Dreamers Often Lie (4 page)

When I turned back toward the windshield, the voice went on.

Thorough bush, thorough brier . . .

Mom settled into the front passenger seat, turning halfway around to keep one eye on me. Sadie plunked into the driver’s seat. She fit the key in the ignition, and a blast of music filled the freezing air. It made my skull ring, but at least it drowned out the sound of Shakespeare’s singing.

“Sadie,” said Mom warningly.

Sadie turned the music down.

We bumped out of the lot into the city streets. I sank down, letting the thump of the music beat against the pulse in my head.
Empty stage
.

Empty stage.

W
e’d lived in the same red brick house my entire life.

I knew every hole in the front porch screens. I knew the exact number of steps it took to get from my bed to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I could hit every light switch without looking. But as the minivan jostled up the snowy driveway, the house suddenly looked unreal to me. It seemed too small, or too thin, like we might step through its front door and find that it was just a façade, a flat wooden set with nothing on the other side.

Mom and Sadie helped me along the walkway. From the porch steps, I glanced back at the van. Empty. Nobody in a tunic and tights was following us up to the front door.

Thank you,
I thought. Then I wondered who I was thanking.

Mom opened the door. There was our living room, just where it should have been. There was the worn gold couch draped with blankets. The cluttered end tables. The slate fireplace, its mantel clustered with dusty photographs.

“You sit down and take it easy.” Mom peeled the coat
gently off of my shoulders. “I’ll go heat the oven, and we’ll have a nice, non-hospital-food dinner in about an hour.”

I glanced at the old wooden wall clock. Five thirty-five. Rehearsal was probably just ending. “Can I invite Tom and Nikki over?”

“Jaye, what definition of ‘taking it easy’ involves inviting your friends over the second you get home?” Mom shoved my coat into the crowded closet. “No visitors. Not tonight.” She passed me the cordless phone, which had been lying in a pile of papers on the coffee table. “You can have five minutes on the phone, and I’m timing you. Then you need to rest.”

“What happened to
my
phone?”

“The doctors said no screens, remember? That means no texting, no e-mail, no photos. Not for a few more days, at least.” Mom nodded at the receiver in my hand. “Your five minutes are dwindling.”

Sadie had already settled down with a textbook and a stack of notes at the dining room table. I squeezed past her, into the sunroom. The room was narrow and chilly in winter, and its row of windows stared out at our snow-buried backyard, but at least I could shut its French doors behind me.

Nikki answered on the second ring.

“Ohmygod! How are you!” she shouted, without even saying hello. In the background, I heard another voice yell, “Jaye! JayeJayeJaye!”

“That was Tom,” said Nikki. “So, how
are
you? How do you feel?’

My throat gave an unexpected clench. “I miss you two.”

“We miss
you,
” said Nikki. I heard Tom’s more-distant echo: “We miss
you!
”

“I’m not allowed to leave the house or have people over yet, but I couldn’t wait to talk to you.”

“When are you coming back?” Tom’s voice shouted into my ear.

“Monday, I think. Four more days. How are rehearsals going?”

Nikki’s voice answered again. “Well, all the cheerleaders show up to watch now.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“Give me a
P
!” Tom chanted in the background. “Give me an
I
!”

“Mr. Hall hasn’t already given my part away, has he?”

“He’s got the understudy learning it. One of those snotty show choir girls.” Nikki’s voice grew muffled. “What’s her name?”

“Michaela,” said Tom.

“Michaela,” Nikki repeated. “Oh—and I was going to tell you, tonight—”

The French doors creaked open. “Time’s up,” said Mom, holding out her hand for the phone.

“Already?” I put on my least-obnoxious pleading face.

Mom’s hand didn’t move.

I sighed. “I have to go,” I said into the phone. “But I’ll see you soon.”

“See you soon!” shouted Nikki.

“We love you!” shouted Tom, more distantly.

“How about a cup of herbal tea?” Mom offered, taking the receiver. “We’ve got peach, chamomile . . .”

“No, thanks. I’m just going to go up to my room for a while.”

“No reading, remember.”

“I remember.”

“And no homework. No working on your lines.”

“Mom, I
remember.
”

“Are you sure?” Her voice turned lightly teasing. “Do you need a chaperone? Because I can send your sister up there with you.”

“Please don’t.”

“
Please
don’t,” echoed Sadie from the dining room. “Even mold would try to escape from her room.”

Mom reached out and rubbed my upper arm. She’d touched me more in one day than I could remember her doing in the last full year. Her face was bright. “You know, I could show you a few yoga poses.”

“But I’m not supposed to—”

“Nothing strenuous. There are some very simple sitting or reclining poses that could help you focus on your breathing. Calm your mind.”

“Thanks, but I’m not feeling very yoga-ish right now.”

