A Step Toward Falling (5 page)

Neither one of us is ready for what comes next. Francine turns and fixes me with a stare full of fury and resentment. For a second I wonder if she really hates me. Her teeth begin to grind and her lips move as if an explosion is building up inside. Finally she screams, “BAH WAH YUV EE OTHER!” She flounces over to a nearby table and
bangs her fists into it.

Suddenly it's amazing—we understand her perfectly because her acting is so good. “You
love
each other?” Lucas says.

She looks over at him gratefully, as if there's a long history of Dad understanding her needs better than Mom. “Yes. Wary much.” There are real tears in her eyes.

“Uh . . . maybe your mother and I should talk about this,” Lucas finally says.

Mary claps once. “Great and scene!” Francine turns away from the table, straightens her glasses on her face, and takes a bow before returning to her seat.

Mary turns to the group. “So it looks like Francine went with an all-out emotional plea to get what she wanted. Was that a smart thing to do?”

Harrison raises his hand. “Yes!” he says. “Because she got what she wanted!”

“Okay, good point. But let's say you're working a job and the boss says no dating between employees. You've met someone you like there and you both want to go out. Is crying the best way to get your boss to change her mind?”

No one says anything.

“Harrison's got a good point, but I'm thinking in different situations, probably not. If you're trying to make sure people don't treat you like a child, one of the most important things you can do is not act like a child. Emotional pleas can be effective, but we want to be careful when we use them, right?”

On our way back to our seats, Chad catches my eye.
“
Great
job,” he whispers. I feel a tingle in my armpits. The truth is, he's even cuter than Ryan Harding.

After the
Jeopardy!
game is over, Mary introduces a new topic: learning how to say no without hurting other people's feelings. When she asks for volunteers to do a role-play, Chad's hand goes up. He smiles gamely around the room as if he's surprised no one else is raising their hand. Frankly, so am I. Surely one of the women would like to do a scene with someone as handsome as Chad, I assume, but no.

“Anyone else?” Mary asks.

No one. I look around the room and I think I know what's happening. I'm not the only person who has noticed how cute he is. He has the aura of celebrity. Last week, Sheila announced that if she could date anyone, she would pick Justin Bieber. Now it's as if Justin Bieber has joined our group for the night. There is that sort of electricity in the air. They can't talk and gawk at the same time.

I don't know if it's okay for two volunteers to do an improv together without a student as well but I raise my hand. “I'll do it.”

Apparently with a new topic, it is. “Great, Emily! Thank you!”

I assume our scene will involve me turning down his request for a date. I can already tell Chad has a sense of humor by the way he pats his stomach after he stands up, as if we're about to eat a big meal. “Ready to go?” He smiles at me. This time the soles of my feet tingle.

“Ready,” I say, wondering if I can summon the wherewithal to say no to a pretend invitation from this guy. Mary hands us our scenario written on a piece of paper:
Jane and
Adam are friends from work. Jane keeps asking Adam on a date, but he doesn't want to go and doesn't know how to tell her.

Oh, great,
I think.
Of course I have to be the sad girl haranguing the boy for a date
.

Chad walks up to the front of the room and starts the scene by stirring a large, invisible pot in front of him. I pick up the cue and pretend to carry a heavy tray of plates back to the kitchen. “Hi, Adam!” I say, putting my load down on the invisible counter next to him. “So I'm glad to see you because there's something I wanted to ask . . .”

Chad tastes his invisible concoction and makes a face. “Okay,” he says, salting.

“I was wondering if you'd like to go out with me this weekend.”

He looks at me and smiles again, his “spoon” raised to his lips. He's supposed to say no but the role-play can't end too quickly. “Go where?” he says.

“Maybe you could come over to my house. I could show you my music collection. It's mostly One Direction, but you like them, right?” I'm trying to suggest something pretty unappealing. A few people get the joke and laugh. His “spoon” doesn't move but his eyebrows go up. “Love them,” he says.

