The Taming of the Drew

by Stephanie Kate Strohm

  “Out of my face, please.” I swatted the box away.

  “What’s going on?” Heidi arrived in the kitchen, belting a kimono around her waist.

  “A mouse pooped in all of Drew’s food,” Rhys announced, pretending to vomit over the side of the freezer.

  “A mouse pooped in some of Drew’s food,” Noah said fairly, adding his bowl to the tower of dishes in the sink. “Looks like the little guy burrowed his way into the boxes, ate a whole bunch, and left some presents behind.”

  “Thanks for the play-by-play,” Drew said snidely. “Who cares what it did? It ruined everything. All my freaking food.”

  “All creatures need nourishment,” Heidi said kindly. “His need is no less important than yours. The mouse didn’t mean any harm.”

  She was so compassionate, I wondered for a moment if Heidi had forgotten that there wasn’t actually a mouse— that we were, in fact, the mouse. Or maybe she was just displaying her excellent acting chops.

  “The mouse’s nourishment is really not my chief concern right now,” Drew said sarcastically, scooping all the mouse-tainted boxes off his portion of the shelf and dumping them into the trash. I was so proud of the little mouse-holes I’d created I was almost sad to see them go. It had been a long time since I’d done any arts and crafts.

  “Someone say something about a mouse?” Langley popped her head in the door.

  The six of us nodded.

  Wordlessly, she thrust a can of Lysol disinfectant wipes at Heidi, who happened to be closest to the door, before disappearing again.

  “Don’t be late for rehearsal!” Langley called as her voice faded away.

  “What I don’t understand,” Drew said meditatively, looking at each of us in turn as he folded his arms over the BACK TO THE FUTURE logo on his T-shirt, “is why the mouse only touched my food. It doesn’t make any sense. Mice can’t distinguish between who owns what. They don’t have that kind of brain capacity.”

  “Maybe the mouse is also gluten-intolerant?” I suggested innocently, assuming that explained the inordinate amount of quinoa and rice flour products on Drew’s shelf.

  “Mice aren’t—”

  “He simply ate his fill and moved on, taking no more and no less than what he needed,” Heidi interrupted. “Yes, we could all learn something from this little mouse—”

  “Thank you, Grandmother Willow,” Drew snapped. “Well, wouldn’t want to be late for rehearsal!” he chirped with fake enthusiasm. “I’ll worry about starving to death some other time.”

  He stomped out of the room while the other boys trailed behind. Amy snatched the Lysol from Heidi and hopped gracefully up onto the counter.

  “Eww.” Amy wrinkled her nose with distaste. “‘Poop’”—she air-quoted—“aside, these cabinets are super dirty. Like disgusting.”

  “What do you expect?” I asked as she slid off the counter and dropped the nearly black Lysol cloth into the trash. “Students and actors live here. Not exactly two groups known for their domestic skills.”

  She laughed, and we tramped up the stairs.

  “I still feel bad,” Heidi sighed heavily.

  “Heidi, he can buy new food!” I exclaimed as we poured into our room and I started digging around for something clean to put on. “That was like some cereal, pasta, and a box of crackers. Not that much.”

  “I feel bad that a mouse had to take the blame.” She pursed her lips. “An innocent creature. What if Langley sets up a trap, and we’re responsible for murder? Rodenticide!”

  “Langley’s response to a mouse was Lysol. I think any mouse that may or may not exist in this house is totally fine.”

  Not surprisingly, Drew was in a particularly foul mood at rehearsal. The torrent of rage he unleashed when Noah crossed downstage of him instead of upstage probably would have made anyone but the remarkably even-tempered Noah cry. Even Nevin appeared taken aback, and he wasn’t exactly an old softie.

  “Do you think it’s working?” Amy whispered anxiously backstage where we hid in safety, peeking around the curtain as Drew continued ranting about people not knowing the blocking this close to opening. “If anything, he just seems … grumpier.”

  “That’s just the first phase,” I said with more confidence than I felt, watching Drew turn redder and redder as he continued yelling. “Look at the play! Kate’s totally pissed at first. We just have to go through every aspect of the plan. That’s when we’ll see results.”

