by James Ramos
* * *
Theater Arts promised to be awkward. Up until today, Ms. Wright had been talking a lot about the need for actors to trust one another, to build a rapport with each other so that each would feel free to explore a range of emotion. Now we would be putting all that into practice.
“Just as an actor must always have a goal,” she said, “so they must always have an other, someone who will either aid in or fight against the acquiring of that goal.”
My apprehension flared up when Ms. Wright divided the class up into boy-girl pairs. I was paired with Laura, a girl I’d shared an almost-identical schedule with last year, but whom I’d barely spoken to much after that. Jake and Kyle were both paired with people I didn’t know, and I looked on in horror as Liam was partnered with Darcy.
At Ms. Wright’s direction we spread out across the room. I watched nervously while Liam and Darcy found a space toward the back corner, near the door. Liam was clearly looking forward to this. Little did he know what he was in for.
“One hurdle every novice actor has to overcome is the fear of touch,” Ms. Wright explained. “An actress or actor mustn’t be afraid to touch and be touched, both emotionally and physically. Within boundaries, of course. So, what we’re going to do is this: facing your partner, I am going to give you a task that involves touch. You must maintain eye contact throughout. After thirty seconds, we will switch. Is everybody ready?” A murmur of nervous giggles rustled through the theater. “Alright, for our first task, I want you to shake hands. Remember, thirty seconds. Go.”
I took Laura’s hand and made myself stare at her, while she did the same with me. “This is strange,” she whispered after five seconds, trying to keep a straight face.
“Tell me about it,” I chuckled.
“Are we supposed to talk?” she asked.
I looked around at the others. “Sounds like everyone else is.”
A lot of people were having a hard time with the task. Some groups just couldn’t keep their hands together. Kyle made it all of five seconds before bursting out laughing.
“Sorry, this is just weird,” he said as he tried to get a hold of himself. His partner sighed with a face that looked like she wished she could be anywhere else.
Jake and his partner were doing fine; even though he was clearly uncomfortable, he wasn’t letting go of her hand. Meanwhile, she didn’t seem to have many qualms about staring at him. I overheard Liam ask Darcy how she was enjoying Phoenix and glanced at them.
“I’m not,” she said tersely, and I almost felt sorry for the death glare he had to endure.
“Too hot?” he asked. I wondered if he was oblivious to social cues or if he was just ignoring them.
“How’ve you been?” I asked Laura, hoping that our own conversation would prevent me from hearing theirs. “Still got that mean serve?”
“I’ve been okay,” she said with a laugh. “You still remember that?”
During PE last year, I’d had the honor of being on the receiving end of her very powerful arm when we’d played volleyball. Our team lost four matches in a row because of it. I didn’t find out until afterwards that she was on the varsity team.
“I don’t think I’ll be forgetting that any time soon,” I grinned.
“If you’d like, I can show you around.” Liam’s voice seemed to ring out over everyone else’s. “I’ve lived here my entire life. I could be your personal tour guide.”
I’d never heard the words “personal tour guide” laced with so much double meaning, nor had I ever heard them sound more creepy.
“I think I’ll pass,” said Darcy, which was a decidedly less hostile response than I’d anticipated.
“Time to switch,” yelled Ms. Wright.
I shook myself. “Talk to you later, Laura.”
She waved as we rotated. “Yeah, we should catch up some time. Play more volleyball, like old times.”
I laughed. “Only if I get to be on your team.”
As I joined another girl I happened to glance at Darcy. She was looking right at me, with a scowl on her face that could kill a person. I was grateful when my partner obscured her glare from view.
What the heck was that for?
“This time, I want you to play a game of thumb war,” said Ms. Wright, “if somebody wins, keep playing. Thirty seconds. Go.”
My partner and I started our game, and I peeked over her shoulder at Darcy. She was with Kyle now, which was only a slight step in the right direction. “You’re Darcy, right?” he asked her as they played.
“Yes,” she said reluctantly.
Kyle laughed for no reason, beads of sweat already visible on his brow. “I’m Kyle. We haven’t met yet. You have pretty hands.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried not to cringe.
“I win,” said my partner, and I realized that she’d had my thumb pinned under hers for a while now. We started another game.
“Switch!” Ms. Wright hollered after the thirty seconds was up. I hesitantly moved toward Darcy. I was next in her queue. I felt like a prisoner headed to the executioner’s block as I met her.
“We meet again,” I mumbled.
“So soon after our last encounter,” she noted.
“This time, I want you to place your hands on the other person’s shoulders,” said Ms. Wright. “And please, only their shoulders. I’m watching all of you. And, go!”
“Um . . .” I said.
“Well . . .” muttered Darcy.
I couldn’t meet her eyes. “I guess, I’ll do the . . . the thing.”
“Oh . . . okay.”
“We can fake this part, if you want,” I whispered. I was sure she didn’t like me this close to her, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it either.
“No, no,” she said. “I’m fine. Go for it.”
