to deny it. I was waiting for me to deny it. But there was no denying it.

  “The one time the writers of Good As Gold tried to do anything even remotely real was when they had Geneva fall in love with her parole officer. They brought in Bill Branson, an Obie Award–winning theater actor from New York, to play the PO. For three months ‘Rio and Geneva’ were the darlings of daytime. They got all the covers. They got all the kudos. Until Bill’s hair started falling out.”

  “He got sick?”

  “Of my mother! And it didn’t stop with Mom Pattern Baldness! Then there were migraines, followed by blurred vision and arthritis—the guy was thirty-five and a former yoga instructor!”

  “Maybe he wasn’t getting his vitamins?”

  “Trust me, you could hook up an IV of V8 to the guy and it wouldn’t straighten him out. He was just the latest in a long line of failed love interests for my mother. None last longer than a year. She’s a vampire. She sucks them dry, and she’ll do the same to you.”

  “So I’ll eat garlic.”

  “I’m not kidding. Dallas as we know him wouldn’t survive. You’d turn away from acting. You’d run screaming back to your mom and tell her she was right all along and you never should have gone into acting. You’d end up in med school.”

  Dallas stared straight ahead, apparently fascinated by the grove of sycamores donated by the class of ’96. “You sound more like a fortune-teller than a writer.”

  “I’m just looking out for you.”

  He looked at me with those eyes of a million colors. “I wish you wouldn’t. While you’re looking out for me, who’s looking out for you?”

  “Who says I need looking out for?”

  “No one, apparently.” Dallas took a breath, but bit his lip, watching me and waiting. I didn’t say anything. So he did. “But maybe somebody should.”

  I couldn’t tell if he had somebody in mind, and I was afraid/curious to ask.

  “It means a lot to me that you’re willing to put the show on the line for my well-being,” he said slowly. “But don’t you know by now that I’m willing to put my career on the line for you? I mean, your show.”

  His slip—if it was a slip—was of the heel-to-banana-peel
, rug-from-under-the-feet variety. It sent me flying, too. Instead of facing it, I looked at my watch.

  “I’m going to be late.”

  The gym was my county fair nightmare come to life. Hay bales were stacked in front of the bleachers. Wagon wheels and butter churns lined the walls. Warming up on a platform was a quartet straight out of a Hee Haw reunion special: four overalled, knee-slapping old men, picking at banjos, fiddles, guitars, and double basses. And gingham. Lots and lots of gingham.

  “Tell me there’s a pie-eating contest, too,” said Dallas.

  “I think that would defeat the purpose of gym class. Plus there’s no social engineering to be had poised over a plate of blueberry filling.”

  I scanned the dozens of squares until I found mine, minus me, dead center. Amelia was foaming at Keith about something, and he didn’t exactly look like his serene self, either.

  “Maybe you should take a seat on the sidelines,” I suggested to Dallas. “Suddenly I get the feeling that your presence might not be appreciated.”

  How wrong I was.

  “DALLAS GRANT!” shrieked Scooter, immediately shutting up Keith and Amelia. Dallas froze as the five foot seven rhino charged, to the squeals of the rest of the students. Dallas was two seconds from being flattened by Scooter’s fandom—until Coach Samson stepped in to gush and took the blow himself.

  Coach didn’t even sway as Scooter bounced to the floor. “Huge fan, Mr. Grant—HUGE.” Soon Coach was competing for Dallas’s attention with the entire female and gay male Cloverdale student body. I stuck out my hand to help Scooter to his feet. Keith was there on Scooter’s other side.

  “Look, everybody, Dallas Grant is here,” Keith muttered at me as we hoisted Scooter.

  “Oh my God, I know!” said Scooter, flinging himself at the throng. He flung far short, though, crumpling and clutching his ankle.

  Coach diagnosed it as a sprain (“Serves you right for not watching where you’re going!”) and sent for the nurse.

  “Aw shucks,” said Amelia with all the pretend disappointment she could muster (which wasn’t much). “I guess that means we’ll just have to watch. Can’t square with just seven.”

  “No, it means you’ll get an F for the day,” Coach said.

  “Fine by me,” said Amelia as she made for the hay. “That won’t even register on my GPA.”

  I raised my hand. “Not fine by me. An F for me is as good as not showing up. The school board will force me off the set.”

  “And angels wept,” called Amelia, not even looking back.

  Coach was sympathetic but unimaginative. “The International Folk Dancer Handbook is clear: Squares consist of exactly eight people. One more or less would result in an irregular quadrilateral that cannot function as a square.”

  “I could fill in for Scooter,” offered Dallas.

  The gym suddenly went quiet.

  “I mean, if that’s cool.”

  “Are you kidding?” cried Scooter, not in agony, but in ecstasy. “That’s the coolest!”

  No argument from me.

  “I didn’t think you were going to make it on time. Did the network revoke your chauffeur privileges?” asked Keith, loud enough to include the rest of our square in the conversation. Dallas ignored him and tried to catch up with Amelia, who wasn’t having it. For some reason she was far more interested in my own domestic drama.

  “We had some work issues to discuss, so he gave me a ride.”

  Truth or not, the look on Keith’s face told me that wasn’t going to cut it. I could only hope that the twang of the quartet and chicken-fried flavor of the caller’s voice would help take the edge off my boyfriend.

  I was doomed.