  “Uh-huh.” Amy still seemed skeptical, even though Drew had finally worn himself out and stopped shouting. He looked pretty red though. “Ooo, we totally had a moment earlier, though!” she squealed excitedly, her face brightening.

  “Details, por favor.”

  “Well,” she said breathlessly, “he said, ‘You probably have a highlighter,’ and I said, ‘Yes, of course,’ and then I gave him my blue highlighter, and then he said, ‘Yeah, I forgot to highlight this line,’ and then I said, ‘Yeah, I hate when that happens. It’s the worst!’” She concluded triumphantly, “Pretty amaze, am I right?”

  “Totally,” I agreed, even though I couldn’t see what was so amaze about it. But she looked so hopeful and happy, anything less than an enthusiastic response would have made me feel like I was kicking a puppy. I sighed as she skipped off to join Noah onstage. I had been so sure that Shakespeare couldn’t steer us wrong, but the further we “tamed” the Drew, the less sure I felt of anything.

  One thing I did feel sure about was that I couldn’t wait to see Taylor again. I must have been doing okay at rehearsal because Nevin didn’t give me many notes—or maybe he was just busy trying to keep Drew under control—but I felt like my whole being was vibrating, consumed by thoughts of Taylor. In some ways it was a relief not to have cell service, so there was no point in constantly checking my phone—he had no way to get in touch with me. But on the other hand, why hadn’t he gotten in touch with me? Didn’t he want to see me again? Shouldn’t we have made a concrete plan? Nevin yelled at me for biting my lip, and I snapped out of it. I was in Padua, not Vermont, and there were no skateboarders in Padua.

  Declining to follow Amy and Heidi back to the house, the minute rehearsal ended I fled into the woods, Keds smacking the path as I raced back to the spot where I’d met up with Taylor. As I skidded to a halt in the clearing, I looked around wildly. Of course, there was no one there but me. And a squirrel. I sank into a seated position and blew an unruly curl that had escaped from my ponytail out of my eyes. What did I expect, that he would have just been waiting there? I was sure Taylor had better things to do than hang around in a field all day, waiting for sweaty redheads.

  Sighing, I flopped on my back into the warm grass and stretched my arms over my head, watching the sun dapple through the leaves above me. The minutes ticked by as I watched the progression of a ladybug across a twig. The birds chirped a chorus that sounded remarkably like “stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  “You’re right, birds!” I called back at them. Because, seriously, I was beyond stupid. Waiting in a random field for some boy who might or might not show up?

  The crackle of breaking underbrush interrupted my stream of self-loathing.

  “Taylor?” I asked as I popped up. Nope. I sighed as Drew appeared at the edge of the clearing and covered his eyes.

  “Please tell me I’m not interrupting anything,” Drew called from across the field, peeking through his fingers.

  “Not a damn thing. Put your hands down—you look stupid.” I flopped dramatically back down into the grass.

  “I look stupid? I’m not the one rolling around in the mud.”

  “It’s not even muddy. Go away.” I covered my face with my arm, hoping that if I couldn’t see him, he would simply cease to exist.

  “Nope. Because as impossible as it sounds, you could actually be useful right now. Get up.” He prodded my leg with his toe.

  I bolted upright and aimed my best soccer kick directly at his left shin.

  “Ow!” he shrieked, grabbing his shi
n as he hopped away, the baseball bag on his shoulder swinging wildly. Look at that. Maybe I should have stuck with soccer after all.

  “You kicked me first!” I retorted as I pushed myself up to standing, brushing the dirt off my butt.

  “That wasn’t a real kick, that was—ow, are you wearing steel-toed boots?” He shot me a wounded look as he rubbed his shin.

  “If they made steel-toed Keds, I’d be first in line.”

  “Of that I have no doubt,” he muttered. “Come on, follow me. Assuming I’m not crippled for life.”

  I rolled my eyes but followed him deeper into the woods. I certainly wasn’t going to hang around and wait for Taylor any longer than I already had. I’d veered dangerously far into pathetic girl territory.

  “Do you have your walkie-talkie, Ranger Rick?” I asked, breaking the silence. “Just want to make sure we’re practicing wilderness safety.”

