“Comedic opportunity?”
He held up a finger. “Missed comedic opportunity.”
“So you think it could be funny. I mean, in an intentional way?”
Hank nodded. “Oh yeah. It’s halfway there already. Only needs some tweaking.”
I frowned, unsure of how Ainsley would feel about that. “What kind of tweaking?”
“Well, take this scene for example,” he said, turning a couple of pages. “Layla is in the locker room by herself, since she’s the only girl on the team, and wondering if she’s made a big mistake because Bo doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to her.”
I nodded, my eyes scanning the familiar page. There were more parts than Drama Club members, so Ainsley was playing Layla as well as directing.
“But what if she can’t use the girls’ locker room and had to use the boys’?”
“But why—”
“Doesn’t matter why. We can figure that out,” Hank said, waving a hand. “Maybe she demands to use the boys’ locker room so she’s treated like an equal and then realizes maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.”
“Like she . . .” I chewed on my lip and thought for a moment. “She almost passes out when she gets a first whiff of the smell?”
“And she’s appalled by the urinals, or—” He snapped his fingers. “She doesn’t know what the urinals are at first and tries to wash her hands in them!”
I snorted. “And she’s too proud to say she made a mistake, so she stays with it, and . . . and . . . there’s no place for her to really change her clothes, so she climbs into a locker to do it—”
“—and some guy comes by and slams it shut, not realizing, and they all gather around when she starts calling for help, and she tries to tell them the combination to get her out, but they can’t hear her too well, so they keep getting it wrong—”
“—and when they finally do get the door open, of course Bo’s right there in front.” I could almost picture it—Ainsley wrapped in a towel and trying to maintain her dignity as she tumbles out of the locker, her legs having fallen asleep. “And she falls right on top of him, and they get tangled up in some smelly football gear.”
“Now you’re getting it!” Hank said, barking out a laugh. “Like Mel Brooks said, ‘Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.’ ”
I blinked and opened my mouth to comment but wasn’t actually sure what to say.
Hank laughed. “Comedy’s all about exaggeration,” he explained. “You want to make everything bigger . . . more ridiculous. That’s what makes people laugh. This—” He tossed the script onto the table idly. “It’s trying to be serious, which makes it silly. The audience won’t be sure if they’re supposed to laugh or not. What your friend needs to do is make it more silly, so they know it’s okay.”
“More silly?” I couldn’t quite wrap my head around how that was possible. Then I remembered Viney and I setting it to music and laughing hysterically. “Like a musical?”
Hank clapped his hands once and pointed at me, a broad grin on his face. “Exactly! Well, maybe not a musical. I don’t think you have the time for that. I mean, you’d have to come up with the lyrics and a score, and it’s not really practical, but that’s the idea. Push it past the line of silly into hilarious.”
My shoulders fell. “But how do we do that? I’m not really funny.”
“Well, first of all, I think you underestimate yourself. You did pretty well with the whole locker room thing,” Hank said with a slight shake of his head. “But you don’t have to be funny to know what is funny. And I’ll help you.”
“You will?” I brightened.
“ ’Course, I will. It’s been years since I got my teeth into a good script. Well, not that I’d call this one good, exactly.” He picked it back up again and thumbed through it. “But it can be. It will be.”
I tried to meet Hank’s enthusiastic smile, but I wasn’t sure if I felt excited or nervous or scared or maybe a combination of all three. Because no matter what we came up with, in the end, it was all up to Ainsley.
And a little voice inside me said convincing her wasn’t going to be as easy as I hoped.
6.Be a Good Friend
Establish trust. Be there for her during tough times. And maybe it’ll grow into something deeper.
I stood on the landing between the first and second floor of the library and cleared my throat, then cleared it again, my fingers tapping anxiously against my leg. Ainsley’s play—now dog-eared and covered with scribbled notes—crinkled as I clutched it in my sweaty hand. I’d debated over when and how to tell her about Hank’s suggestions—during school or at play practice, or maybe trying to intercept her in the parking lot after practice again. In the end, free period seemed like the only option where I could be sure we wouldn’t be interrupted by Ian.
