Don't Touch (17 page)

“Okay, sure, but—”

“Tell me you're a fan of getting groped by Oscar, and I'll put these back.” He moves as if to start.

“I'm not a fan. Not. A fan.”

Peter smiles.

“But this is so . . . elaborate.” That he would do this for me, I'm overwhelmed.

“I have anger problems,” Peter says lightly as if he's said he's a fan of scuba diving. “Sometimes when I get angry, instead of punching my fist through a wall—”

“You've done that?”

He shrugs. “I express my frustration through art.”

“This is art?”

He shrugs again, grinning, “Well, that's what I'll claim if they catch me, but they won't. And even if they do, I used the tiniest bit of putty. It'll peel off. That's grounds for suspension, tops.”

“But for making fun of Oscar?”

“I'm not making fun of him,” Peter says, “I'm defining him.” His smile's contagious, dangerous.

“He'll think I did it.”

“No. He won't. Seriously, you're new. You're a girl. The only thing he suspects you of is being in love with him. The guy's got a runaway ego.”

“So who's he going to think did it?”

“Somebody who wishes they could
be
him. Probably the mission will backfire. Probably, it'll just feed his ego.”

“Mission?”

“Yeah, Project A-hole.”

I'm laughing too loudly. I'll get Peter in trouble. “Can we put them away? Before somebody sees?”

“I'll put them away. I can't risk you getting implicated in my covert activity. Roger that?”

“I copy.”

“No, you're supposed to say ‘roger' back.”

“Roger back.”

He groans. “You'd be hopeless as a spy.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“No, I'm serious. Get out of here before you compromise my position.”

“Okay.”

“Go! Be off!” He's gathered a couple of volumes in one arm and is sweeping at me with the other. “That's Shakespearean for ‘leave.'”

“Peter?”

“What?”

“Thank you.”

He holds my eyes, and maybe it's my imagination—it's still dark in here—but I think his cheeks flush red. Or maybe I'm mixing up what I see in him with what
I
feel.

Peter waves me away.

“Have you seen this?” Oscar bends over the lunch table,
Merriam-Webster
in hand, open to his definition. I guess news of pranks travels fast.

Oscar's beaming.

People lean in and fall back laughing. Peter does the same. He's a great actor because he's not hiding anything. He's not worried about getting caught, and he thinks his own joke is fantastic.

“I'm famous,” Oscar says. “I mean, more famous than I already was.”

Peter widens his eyes at me—see? He told me so. And he mouths the words, “Worse than I thought.”

Oscar breaks into song: “You ain't nobody till somebody hates you!”

My eye contact with Peter lasts a little too long, and there's so much potential energy thrumming between us—it wants us to close the distance, fall in. It's like one of Dad's physics tricks—stretching the rubber band makes it get warmer.

Sooner or later it snaps.

I ask Mandy if we can go somewhere to talk after rehearsal. As much time as we've been spending together, it can be hard to get Mandy alone.

We pick the Dancing Elephant Café, a crunchy-granola place near Avondale Park, named for Miss Fancy, the circus elephant who used to be an attraction there. The sign out front is already lit up since the light's fading earlier these days, and there's actually a chill in the air.

On the stage in the corner, a guitarist's setting up for what looks like a punk-country crossover. “Cowboy meet fauxhawk,” says Mandy. “I like.”

I think she likes the guy's exposed arms. Mandy looks like she wants a private concert, but I hope he won't start playing before we're gone.

Mandy buys us tea and pumpkin bars—“Made with
lots
of
real
butter,” she says, “so hush-hush to my mom.”

I've got to talk to someone, but telling Mandy about Peter feels like a risky step. If I tell, it will feel more real, like this might be the start of something.

So, I stall. “You and Drew . . . that's all good?”

“It's been rough since auditions,” she allows, and then brightens, “but Caddie, you have no idea how amazing it is to be in love.”

It isn't her fault I have no idea, that I won't maybe ever. “I don't suppose you want to tell me about it?”

