Kate in Waiting

by Becky Albertalli

  “WHAT?”

  “—with a paintball. Kate, chill. A paintball.”

  “In the neck?” I cover my throat. “Is that allowed? That can’t be allowed!”

  “It’s not.”

  “I’m just.” I blink. “When were you playing paintball?”

  “I crashed the eighth-grade trip—”

  “What? Aren’t there chaperones? And the coaches? Ryan, those were Mom’s coworkers—”

  “My whole face was covered. You have to wear this helmet thing—”

  “So you just showed up with a blatant paintball bruise the day after the eighth-grade paintball trip, which Mom obviously knows about—”

  Ryan nods. “Yup.”

  “Nope. There’s no way Mom wouldn’t have put that together. I don’t buy it—”

  “I know. I couldn’t believe it. But I guess she was distracted.”

  “Distracted?”

  Ryan looks at me. “Do you even remember that week?”

  “The variety show?”

  “Kate, you couldn’t stop crying. It was brutal. And Mom’s there thinking it’s all her fault for talking you into it, and you wouldn’t even talk to her. And then you dyed your hair that toilet bowl color. I mean, you were a wreck, she was a wreck . . . so I took advantage of you being wrecks.”

  “I mean, it’s not like you knew Eric was going to shoot you.” I exhale. “God, Ryan. Eric shot you! Because of me!”

  “No. Kate. Not because of you. Because he’s an asshole.” Ryan straightens up and slides off the bed. “Anyway, you good here? I’m going back to bed—”

  “Wait!”

  He turns to me, yawning, his eyebrows raised. “Yup?”

  “So. Um.” I rub my cheek. “I’m not really on speaking terms with Andy right now.”

  Ryan winces. “Oh! Okay. Wow. Are you—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I say quickly. “But I have one of those Saturday rehearsals today. So . . .”

  “Let me guess. You need a ride.”

  I shoot him my best pleading smile.

  Scene 66

  Half an hour later, we’re parked in Noah’s driveway, waiting for King Sextimus the Slowpoke to finish brushing his teeth.

  I check the dashboard clock, glancing back up at Noah’s window. “What’s taking him so long?”

  “I mean. He’s in a cast—”

  “Nope. Brushing your teeth isn’t a two-handed job.”

  Ryan shrugs. “I’m just telling you what he said.”

  I bite my lip, feeling instantly guilty. Because Ryan’s a saint to drive me to rehearsal, and the last thing he deserves is me being a grouchy little butt. “Seriously, thanks again for driving us,” I say.

  He yawns. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”

  “You know . . .” I turn to face him, an idea dawning. “If you want, you could come hang out at rehearsal.”

  “Um. I’m good.”

  “I’m just saying. Brandie will be there.”

  “Okay . . .” Ryan’s phone buzzes in the cupholder, and he grabs it. “All right, Noah says he’ll be down in—”

  “Also, Brandie’s a Capricorn,” I inform him.

  Ryan looks slightly bewildered.

  “For real! Her birthday’s on Christmas, which sucks, because she gets half the amount of presents, and someone always forgets—I mean, not me, obviously. Not the Jews. We remember.” I thump my chest. “But I think it all evens out, because her two-in-one presents are so epic. Like, multiple American Girl dolls. Okay, not multiple per year—”

  “I’m . . . not sure where you’re going with this,” says Ryan.

  “Where I’m going with this is that Brandie’s a Capricorn and you’re a Virgo, which is perfect!” I give a chef’s kiss.

  “I truly have no idea—”

  “I’m just saying, I approve of this crush. And I can actually help you with this. I’ll be your wingwoman.”

  “You think I have a crush on Brandie?”

  I look at him. “Come on. Why else would you be suddenly up for hanging out with me all the time?”

  “So let me get this straight. You think the only reason I could possibly want to spend time with you is to get with Brandie.”

  I tilt my palms up. “Literally what else could it be?”

  The back door behind me yanks open, and I whip my head around, startled.

  “Hi!” Noah grins back at me, scooting across the seat to Ryan’s side. “Sorry I’m late.”

