Since You've Been Gone

by Morgan Matson

  To my relief, Frank, as Duncan, had more than held his own. I wasn’t sure I was going to encourage him to change direction and start auditioning for all the school plays, but he spoke his lines clearly, followed along with the script, and faced the right way. He also revealed an innate sense of comic timing I’d never guessed he had. So I was feeling like the evening hadn’t been a total disaster, and had actually gone okay, as Frank and I took the stage together for the final scene.

  Duncan and Cecily had been on quite the whirlwind together, as they went from enemies to friends, until Cecily became convinced Duncan was only pretending to be her friend after it appeared he had turned against her during her court-martial after the color war. But it was just a misunderstanding, and in the final scene, on the last day of camp, the smoldering embers of what remained of Camp Greenleaf behind them, they finally cleared things up.

  “I’m sorry,” Frank-as-Duncan said to me.

  “He crosses to her, stage right,” Beckett intoned from his perch on the kitchen stool just offstage. He had been the true star of the night, always staying on top, reading the stage directions and jumping in with assistance when people lost their place.

  “You should have told me what was happening,” I said, as Cecily.

  “I know,” Frank said, glancing up at me and then looking down at his script again.

  “I didn’t think I could trust you,” I said.

  “But you can,” Frank said. “I’m here.”

  “He takes her hand,” Beckett read out from the stage directions. Both Frank and I looked over at him, but neither one of us moved. “He takes her hand,” Beckett repeated, more loudly this time, and Frank glanced at me, then took a step closer.

  I swallowed hard and could feel my heart start to pound. I tried to tell myself that it was just acting. It wasn’t a big deal.  And it certainly didn’t mean anything. I transferred my script into my left hand and met Frank’s eye. He gave me a small, embarrassed smile, then reached out toward me. I met him halfway, our fingers awkwardly colliding until we got our palms lined up and he threaded his fingers through mine. His hand was cool, and I was suddenly aware how nicely our hands fit together, our fingers overlapping easily.

  My heart was beating hard, and I could feel the blood pulsing in the tips of my fingers. How had this even happened? How was Frank Porter holding my hand?

  “Cecily?” Beckett prompted, and I was jerked back to reality as I tried to turn to the last page of my script with only one hand.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, and there was low, polite laughter from the audience. I glanced up long enough to see my parents standing in the back, my dad’s arms around my mom, both of them looking more present, and more relaxed, than I’d seen them in a while. I was just relieved that neither one of them seemed furious I had ruined their masterpiece. I flipped to the last page of the script, and there it was, in black and white, two lines away—They kiss.

  I must have totally blocked out that this would be happening. I could feel my pulse start to race, and I worried my palm, still pressed against Frank’s, was going to start to get sweaty very soon.

  “Um,” I said, struggling to find my place in the script. “And you’ll always be here?” I asked him.

  Now, just a bit too late, I remembered perfectly what came next. Duncan had the line that was always the last laugh of the play, about how he’d be there at least until his mom came to pick him up and take him back to Weehawken. And then Duncan and Cecily kissed while the rest of the campers filed onstage and sang the Camp Greenleaf song.

  I didn’t want Frank to feel like he had to kiss me, like he had clearly felt compelled to take my hand. I couldn’t even imagine having to kiss Frank Porter, especially in front of all these people, and my parents and younger brother.  Also, he had a girlfriend. And while real actors kissed other people all the time, this was different. This was—

  “. . . back to Weehawken,” Frank said, finishing the line I hadn’t heard him start, and there was laughter from the audience and I knew what was coming. I glanced, panicked, at my brother.

  “They kiss,” Beckett read, and I could practically feel Frank’s shock and the expectant pause in the audience.

  Frank and I looked at each other. We were still holding hands, but he still seemed impossibly far away from me, and I couldn’t even imagine crossing that gulf to kiss him. Mostly because I couldn’t even imagine kissing him. It was one thing to get to know him, and go running with him, but—

  Keeping his eyes on me, Frank took a tiny step closer, and it was like my brain was wiped clear of thoughts. It was like the world had started moving in slow motion as he moved a little closer to me still, and then started to tilt his head to the side.

  “Lights down!” Beckett yelled, jerking me back to reality, and I blinked, trying to catch up with everything that had just happened—or almost happened. “Curtain!”

  Everyone started clapping, and the rest of the cast filed out and we all joined hands—Frank and I hadn’t stopped holding hands since Beckett told us to, I realized—and took a bow, and then people started getting up and putting the chairs away and drifting back into the kitchen to see if there was any food left.

  Frank and I looked at each other, and after just a moment like that, we dropped hands. He stuck his hands in his shorts pockets and I grabbed the script with both of mine, twisting it into a tight roll, trying not to think about how cold my hand now felt.

  “Hey!” Dawn said, coming up to us and giving me a smile. “That was really great.”

  “Thanks,” I said, glancing at Frank, wondering what he was thinking about what had almost happened, but he was frowning down at his phone.

  “Nice work, you two,” my mother said with a smile as she passed me, giving me a quick hug as she went. I caught my dad’s eye from across the room and he gave me a very dorky thumbs-up.