“It's like, I see things differently. Everything looks . . . more of whatever it is.”

I snatch up and tuck away every word. By the time she's finished, Mandy's made love sound like a unicorn made of rainbows that cures cancer in its spare time.

“So what's up with you?” she asks.

“Well.” I break off a piece of my pumpkin bar with a fork. Mandy, of course, is using her hands, but everybody's gotten used to me keeping the gloves on to eat. “Peter did something super nice,” I say, and at the risk of breaking spy rules, I reveal that Peter was behind Oscar's definition. “I like him, Mandy.”

She squeals. “I knew it!” she says. “I
knew
! Maybe this is why you had to get cast as Ophelia. Maybe it's your
fate
so you and Peter can fall for each other.”

“Too late,” I say.

“I knew it!” she says. “I was just waiting for you to admit it.”

I'm already wondering if confiding in Mandy was a bad call, but her excitement for me, her pleasure at getting the secret firsthand, makes it worth it.

“Here's the thing,” I say. “I don't know what to do about it.”

“You kiss him,” Mandy says. “Duh.”

I think,
don't touch
, but in spite of it, I laugh.

“I don't want . . .” I'm not sure what I can say that won't reveal too much. “I should probably keep things professional,” I say. “What if something went wrong and we couldn't stand working together?”

“That's fear,” Mandy says. “You know what you do with fear? You have to crush it.” For punctuation, she takes a raw sugar cube from the bowl on the table and pulverizes it between her teeth.

“That's the other thing about being in love,” she says. “I'm not afraid of things so much—it's like when you ask yourself what's the worst thing that can happen? It can't be that bad because Drew is still there.”

“Mandy, what do you have to be afraid of?”

“I get afraid of things,” she says, “looking stupid, saying the wrong thing . . . Everybody does.”

I think about Mom, how her face looked pinched for months before Dad left town. That pinched look, that was fear, the tension that comes before pain.

Maybe it's mean to ask, but I have to: “What about losing Drew? Are you afraid of that?”

“Ahhhh!” Mandy makes an animal sound in her throat. “Petrified! I don't think there's anything scarier than losing a person you care about—except maybe not caring at all.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

Over the next couple of days, every time I make eye contact with Mandy, she shoots a meaningful look toward Peter. Sooner or later, he's sure to catch on.

Meanwhile,
Peter
barely looks at me except when we're reading lines together at rehearsal. Maybe my reaction to Project A-hole wasn't as big as he'd hoped . . . or maybe he saw something in my eyes, too eager, too swoony, and he doesn't want those feelings from me.

“Best safety lies in fear.” That's Oscar reading his line.

Nadia says, “What do we think he means, Caddie?” Of course she calls on me when my mind's wandering.

“I think he means Ophelia has to keep safe.”

“Okay . . . in what way?”

I know what the line means. I wrote about it in my journal, but my understanding of it's all tied up with Peter, and I'm afraid if I open my mouth I might talk about that. I shake my head.

“Try to stay with us, Caddie.”

On Friday, Nadia tells us to practice in pairs while she holds character conferences. I move toward Peter, but Nadia calls him, and Mandy pulls me toward Drew.

“Let's work on your first scene,” Mandy says.

“Nadia said pairs,” Drew says. “Just actors.”

“As long as I'm here, I might as well help,” Mandy says, and she looks back and forth between us, smiling. “My boyfriend and my best friend, making magic together.”

Drew lowers his voice to speak to Mandy, but I hear him fine: “You said you'd stop trying to help. It gets us irritated with each other, and I don't want that.”

“That's when we're not at rehearsal,” she says, “but it's my job to help here. What if Caddie needs my help?”

Ophelia has only six lines in this scene, and they're not that difficult language-wise. Polonius, on the other hand, never stops talking. But Drew turns to me, resigned.

“Daddy's little girl,” he says to me, his voice and eyes flat as he opens his arms. I don't step into them.

