Damsel Distressed (4 page)

Gild's posture, combined with the music, seems to say, “I'll get you, my pretties, and I'm gonna ship you back to Kansas if you screw up my sets.”

It feels like a punchline, and I swear I see Gild's mouth twitch as she resists a smile. She loves a good sound cue almost as much as I do.

“Yes, Mrs. Gild,” Brice and I reply in unison.

She gives us a wink, and the corner of her mouth pulls up into a grin. When she turns to her clipboard, the stage jolts back to life with banging and talking in equal measure. Brice and I return to our paintbrushes and half-done walls.

“So, what's your excuse?” Brice asks as he drags the soggy brush over the particleboard and outlines another stone. I look over at him as he works. His sandy blond eyebrows are drawn tight with concentration, and his tongue is just barely sticking out of his thin-lipped mouth.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Jonathan and I've been going out for about three months now, thank you very much, so I'm entitled to periodic fainting spells when he's being all adorable.” He flip-flops his head from side to side as he emphasizes his point. “But you and Grant are just
friends
and you keep telling me you're just
friends
, and while I'm sure you are just
friends
, you still have a little drool right—” He reaches up like he's going to wipe my chin, and I swat his hand away.

“We are, though. Really, I swear.”

I swear. I swear. You have no idea how much I swear
.

I bite at the edge of my thumb. All I want in the whole world is to look over my shoulder and see if I can spot Grant again. Not to ogle. That was a moment of temporary frivolity. Grant is not the kind of boy you leer at. He's the kind of boy you love. My neck aches to turn around. I just want to be sure he's still there.

I always feel better when I'm sure.

Brice lowers his chin and looks up at me with a sly smile as he gives his thin paintbrush a perfectly timed twirl. “Well, your words say you swear, but your face looks like a fish on a hook. Mouth all gaping open—”

“Briiiiiiiiiiice, no!” I feel my face spreading into another huge open-mouthed smile. I cover my face when I realize I do actually look like a largemouth bass. I lift my heel to gently kick him in the knee, and behind me, I hear Grant's voice. He's shouting something to someone up on the catwalk. His voice cuts straight into my eardrum. I'm like a radio that only picks up one station.

If he could feel the flush on my cheek, if he could see the way I'm biting my bottom lip.

Obvious. Readable. Again.

I reach higher with my paintbrush, and my long-sleeved shirt tugs at my wrist and lifts in the back. These paint fumes. I look to the open stage door—I can just see a sliver of the outside world through the rows and rows of hanging curtains in the wings.

Maybe I should make a dash for the fresh air.

“—tongue all hanging out, I mean, please. You've gotta play it cool like me,” Brice says.

I reach down, drop my brush into the drip tray, and then pull at the hem of my shirt and my sleeves. I turn my back to the set and pull my ankles in as far as they'll go—which isn't very far—as I look out over the auditorium chairs.

“Right. Cool like you,” I say.

“Right. But seriously, you like him.” He lowers his voice. “He likes you, too. What's the problem?”

I should have jumped out of Therapist George's window when I had the chance.

I keep my lips pulled into a smile for Brice's sake, but in my head, I'm seeing an exaggerated version of our little display of school-girl behavior. All giggling and blushing and desperate looks. I imagine myself leaning forward and staring at Grant with a
let me love you
look of desperation smeared across my face.

And it makes me sick.

If Brice saw it, did Grant? He'd never tell me if he did. Grant would never want me to feel embarrassed. But if he saw it, he'd know what it was. He'd know what every look meant. And I'd promised myself those feelings would be buried for good.

Just the way he wants it.

He's made it perfectly clear that whatever lightning I think is buzzing between us is an illusion. A misinterpretation.

“Brice, we're just not like that. We're best friends.” I use too much emphasis. I sound like an actor trying to say a line they don't fully understand.

Beside me, Brice shifts around on his knees as he paints on another contour. I watch as Mrs. Gild marches through the rows of seats with three techies behind her, tripping over their attempts to keep up. With all of the houselights up, the auditorium is utterly unextraordinary. I miss the magic.