“Oh. Alright.” I gathered myself, and very, very carefully set my hands on her shoulders. She didn’t feel nearly as tense as she looked, but any second now, I expected her to jerk away from me. She didn’t. She set her hands on my shoulders, and I involuntarily knotted up. I thought I heard her chuckle.
“Relax,” she said, “I’m not going to stab you or anything. My fingernails aren’t long enough.”
I could very clearly picture Darcy brandishing something sharp, but something elegant, like a katana or a pair of Sai.
“Do you have bad nerves or something?” Darcy asked.
Only around certain people. “No. Why?”
She tapped my shoulders. “Because you’re stiff as a board.”
What do you expect? Your hands are dangerously close to my neck.
“Do I make you uncomfortable?” I thought I heard humor in her voice.
I considered. “If I say yes?”
“Then you would have answered my question.”
Hm. “And if I say no?”
“You would still have answered my question. But,” she added, “I’d be inclined to think you were lying.”
“No,” I said after no small amount of deliberation. “You don’t make me uncomfortable. At least, not in the way you probably think.”
She, on the other hand, seemed completely comfortable. “Which way are you assuming I’m thinking of?”
I felt a blush creeping up my collar. “How many ways are there?”
“Are you evading the question again?” She frowned.
I shrugged. “I might be, a little bit. Yes.”
“You do that a lot for someone who claims to want to talk.”
Was that what this was? Was Darcy trying to hold a conversation?
“I think you had a point,” she said.
I frowned. It was weird talking to her like this, less than an arm’s length away from each other. “About what?”
“About the hedonism thing in The Picture of Dorian Grey. I mean, Lord Henry said that the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. And that’s exactly what Dorian does. That’s what the whole novel
is about: his descent into hedonism.”
I nodded, hung up on the word “temptation.”
“Time’s up!” Ms. Wright called. “Rotate.”
At once we both took a step away from each other, and it was the same as at the dance. People shuffled around us as they all moved to their next partners. Neither Darcy nor I budged. “You know what I think? About you?” she asked.
My hands curled into nervous fists. “What’s that?”
“I think you’re lost,” she said flatly.
“Lost?” I repeated, but before I could press her for an explanation her new partner, who had until now been standing to her side, gave an impatient groan. She stared at me as if she were studying me, savoring my confounded reaction.
Lost? I shook my head and left her and her partner to find my own, the word echoing through my head.
At lunch, I sat with Kyle, Liam, and Lucas. I felt bad about abandoning Jake, but I didn’t want to be around Darcy. It felt too weird. I watched them from afar, sitting at the table she and her friends had claimed for themselves. How could Jake stand it?
“So get this,” said Kyle between shoving chili fries into his mouth. “You get to pick one superpower. Just one, specifically. It can be anything. What would it be?”
“Tough one,” said Lucas.
“Teleportation, all the way,” said Liam. “Can you imagine what you could do with that?”
“Teleport to some girl’s room, probably,” Kyle said with a smirk.
“C’mon, I’ve got principles.”
Lucas flicked a bottle cap back and forth. “Immortality for me.”
“So you can watch everyone around you die over and over again?” said Kyle.
Lucas ignored him. “What about, you, Elliott?”
I thought about it for a moment. “I think I’d go with flight.”
“Flight?” asked Liam.
“Typical,” laughed Lucas.
“Think about it. Anytime you want to get away, or you just need a break, you jump up and leave. Bam. No one can bother you in the clouds.”
“Except all the birds,” said Kyle.
“Or the planes,” added Lucas.
“Very funny,” I said, and flicked mixed vegetables at them all.
“Besides,” said Lucas, “the whole point of having superpowers is to confront problems, not run from them. What would be the point of superpowers if you only used them to run?”
I frowned. Was I a runner? I’d been in a hurry to get away from Mr. Williams and his “career goals” speech. I was avoiding Darcy like she had a communicable disease. Was not confronting my problem? Maybe I needed to stop putting things off and face them head on. Maybe . . .
Maybe I was reading too much into it. I laughed it off, and focused on my current problem: finishing my lunch.
After school I went down to the theater, where I met Jake for his audition. “Nervous?” I asked.
“Nope,” he answered, and this time I wasn’t sure if he really meant yes. I knew I was. When we came inside, I was surprised to find that only Ms. Wright was waiting for us.
“Welcome,” she announced with a warm smile that wasn’t quite enough to put me at ease. “Please, come in.”
She motioned to the stage, and I grudgingly followed Jake. The spotlight was hot and bright, obscuring Ms. Wright’s face from view. I crumpled the script nervously in my hands as we began.
“Out,” Jake began with a poetic tone.
“Of love?” I asked.
He groaned and kicked at imaginary rocks on the ground. “Out of her favor, where I am in love.”
I tried not to glance at my script. “Alas, that love, so gentle in his view, should be so tyrannous and rough in proof.”
Despite my clunky reading, Jake went into his monologue without missing a beat. “Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still, should, without eyes, see pathways to his will! Where shall we dine?” He looked at the ground around us. “O, me! What fray was here? Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all. Here’s much to do with hate, but more to do with love. Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate, O anything of nothing first created! O heavy lightness, serious vanity, misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this.” He paused and looked at me expectantly. “Dost thou not laugh?”
