Inevitable and Only

  Maybe Zephyr had a sister.

  Or friends outside of school. What a concept, I heard Raven’s dry voice say in my head. Maybe Ava was a friend from his old school, or from drama camp. I didn’t know why I cared, anyway. Except that he was such an enigma.

  Micayla and Heron and I went out to the lobby for hot chocolate, which of course meant that as soon as we took our first sips, the lights blinked, signaling the end of intermission. You couldn’t bring beverages into the theater, so we gulped them down and went back in with burnt tongues.

  Zephyr slid into his seat just before the curtain went up again. He was still frowning.

  None. Of. Your. Business, my brain reminded me. Nosypants Greenfield.

  In the second half of the play, Beatrice and Benedick finally confess their love to each other. Which means, of course, since it’s a romantic comedy, they kiss.

  I didn’t remember the actors holding it nearly this long the first time I’d seen the play with Dad. Benedick swept Beatrice off her feet and carried her to a couch upstage to continue the embrace more horizontally, not letting his lips leave hers all the way across the stage. The audience let out a collective sigh of satisfaction.

  Beatrice and Benedick immediately started to argue again, this time about Hero and Claudio, but the rest of the lines in that scene went right over my head. I felt my face burn, trying as hard as I could not to visualize myself on that stage, not to imagine how it would feel to play that kiss with the leather-jacketed guy in the seat next to me. I let my eyes slide in his direction without moving my head. He was very carefully staring straight ahead, still whispering Benedick’s lines along with the actor. I couldn’t tell in the dark theater whether he was blushing, too.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I went back to church with Elizabeth that weekend, because I’d said I would. I told myself I just wouldn’t think about Sam Shotwell. She hadn’t mentioned him or the dance, and I hadn’t asked. Besides, I reminded myself, you don’t have dibs on every boy in your school. In fact, you only have dibs on one of them, because you put on your big-girl pants and asked him to the Fall Ball. And that does give you dibs. But Sam Shotwell can take whoever he wants to the dance.

  We started walking down Keswick, and she asked how play rehearsals were going. I told her a little about the Shakespeare Theatre field trip, and asked about debate team. She said she liked the advisor and the other students. Then the conversation flagged, and I started thinking about the play again and worrying. Was Robin going to ask Zephyr and me to kiss onstage? My first kiss couldn’t be a stage kiss. That would just be wrong. My first kiss was supposed to be with Farhan, my one true love. But if Robin did ask, I couldn’t very well tell him I’d never kissed anyone. I couldn’t say that in front of the cast, or Zephyr. I was probably the only person in the whole cast who’d never kissed anyone. From what Micayla had told me, they’d all had plenty of practice kissing each other. And according to Raven, it took a while to get it right. It was sloppy and awkward at first. If I had to kiss Zephyr onstage, he’d know immediately that I’d never done it before.

  To distract myself, I blurted, “So, what about the Fall Ball? Do you have a date yet?”

  Elizabeth waved a hand in front of her face, as if brushing away a fly. “Oh, that. Yeah.”

  “You do? That’s great! Who is it?”

  “Just a guy from my math class. You probably don’t know him.”

  I forced a laugh. “It’s Fern Grove—I know everyone and their cousins and their dogs.”

  “Oh. Well, his name is Sam.”

  “Sam Shotwell!” I said, acting surprised and overshooting the mark by about twenty yards.

  She looked startled at my enthusiasm.

  “That’s great. He’s a great guy. You’ll have a great time.” I was going to get fined for excessive great-ing.

  “And this topic is starting to grate on my nerves,” Elizabeth said, grinning.

  I laughed, despite myself. She knew how to pull out the sarcasm when you were least expecting it. And she did have Dad’s way with words, his talent for dumb puns.

  When we entered the church, Elizabeth dipped her fingertips into a little sconce in the wall filled with water, and crossed herself.

  “What’s that, holy water?” I whispered.

  She nodded.