“Great. So how about seven on Saturday?”

“Wait! I can't!” He laughs and drops his invisible “spoon.” “I'm sorry, Mary. I blew it. I'm supposed to say no, right?”

“That's right, Chad. Try again. Start the scene over from One Direction, Emily—nice suggestion, by the way—and go—”

I start again. “So I have six of their CDs. What I like to do is start with the first one and listen to them all straight through. They kind of sound the same but then if you keep listening you think, wow, they're such great musicians.” I've gotten into a groove now, channeling the girls I remember who talked this way in middle school.

Chad works hard not to laugh. “I'd like to, seriously. It's just hard cause I'm working a lot and I'm kinda busy these days.”

“You've got Wednesday off.” I surprise myself with how quickly improvisation comes back. One more trick that I remember: the more a character clearly wants something, the easier they are to play. “Why don't we do it then? Please, Adam?”

I get a few laughs with my overeager act. Chad looks down and then back up and smiles so sweetly, I stop speaking. He's having a hard time saying no. A really hard time.

“
Please
, Adam,” I say. We are grinning at each other now, like we are not our characters. And the word won't come out of his mouth. We both have to laugh because he's
terrible
at this.

Mary claps her hands to pause the scene. “Good work, Chad and Emily. Chad's showing everyone how hard it can be to say no sometimes. What could Chad say, folks? Let's make some suggestions.”

Now I wonder if maybe Chad's silence was intentional. He's done this before and maybe he knows the rules—like if two volunteers are acting out a scene, they need one person to freeze and get suggestions from the
group. Sheila raises her hand. “He could say, I don't like One Direction, I like Justin Bieber.”

“He could say no,” Harrison suggests.

“He should say, I don't want to go with you,” Francine says. It's funny—now that we've been around her more, she's easier to understand.

Mary continues, “Chad, do you want to pick one of those?”

Chad turns to me, still smiling. “Hmm,” he says.

“Chad, why don't you tell Jane here you're not interested in having a relationship outside of work,” Mary suggests. “Then she'll know she should stop asking you out.”

Chad's eyes never move from mine. “Okay,” he says. “Can we start over?”

“Sure. From the top, Emily!” Mary claps again and this time I make more suggestions, opening up the possibility of doing something every night of the week. He watches me with a smile in the corner of his mouth, as if he's stretching this out intentionally because he's enjoying my performance.

“Wow,” he finally says. “It all sounds great, but I can't. I'm busy this weekend.”

“What about next weekend?” I know the goal Mary is trying to get us to. He's meant to say no not only to these invitations but to future ones as well.

“I don't know. Maybe I could do next weekend.”

Mary claps for us to stop again. This isn't going right. We're smiling too much and enjoying ourselves. Instead of stopping the scene, Chad leans over and whispers in my
ear, “I might be able to go out next weekend.”

I can't help myself. I laugh even though I see Lucas in the corner with his arms folded over his chest, looking on disapprovingly. I wish he were a friend so I could explain what this feels like. We can't act out this scenario because we like each other! I've never flirted like this before!

We try it a few more times until finally Mary gets tired of it. “Chad, tell Emily you aren't interested in having a relationship with her at all. That if she asks you out next week, the answer will be the same.”

He turns and fixes his blue eyes on mine. “If you ask me out next week, my answer will be the same,” he says.

After class is over, Chad walks out beside me. “That was fun,” he whispers. “I should get your number just in case I change my mind about One Direction.” I can't stop smiling at how easy this seems. Usually a conversation like this requires a long dissection with Richard afterward to determine if any flirting was actually taking place. Now there's no question. What's harder to tell is if he's really asking for my number. Then I can't believe it—he digs in his pocket and pulls out his phone. “I have to run and meet someone from school, but I can walk and type at the same time.”

I'm so surprised by his ease that I don't say anything right away.

