You in Five Acts

by Una LaMarche

  “I’m sorry,” I said, clenching and unclenching my fists behind my back. Lunch had consisted of four cigarettes, half an apple, and two Diet Cokes, and I was getting lightheaded and twitchy.

  “You shouldn’t be.” Diego shook his head angrily. “You don’t get someone to perform by psyching them out and threatening them.”

  “It works on me,” Joy sighed.

  “She knows, that’s why she does it,” Diego said. He wiped his face with the bottom of his tank top, exposing a lean, flat six-pack. Joy didn’t even glance up. “At least we don’t have to see her for ten days, right?”

  “Yup, it’s a nice, relaxing stay of execution,” Joy said. She bent her bare right foot over her left knee and started massaging the ankle, wincing with each push.

  “Are you OK?” I asked. She and Diego exchanged a look before she shrugged and quickly switched feet.

  “Just tired,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” She looked up at me and frowned. “Are you OK? . . .”

  “Just stressed,” I said. “The usual.” It was weird to feel so uncomfortable with someone I’d loved so long that I’d stenciled her name onto the lower half of my bunk bed. I tried to remind myself that the room had already been tense before I walked in.

  “Yeah, tell me about it.” Joy pulled on some socks. “Do you need to vent?” She said it in a monotone that made it clear that wasn’t what she wanted to do, but it was enough of an effort for me after weeks and weeks of nothing.

  “Can I buy you an early dinner?” I asked. I’d taken out money in the middle of the night to pay Dante for my next order, but I wasn’t seeing him until Saturday, and besides, I’d taken out extra to give myself a cushion.

  “You sure?” Joy asked. She looked over at Diego for permission, which stung a little—I guess they must have had a routine going, packing up and taking the subway together—but I couldn’t really be mad. I used to look forward all day to those ten minutes with you.

  “After the next couple weeks, you’ll be sick of my face,” Diego laughed, picking up his duffel. “Get out while you can.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I had one pill left until I got home. I could almost feel it bouncing around inside my purse like a pea under a princess’s mattress. I wanted to see Joy, I was aching to be in a room alone with you, but if I’m being honest I was just as excited to take that fucking pill, to plot when and where and how I would take it. That was how I planned my days. That had been all that was keeping me going.

  Get out while you can.

  I didn’t even hear the words.

  • • •

  Sitting across from Joy in a diner booth felt almost normal, although conversation tripped and stalled at first, both of us staring at the menu like it was a script we couldn’t find our lines on.

  “What are you getting?” she asked.

  “I don’t know . . . cereal, maybe? I’m not really hungry.”

  “You should eat more. You look too skinny,” Joy said bluntly. “And I don’t mean that as a messed-up compliment.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Okaaay. I won’t thank you, then.”

  The waiter came and took our order. Joy got a turkey wrap, and I asked for a veggie burger deluxe I didn’t even want. I gulped down my water and chewed on the straw.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, once he’d left. “I’m not trying to be a bitch. I’m just freaking out right now.”

  “It’s OK,” I said. “Me, too. I thought second-semester senior year was supposed to be like a big chill orgy. What happened?”

  Joy laughed. “Right? The pressure is so crazy right now that if I didn’t have Diego there most days, I legitimately think I would have punched Adair.”

  “Too bad she’s not busy sleeping off a hangover like Mr. Francisco,” I said. “Although the one time he showed up to a run-through he suggested Ethan recast me.”

  “What?” Joy looked honestly shocked, and I loved her for it.

  “Yup. He’s probably right, though. It’s such a weird vibe, the play’s going to suck unless . . .” I paused, unsure of how to finish the sentence. Luckily, or unluckily, maybe, one thing about Nuvigil was that it was great at filling awkward silences with words.

  “I’m really sorry about stealing Dave at the party,” I blurted, clasping my hands together, digging the nails of one into the palm of the other methodically as I spoke. “I mean, nothing ever happened, but you were right. I liked him—I still like him—and I should have just said that. I don’t know why I tried to act like I didn’t care. I think I just didn’t want him to know I was just like everyone else, you know?”

  “Whoa,” Joy said. “Slow down.” She pressed her lips together and took a deep breath. “You can’t own a person, so you can’t steal a person. He was never mine.” She looked straight at me then. “But if you had just been honest with me, I would have had your back,” she said. “Instead I felt like you made it a competition or something.”

  I looked down at my hands. I’d broken the skin. “I can’t compete with you,” I said. “Trust me, I’m a hot mess.” A lump surfaced unexpectedly in my throat, and I gulped water to keep it down.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” Joy asked. “Olivia,” she said—which she never said, which is how I knew it was really showing. “What is going on with you?”

  “I’ll tell you if you tell me,” I said, hedging. I already knew it was a lie, because at that moment I honestly thought that if I told Joy the truth, everything would fall apart. Because back then, on the other side, “falling apart” just meant that everyone would know how far gone I was, and that people would be mad at me and I would have to drop out and go to some rehab facility where I’d sweat and heave and feel like shit for a week. That seemed like the worst possible thing in the world. I was so fucking selfish.