  I stare at his face. There’s something strange about the skin below his eyes. “Are you . . . wearing makeup?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with guys wearing makeup,” Noah says loftily.

  “Agreed. It’s just . . .” I bite back a laugh. “Normally, people try to match their skin tone a little bit?”

  “It matches!” He leans forward, checking himself out in the rearview mirror.

  “Mmm.” I shut one eye.

  “It’s a little . . . pale,” says Ryan.

  I nod. “You look like a reverse racoon.”

  “Oh, well, excuse me for trying to look a little more awake.” He pokes at his undereye. “I think it looks good.”

  “Great. You do you.”

  He pauses. “Okay, if you happen to have—”

  “Here you go.” I pass him a makeup wipe.

  Ryan turns the car on, but then he looks at me. “You want to drive?”

  I side-eye him. “Uh. What?”

  “Do you want to drive? I’ll sit in the passenger seat.” He shrugs. “You should practice.”

  “You have to be twenty-one to drive with me.”

  “Kind of like how I’m supposed to be twenty-one to drink?”

  “Boom,” chimes Noah from the back seat. He pantomimes a mic drop with his makeup wipe.

  “Ryan, no—I’m not getting arrested less than a week before opening night.”

  “We’re not going to get arrested. Come on. We can run back home for your permit.”

  “You think my permit’s going to help when they arrest us? Or when I crash your car? Are you crazy?”

  “Kate, you’ve taken Driver’s Ed. You’re not a bad driver. You just need practice. I’m telling you, you could have your license—”

  “Okay!” says Noah, poking around his eyes again in the rearview mirror. “How’d I do?”

  Ryan looks up at the mirror and shoots him a thumbs-up. “All clear.”

  “And I promise I’ll get my license, okay? I’m just busy.”

  “You’ve been busy since March.”

  “Ryan. The play opens Friday. It’s literally tech week.”

  “Okay. But it ends on, what, Sunday? Then what?”

  “The cast party,” says Noah. “No fuckboys allowed.”

  “Okay, that’s accurate.” I turn back to Ryan. “So what, you’re sick of driving me around or something?”

  “No.” Ryan shoots me an eye-rolling half smile. “I just need to know you’ll be able to get around next year.”

  He checks the mirrors and starts reversing slowly, and weirdly, I find myself taking mental notes of where he’s looking, where his hands are. Backing out of places is my least favorite part of driving, but Ryan makes it look effortless.

  Maybe it will be effortless for me one day, too.

  Scene 67

  “All right. You know the drill,” says Ms. Zhao. “The whole thing, twice. Start to finish. First run-through, I may stop you with notes. Second time, you’re on your own. And tech week starts tomorrow.” A few people groan. “I know. I know. But we’re going to suck it up and whip this monster into shape. Who’s with me?”

  “Me!” yells Mr. D from the piano. He starts playing football fight music, because, you know. We’re all big sports fans here. I catch Noah’s eye and quickly look away, grinning.

  “We’ve got costumes hung up in the dressing rooms in alphabetical order. You’ll find a tag on the hanger with your name on it. If you’d like extra practice in your costume, go
ahead and wear it. But please—please—put it back on your own hanger, in the exact spot you found it. And do not, I repeat, do not eat in your costume.” Ms. Zhao exhales. “How are we feeling?”

  “We’re feeling great,” says Emma, looking around the circle fiercely.

  “Then bring it in,” says Ms. Zhao, and we all scoot into a huddle. “One, two, three . . . WE ARE ROSWELL HILL, AND WE ARE ONE.”

  “Woo-hoo!” Lindsay Ward does a cheerleading kick, landing with her hands on her hips. “Go team! Go us!”

  Luckily, Anderson’s in practically every scene—and even when he’s backstage, he’s usually blocked to enter from stage left. So he spends most of his backstage time on a completely different side of the stage from me. Kind of a lucky break.

  Of course, Matt’s a different story. I honestly can’t believe this is my life. My love interest in the musical is my real-life unrequited crush. Who’s now dating my best friend.

  Though, now that the shock has worn off, I think I’m fine with Matt not liking me. I mean, he’s gay—it’s not even personal. It’s just another Éponine situation, right? He was never mine to lose.