“So you've
never
been anything else? Not even a kiss? That really surprises me. Something about the way you look at each other. I really thought you had history.” When Brice speaks this time, his voice is more tender. He doesn't look away from his work in the same way people don't look at an animal in the wild so it doesn't spook and run off.

“Well, we've got plenty of history. You have no idea.”

My head aches with the sight of Grant behind my eyelids. I can see him sitting there, his face in his hands. I remember the way my bed pulled down as he sat by my side. I remember thinking the bandage on my arm was too tight. I remember the icicle lights next door flickering, sending light falling onto my bed like snow. I think my head may actually pop open.

“Ah-ha! You have kissed!” My pause causes Brice to jump to the wrong conclusion. His pale face lights up like an excited puppy as he turns toward me and waits for the details. Details he's definitely not going to get.

“No,” I interrupt him. “We almost, maybe, kinda had something almost happen last year, but it was
not
a kiss and it was
not
a good idea. It was a mistake.”

“A mistake, how?” Brice asks with trepidation, his eyes lifting into a concerned shape. His head tilts to the side as if it were so easy to convey compassion.

“‘Cause he pulled away from me. I thought there was something more, but I was wrong. He doesn't like me like that. So can we drop it, please?”

Boom.

Grant and I have been best friends since writing our names required twenty-five minutes and an entire sheet of paper. He has been the most constant part of my life.

Grant is my gravity. He doesn't force anything, but he is a force. Something I never even notice until I realize I haven't drifted away.

He loves me and has shown me that love over and over.

But it's not every kind of love.

It's just one kind.

And it's a really good kind.

But it's not the only kind.

It's not the kind of love that grew in me.

It's not like the love that snuck into my heart and set up shop, slowly taking up more and more space until there wasn't a single cell not filled with it.

Just like that, I feel the pressure of invisible clouds hovering over me. Fat and aching with rain they're desperate to spill.

Brice has shut up. And the look on his face as he wipes off a drip of grey tells me he realizes he's just stuck a red-hot poker deep into an unhealed wound.

“I'm sorry, honey. I didn't know,” he says without looking at me.

“Let's just keep painting, okay?” I force myself to take a deep breath and blow it out slowly as one of the freshman techies drops a giant ladder he was carrying back to the scene shop. The clatter gives me an excuse to turn my head toward the rest of the stage.

I dip my brush again into the grey and look over toward Grant. His back is to me, but I imagine he can feel my eyes on him. I imagine he turns around and looks at me from under his dark hair. And then he crosses the space between us and puts his face near mine and whispers in my ear that he loves the way I laugh.

But he doesn't turn. He's running to help the kid who lost his ladder. I shake off the ridiculousness of my daydream and get back to work as I reach down to resume the act of turning plywood into stone.

4

W
e, the techies of Crestwood High, work until after dark on the sets for
Once Upon a Mattress
. We are completely exhausted by the end of the evening when Gild sits us down and tells us that tomorrow we'll finally be meeting the cast and joining rehearsals after school. By the time Grant and I pile into my car, I feel like I've run some kind of marathon or something. Everything hurts. I am so freaking sore and tired by the time I drop off Grant at his house around the corner that I don't even notice the moving truck parked along the curb until I almost smash into it.

But it's worth it to have been gone the entire time she moved in.

I pull out my phone as I sit in my car and stall. The last thing I want to do is go into that newly sisterified house.

Evelyn has texted me three times. First, to tell me Carmella arrived safe and sound this morning. The second was to ask if I'd be home in time for dinner. “There'll be pizza!” Which apparently means I am some kind of rabid, fat animal who will rush home at the first mention of pepperoni. Which isn't exactly false, but whatever.
Suck it, Evelyn
. And the last says, “Didn't know rehearsal would last so long. Carmella and I are going to bed.”

So now, in addition to my significant body odor, muscle fatigue, and emotional rawness, I also get to be moments from a panic attack.