  I’ll tell you if you tell me. One step up from Secrets, secrets are no fun, secrets, secrets hurt someone.

  “Something’s the matter with my ankle,” Joy said, looking into her water glass as she stirred and stirred, watching the ice cubes melt down to nothing. “Only Diego knows. So please don’t say anything.”

  Diego knew all of our secrets, apparently.

  “What is it?” I asked, before the waiter came with our food, and we did that thing of suddenly pretending we were deaf-mutes while he set down the plates and arranged the silverware.

  When we were alone again, Joy shrugged and picked up a pickle. “I don’t know, I haven’t been to a doctor.”

  “Why not?” A huge platter sat in front of me, my burger sitting on a lettuce raft in a sea of golden fries, but I was craving something much smaller and less filling.

  “I can’t go without my parents finding out,” Joy said. “And if they found out they’d tell me to stop dancing on it.”

  “Maybe you should.” I ran my dry tongue over my teeth. My ears popped.

  Joy pressed her lips together and took a deep breath. “This is my one shot,” she said, her face tense just like I’d seen it through the glass panel on the studio door. “No offense, but I’m not gonna have a gap year to figure it out. You know my mom and dad. If I don’t get recruited by a company, the deal’s off. It’s over.”

  We ate in silence for a minute. I took a tiny bite of my veggie burger and tasted wet cardboard.

  “So,” I finally said. “What happens if it gets worse?”

  “I don’t know.” Joy frowned. “I’m just trying to make it through the next couple weeks.” She reached across the table to steal a fry and shot me an embarrassed smile. “Actually, I’ve been spending some lunch periods icing it in the handicapped stall of the fourth floor bathroom.”

  So Joy had a lunchtime bathroom habit, too. “You could have told me,” I said.

  She shook her head emphatically. “I don’t need anyone else worrying about me. Diego’s bad enough. He’s
only helping me because he knows I would dance on it anyway and he wants to be there to make sure I don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I don’t think that’s why,” I said. The summer between ninth and tenth grades was when Kyle first started buying me forties from the corner store with his fake ID, saying he knew I would drink anyway and he wanted to make sure I was being responsible. It turned out he just wanted to try to kiss me in the hallway near the garbage disposal. When I didn’t let him and he kept buying, I felt more powerful than I knew what to do with.

  “OK, so now you know my drama,” Joy said, chewing. “So what’s yours? You seem really upset.”

  “Nope, just melodrama,” I sighed, relieved I had been smart enough to hold off confessing. “I’m just in such an awkward position. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, et cetera.”

  “Between an Ethan and a Dave place?” Joy quipped.

  “Pretty much.” I could feel my brain start to decelerate, the whirring and clicking getting slower, like a train approaching a station. I started to worry if I would need more before I got home, especially if my rehearsal with you went well and we decided to hang out afterward, which I knew was a long shot, maybe the longest shot, but still a shot I wanted to take. I wondered when Dante got off work, if he could meet me halfway. If I could find a good moment to excuse myself, I could text him and take my next dose at the same time. Two birds, one bathroom. I laughed, and Joy looked at me funny.

  “Don’t take this wrong,” she said, “but to me, yours has an easy solution. Just let Ethan down gently.”

  “It’s not, though,” I said. I thought about Ethan’s lips, and how nice they felt—but only when I was imagining he wasn’t attached to them.

  “I know,” Joy said. But I could tell she didn’t.

  “And I know you think a gap year is some kind of vacation,” I continued, working myself up, “but I kind of wish my parents cared more about what I do. Because if I don’t start getting auditions, I’ll just be the girl who lives at home and goes nowhere.” I pushed my fries around fussily on my plate. “I’ll be the girl who peaks in high school.”

  “Uh-uh,” Joy said. “That won’t happen. Besides, I don’t think you can peak when you’re a hot mess, right?”

  I laughed and launched a fry across the table. “Shut up.”

  “Then again, Dave peaked early, too, so maybe you two are destined,” she said. I didn’t want to laugh—you were so insecure about that, and you’d confided in me—but Joy broke first and started giggling, and I was so relieved at the break in tension that I started too, loud enough to get a shush from an old lady in the next booth.

  “Aaaaanyway,” Joy said, in an exaggerated whisper, “it’s not like I have time for anything besides rehearsals and homework right now. I’m glad I don’t have anyone making me crazy. Besides you, obviously.”

  I smiled, but I wanted to tell Joy that she was wrong, and that she didn’t know what she was missing. I wanted to tell her that you were the only thing about the past few months of my life that felt real, and that I’d been spending every single day for two months chasing the electric feeling that had sparked when we first met. I wanted to tell her that someone like that makes everything easier, makes everything seem more possible, not less.

  But I didn’t end up telling her any of that, because while I was staring off into space thinking about you, I looked up and saw the clock behind the counter.

  The moment I first realized I was in love with you? That was also the moment I realized I’d stood you up.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mid-April

  Less than a month left

  WHEN I GOT TO THE REHEARSAL ROOM, you were packing up your stuff. The sun was almost gone, and the sky through the windows was orange-gray like a coal on fire from the inside. You had your back to me, but I saw you flinch when I opened the door.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said. The last pill bobbed bitterly in my throat; I’d panicked and swallowed it dry on the way over. I plunged my arm into my bag, hoping to find some half-empty bottle I could use to wash it down.