  I let her walk ahead of me, so she wouldn’t see me dip my fingertips in, too. It just felt like normal lukewarm water, though. I wondered if my Communist grandparents and all my Jewish ancestors were rolling over in their graves.

  Mass was a little more intelligible this week—I remembered some of the places I was supposed to stand, or sit, or kneel. I liked that the calls and responses were the same every time. It was like a very elaborate weekly rehearsal. Or maybe it was more like a play, and the congregation was the devoted audience who went to see every single show.

  I hesitated when it was time for Communion. I didn’t want to go face the priest again with my arms folded, but I also didn’t really want to sit in the pew all by myself while everyone else went up. At least if I stood in line, I wouldn’t stick out like such a … well, like such an atheist Jew at a Catholic Mass. So I got up with Elizabeth and we made our way slowly to the front together.

  When it was my turn, I folded my arms across my chest and then—I couldn’t help it—whispered to the priest, “I’m not Catholic. I’m just, um, trying it out.” He smiled at me and nodded, then bowed his head, made the sign of the cross, and said the blessing over me. Were you supposed to thank a priest for a blessing? I nodded back to him when he was done, and that felt like the right thing to do.

  I turned to tell Elizabeth, but she was in front of the priest now, receiving Communion.

  Only she wasn’t receiving Communion, either—the priest was saying the blessing over her, too, because her arms were also folded across her chest.

  It didn’t seem like the sort of thing you could ask about. I felt like I’d invaded her privacy just by watching. So I didn’t mention it. But I couldn’t help wondering, as we started walking home. Elizabeth took out her pack of cigarettes and held it out to me. I hesitated, then shook my head. “Good choice,” she muttered.

  We were both quiet for a few minutes, and I remembered our conversation from last week, how much she’d opened up to me about her mother.

  “Could I ask you something else about—Ohio?” I ventured.

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I was just wondering. I mean, I don’t know how to put this, but I’m assuming—when your mom lived at Ahimsa House—she wasn’t Catholic then, was she? So, I was just wondering—how did you become—”

  “How come I’m so religious if my mom was a hippie?” she interrupted.

  “Well, yeah.”

  She breathed out a long, smoky exhale. “My mom was raised Catholic. But she rebelled and ran away from home when she was sixteen, changed her name to Sunshine, and hitchhiked up and down the East Coast, lived on a couple of communes, finally ended up in Takoma Park. When she got pregnant with me, she freaked out and went home—my grandparents still lived in Ohio.”

  “Wow. And they took her back in?”

  “Of course. They were amazing people. Gram died when I was five, and Grandpa went downhill quickly after that. Mom said he just couldn’t face life without Gram. But I do remember them.”

  “So your mom went back to religion when she came home?”

  “Yeah, Mom figured God had punished her for turning her back on Him, and it was time to return to His good graces.”

  “Elizabeth. You don’t really believe that you were sent to your mom as a punishment?”

  She grimaced. “Well, no. That was what Mom thought back then, though. She was in rough shape for a while. But Gram and Grandpa helped her get her GED, find a job. They had enough money to put me into St. Joe, and they left us enough to live on after they were gone.”

  “Wow,” I said again. “You were really lucky.”

  “We were,” Elizabeth agreed. “And God w
as very good to us.”

  “Until the end,” I muttered, before I could stop myself.

  She shook her head. “He calls us all back to Him someday. I just have to be grateful for the time we had together.”

  How did Elizabeth manage to say things that sounded both pathetic and pompous at the same time? She made me want to put my arms around her and also put my hands around her throat.

  “And I have to trust that He has a plan,” she added.

  “I don’t get it,” I said, against my better judgment. “I like the ritual. I like the prayers. I like peace and love and treating thy neighbor as thyself, but how can you still believe in a God who would do that to you? What kind of benevolent power would take a mother away from her child?”

  She paused for a long time, long enough that I thought she wasn’t going to answer me. Finally she said, “We’re all given crosses to bear. Some of us have more strength than others. And the rest of us just have to find that strength. Somehow.”