“It's good for volunteers to have each other's numbers. This way if I need a ride or something I'll call you. Or you can call me.”

“Sure,” I say, remembering too late that I'm the one who needs a ride tonight. My mom needed the car and
dropped me off earlier.

I tell him my number, which he types in one-handed. When we get near the front door, he turns around and walks backward, grinning the way he did when we were doing our improv. “If you ask me again, my answer will be the same,” he says, laughing and shaking his head. “God, I was bad at that.”

A moment later he's gone and I turn to see Lucas sitting by himself in the lobby. Apparently he didn't drive himself either. I sit down a few seats away from him. I assume we'll sit here in silence, which we've done plenty of times before, but Lucas surprises me. After a minute, he says, “What do you think about this class?”

I have a feeling I know what he wants me to say.
These people dating? No, thanks.
Suddenly I can't help myself. It's like flirting with Chad has given me enough self-confidence to say what I really think. “I like it. Mary isn't telling anyone that they shouldn't think about dating. She's saying there are rules to doing it the right way and you probably shouldn't bother setting your sights on Justin Bieber.” Maybe I'm saying too much. Maybe his point is only,
I don't want to picture these folks on dates or touching each other. I've seen enough of that.

“It didn't freak you out a little today?” he says.

I'm not sure what he means. To me it was like the class the week before except for Chad joining it. Then I remember something else. After break, Annabel and Ken, the only established couple in the class, announced that they'd broken up over the weekend. “Would you like to
talk about that with the group, Annabel, or is it private between you and Ken?” Mary had asked.

Annabel thought for a minute, then turned to Ken, who looked miserable. “It was about having sex, so I guess it's private.”

“That's probably right,” Mary said. “Good decision, Annabel.”

The subject got dropped, but that must be what Lucas is thinking about now. “I mean, I'm sorry, but should those two be talking about
having sex
?”

I don't know if he's thinking about Belinda when he says this. We've never mentioned her name with each other. “Well. It sounded like they talked about it and they didn't agree on what they wanted so they broke up.”

“Yeah, but should
any of us
be sitting around talking about sex?”

I'm surprised at Lucas saying “us” like we're part of the same group. Lucas and I are both seventeen. Of my friends, only Barry and Weilin have had sex (with each other, after a year and a half of dating) but I'm part of the nerd brigade. I've always assumed everyone in Lucas's crowd has done it plenty.

“I don't know,” I say. “We have that class at school, Real World Issues. People talk about it there, right?” I've never taken Real World Issues. I only know about it because all my friends make fun of the end-of-semester project where everyone carries an egg around for a week so they'll understand the constant demand of having a baby. The teacher marks the egg so you can't switch it or hard-boil it. You also
go down a full letter grade on the final if you're ever caught at school or around town without it. Students are encouraged to respectfully police one another, which means, for a full week, everyone walks around saying, “May I see your egg?” Even if you aren't enrolled in the class, it's a funny thing to say. Or, “How's your egg, mine's a little fussy.” Richard thinks these jokes are so funny he makes them for weeks after the project is over even though no one in our crowd has ever taken the class. None of us has room in our schedule for a blow-off like Real World Issues. We're all trying to get through our AP credits.

Lucas is—well, the type to take Real World Issues. It's just a guess, but it turns out I'm right. “We didn't talk about sex that much,” he says. “I mean, a little, but not like this.”

I thought the whole class was about sex. The teacher, Ms. Simon, is wildly popular. “Doesn't everyone love Ms. Simon because she talks about sex a lot?”

“Not at all. Mostly she talks about other stuff. She did this thing where you could anonymously suggest a topic to discuss. You have to say something compassionate but also honest. Like if the topic is cutting yourself, you have to say, ‘It makes me feel scared for someone who's doing that, but it also makes me think it's a cry for help.'”

This is the longest I've ever heard Lucas talk. I can't help feeling surprised. Mostly that he's used the word “compassionate” in a sentence.