“One Hundred Years of Solitude? Cool,” I say. “You should read it in Spanish. So much gets lost in the translation.”
She raises an eyebrow. I feel my cheeks get warm, and give a sheepish grin. “Or so I’ve been told,” I say. “I’ve never read it. My father teaches Latin American lit at UT. He named me after García Márquez.”
“Gabriel?” she asks. Something about the way she says my name gives me a shiver of pleasure, like a breath on my skin. She catches the music in the syllables.
“Gabe,” I say. “Yeah. I can’t even read it in English, much less espa?ol. It just kills my dad. I’m more of a comic book guy, myself.”
“I like comics, too,” she says with a small smile. “The Sandman is one of my favorite series.”
“Oh yeah?” I lean forward. “Have you read The Wicked and the Divine? It’s kind of like Sandman. But with, like, magic rock stars.” She shakes her head. “I’ll bring you the first issue. You’ll love it.”
Her eyes light up for a split second, but then they fade again. “No—no, I can’t. Thanks. I’ll . . . I’ll see if they have it at the city library, or something.”
The warning bell rings. Two more minutes to get to class. I stand up and linger for a second, waiting to see if I can walk with her toward her next class. She doesn’t move.
Almost as if reading my mind, she gives a faint smile. “I have a free period. I spend it in the library getting caught up on homework.”
“Getting caught up? I’ve only ever seen you do homework. Do you ever do anything else?” I shift my weight. “You know, besides rescuing strangers by night.”
Her face falls back to her hands on her lap. A lock of hair slips past her ear and hangs down in front of her, like a curtain.
“I really have to get back to work,” she says softly.
Conversation over. It stings, but I give a careless shrug. “Cool. Well . . . thanks again, Cat. I’ll see you around.”
I force myself not to look behind me as I walk back to the entrance. But I can’t get the image of her out of my mind: the fragile way her shoulders curl around her book, the slate blue of her eyes. That lock of hair, slipping free. I don’t know what her deal is, but if she’s trying to be invisible, she’s failing—at least with me.
SIX
Elyse
“Juliet? Juliet. This is your entrance.” Mr. Hunter looks up from his clipboard. “Elyse?”
“Oh!” I dart forward, hurrying to join Laura and Brynn at center stage. “Sorry. Here.”
Out in the audience, I hear a low giggle. My cheeks burn.
We’re only halfway through the first week of rehearsal, but no one else seems to be struggling quite as much as I am. We’re still on book, after all. Still reading through all the scenes. It’s the easiest it’ll ever be. But even with the script in hand I keep losing my place. This is the fifth time I’ve missed my cue.
“. . . where’s this girl? What, Juliet!” Brynn says again in an exaggerated tone. Her eyes bore into me like she’s trying to telepathically transmit the lines straight into my head. This must be making her crazy, watching me butcher the role she wanted.
It takes me a moment to find my place on the page. “How now, who . . . um, who calls?” The words come out awkward and stilted. My tongue keeps tripping over itself.
We plow on. Laura, playing Lady Capulet, reads her words with stately grace. And Brynn is actually already off book, her lines memorized. I’m more and more aware of the glare of the lights, the eyes in the darkness beyond the edge of the stage. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve done cold reads plenty of times and done all right, but now that I’ve got the biggest role of my life I’m a mess.
“Speak briefly. Can you like of Paris’ love?” says Laura.
“I’ll like to look, if l-l-liking looking . . . no, I mean looking liking . . . I mean . . .” I trail off. “Sorry,” I finish lamely.
“How did she get this role again?” It’s a stage whisper, meant to be overheard. I don’t recognize the voice. It doesn’t matter; my gaze drops down to my shoes.
“She got the role because she’s good, Kendall.” Brynn spins to squint out at the audience. “And it’s just a read-through, so why don’t you chill?”
The room goes deadly quiet. I can feel all those eyes raking over my body, peering from the darkness. Just last week, I was eager to be seen; I was ready to step into the spotlight. Now it occurs to me that there’s a flip side to that attention. Now I realize that there are people waiting—hoping—for me to fail.
“Why don’t we call it a day?” Mr. Hunter stands up, glancing around at everyone. “We’ve done a lot of good work today, guys. This is all part of the process.” His eyes fall on the little cluster of girls where Kendall Avery is sitting. “And I expect everyone here to be supportive along the way.”
“Don’t let them get to you,” Brynn whispers as everyone gathers their stuff to go. “Kendall’s hated me since I stole a lead right out of her grasping little hands in sixth grade.” She smirks. “She told me a Filipina couldn’t be Orphan Annie. She was so mad when the casting list went up.”
I stare down at the script. It shakes in my hand.
“This was a mistake,” I say softly. I look up at her. “You should’ve gotten this role. Everyone knows it.”
“Well, everyone except Kendall,” she jokes. “Kendall thinks Kendall should’ve gotten it.” She gets a look at my expression and softens again. “Oh, come on, Elyse, you know that’s not true. Everyone fucks up their first read-through. Especially with Shakespeare. It’s hard.”
“You didn’t,” I point out.
She throws her hands out wide. “Yeah, because I’ve got, like, thirty lines. You just choked because you got stuck in your head. After you’ve done it about a hundred thousand times, you’re going to be amazing.” She puts her hands on my shoulders. “Come over Saturday. We’ll do the usual.”
I finally smile a little. “The usual” means ordering pizza, sharing a beer stolen from her dad’s stash, and running lines all night. Except usually I’m the one helping her learn her parts.
Suddenly those eyes in the audience, leering, waiting for me to mess up, don’t matter as much.
“You’d do that for me?” I ask.
She frowns. “Uh, obviously,” she says. “I kind of owe you for the last, like, year and a half of doing it for me.”
I can’t help it; I throw my arms around her neck.
“You don’t give me any credit at all, do you?” Her voice is muffled against my shoulder. But she hugs me back.
She’s right. I’m acting insecure. Brynn’s looked out for me from the moment we met, when she stumbled on me crying in the girls’ room our first week of freshman year. It was a bad day. My mom’s most recent boyfriend had left the night before, giving Mom a black eye as a parting gift. I didn’t know anyone at East Multnomah; we’d moved that summer, and all my junior high friends were on the other side of town. My clothes were all stained and old, my jeans too short, my sweater pilling, and at lunch a junior boy had snapped my bra so hard the strap broke. I’d gone to the bathroom to fix it, but instead, I’d just collapsed over the sink, tears pouring down my cheeks. In came this girl in a pink sequined skirt and a T-shirt with a giant sloth face printed in the middle, like a fairy godmother in a Wes Anderson movie, and instead of ignoring me like three other girls had done, she gave me a hug before she even asked my name.
And that was it. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but suddenly I was sharing half of her peanut butter sandwich at lunch, and following her to drama club after school, and spending my weekends at her house singing along to musical soundtracks and eating dinner with her family. She was the one who made me audition for my first role; she was the one who coached me on speaking to the back of the room.
So why am I treating her like she’s waiting for me to fail?
“Thanks,” I whisper.
That’s when I hear Mr. Hunter’s voice behind me.
“Elyse, can I speak to you for a moment?” he asks.