Don't Touch (15 page)

“All right, your turn,” Hank says, spinning his finger in a circle toward me and Peter. “We can double date, the king and the queen and the prince and the . . . What are you?” he asks me.

“A courtier? I don't know. Are you so excited?” I say to Peter, to get away from the cute talk.

“Excited,” he says. “And terrified.”

“That's what makes it fun,” Oscar says. “When I went in for my first day of shooting with Lance—”

“You shook so bad your costume glasses fell off your face,” Hank finishes.

“She hasn't heard it before!” Oscar says, pointing to me. “I'm not bragging.”

“Of course not,” says Hank.

“If I were bragging, I would act like Lance was the one scared to be working with me.”

“Lance?” Peter teases.

“You work with a guy, you get to be on a first-name basis. I'm not trying to be snotty about it.”

“You're so good at it, though, without even trying,” Hank says.

Everyone laughs, Oscar too. He still rubs me the wrong way—he did rub me, in a very wrong way, at our first meeting—but I get why they like him.

“Let's talk flash mob.” Peter turns sideways in his seat so his knee bumps mine.

Careful.

“Cannot wait,” Livia says.

Peter nods. “I was thinking we could do it at Mandy's Halloween party.”

“Mandy's?” I say.

“I know it's a ways off, but it will give us time to plan.”

“It's an annual thing,” Hank explains. “You guys are so tight, I'm surprised you haven't come before.” If anybody else said that, I'd question whether he meant to make me feel bad, but Hank has a way of being oblivious to the social dynamic.

“Will there be enough people there?” I ask.

“Half the school,” Oscar says.

Peter says, “Count on a hundred and fifty people. I figure if fifteen percent of them freeze, that should be about right.”

“That's like the whole cast of
Hamlet.
”

“Great minds . . . ,” Peter says, pointing a finger back and forth between my great mind and his. Livia claps. They're all looking at me with the same excitement Mandy used to show when I had a great idea. Getting cast makes such a difference.

I belong, even without Mandy here. I'm not glad Mandy's skipping lunch, but I'm glad to know how this feels.

“Caddie, I know you're going to beg to be my partner for warm-ups at rehearsal today,” Oscar says, “so I'll kill the suspense now and say yes.”

“Show of hands if you vote Oscar's banned from trust falls,” Peter says.

“Trust falls?” I say. “Like, where you fall. And other people. Try to catch you?” It takes several breaths to get out the words.

“That's Nadia's favorite bonding thing to do with a new cast,” he says, completely oblivious to my horror. “She's got a bajillion variations.”

Livia says, “I like the one where you stand in the middle of the circle and let everybody pass you around.”

“But you actually like people groping you,” Hank says. “I know.”

Livia giggles.

“I like the one,” Oscar says, “where people put their hands on different parts of your body all at once, moving down like a waterfall. Kind of hot.”

“Caddie?” Hank says. “Are you all right? You look red.”

Any sense of belonging I had has fled, and I'm back in my bubble. My air's running out—one false move and panic will come crashing in.

“Yeah, I'm okay,” I say. “I feel like I might be getting a fever. I'm going to see if the office will give me some Tylenol.”

Peter reaches out as if to touch my forehead, and I stand up fast.

“Feel better,” Peter says. “You can't miss the first rehearsal.”

“No, I know. Thanks. You feel better too. I mean, I didn't mean that. I mean, see you guys later.”

Going home sick is one option.

Jumping off the roof is another. Better that than dropping out of the play.

My feet carry me outside, across the drive to the amphitheater. Mandy's there, on the lowest level, folded into herself and smoking. Drew sits with her, and when he sees me, he stands. “Oh, good. Caddie can keep you company while I scarf something down.”

Mandy looks up toward me, indifferent. “You're leaving me?” she says to Drew.

He rubs his hands up and down her arms. “I love you, baby, but I'm hungry.”

“Okay,” she says in her mopiest voice. “Grab me a banana?”