  I’m even warming up to the idea of Matt and Anderson dating. But the thought of Matt knowing I liked him—I can’t shake that. I can’t stop thinking about how it all must look to Matt. My sad, misdirected thirst. I hate being pitied. It makes me feel like such a loser. When someone feels sorry for you, you can’t help but become that sorry person, at least a little bit.

  It’s enough to make a person want to lock herself inside a dressing room forever.

  To be fair, the dressing rooms are party central. I always forget how much I love these backstage moments. Someone took the gender signs off the doors years ago, and we use both rooms interchangeably. There are tiny bathroom stalls for when you’re actually changing, but for the most part, people just lounge around in folding chairs and eat pretzels and listen to the Official Once Upon a Mattress Playlist, curated by Lana Bennett. Admittedly, full of bops.

  There’s just something to be said for the fact that I’m sitting in a circle, smack-dab between Margaret Daskin and Emma McLeod, whom I suddenly trust with my life, even though I never really hang out with them outside of theater. It’s this strange way of knowing someone. I never think of it as true friendship, because how could it be if we don’t know each other’s secrets. But when you can sit in a room with someone and feel totally at home, what else would you call it?

  Devon Blackwell appears in the doorway with his binder. “Okay, Minstrel’s starting the prologue. We need Aggravain, Sextimus, Dauntless, Wizard, Lady Larken, Lady Rowena, Lady Merrill, Lady Lucille, Princess Number Twelve, and”—he turns the page—“any other knights and ladies for Act One, Scene One. In the wings, please.”

  “Raina, Noah, and Anderson are already in the wings, stage left,” Emma says, rotating her wheelchair toward the door. “But Colin and Pierra are, uh. In the lighting booth.”

  “Of course they are.” Devon double blinks, shaking his head slowly.

  Scene 68

  “Zhao’s going to quit,” I murmur to Raina and Brandie two and a half hours later, as we settle onto the various platforms and set pieces for our first round of notes. “She’s gonna be like, nope, y’all are hot messes, and I’m out.”

  “You say that every single show,” Brandie says.

  “I know, but this is going to be the one. I can feel it.” I scoot back against the stack of mattresses, tucking my legs up into triangles. “See, it’s because we lost a Saturday rehearsal because of Rosh Hashanah. So now everyone’s going to blame us Jews if this sucks.”

  “No one’s blaming anyone,” Brandie says, scooting up beside me—and then she sniffs the air suddenly. “Hey, pizza’s here.”

  “Which means Zhao needs to hurry up and give us notes. I’m hungry,” says Raina.

  “And, Kate, it’s not going to suck,” Brandie says. “This happens every time, remember? We run through it, it’s rough, we keep going, it gets better, and by opening night, it’s great. Every time, Kate.”

  “I just want to fast-forward,” I say. “Let’s just skip to the part where it’s great.”

  “She’s just hangry,” Raina tells Brandie. “Watch. She’ll have one slice of pizza, and she’ll be a brand-new person.”

  “Shut up.” I shove Raina’s arm.

  “Am I wrong?”

  I sigh heavily. “You’re not wrong.”

  Pizza’s forbidden onstage near the set pieces, so we all trickle out into the auditorium seats and the lobby. Anderson and Matt disappear pretty much immediately, which doesn’t hurt anywhere near as much as I thought it would. Maybe one quick pang, but mostly relief that I can just settle in with Brandie and Raina and Colin and Pierra and whoever, and not worry about avoiding them.

  But I’ve barely had time to grab my pizza and a water bottle when Noah materializes beside me. “Hey, want to eat outside?”

  I nod. “Should I grab Raina and Brandie?”

  “Oh.” He presses his lips together. “I was thinking just us.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is that . . .”

  “Okay.” There’s this pinprick feeling, just below my rib cage. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  “Okay, great,” he says, smiling, and the next thing I know, I’m cutting through a row of seats behind him, out through the side door of the auditorium. It feels strangely rebellious, stepping out here in the middle of rehearsal even though we’re on break until two thirty. Noah stakes out a spot around the back of the auditorium, and we settle in for a curb picnic. He sets his pizza on the ground beside him and leans back against the school’s brick exterior. “This is perfect.”