Ian.
Yeah, he was the fly in the ointment, or something equally as frustrating but not quite as gross. Interestingly enough, the phrase dates to biblical times and refers to a passage in Ecclesiastes: “Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour.”
So I was apparently the apothecary and Ian was stinking up my savour all over the place. Or Ainsley’s savour. Whatever.
Anyway, Ian. Ainsley put a lot of stock in his opinion, and he’d made it very clear he thought the play was fine as it was. So, in addition to convincing Ainsley it would be better as a comedy—which it totally would, because Hank was hysterical—I also had to help her stand up to Ian.
I frowned and cleared my throat again, unsure exactly how to go about doing that.
“Man up, Holmes,” I muttered half to myself, earning a startled glance from a girl coming down the stairs. I smiled at her with a sheepish shrug and climbed the last few steps to the second floor.
Ainsley was sitting at our table—her table, the table where she usually sat—and looked up and waved when she spotted me. With one last deep breath, I put on a smile and walked over to sit across from her.
“Sooo . . . how’s it going?” I asked, nodding with what I hoped was a casual smile.
Ainsley pulled out one of her ear buds and side-eyed me a bit. “Fine,” she said, drawing out the vowel. “How’s it going with you?”
“Fine. Fine.” I cleared my throat. Nodded. Looked around the room, anywhere but at her. Drummed the tabletop a little with the rolled up script. “What are you listening to?”
She flushed a little. “It’s my algebra playlist.”
“And that’s embarrassing why?” I asked, reaching for her iPod on the table. She tried to beat me to it, but I was too fast. “I don’t even know some of these,” I said, scrolling through, “but are these . . . are these all . . .”
Ainsley snatched it away. “Yes. They’re boy bands. It helps me concentrate.”
“Boy bands help you concentrate.”
She lifted her chin stubbornly. “You got a problem with that?”
I held up my hands. “Me? No. No problem.”
“Good.”
Of course, with that resolved, the issue at hand reared its ugly head again, and I shifted in my seat, tapping nervously on the table. Striving to keep it casual.
That’s me. Casual.
“Oliver, is something wrong?”
Obviously, my casual needed work.
“Wrong? No! Nothing wrong.” I figured there was no putting it off. Time to jump in with both feet. “It’s just . . . the play.”
She wrinkled her nose and frowned a little. “What about it?”
“Uhh . . .” I fiddled with the script, trying to find the right words. “I have a suggestion?”
She stiffened ever so slightly but enough that I wished I could start over. “What kind of suggestion?” she asked.
My face heated, sweat blooming on my upper lip, on my palms . . . pretty much everywhere. I probably stank. I tilted my head and sniffed surreptitiously.
“What are you doing?”
N
ot so surreptitiously.
“Okay, look,” I said finally. “Don’t be mad—”
“Don’t make me mad.”
“Fair enough.” I unrolled the script and smoothed it on the table before me. “I took your script to a friend of mine—”
“You did what?” Oh. Yeah. No mistaking that tone. Ainsley was not happy.
“He’s a professional,” I said quickly. “An actor. Some producing, too, I think. He was on Broadway.”
“Oh my God.” Ainsley covered her face with her hands, and I could barely make out her mumbling words. “I can’t believe you did this.”
“No, it’s good!” I kind of screeched, earning a glare from the librarian shelving books across the room. I winced and waited until she headed down the stairs before continuing. “He thought it had potential, but he had some really good ideas—”
“Oliver, I told you I can’t change it.”
“But you can. Hank said it could be good, but it should be a comedy.”
Ainsley stared at me, but I couldn’t read her flat expression. “A comedy.”