  I was prepared for Cloverdale’s students to rebel at the forced merriment. Or at the very least slouch. But this was LA. Put a bunch of Angelenos in cowboy costumes and give them an audience (even if it’s of lower classmen), and suddenly it’s everybody’s next Big Break. The hoot’n’hollering started as soon as the music did. Even Amelia couldn’t suppress the growing enthusiasm … although it probably helped that she’d traded in her partner for a bona fide hunk. Dallas threw himself into it with every ounce of his Method-actor focus, morphing from Silverlake chic to Country Lane quaint with the tap of a toe … only to be outshone by Keith, who stamped his foot and clapped his hands red. All this time I thought it would take a bumblebee in his boxers to spur him to dance. Turns out he just needed a little friendly competition.

  “Hurry folks, fill the hall,

  get your partners one and all….”

  And we were off. The caller warmed us up with a simple do-si-do-your-partner/allemande-left-your-corner combo—but it was quickly apparent that the dance syllabus at Juilliard favored ballet over folk. Dallas had no idea what he was doing.

  And it was the most adorable thing ever.

  He tripped. He stepped on feet. He turned the wrong way. He turned the right way, but too late … only to step on feet and then trip. He got lost in a square through, led when he should have followed, stood still when he should have led, and tried to promenade the wrong partner home (Keith). Dallas laughed an apology and even tried to dress it up, extending his hand for a shake. Keith left him hanging.

  Coach popped by during a break between dances and suggested Dallas take a breather. “Probably not a bad idea,” said Amelia, rubbing a bruised shin. “Maybe that way we’ll avoid a trip to the ER.”

  “I can bow out,” offered Dallas. “I don’t want to cause trouble.”

  “Turning over a new leaf?” asked Keith.

  “Hey,” I said, hustling him away from Dallas. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong is Mr. Soap Opera here sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

  “In a high school gym?”

  “In our square. We had a good group before Dallas barged in. You and me and Scooter and even Amelia. We were all getting along. We didn’t look like idiots. And we were having fun!”

  “I’m still having fun, but I guess I’m the only one not taking this so seriously.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe you take the wrong things seriously at the wrong times for the wrong reasons.”

  “Are we fighting? Because this feels like a fight. About square dancing.”

  “Let’s just dance,” Keith said, taking my hand as the fiddlers struck up another tune. Under other circumstances I would have swooned. But his touch was making my stomach turn.

  I took my hand back. “Let’s not. I’d rather fail than pretend everything’s all kittens and puppies with you at the moment.”

  Amelia booed as I pivoted to walk away.

  Dallas held me back. “Think: me,” he whispered. “Your mom. Bedroom scene. That’s what happens if you’re not in the studio to steer the show.”

  Keith was watching. So was Amelia. So was Coach.

  “Are you all going to dance or what?” Coach asked.

  “Thanks for the reality check,” I told Dallas, taking his hand. “Let’s do this.”

  “What are you doing?” asked Keith.

  “The acey-deucey, if I heard the call right. With my new partner. You can dance with Amelia. Maybe you’ll have more fun.”

  “I don’t know what the acey-deucey is, either,” said Dallas, all smiles.

  “Then I’ll lead.”

  malcontent: you there?

  GinaBeana: Hi there, Sweetie!

  malcontent: phew

  GinaBeana: Are you saying I smell?

  malcontent: heck no!

  malcontent: never mind

  malcontent: just glad you’re here

  GinaBeana: I’m looking up Emmy fashions!

  GinaBeana: I have to look my best on the big night!

  malcontent: you could go dressed in a hairnet and rubber gloves and still outshine everybody else

  GinaBeana: Aw shucks, thank you. How are you?

  malcontent: meh

  GinaBeana: My mother used to say “meh.”

  malcontent
: my kinda lady

  GinaBeana: What’s wrong?

  malcontent: where to begin

  malcontent: you’re gonna regret asking

  GinaBeana: Your disclaimer is duly noted.

  malcontent: keith

  GinaBeana: What happened?

  GinaBeana: Is it that bad?

  malcontent: worse

  malcontent: all we do is fight

  GinaBeana: What do you fight about?

  malcontent: stuff at the show, mostly malcontent: I don’t know what to do

  GinaBeana: First things first.

  GinaBeana: “Stuff at the show”

  doesn’t cut it.

  GinaBeana: You need to be

  specific.

  GinaBeana: And honest.

  GinaBeana: Try it out.

  GinaBeana: I know it’s hard.

  GinaBeana: But do your best.

  rocketboy: hi

  rocketboy: what’s up

  malcontent: working

  malcontent: the usual

  malcontent: yourself?

  rocketboy: hanging

  rocketboy: so

  rocketboy: do you want to break up?

  rocketboy: do you?

  malcontent: do you???

  GinaBeana: Are you still there?

  malcontent: yeah

  malcontent: okay. my

  mom, for one.

  malcontent: she meddles

  malcontent: she’s always in

  the way

  malcontent: and not just

  with keith

  malcontent: with dallas,

  too

  malcontent: what?

  GinaBeana: I don’t think it’s your mom, Mallory.

  GinaBeana: I know you two have your problems.

  GinaBeana: But she hardly even knows Keith’s name.

  GinaBeana: Want to give it another try?

  malcontent: okay

  rocketboy: I’m asking you

  malcontent: why are you asking?

  rocketboy: because it feels like that’s what you want and I’m not the only one who thinks so

  malcontent: amelia malcontent: right?

  malcontent: that’s what you two were talking about when I got to gym today