  I had rehearsal Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday after school that week. So far, so good—we’d discussed the Shakespeare Theatre production, but Robin hadn’t mentioned any stage kissing. We started working on our blocking, even though we were still on book. He said it would help us internalize our stage directions along with the words we were speaking. “Your movements must be inevitable, people,” he said, “just like every line you speak. Remember, every line is the inevitable and only continuation of the line that came before it. Every response to a cue is the inevitable and only response.”

  In class, too, we were working on blocking for our Crucible scenes. Robin had moved us from Meisner repetitions to Uta Hagen’s “object exercise.” And, thankfully, we were working on whole scenes now, not just partner exercises. I kept telling myself there was no reason to be awkward around Sam, but couldn’t seem to convince myself that “awkward” wasn’t the inevitable and only way to behave around him.

  “What are the given circumstances?” Robin kept saying, walking from group to group. “Don’t just move aimlessly around the room and flail your arms when you speak because that’s what actors do. Think, people, don’t act. Think given circumstances. Where are you, what time is it, what surrounds you? What do you want, what’s in the way of getting what you want? What is your objective?”

  He paused to watch my group run through our scene, but we didn’t get more than five lines in before he waved his arms and yelled, “Cut! What did I say? We’re doing, not acting. Rina, what are you doing in this scene? What’s your objective?”

  Rina was playing Abigail in the scene where she and John argue in front of the court. “Um,” she said. “I’m—trying to make John feel—”

  “No!” Robin cut her off. “Making someone feel something is not an action. It’s not a doing. Unless you’re literally taking his hand and running it over something to make him feel a texture.”

  Rina rolled her eyes. “And if I’m doing that,” she muttered to Sam, “then I’d hope we were in the back seat of your car, not in drama class.” A few students standing nearby snickered.

  Robin raised his eyebrows. “Next time you try to imbue my innocent words with innuendo, please remember that I am not hard of hearing,” he said mildly. “Now, what is your action in this scene?”

  So drama was good, school was good, but every night when I climbed into Micayla’s car after rehearsal, I wished I could go home with her or Heron. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were all the same—either everyone was still sitting around the table when I got home, savoring dessert and telling funny stories, or else Dad and Elizabeth would be reading next to each other on the couch, while Josh practiced and Mom worked at the kitchen table. The house felt full, complete, before I even walked in.

  Thursday, since I didn’t have rehearsal, I took the bus to Fine Print. I should’ve waited for Elizabeth, but I just didn’t feel like it.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said, dropping my backpack by the front door. He was behind the front counter today, for a change. “Where’s Cassandra?”

  “Where’s Elizabeth?” he countered.

  “I don’t know. We’re not joined at the hip.”

  “Defensive: adjective, derived from the verb ‘to defend’; behaving in a way that shows you feel people are criticizing you,” Dad intoned in Dry Professor Voice.

  “So where’s Cassandra?” I repeated, ignoring him.

  “Persistent: adjective, derived from the verb ‘to persist’; continuing along a path of inquiry even after it has been discouraged.”

  “Annoying: adjective, meaning Ross Greenfield.”

  Dad grinned. “That’s my girl.”

  Despite myself, a bubble of happiness expanded in my chest.

  “So, for real,” he said. “Where’s Elizabeth? I just got a complete leather-bound set of Tolstoy, published 1927. I promised I’d let her sniff it and maybe even touch the covers when it came in.”

  The bubble burst. “I don’t know, Dad. I guess she went home with Mom and Josh.”

  “Oh. All right, then.”

  Pause.

  “Well, Cassandra’s taking her driving test this afternoon, so I’m covering the desk for her.”

  “Cassandra doesn’t have a license? She’s, like, thirty years old!”

  “And no one gets a driver’s license in New York City till they turn forty-five and move to Connecticut.”

  “But this is Baltimore. People drive places here.”

  “Unless you’ve been trying to time-travel back to the 1400s for the past twenty years of your life.”

  “Poor Cassandra. I guess she finally gave up on that.”