  “Of course.”

  Apparently he had missed my sarcasm. Drew unceremoniously dropped his baseball bag into the center of the next clearing, a more densely shaded space than the one we’d previously been in, with shorter, trampled-down grass.

  He crouched down to unzip the bag as I looked around, still unsure of what exactly we were doing here.

  “Catch,” he said calmly, before a heavy metal object started hurtling its way toward me. My brain briefly registered it as a sword before going into panic mode. Miraculously, I managed to grab onto the non-pointy end and kept myself from getting impaled.

  “You threw a sword at my face!” I squawked.

  “You caught it.” He shrugged nonchalantly as if he hadn’t just flung several feet of steely death at my vulnerable parts. “Have you ever used one of these before?”

  “What? A sword? No. Why do you have this?” I asked incredulously.

  “You’ve never used a sword before? Really?” Drew tossed his sword up and caught it, and then did something that looked like it should have been called a thrust or a parry. “No stage combat? Not in class? In camp? A weekend seminar?”

  “I can do a mean forward roll,” I said defensively. “A great slap. A pretty good punch. But not so much with the swords, no. That wasn’t covered in the stage combat unit in drama club.”

  Drew looked surprisingly natural with a sword in his hands. Kind of like a sexy pirate. I swatted that thought out of my brain the minute it popped up. Where did that come from? I must have been losing it.

  “Why are you blushing?” he asked curiously.

  “It’s hot!” I barked. “The sun. I’m very susceptible to sun poisoning. Redheads produce less melanin.”

  “Okay,” he said equably. “We’ll go in the shade. Want to be my sparring partner?”

  “Wait a minute.” I followed him into the shade. “You’re seriously going to teach me to sword fight?”

  “Seriously.” He got into some kind of ready position. “If you’re interested.”

  “Totally interested,” I answered more enthusiastically than I’d meant to let on, but I couldn’t help it. I’d always wanted to learn but had never gotten into weapons combat in any of the shows I’d done in high school. Like when I was Beatrice opposite Jeff Butts and said, “Oh, God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace,” I meant it. Not that I wanted to eat anyone’s heart. Beatrice just meant that she wanted to be able to fight her enemies with a sword, and so did I. Jeff Butts was terrible at combat. I would have been way better.

  “Just don’t, like, come at me out of nowhere and make me defend myself like this is Zorro or something. I want to learn how to poke you before you attempt to decapitate me,” I said.

  “It’s stage combat, not real combat. The whole point is not to decapitate you.”

  “Just checking. You’ve got a shifty look. Especially holding a sword.”

  “First of all, it’s not a sword. It’s a rapier.”

  “Isn’t a rapier a type of sword?” I asked skeptically.

  “Well … yes. Technically,” he admitted as I grinned victoriously. “It’s a slender sword used for more athletic fights and thrusting attacks. But just call it a rapier, to make sure you differentiate it from a broadsword. That’s the accepted, accurate terminology.”

  “I’ll call it whatever you want”—I swished my sword dramatically—“as long as I get to poke you.”

  “Again, no poking.” He sighed heavily. “First, we warm up. And then I’m teaching you to parry. You’re clearly not ready to thrust.”

  “I’m ready to thrust all day long,” I said before I realized what it sounded like, then quickly clamped my mouth shut and prayed that Drew chose to ignore it. Thankfully, he did.

  Drew led me through a series of warmups that consisted of jumping jacks, squats, stretches, and making tiny circles with my arm while holding the sword. After a couple minutes my arms were killing me! That sword, um, rapier, got so heavy so fast. My arms burned worse than when I went to one of Mom’s Yogabooty classes.

  “And we do this for how long?” I asked eventually.

  “Till you can’t take it anymore, which is clearly right about now.” I exhaled with relief as I lowered the heavy sword. “It’s important to build up the muscles in your sword arm.”

  “In case of roving bands of brigands?”

  “Something like that.” Drew grinned. “Now, for Harry, England, and St. George, let’s do this.”

  “Now I know what you were doing with that warmup.” I tried to copy Drew’s ready position stance. “You were trying to drain all my resources so I couldn’t put up a fight.”