Because she's in there. Right now.

Our parents got married last December. I “met” her right after Christmas, and then she went back to her dad's. And now, in October, halfway through the fall semester, she shows up at our doorstep. She moves into my mom's old craft room. She inserts herself into the life that I'm barely living in the first place. And nobody will even explain what happened that warranted upending her whole life and mine.

I park behind the moving truck in my normal place along the curb, but nothing about sitting here feels the same. I lean over to look out the passenger window and up at the second floor windows sitting side by side. Mine on the right is wide and squatty, while hers is narrow and tall.

I see you, window-related irony.

It embarrasses me to the point of nausea when I realize I am muttering to myself. My behavioral conditioning has kicked in, and I'm droning, “I am whole. I am more than just the pieces that I see. I am stronger than I seem.”

I close my eyes and put my head on my steering wheel.

“You have to go inside, Imogen,” I whisper. I wipe my sweaty hands on my jeans before I finally get out of the car.

I step inside the house, locking the door behind me as quietly as I can. I head straight to the kitchen. The lights are off, except for the long fluorescent bulbs under the top cabinets, shining down on the countertops.

I set down my bag and pick up the note.

So sorry we missed you, Imogen, honey. There's plenty of leftover pizza in the fridge. And salad too! Get some rest. See you in the morning!

I open the fridge and toss the box of salad straight to the trash bin, burying it under some plastic wrap and waxed paper.

“No salad tonight, Evelyn. 'Cause you're not the boss of me,” I whisper to the empty kitchen. I should give classes on maturity.

As sneakily as I can, I take the cold leftover pizza and my bag and creep up the stairs. It never seems to matter if I take the stairs slowly or quickly because they always creak. As a kid, when I snuck down to the kitchen at night, I tried all sorts of tricks to try and keep the steps from making noise. I walked on the edges, right along the railing. I tried crawling up on all fours. They always creak. These stairs are a miserable accomplice.

My legs hurt so bad. I lug them up, step by step, until I'm outside my room—right next to Carmella's. I sneak past her door like she's waiting to pop out or something.

Inside my room, I lock the door handle. The last bite of my pizza crust is a little burned, which leaves the flavor of char on my tongue. I want to take a shower, I really do, but I'm too exhausted. I tighten my ponytail, throw on some pajamas, and collapse onto my bed, which groans under my weight. I catch my breath and hope the sound of the springs won't wake her next door.

My stomach presses against my quilt, and I breathe in the sweet, freshly washed smell. One point for Evelyn. Just one.

As soon as my body starts to relax, I feel cold wetness seeping into my clothes. The front of my hoodie, shirt, and pants are wet, and it feels like I am lying face down in a puddle.

I roll off the bed and pull back the cover to see one of my robin's egg blue bath towels. Soaking wet, laid out, and hidden underneath my quilt.

I rip the wet towel and sheets off my bed; my mattress is soggy and cold.

As I walk, the water from the dripping towel pools on the floor in the hallway, and I feel tiny puddles under every heavy footfall.

I toss the wet towel into the bathtub. It will probably be mildewed and gross by morning, but I don't care.

When I turn, a neon green Post-it stuck on the mirror catches my attention. Written in black permanent marker:

This isn't just your bathroom anymore. I found your disgusting wet towel on the floor when I tried to shower this afternoon, so I put it away for you. Sleep tight
.

I didn't expect this.

I thought I expected this, but I didn't really.

I wanted to believe it was all in my head and somehow she'd come here and everything would be fine.

I wanted to believe the hate in her eyes when she saw me bleeding and crying was imaginary.

I crumple the Post-it into a ball before shoving it in my hoodie pocket. I turn away as fast as I can so I don't make eye contact with my reflection. Right now, nothing sounds worse than looking in a mirror. So I don't.

In the dark hallway I pause, listening for the sound of her cackling like an evil witch or something, but the house is quiet. She's fast asleep. Of course she is.