  “You’re unbelievable,” you said, not moving.

  “I said I’m sorry.” My fingers closed around a plastic cap and I pulled out a days-old water, gratefully chugging the last inch that was left. That felt better. “I ran into Joy,” I explained. “I lost track of time. I’m ready now.”

  “The funny thing,” you said, finally turning to face me, “is that when you say you’ll be someplace you lose track of time, but when you’re not supposed to be there, you just magically appear. You’re never ready at the right time.” Your eyes flashed with anger. I could tell you wanted me to apologize, but not just for running late. Couldn’t you see how complicated it all was? You couldn’t own a person, Joy had said, and it was true. So why did you and Ethan both insist on acting like I had to belong to you?

  “That’s not fair,” I said.

  “This was a bad idea.” You picked up your coat. “I’m over it. I’m just gonna tell Ethan to find someone else.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Better than this.” You shrugged your bag onto your shoulder.

  “Wow. Well, way to quit.” I tried to keep my voice steady, even though the prospect of facing rehearsals without you—of facing anything without you—made me feel like crying.

  “I think it’s for the best,” you said.

  “Really?” It was hard to hide my disappointment, but I didn’t care anymore. “For someone so worried about the future, you give up on good things pretty quickly.”

  You laughed bitterly. “I don’t think I would describe this as a good thing.”

  “It could be.”

  “Look, what’s the best-case scenario?” you asked. “We do this, and it doesn’t suck, and then it’s over, right?”

  “That’s better than not trying.” I tossed my bag against the wall, where it landed with a dull thud.

  “So what?” you asked, shaking your head. “You just want to run lines now? For real?” I opened my mouth and then shut it again. I forgot we were talking, in theory at least, about the play.

  The sky was dark; in the time it had taken us to fight, the sun had beat a hasty retreat below the Hudson. If you left, I knew I would have nowhere to go but uptown on the 1 to the top of the park, where I would meet Dante so I could lose track of time, on purpose. Just like that Sunday when I’d walked off the subway without meaning to, I felt a powerful pull to derail. Maybe, if I could just get you to stay for a little while, you would change your mind. Maybe then we could both change course.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  You let out a deep sigh but pulled off your bag and hung it on a chair. “Fine. Five minutes. Where should we start?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess . . . at the beginning.”

  • • •

  “On a night like this, you can see the whole city,” you said.

  We were standing a safe distance apart, ignoring the blocking and just saying the words, facing forward, as if we were doing a staged reading in a black box theater. When we’d started it hadn’t been good, exactly, but some of the venom had dripped away, slowly, and once we we’d gotten about halfway through—five minutes had become ten had become fifteen—we’d found a flow. We weren’t sparking, but we weren’t sparring, either. We were just voices rising and falling on the right beats, building a rhythm. Telling a story.

  “Sometimes,” I said, “I wish I couldn’t see it at all. I long for the mountains back home.” Normally at that part I was supposed to be sitting next to you, leaning into your shoulder, and holding your hand. I knew we would skip the stage directions like we always did, and fly past the kiss without even discussing it, but still, it was getting close. I glanced over at you, expecting you to stop any second, roll your eyes, and tell me it was time for you to go. But you were just staring out at nothing, y
our focus somewhere far away.

  “How can you say that?” you asked. “It’s so much better here. There’s so much . . . opportunity.”

  “Sewing underclothing in a stifling factory until my fingers bleed doesn’t seem much like opportunity,” I said, trying to slow myself down—learning my lines high had been efficient, but they’d imprinted in a speedy rush that wanted to come out all at once. “The conditions were better traveling steerage.” My fingers twitched at my sides. I needed to do something with my body soon or else I felt like I would explode.

  “That can’t be true,” you said. “Besides—” You were supposed to gesture out at the imaginary cityscape in front of us, the metaphorical future ahead, but instead you turned and looked at me. “This is just the beginning,” you said. “You speak as if this is the end.”

  “Maybe I wish it was.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to breathe. My mind was racing and it was hard to stand still. But closing them only made the room tilt. Joy had been right again; I should have eaten more at dinner. I needed to hold on to something. I just wanted to feel grounded.

  “I just want to feel something,” I said, gesturing wildly with my arms to release the pent-up energy. (Mom used to call it “shaking the sillies out.” We had a whole dance we’d do.) “I want to feel something other than homesickness.”

  (It was Viola talking, but I was homesick, too, wasn’t I? Only not for some country across the ocean, but for my own apartment, where I used to feel so safe. When did that stop? How could I get back?)

  “I want to know something other than sadness,” I said, my chest starting to tighten. “I want to see something besides my mother’s face as she—” Answers the door and doesn’t even seem to notice how fucked up I am. “As she . . .”

  “Liv?” You were looking at me again, concerned this time.

  “Sorry. Where was I?

  “I want to see something besides my mother’s face.” You paused, a flicker of annoyance registering in your tensed jaw. “I thought you were off-book.”