  “Precisely. You plus unlimited energy plus a sword seemed like a deadly combination.”

  “Hardy har har,” I laughed sarcastically. “Shut up and fight.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Despite what he’d said earlier, Drew did teach me how to thrust first. So stage combat was basically broken into two parts: thrusts, when you attack your opponent, and parries, when you block an opponent’s attack. Slowly, Drew showed me how to swing the sword in a safe, nonviolent way, first practicing making cuts toward the left and right legs, then the left and right shoulders, and finally, the most dangerous overhand swing, straight to the head. He expertly parried each thrust, blocking the flat of my sword with the flat of his, metal clanging throughout the clearing. Even though we were going about as slow as molasses, it was still impressive how gracefully he moved. And what a good teacher he was.

  The hardest part was resisting the temptation to poke him with the sword. Because the ends were blunted I knew I couldn’t hurt him, and I would never poke hard enough to do any kind of real damage. But it was fun to annoy him.

  “No poking,” he reprimanded me for the fifth time.

  “I am determined to prove a villain!” I cried, quoting Richard III.

  “I’d prefer it if Vermont didn’t weep in streams of blood today,” he quoted right back at me. Well, kind of—Richard III didn’t rule Vermont. “Particularly not my blood.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a baby. The end is blunted,” I grumbled. “What, do you tremble? Are you all afraid? Alas, I blame you not, for I am excellent at poking.”

  “How do you know so much of Richard III ?” he asked curiously. “Were you in it?”

  “Yeah. I was Lady Anne at theater camp.” I tried to execute a cool spinning maneuver with my sword that probably didn’t look very cool. “I’m kind of weirdly obsessed with it.”

  “You’d be weird if you weren’t obsessed with it. It might be my favorite. I was Richard senior year.”

  “Perfect type-casting, you defused infection of a man,” I said with a laugh.

  “Alright, that’s it—come at me.”

  I brought the rapier down with a satisfying clang and returned to aiming for the center of his sword like a good little stage combat pupil.

  After several hours of thrusting and then learning to parry, I was beyond sweaty and gross. My arms were killing me, practically throbbing with pain, but I felt exhilarated. Eventually my sword
arm pretty much gave out, and I tossed the rapier back to Drew.

  “That was awesome!” I shouted as Drew started wiping down the swords with a white cloth and some mysterious liquid. “That was so, so cool. I loved it. I wish people still had swords so I could fight all the time! Or at least in shows. I wish we could put a sword fight in our show. Are there any Shakespeare heroines who fight?” I tried to think of an example.

  “Traditionally? Not so much. Well, Viola in Twelfth Night has that almost-kind-of duel with Sir Andrew.”

  “Pfft.” I waved my hands dismissively. “That’s a fake fight; it’s supposed to be silly. I want to do some damage.”

  “I have no doubt that you could do some serious damage. But I saw a female Tybalt once in Romeo and Juliet.” He carefully laid the swords back in the bag and zipped it up. “She kicked butt.”

  “A female Tybalt. Wow. That would be awesome,” I marveled. “I would love to play Tybalt.”

  “It’s a good role for you. You’ve got the constantly flaring temper and uncontrollable rage necessary for the part.”

  “Hey!” I punched him in the arm as he stood up, slinging the baseball bag over his shoulder.

  “My point exactly.” He gestured to his arm. “Uncontrollable rage. I think I can already see the bruise forming.”

  “Hmph,” I sniffed. I couldn’t see anything. Except for a slight bicep bulge. “No one would fleer and scorn at my solemnity,” I muttered, quoting the part of Romeo and Juliet where Tybalt is super pissed that Romeo crashed his family’s party.

  “They wouldn’t dare.” Drew laughed as we started along the path back to the house. “They’d be afraid for their lives. No one would mess with your solemnity.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “Seriously, though, it would be a good role for you. You’re a natural with a rapier. You picked everything up really quickly. I’m surprised no one’s ever put a sword in your hands before.”

  “Thanks.” I blushed at his praise, then cursed myself for blushing. Why did I care what Drew thought? Even if being a natural with a sword was an objectively awesome quality.