  “Thanks,” Frank said, glancing up from his phone for a moment before typing a response into it, then looking up at me, his brow furrowed. “Hey,” he said. “So here’s the thing.” He seemed to notice Dawn for the first time, and turned to her, holding out his hand in a manner that practically telegraphed I’m the student body president. “Sorry,” he said, “I’m Frank Porter.”

  “Dawn Finley,” she said as they shook. “You did a really good job.”

  “Well,” Frank said, and he shot me a small smile. “I’m sure that was just due to my costar.”

  “What’s the thing?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

  Frank looked back down at his phone and said, a little doubtfully, “So apparently Collins is at my house. He wants me to come and hang out, and told me you had to come too.” He looked up and shook his head. “Remind me to take his key away.”

  “Oh,” I said, wondering why Collins had invited me specifically. But I had been seeing him more this summer than I ever would have predicted, so maybe he was just being nice, and inviting me to their hangout.

  “And you’re welcome to come too,” Frank said to Dawn. “Unless you have other plans.”

  “Nope,” said Dawn, looking thrilled by this invitation. “Sounds fun. You know, whatever it is.”

  “Emily?” Frank asked.

  I looked around at the chaos that was still reigning in my house, all the people standing around and eating cold breadsticks. I knew well how Living Room Theater nights ended up—the adults hanging out for far too long, exchanging department gossip for what always felt like hours. I had a feeling the house would be filled with people for a while, and if I did stay, I would undoubtedly be roped into cleaning up. “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

  “This is a really nice house,” Dawn said, her voice dropping to a whisper as she stepped inside, her expression looking much like I had a feeling mine had when I’d seen it for the first time. Since my car had been buried behind everyone who had parked in our driveway, Dawn had driven us all to Frank’s in her convertible, her driving making me very glad that Frank lived so close to me.

&nbs
p; “Thanks,” Frank said easily, leading the way inside. “Collins!” he yelled, just as he slid around the corner in his socks.

  “Hello,” Collins said, a wink somewhere in his voice, smiling at me, stretching out the word more than usual, and giving it a few more o’s.

  “Um, hi,” I said, giving him a smile. “What’s up?”

  He looked behind me, saw Dawn and her shirt that read Captain Pizza—A great COLONEL of an idea! and brightened. “Did we order pizza?”

  “No,” Dawn said, looking down at her shirt. “I’m off the clock. I’m Dawn.”

  “Matthew Collins,” he said. “Matthew with two t’s and Collins with two l’s. But call me Collins. Although,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “let me be Frank.” He cleared his throat and gave me an earnest, serious look. “Emily,” he said, his voice both softer and deeper. “Is there anything—anything—I can do to help you? As soon as I finish saving the planet, I promise to get right on it.”

  “Collins,” Frank said, walking past him and into the kitchen, but not before I saw that there were two dull red spots on his cheeks. “Will you stop it?  That joke was old back in middle school.”

  “I’m just being Frank with them,” he said, giving me an actual wink this time. “Want something to drink?” he asked as he followed Frank into the kitchen and pulled open the fridge, clearly as comfortable in Frank’s house as Sloane had once been in mine.

  “Sure,” Dawn said, heading over to join him in the kitchen. As I watched her walk closer to him, I couldn’t help but wish I’d had some way to warn her about Collins, and the fact that he’d probably be hitting on her relentlessly within seconds. But to my surprise, he just stood back respectfully to let her get a clearer view of the fridge, and didn’t ask her if it hurt when she fell from heaven.

  “Emily?” Frank called to me from the kitchen area, and I realized a moment too late that I was the only one still standing by the front door.

  “Yeah,” I said quickly, walking across the floor to join the group in the kitchen. Everyone was standing around the big island in the center that looked like it was made of granite or slate—some dark mineral, at any rate. There was a bag of tortilla chips on the counter that Collins opened as Frank grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and then handed one to Dawn.

  “So,” Collins said, rubbing his hands together and looking at me. “I was thinking about your list.”

  I stared at him in surprise, then looked over at Frank. The list hadn’t been a secret, exactly, but I was just a little taken aback that Frank would have told Collins about it.

  “What?” Collins said, picking up on this. “Porter will not stop talking about it. And I decided to help.”

  “What list?” Dawn asked, looking from Collins to me.

  “The list from Sloane,” Collins said, like he’d been involved with this from the beginning.

  “Who’s Sloane?” Dawn asked.

  “Sloane’s my best friend,” I explained.

  “The one who’s camping in Paris?” she asked, and I gave her a quick nod, not meeting Frank’s eye, even though I could sense he was looking at me.

  “Anyway,” Collins said. “I had a solution, so—”

  “Which number?” I asked, really a little baffled as to what Collins could have come up with.

  “Yeah, Matthew,” Frank said, and his voice sounded measured, but I could also hear the irritation behind it. “Which number?”

  “Hey.”

  I turned around, surprised, and saw a guy behind me, coming from the direction of the TV area—I supposed it wasn’t really a room if there weren’t any doors. I hadn’t realized anyone else was there and I suddenly worried this perfect stranger had heard us talking about Sloane’s list. He had close-cropped blond hair, and was wearing a T-shirt that read Briarville Varsity Soccer. Briarville was a boarding school an hour upstate, but while I’d heard of it, I’d never met anyone who went there.