I remembered this line. “No, coz, I rather weep.”
He raised a brow. “Good heart, at what?”
“At thy heart’s oppression.”
Surprisingly, I knew most of my lines without having to look at my script. Jake made the audition easier; he spoke his lines so naturally that I felt like I should be saying something at the exact moments when I was supposed to. Still, there were a few awkward pauses.
It was all over in five minutes, and I couldn’t have been more thankful. My palms and brow was sweaty, and I couldn’t stand still. I wanted to get out of here. Fast.
Runner . . . The word echoed through my head. Lost . . .
We came to the edge of the stage, where we could see Ms. Wright. “Breathtaking performance, Jake.” She seemed genuinely beside herself, exhaling as if she’d just sampled a new, exhilarating flavor and was now savoring its aftertaste. “Yes,” she said, nodding emphatically, “mesmerizing, vigorous, nuanced . . . and most of all, heartbreaking. Everything we expect our Romeo to be. Thank you so very much.”
I wondered how she could see all that in a five minute exchange. Not that Jake wasn’t good; he was awesome. But still.
Jake turned four different colors. “Thank you,” he said quietly, giving a slight bow.
Ms. Wright beamed once more at him, and then her eyes flickered to me. “And what of you, Elliott? Was Benvolio your first choice, or would you care to be considered for some other role?”
“Oh, I’m not auditioning,” I said quickly, “just helping.”
“Why ever not?” asked Ms. Wright, with a pained note in her voice. “I think you acquitted yourself rather well as Benvolio. Who better to portray the cousin of Romeo than his off-stage cousin? Why, the chemistry is built-in!”
She waited, and the room suddenly felt air locked. I stared at Ms. Wright’s hand, tapping impatiently on the desk. I looked past her, to the rows and rows of empty maroon chairs. I looked down, at the thick tongues of my sneakers and the fraying shoelaces that were coming undone. I could feel Jake watching me, and I wondered what he would want. I started to decline. There was no way I was ready for as huge a commitment as this. Months of rehearsals, hours upon hours spent memorizing Shakespeare, wearing tights . . .
I was caught in the proverbial rock and hard place. I glanced at Jake. He gave me an encouraging nod, a nod that said, “Why not?” It gave me pause. Why not? What else was I doing?
Runner . . . the word popped inside my head again.
“No thanks,” I said at last. I had already joined The Quill. That was more than enough commitment for me to stomach as it was. There was no way I was going to submit myself to five months of grueling rehearsals on top of that. Lucas may have been right about my being a runner, but maybe being a runner wasn’t so bad.
* * *
I was still reeling from the performance I’d just witnessed when I got home. Dad wasn’t home from work yet. Mom wasn’t in either; she was probably at a neighbor’s house trading gardening tips or complaining about the HOA. Jake had made a beeline for the Manor as soon as we’d gotten off the bus—he and Bridget were supposedly study buddies now—leaving me with nothing to do and no one to do it with. Kyle and Liam were watching some game or another, and Mark was, well, I didn’t want to hang out with Mark. I picked up my phone and skimmed through my contacts. Most of the other numbers were of people I didn’t regularly associate with. Which left only Gabby or Lucas.
I went to the living room, sent Gabby a text, splayed out on the couch, and waited. Gabby never took longer than a f
ew minutes to respond to a text, no matter what time it was.
One minute passed. I reached for the remote, which was on the table just out of my reach. Another minute passed. I took off a shoe and used it to extend my reach. I swatted at the remote, only to knock it in the opposite direction. I tossed the shoe and gave up. Two more minutes. I groaned, dragged myself off the couch and snatched the remote from the table. Finally my phone blipped.
Sorry. Busy. Txt L8ter.
Weird. I was down to one other option. I found Lucas’s number and hit dial. Lucas was always up for an adventure.
“Sup, Elliott,” he said when he picked up.
“Hey, Lucas, I think I’m going skating. You want to come?”
“Sorry bro, no can do.”
Had Lucas just said no to skating of all things? “Wait, why not?” Something must have been very wrong for him to refuse that offer. Maybe he was sick. No, Lucas would skate sick.
He hesitated. “I’m sort of studying.”
“Studying? For what?” Lucas wasn’t the type to study for much of anything.
“The SAT’s.”
My eyebrows knit together. “But we took the SAT’s last year.”
“Yeah, well, I want to take them again.” He sounded a little defensive.
“Why?” I asked.
“To get a better score,” he answered. “Studies show that people who take the test twice do better the second time around. It says so on their website.”
“Yeah, but . . . why?”
He chuckled. “For college, bro. Why else?”
I knew that much. But hearing it coming from Lucas, aka Mr. Throw-a-Party-on-a-Whim, the information felt strange and new.
“Hey, why don’t you take it, too?” he said. “It’s not too late to register, and if I remember right your score could stand some improving, too.”
I was at a complete loss for words. If Lucas, who was easily the most nonchalant person I knew, was suddenly getting serious about his future, it was probably a sign that I should be doing the same.
“I’ll think about it,” I told him.