“Sure thing.” On his way up he mutters, “Good luck,” to me under his breath.

“He's being nice,” I say.

“Yeah. He still says I ‘wrecked his audition,' but I guess I'm forgiven since I wrecked mine more.”

“I think you helped his audition—or you would have if he'd let you.”

Mandy takes an aggressive draw on her cigarette and lifts her chin to exhale.

“She should have at least asked me,” she says, “if I wanted to be AD.”

“What would you have said?”

She shrugs. “It might be more fun, if it were between that and a small part, but who knows? My mom's going to be pissed.”

I don't feel like I have permission to sit down yet, so I hover. “We missed you at lunch.”

“I couldn't deal with everybody.”

“I'm sorry.” I step down to the lowest level and sit, leaving one big stone seat between us.

“It's not your fault,” she says, and then after a drag, “Congratulations. You must be excited.”

“I am and I'm not,” I say. “I'm afraid of messing up, and . . . I've been afraid you'd be mad at me.”

She locks eyes with me. “I am mad at you,” she says, “a little. But I know it's not fair. I'm just jealous.” She smiles. “I'll get over it.”

I smile too, because she looks like the Mandy I know, the one who gets over things fast.

“Let me ask you this,” she says. “Did you even want that part? Because you didn't act like you did.”

“I did,” I say. “I didn't think I would get it, but yeah, I wanted it.”

She nods. “Good. I would be madder if you didn't. Why didn't you tell me, though? I was going on and on about it like an idiot. I wish I had known that you wanted it too.”

I can't help smiling. “So you could talk me out of it?”

“What? No!”

“Like you told Livia she'd be good at Horatio when she said she might be interested in Ophelia?”

Mandy inhales and takes that in, smiles guiltily. “Did I do that?”

“A little bit.”

“Hm.”

“I think she's pretty happy with Gertrude. King Hank kissed her at lunch.”

Mandy cackles, then shakes her head. “She's barking up the wrong tree.”

“What do you mean?”

“That tree only likes cats.”

It's nice talking with Mandy about her friends who are now
our
friends. Without Mandy, I wouldn't even know them.

“I'm sorry I didn't say anything about Ophelia. I didn't want anybody to know that I cared.”

“Okay, but there's a difference between telling everyone and telling your best friend.”

My reaction to that phrase, “best friend,” makes her smirk. She holds my eyes.

“We're friends, Caddie. I want us to always be friends.”

“Okay.”

“You have to be open with your friends, though, or what's the point?”

I should tell her. She might even understand, weird as it is. And maybe it would take some of its power away. . . .

“I need to talk to you about something,” I say.

“Yeah?”

My heart seems to tug at my vocal chords, stretching them tight. “It's about rehearsal this afternoon. I hear Nadia likes to do trust falls? Okay, well, remember when I told you I had sun poisoning?”

She nods.

If I let her in, it won't be just my problem anymore, and Mandy will want me to fix it. People change, feelings change—people hurt each other, hurt themselves, and whether or not I touch people has nothing to do with it.

“I . . . well . . . I still have it.”

Nadia's kind of acting is hard, but a lie is so easy.

“Seriously? That was, like, three weeks ago.”

“I know. I'm stupid.” I make myself sheepish. “It was dumb, but I laid out again.”

“Can I see?”

“I'm not supposed to expose it to sunlight.”

“We're in the shade.”

“I know, but it hurts to pull up my sleeves.”

“Ow! That sounds awful.”

“Yeah, well, I was hoping you could tell Nadia that I don't want anyone to know . . . or to worry about me, because it's not that big a deal, but I can't do trust falls. It would hurt too bad.”

She nods. “Ouch! Yeah, okay, I'll tell her. You'd better not go in the sun again, though. You're going to have trouble being in a play and not touching anybody.”

My thoughts exactly.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Some kids wait in the audience for rehearsal. Some stretch on the stage, including Peter. I'm going to be acting with him; I'd better be able to sit beside him.

I
want
to sit by him.