  “Or else this is but the next step of her complex and difficult journey. Perhaps she’ll find a time-traveling device for her car. Speaking of cars …”

  “No,” I groaned. “Do we have to?”

  “Well, I know Elizabeth is quite eager to get her practice hours out of the way. You don’t have to come along if you don’t want to.”

  I pictured Elizabeth and Dad doing driving lessons without me, having more quality one-on-one father-daughter bonding time. The thought made my teeth itch.

  “It’s fine,” I grumbled. “I don’t want to fall further behind.” How come I couldn’t even spend ten minutes with Dad without talking or thinking about Elizabeth?

  “So, how are rehearsals coming along?” Dad asked.

  “They’re fine. I better get home, I’ve got lines to memorize. Plus a ton of homework.”

  “Oh, and I’ve been meaning to ask you …” He leaned over the counter and lowered his voice, even though there were only a few customers at the back of the shop. “How is the whole, uh, church thing going? Want me to take church duty next Sunday?”

  I thought about Elizabeth smoking on the way home. About our conversation last weekend, about her mom and her grandparents. “It’s fine. I don’t mind.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it, honey,” Dad said, visibly relieved. “You know religion makes my scalp crawl. It’s been one of the toughest things for me to accept about—this whole situation.”

  Screw that. I was not going to have a heart-to-heart with Dad, of all people, about how tough “this whole situation” was.

  “I have to go,” I repeated.

  “All right, then. Dad-daughter driving lesson after dinner? We’re on?”

  “Sure.” I picked up my backpack and banged out the door, just in time to see the bus pulling away from the curb. My luck. And it had started to rain, a heavy, cold, Baltimore autumn rain. I trudged down to the bus shelter, pulled the hood of my jacket up over my already-frizzing hair, and plunked myself down on the bench to wait.

  The bench was stamped with big white letters: Baltimore—The Greatest City in America. Dad and I always made fun of those benches. For a while, the city’s motto was Baltimore: The City That Reads. Dad loved that one, of course, although I didn’t think it made any sense. As Raven was always quick to remind me whenever we’d pass one of those benches, “Thirty-e
ight percent of this city cannot read well enough to complete a job application. That’s almost twice the illiteracy rate in the rest of Maryland.” But Baltimore seemed to think that if all its benches shouted one thing long and loud enough, they could make it come true.

  Maybe I should paint my own bench.

  The problem was, I didn’t even know what I’d want it to say.

  And then it was the second week of October, the week of Fall Festival, and the whole school went crazy decorating. There was an open house all day on Saturday and the school-wide Pumpkin Picnic on Saturday afternoon, followed by the Fall Ball that night. Oh, and parent-teacher conferences were slated for Monday. That was the administration’s brilliant idea to make sure students behaved themselves Saturday night. Mom’s idea, probably.

  On Friday afternoon, all the teachers made us set up special displays in their classrooms for the open house. In biology, my last class of the day, we built scale models of the parts of a cell, strung DNA streamers around the room, and decorated each corner to represent one of the kingdoms of living creatures: bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals. We drew Protista all over the white-board because we’d run out of corners and DJ Derry said it would be against school safety policy to have us decorate the ceiling.

  DJ Derry was actually Becca Derry, and she was another teacher who’d told us to use her first name—but ever since someone found out she moonlighted as a folk radio deejay, we hadn’t called her anything except DJ Derry. She was also going to deejay the Fall Ball, and students had been putting in requests for weeks.

  “Guys, enough already,” she sighed, holding up a list three pages long. “Who added Metallica? Seriously? Plus, we’re going to be there till Sunday morning if I play all these songs.”

  “Exactly!” someone yelled. “Dance all night!”

  “Dance till dawn!”

  “Daaaaance!”

  On Saturday, it was hard to enjoy the Open House or the picnic, my stomach was such a tight-wound ball of yarn. Or maybe a ball of frayed cables, shooting out little sparks of excitement every time I thought about the dance that night. Raven promised she’d bring the dresses over to my house after the picnic with plenty of time to get ready before dinner.