“Yeah.” I flipped through a couple of pages to the locker room scene Hank and I had worked on. “See this? Could you . . . look, maybe? Give it a chance?”
“No!” She shoved the script back at me. “I told you I can’t change it. I won’t change it. And you had no right to show it to anyone, Oliver.”
“But—”
“No. No buts.” She slammed her books shut and shoved them back into her backpack. “I told you. I told you, and you completely ignored what I said.” She stood up and shouldered her pack, papers sticking haphazardly out of the top. “I can’t believe you.”
I gaped at her for about a half a second. Then an unfamiliar feeling swept through me.
Well, not entirely unfamiliar. I’d felt it often before—around Sherlock, people like Ian. Sometimes even around Viney.
But never around Ainsley. Never before around Ainsley.
I was mad.
I was trying to help. And sure, in hindsight maybe I should have talked to her about it first, but she wouldn’t even give it a chance.
“I can’t believe you!” My harsh words caught even me off guard, but I didn’t back down.
Ainsley had been saying something else but stopped mid-sentence, her eyes wide.
“You agreed it wasn’t any good.” I wasn’t sure how the words were flowing out of me, steady and firm. “And I’m telling you there’s a way to make it better, and you won’t even listen—”
“It’s not up to you, Oliver!” Ainsley’s eyes flashed. “It’s not your play.”
“And I can’t believe you’re willing to go ahead with it as-is so your boyfriend doesn’t get mad—”
“That’s not fair. You have no idea what I’m dealing with.”
“That’s why I tried to help!” I threw my hands in the air. “All you have to do is look at what Hank and I—”
“I don’t have to look at anything!” She leaned forward on the table, cheeks flushed and chest heaving. “You should have stayed out of this, Oliver. It’s none of your business!”
And with that, the fight went out of me. What was I doing? She obviously didn’t want my help. I let out a heavy breath, nausea roiling in my stomach. “You’re right.”
“Oliver, you just don’t understand—”
I held up a hand and got up from the table. “No, I understand perfectly. I get it.” I gathered up the script and wadded it in a ball. “I butted in where I shouldn’t have.”
“Oliver—”
The bell rang, and we both jumped.
“I’ve got to go,” I muttered. “See you around.”
I turned and fled, and Ainsley said nothing.
Perfect.
The nausea and regret haunted me through the rest of the school day. All I could think about was how I could have handled the situation differently . . . better.
Sure, part of me was still annoyed that Ainsley had refused to listen. And part of me was incredibly frustrated that she let Ian dictate her decisions in that regard.
But yeah. I felt bad for yelling at her. And I wasn’t exactly sure how to deal with that. I was pretty sure Ainsley was mad at me, too, and even if I apologized for how I acted, I couldn’t find it in myself to say I was sorry for trying to help—or for encouraging her to stand up for herself.
So I did what any teenage guy would do in such a situation.
I avoided her.
It wasn’t too hard, actually. I hardly saw her the rest of the day, which led me to believe perhaps she was instigating the same game plan. And I got another reprieve, at least until the next day, because I was excused from play practice for the day.
I had an appointment. A very important appointment.
“You ready for this?” Dr. Schulz grinned at me as he flicked on the light over the dental chair. “We could wait another week, if you want.”
“I’m ready,” I said. I’d been waiting for this moment for two years. Granted, I’d been a little more excited before my Ainsley plan took a detour, but still.
“All right then, open,” he said. I looked above his head, avoiding his huge hairy nostrils. Dr. Schulz was kind of hairy all over, and he wheezed when he breathed, but I generally tried to avoid thinking about that, too. I tried to avoid breathing as well, especially when I had an appointment after lunch.
He had a thing for garlic.
“Okay, I’m going to remove the rubber bands first,” he murmured. “You okay?”
I said something in the affirmative around his gloved hands. Somehow he always seemed to understand me.
“Good . . . good.” He reached for a tool off the tray. “Time for the wires.”