  “Better than the lobby,” I agree. “Hey, you were great this morning.”

  He looks both startled and pleased. “Me?”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you guys do ‘Man to Man Talk’ since the read-through. Y’all are hilarious.”

  “Well, so were you.”

  I laugh. “I don’t think my character’s supposed to be hilarious.”

  “It just makes it even more impressive.”

  “I don’t know if that’s how it works.” I shake my head, smiling.

  “Well, you were really good. Matt too. Are you sure you’re not dating him?”

  “Ha ha.”

  “You’re not bf-gf?” Noah glances at me sidelong, and for one stomach-plummeting moment, I’m sure he knows the whole story. Maybe Andy and Matt really did spill the beans in Senior D. But then again, something about the way Noah’s looking at me makes me think he’s really asking. It’s as if he’s trying to read between the lines of my expression.

  “We’re not bf-gf. I already told you that.”

  “On our walk home,” he says, nodding. “Hey.”

  I turn to face him, head-on, but he doesn’t elaborate. “Hey what?” I ask finally.

  He nods, opens his mouth, shuts it, grins nervously, and then shuts it again, and I almost laugh from the pure Noah-ness of the sequence. But something stops me. Maybe it’s the strange flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. Or maybe it’s the way my own heart won’t stop pounding. “Hey. Okay,” he says finally. “I owe you an apology. A couple of apologies.”

  “For what?”

  He looks like he’s not sure if I’m kidding. “For last night. For bringing you to Mira’s house. For drinking and being weird.”

  “Noah, you already apologized like twenty times. And you’re fine! I’m not—”

  “I know, I know. You’re not mad. But I still feel really gross about it. I feel like I’m giving you the wrong idea about me—”

  “You know I’ve known you since we were eleven, right?”

  “I know, but you think I’m a fuckboy.”

  I bite back a laugh. “Okay. So . . .”

  “So I’m mad at myself for proving you right.”

  He looks so serious about it that I have to hug him. “Noah, you’re not that kind of f-boy.”

 
; “What do you mean that kind of f-boy?”

  “You’re not a jerk. You’re barely a dudebro. You’re not even that slutty—”

  He snorts. “Thanks.”

  “I mean it.” I nudge him sideways with my shoulder. “After all, I’ve only actually seen you sloppily make out with one girl—”

  “Okay, just so you know, that started out as a dare. Madison and I are friends. It’s totally, totally not like that.”

  “It’s fine—”

  “Also, I’m a way better kisser than that. Way better. That was not representative.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I should ask Camilla—”

  “Kate, I’m serious.”

  “Noah.” I tilt my palms up. “I don’t care, okay? You can kiss whoever you want, however you want.”

  “I wish you did care,” Noah says.

  My breath hitches. “What?”

  “I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “I’m not saying—okay. I want to tell you something, but I don’t want you to think I’m, like, a total dumbass—”

  “I’m not going to think that,” I say.

  God, my heart is just—not keeping its cool right now. Not even a little bit. It’s beating ten miles a minute, and Noah keeps inhaling but not speaking, and I swear I’m not—

  “I broke my wrist during training,” Noah says finally. He’s staring at his feet. “But I didn’t break it playing baseball. It was the dumbest thing.”

  He pauses, but I don’t speak. I have this sudden feeling that I’ll shatter the moment somehow if I move or breathe or anything.

  Finally, Noah continues. “We were spending the weekend at this campground place. Kind of like an ensemble building exercise.” He grins, eyes flicking toward me like he wants to make sure I didn’t miss him whipping out the theater terminology. I grin back.

  “Anyway, Jack and a couple of the guys met these girls staying at this other campsite, and so they made this whole plan, where we were all going to sneak out after curfew and meet up in the woods outside the campground. Just drink and hang out. And it actually worked. Coach Franklin went to bed early, and Jack was texting with this one girl, and finally we all crept out super quietly. And it was totally pitch-black out. This was like way, way outside of Atlanta. I don’t know if Ryan’s ever told you about this place. He hates it. It’s crawling with insects.”