I could tell that Lydia wanted to ask what was wrong, but she stayed quiet, tentative. This was fair. We hadn’t had a real conversation since freshman year, which was absolutely my fault, since I’d turned into that apocryphal girl who gets a boyfriend and vanishes into the ether. I wasn’t proud of it.
I rubbed the heels of my palms into the seams of my closed eyes, exhausted. Suggesting we rehearse here had been a terrible idea. I saw Michael everywhere in the amphitheater. As last year had dwindled toward summer, we’d snuck out every other night, ducking up the quad fastened at the hands, and we’d always wound up on this stage, a stone circle that glowed like a second moon. We stayed until our voices buckled and our eyelids drooped, because soon he was going to graduate, and it’d be NYU for him and junior year for me. Soon there’d be no more secret hours to steal. Now, there was his ghost at the edge of the stage, six foot two of burning presence as I remembered him: a muscular knot of motion. Watching him move was like watching a firework twist up into the evening before it bursts.
Lydia broke the silence. “I’m sorry you didn’t get cast.”
I glanced up at her. I’d forgotten how blunt Lydia was, in a way that was never cruel, never for selfish satisfaction. It was so you knew she was always what she appeared to be. She could take a scalpel to a conversation, work it down to the bone, spot your fractures before you could describe them to her.
She smoothed the edge of her skirt. Splashes of pink on white. Lilly Pulitzer, a Humphreys family favorite. “It really is subjective,” she said. “Seeing how Reese chooses people is actually very eye-opening.” Lydia was assistant-directing the show, which seemed like a brave move. I would never have subjected myself to that quantity of Reese Garrison.
“For real,” I said. “What’s she looking for?”
“It’s different for every part. Way fewer guys audition for the musical, so for guys’ parts she’s basically like, okay, which of these people can actually sing a high A and sound good? Whereas for girls, there’s another whole checklist of stuff.”
“God, maybe that’s why Michael got leads three years in a row,” I said, and instantly hated myself for bringing him up. It was a weird compulsion, like picking at a scab.
“Well,” Lydia said, “he was also great. At everything.”
“Yeah, I know.” Michael could pull on a persona like a well-fitted costume piece. Accents especially—teachers sat up straighter when he did them, taken aback even after twenty years of teaching. He had a flamboyant Italian character he’d nicknamed Angelo and a simpering Frenchman I’d dubbed Pierre; he used to tug them out over the tables at dinner. And he did such a pitch-perfect Dublin accent, burbling out the corner of his mouth, that it was obvious he’d spent three summers in a row there, badgering all the Dubliners to speak more slowly so he could slip their words into his pockets.
His favorite was the noir detective, all flattened and nasal and fast-spoken in a transatlantic twang. Last year, he’d watched about six noir films in a row and then considered himself an expert. He whipped up vaguely hard-boiled-sounding lines about kids and teachers, dragging us into his made-up worlds. “Reese Garrison was a dame whose legs went ahhhn ’til next Tewsday,” he’d drawl over my shoulder as I tried to write. “I gave ’er my essay, and she gave me three bullets, one for every danglin’ modifier . . .”
And I’d groan, or I’d laugh. Or—mostly—I’d let him distract me. “It rained that summah,” I’d drawl back in my smokiest femme fatale voice, playing along. “It rained ’til my conscience felt damn neah clean again.” Then he’d reach forward and mess with my computer, and I’d swat at his hands until he’d take my wrists and pull me in, everything else forgotten. Characters abandoned. There we’d be in private closeness, silent all of a sudden and real.
I could still text him. I could break the three-month silence.
The second the thought came, I stood. Get over this. “Okay,” I said, yanking the folded script pages out of my back pocket. They were an inked, highlighted disaster. I had notes annotating my notes. “Can we maybe run lines?”
“Sure,” Lydia said, tucking her phone away. Instantly, I felt selfish for asking her to stay, but before I could offer her an exit strategy, she started the scene. “What an impertinent thing is a young girl bred in a—”
Noise spilled into the amphitheater. Lydia broke off, and we looked up. A group of vaguely familiar-looking boys was jolting down the steps, a herd of pastel shorts and tank tops. They caught sight of us and faltered but didn’t stop. Soon they were pooling around the front of the stage, and a pair of them jogged forward.
“Hey there, ladies,” said one of them, dark-haired, with even eyebrows that winged out over hazel eyes. He was unreasonably tall and unreasonably good-looking, and he’d also said the phrase, “Hey there, ladies,” which obliterated any potential interest with the merciless speed of a plummeting guillotine blade.
“Are you leaving soon?” said the other boy, a redhead who was a more acceptable sort of tall, and whose words sounded so bored it was a miracle he’d mustered up the interest to open his mouth.
“Actually, we’re in the middle of a rehearsal,” Lydia said, the picture of neutrality.
“Like, just the two of you?” Tall looked at Taller and laughed. “Okay . . . uh, when’s your big important rehearsal gonna be over?”
Lydia’s lips pressed together almost imperceptibly. The Grandma Humphreys equivalent of taking out a shotgun. As my cheeks filled with heat, I remembered, suddenly, where I’d seen these guys: onstage, at their concerts. They were the New York Minuets, Kensington’s douchiest a cappella group. This was an impressive title to hold, since the Kensington a cappella scene was a shade or two less friendly than the mafia, and a shade or two more exclusive. I wondered if the exclusive vibe was something they manufactured on purpose, or if they just fundamentally lacked the ability to befriend people who didn’t spend all their time singing nonsense syllables.
“Don’t you guys have music buildings to practice in?” I asked.
“Don’t you have a theater to use?” said Taller, adjusting his perfect hair.
“Yes,” I said. “You’re standing in the middle of it.”
Tall lifted his freckle-spattered hands. “Okay, calm down.”