I clutched the armrests, my mouth wide open and my heart beating steadily as he clipped the wires and removed the brackets and adhesive. In no time at all, he picked up a mirror and flipped off the light, stepping on the pedal to raise the head of the chair.
“You ready to see?” he asked.
I swallowed and ran my tongue over my teeth. They felt . . . weird. Smooth, almost slimy. But I nodded, and he handed me the mirror. I held it up and took a deep breath before baring my teeth. After two years, it was strange to see them without the glint of metal. My gums were a little swollen, which made my teeth look even weirder—kind of smaller than I expected. I couldn’t even wrap my head around it, to be honest, and I couldn’t say if I looked better, although my head told me I must. I couldn’t really look worse, right?
“Bite looks good,” Dr. Schultz said, tugging my lips open a little further, then reaching for the mirror. “You’ll need to wear the retainers for a while.” At my panicked look, he winked, “But I think we can limit that to after school and nights, okay? We’ll see how it goes for a couple of weeks, and then you can probably go to nights only.”
I smiled, my lips sliding easily against my teeth. “Cool.”
The drive home was an exercise in restraint, as I tried to keep from examining my new mouth in the rearview mirror. My mom met me at the door.
“Smile,” she said, the order softened by the quirk of her own mouth. She squealed when I obeyed and pulled me into a tight hug. “You’re so handsome,” she gushed. “I mean, you were before of course, but even more now.”
I was surprised to find my dad home from work, and we sat down to a meal of pizza and all the stuff I couldn’t eat while I had braces—popcorn, taffy, corn on the cob, apples. It was ridiculous and kind of awesome.
“Oh, I forgot the beef jerky,” my mom said, tossing her napkin on the table as she stood up.
“I’ll get it.” My dad nearly knocked his chair over in his haste, and Sherlock and I turned identical stunned expressions his way. He smiled nervously at my mom.
“It’s in the cupboard next to the fridge,” she said, and I noticed her cheeks were a little flushed.
Weird.
My dad retrieved the bag of jerky and dropped it in front of my mom with a grin.
“Th
anks,” she said.
“No problem.”
Sherlock and I exchanged confused shrugs and turned back to our food.
I was working my way through a particularly sticky piece of licorice when the phone rang. My dad was closest, and the only one without his mouth full, so he reached behind him to pluck the receiver off the counter.
“Hello?” His eyes flickered to me. “May I tell him who’s calling?”
I froze. The only person who ever called me was Viney, and my dad wouldn’t have to ask if it was him. His eyebrows lifted, and he held the phone out across the table. “It’s an Ainsley Bishop . . . for you.”
Ainsley? Calling me?
“Umm. Okay.” I took the phone and tried to ignore the three curious pairs of eyes watching me. I raced up to my room, not pausing to catch my breath until the door was shut.
“Hello?” My voice cracked, but Ainsley was already talking.
“Hi. It’s Ainsley.”
I swallowed. “Yeah. Umm. Hi.”
“I got your number from Viney,” she said, her voice a little higher than usual. “I tried your cell first, but it went to voice mail and that seemed like the coward’s way out. So I called your home phone.” She paused, and I could hear her take a breath. “I hope that’s okay?”
Okay? Okay? I was still having a hard time keeping up with what was happening. How could I be expected to answer questions?
“Oliver?”
“Yeah? Yeah, sorry.” I shook my head, trying to stay focused. “Of course it’s okay.”
“Good. Okay, yeah,” she said. “Look, I wanted to say I’m sorry about, you know, today.”
“It’s okay—”
“No, it’s not. You were trying to help, and I bit your head off!”
I felt a little uncomfortable, unsure of how to respond, so I opted for, “Well, not all the way off.”
Ainsley laughed, and I smiled in relief. “Really, it’s okay,” I said. “I shouldn’t have shown the play to Hank without talking to you first.”
How to Get Ainsley Bishop to Fall in Love With You Page 7