  “Perfect,” Collins said, clapping his hands together. “We can get this going.”

  I felt myself frown. “Get what—” I started, when Collins interrupted, opening the fridge again.

  “Want something to drink?” he asked the guy. “Water? Red Bull?”

  “Agua,” the guy said, coming to stand with us in the kitchen. “Thanks.”

  “Hey,” Dawn said to him, crunching some chips and swallowing quickly. “I’m Dawn.”

  “ ’Sup,” the guy said. “I’m—”

  “Shh!” Collins yelled, so loudly that we all stopped and looked at him. He frowned at the guy. “What did we talk about?”  The guy just raised his eyebrows, and Collins grinned at me, gesturing to the guy with a flourish, like he was presenting him on a game show. “So he’s here for the first thing on your list. Enjoy.”

  I thought back to the list, and the first one, which was—

  I drew in a shocked breath. I had a feeling I’d just turned bright red.

  Kiss a stranger.

  “Wait,” I said faintly, looking at the guy. He wasn’t bad-looking or anything, but that didn’t mean I wanted to kiss him. Especially not here, in front of Collins and Dawn and Frank.

  Collins smiled wide at me, and gave me another wink, this one bigger than before. “You’re welcome,” he said.

  “Wait,” Frank said, looking from the guy and back to me, then glaring at Collins, sounding more annoyed than I’d ever heard him. “Matt, I told you not to do this the first time you suggested it. But you go ahead and bring some random guy here to—”

  “Hey,” the guy said, lowering his water bottle, looking offended.

  “What’s going on?” Dawn whispered loudly to Frank.

  “No,” I said, taking a step away.  Then, worried I might have insulted the guy, I said quickly, “Sorry. No offense. I’m just not . . . I mean . . .” I ran out of words and took a tortilla chip, just to have something to do with my hands.

  “What?” Collins asked. “It’s perfect. You don’t know him, he doesn’t know you. So get to it.” He raised his eyebrows at us. “Chop-chop.”

  “Collins,” Frank said, keeping his eyes on me, “if Emily doesn’t want to do it—”

  “Do what?” Dawn asked, crunching down on another chip, looking baffled but entertained, like this was a movie she’d walked into late.

  “Kiss him,” Collins said. Dawn looked surprised, but then she gave the guy a not-so-subtle once-over and shot me an approving thumbs-up. “It’s on the list Emily’s friend sent, the first one is ‘Kiss a stranger,’ so—”

  “No,” I said quickly, holding up my hands. There was no need to keep discussing this, because it was not going to happen. Ever. “I’m sorry. Um, thanks for the effort, but I’m not just going to go around kissing random—”

  “You know,” the guy said, setting down his water, starting to look annoyed, “my name’s—”

  “Shh!” Collins and Dawn yelled at him.

  “No,” I said again, shaking my head hard. “I don’t even know him, and—”

  “But isn’t that the point?” It was Dawn who asked this. She turned to me, her eyebrows raised. “I mean, it wasn’t ‘Kiss someone you’ve already met,’ right?”

  Collins raised an eyebrow. I opened my mouth and then closed it again when I didn’t have anything to say to this. It was true. It was also one of the main reasons I worried I’d never complete the list. And here a stranger was, being presented to me to kiss. I thought back to the night I hadn’t hugged Jamie Roarke, and how frustrated I’d been with myself, how I was still mad at myself for chickening out on horseback riding.  And I really did need to get moving on the list, if I ever wanted to figure out where Sloane was. Would I get a better opportunity than this to kiss a stranger?

  “Fine,” I said, before I knew I’d made a decision. Frank looked over at me sharply, like he was surprised, but then looked back down at his water bottle, like he was suddenly very interested in where it had been sourced from.

  “Cool,” the guy said with a shrug. He to
ok a purposeful step over to me, and without meaning to, I crushed the chip in my hand with a loud crunch.

  “Um,” I said, dropping the pieces onto the counter and brushing the crumbs off my hands. “Maybe we could go somewhere less . . . public?”

  “There’s a pantry,” Collins said, nodding past the refrigerator, toward what looked like a narrow hallway.

  “Okay,” I said, mostly just to try and talk myself into this. Was I really going to do this? Furthermore, had I volunteered to do this? “Let’s go.”

  “You could go outside,” Frank called as I forced myself to cross the kitchen on legs that suddenly felt wobbly, pointedly avoiding looking at Dawn, who was shooting me an excited smile. “It’s kind of tight in there.”

  “That’s a good thing, Porter,” I heard Collins say, but I just concentrated on looking straight ahead, suddenly worried about my breath.

  Frank was right—the pantry was not particularly big. A light went on automatically when I opened the door, and I could see that down the two steps, there were shelves of food on all sides, and in the middle, just enough room for two people. But that was about it.

  I made myself put one foot in front of the other, walking down the steps to stand in the center of the room, surrounded by spices I could smell faintly and boxes of pasta and bags of rice and flour and sugar.