“Hi, Ophelia,” he says with a big grin as I flop down next to him.

“Hi, Hamlet,” I say, stretching over one leg. “We're so tragical.”

“I don't know about you, but I don't see the point in even doing the play. If we cut to the chase and do ourselves in at the top, we could be done in five minutes and go out for ice cream.”

“Right?”

“Wait,” he says. “Here's the kind of thing Nadia's going to want to know for your character journal: What's Ophelia's favorite ice cream flavor?”

“Character journal?”

“You'll see.”

“Did they have ice cream in Denmark back then?”

“Doesn't matter. Hamlet's taking Ophelia to the ice cream social. What does she order?”

“Um. How about lemon sorbet?”

“Ooh, I like it. Simple, clean.”

“What about Hamlet?”

“I think Hamlet's got to be a rocky road kind of guy.”

“So wait, is this supposed to be the kind of ice cream he would eat, or the kind of ice cream that he
is
?”

“It's an essence thing,” he says. “Instinct.”

“All right. I'll buy rocky road. What about Peter?”

He shakes his head. “To find that out you have to accompany me to the ice cream social.”

Did he just ask me out? To a nonexistent ice cream social, but still . . .

“Do some character research?” I say.

“Sure, or because it would be fun.”

Nadia's voice makes me shake: “Three fifteen. Let's begin.” Normally her presence in a room is enough to turn heads, but Peter's distracting.

“Thank you for being on time,” she says. “If you're late on a consistent basis, we'll replace you. Easy.”

Mandy stands at Nadia's side with a clipboard. She's beaming, and if it's an act, it's a good one.

Nadia motions for us to gather on the stage and gives us the first day rundown. We'll be taking this show to Bard if school-site judging goes well, and we can't take anything for granted. If the judges heard about the mess at Thespians last year, they might be less inclined to take us seriously.

When Nadia introduces Mandy, she says, “I'm pleased that Mandy Bower has agreed to assist me in this process. Treat her with the same respect you give me.” Mandy widens her eyes at us in a goofy, fake threat.

Nadia assigns the character journals. We're supposed to write down everything other characters in the play say about us, and lists of ways we're the same and different from the characters we're playing.

“Don't tell me the obvious, ‘Rosencrantz lives in Denmark, and I live in America.' I want essential differences. Peter might find that he and Hamlet both have a lust for vengeance.”

Peter laughs wickedly, and Nadia goes on, “Hypothetically. Caddie might find that while Ophelia is completely dependent on her father, she herself has trouble understanding that connection, or she understands it entirely. Either way. Think about what separates you from your character and what draws you together.”

We're supposed to come up with metaphors, like the ice cream. “If Laertes were a type of weather, what type of weather would he be?” She tells us to start collecting images—real-life people who remind us of our characters, poses and gestures we might use on stage. And we're to shoot a self-portrait.

“I want to see the character in you. You don't have to put on a costume or makeup, but you should try to capture something essential.”

She lets Mandy lead warm-ups, and Mandy takes an extra-long time with it, just for kicks, I think. She's a good leader. No one complains.

Then it's time for trust falls.

“I do this with every new cast,” Nadia says, and a couple of people laugh in recognition. “Let's all make a tight circle, shoulder to shoulder.”

I stand apart as the circle forms.

“Caddie,” Nadia says, “come and join us.”

Mandy widens her eyes at me and grimaces.

“Oh, but I can't . . .”

“Are you afraid? We'll catch you.”

“No. I mean, yes, I . . .”

Mandy rushes up beside us. “I'm sorry. I didn't get a chance to tell her,” she says, low.

“What's this?” Nadia says.

“I got . . . sun poisoning.” It's harder to make it sound like a good reason with Nadia than with Mandy.

“It makes her uncomfortable,” says Mandy.

“Uncomfortable?” Nadia says.

“I mean, it hurts her.”

Nadia looks back and forth between us. She thinks Mandy's lying for me, even though as far as Mandy knows, it's the truth. “You won't be falling far.”