“We can work on the father-daughter vibe later,” Mandy says.

“I don't know—it feels pretty right-on to me,” I say, and Drew exhales something between a sigh and a laugh. For a moment, I'm free from his negative beam. Without meaning to, I've taken his side.

“We're just doing language right now anyway,” Mandy says, eyes cast down on her script.

Nadia's told us that commas mean speed up, keep building, and on one line, Drew has so many that he runs out of breath and gasps.

“This is impossible,” he says. “‘Springes to catch woodcocks,' what does that even mean?”

“He means that Hamlet's setting a trap for Ophelia, making her think he loves her so she'll sleep with him. ‘Springes' means traps. It's in the footnotes, see?” Mandy reaches to point at his script, but Drew shuts it.

“Nobody talks like this.”

Mandy laughs. “You hear a lot of people walking around going ‘‘tis' and ‘hath' and ‘prithee'? It's Shakespeare, baby.”

“Don't call me baby.”

“You call me that all the time.”

“But you like it.”

Mandy purses her lips and says, “Not if you don't like it when I say it back to you.”

“Guys,” I say, and they both turn their mad eyes on me. Mandy's drop back to neutral quickly, but Drew's stay mad. “Sorry, I just . . . shouldn't we practice?”

“Yes,” Mandy says, and she turns back to Drew. “Let's take it again from the top.”

“You take it again,” Drew says, and he stomps off.

“That doesn't even make sense,” Mandy calls after him. “Baby!” Turning back to me, she says, “That went well.”

“Maybe he needs some time to get used to you being Assistant Director.”

“Yeah, I don't think Drew expected me to actually do anything as AD besides take notes and make coffee. If that were the job, I wouldn't have taken it.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Why should you be sorry?”

She dives back into the script. I would be so anxious to run and fix things with Drew, but she seems determined not to let him get to her.

Nadia calls me then, and Mandy pops her eyes wide.

“Thank you,” I say.

“What for?”

“For working with me, being excited for me. You're a pretty amazing friend.”

Mandy beams and puts her hand to her heart. I always want to shake off nice words—they embarrass me—but Mandy drinks them in.

Nadia's made a meeting space in a room off the backstage area. Peter's coming out as I'm going in. I almost want to reach out and squeeze his hand, but he steps aside, giving me plenty of room.

“I'm so nervous,” I say. An offering.

“Nervous works for you,” he says. “She already loves you. You'll be great.” I try to take in his words like Mandy would, let them swim through me like a drink of something warm. There's an unfinished edge between us, something wanting to be said, but now isn't the time. He waves and heads back to the stage.

“Ophelia,” Nadia says with a twist to her mouth like there's something funny about it.

“Hi.”

She motions for me to sit down and turns to a fresh page in the little notebook she carries. “How are you feeling about the part?”

“Excited. Nervous. Thank you for casting me. I didn't think . . . being new . . .”

“I didn't either,” Nadia says. “It usually takes new students a while to feel open enough to give me the performance I'm looking for.”

Open. I don't think of myself with that adjective.

“I hope,” I say, “that it wasn't a fluke. I didn't expect that I would . . . I don't know . . . feel so much at the audition.”

Nadia shrugs. “You were listening,” she says, “letting things affect you. If you did it once, you can do it again.”

And again. And again.

“Of course, we'll want a little more control.”

I nod.

“So tell me about Ophelia,” Nadia says. “How do you see her?”

I breathe in, try to keep it smooth, then say, “I've been thinking about how she's someone who has rules to follow—her father's rules, and her brother's rules, and Hamlet's, too, I guess, since he's a prince.”

“Yes, good.”

“And there's that part where she talks about Hamlet coming to her room and how he touches her face and shakes her by the arm . . .”

Nadia waves a hand as if to pull more words from me.

“Well, I think that freaks Ophelia out so much not just because Hamlet's acting crazy, but because it breaks all the rules.”

“Hm. Mm-hm.” Nadia tilts her head, writes something down.