“Okay.” Mom’s hand slid off of my arm. “Dinner in forty-five minutes.”

She glided away into the kitchen.

I had to stop and rest twice on the way up the old wooden staircase. My heart thundered like I’d just run around the block, rushing more fuel to the ache in my head. My legs were bags of wet cement.

You’re all right
. I practiced slowing my breathing, even though it made my chest feel like it might explode.
You’re fine. You’re fine.

But when I reached the upper hall, I stopped. I stood there on the worn beige carpet, paralyzed by the same sense I’d had in the driveway. That this was all just a plywood set. That the walls on either side of me were hollow, with each familiar door leading nowhere.

I reached out and touched the wall to my left. It felt solid. It was covered with the same framed family photos that had hung there all my life, a few more pictures joining the collage each year. Dad was in many of them. Really, they were the only Dad-things that hadn’t disappeared. A month or two afterward, without anyone talking about it, his other things were just . . . gone. His clothes, his shoes, his toothbrush and soap and razor and vitamins and that kind of mineral water that nobody else liked. Just gone. I suppose it would have made a louder statement if all of the pictures had suddenly vanished too.

There was Mom and Dad’s wedding portrait, both of them slimmer and younger and tanner and more gorgeous than should have been humanly possible. There was the picture of Dad on the finish line at the New York Marathon. There were snapshots of Sadie and me as babies, Sadie and me and Mom posing mid-hike on family trips, Sadie and Pierce and me with Dad and Patrick Caplan, Pierce’s father, holding up rods that dangled with shimmering sunfish. In the center of the wall was a big photo of Dad with Pierce taken two and a half years ago, the fall of Pierce’s sophomore year. In the photo, they’re grinning. Dad’s arm is around Pierce’s shoulders. Pierce holds up a gold medal on a thick red ribbon.

I’d done this a thousand times. Standing in that spot. Staring at that picture. It was like pressing on a bruise: You push harder and harder, and suddenly the pain breaks, and it doesn’t hurt at all anymore, because you’ve made it feel as bad as it possibly can.

Swaying a little, I headed into my own bedroom.

Mom—or maybe Sadie—had cleaned up while I was gone. The bed was made. Clothes I’d left on the floor had been stacked and folded. The scummy coffee cups that had sat on my bedside table for weeks had disappeared. Everything else looked just about right: the vases full of dusty dried roses, the stacks of plays and stage makeup books and biographies of Sarah Bernhardt and Katharine Hepburn, the collage of theater posters and programs and
ticket stubs covering the walls. I’d painted those walls myself, three years ago. Dad hated the color. Midnight Plum. A purple so deep, it was almost black.

“Do you know how many coats of paint it’ll take to get this room back to normal?” he’d said, turning in a circle in the middle of the carpet, his ropy arms folded across his chest.

It was still Midnight Plum.

I stumbled to the dressing table, plunking down onto the cushioned chair.

Mom and Sadie hadn’t even tried to pick up over here. The tabletop was an explosion of tangled necklaces, scribbled notes, lost beads, splatters of nail polish. As I shut an open tube of mascara, I realized I hadn’t put on makeup in days. No pencil in the eyebrows that didn’t match my dyed hair. No concealer. Nothing. I grabbed the mascara and leaned forward.

That’s how I saw my new face for the first time.

There had been a tiny bathroom in the corner of my hospital room. The toilet was flanked by metal railings. Soap and sanitizer and lotion dispensers hung like little plastic mailboxes beside the sink. There had been no mirror. It had always felt strange to look up from washing my hands and find only a blank wall looking back.

Now I knew why there hadn’t been a mirror.

A wide, shaved strip ran from one side of my forehead up over my scalp. The exposed skin was so pale, it looked
blue. Around the shaved strip, my purple-red hair was greasy and flat, and a scar, long and twisting and ridged like a centipede, wound its way through the shaved patch. I could see the tiny divots where the staples had been. Half-moon bruises hung under both my eyes. On one cheek, directly beneath the shaved patch, was a thin red line where something had gouged me. The rest of that side of my face looked like it had been scraped away by tree bark. I suppose it
had
been. Rashy splotches of fresh skin burned against the pasty background.

My mouth filled with something sour. My stomach started to twist.
Empty stage.
I closed my eyes.
Empty stage.

Vaguely, I heard the front door creak, my mother’s voice speaking. The sounds faded away without sinking in. I opened my eyes again. The face was still there. I brushed one finger over my scar and felt startled when the monster-girl in the mirror raised her hand too.

We were still sitting there, staring at each other, when I caught a glimmer of motion over monster-girl’s shoulder.

I turned around.

Pierce Caplan stood in my bedroom door.

I
made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a honk. The very last sound Audrey Hepburn would ever make—that was the sound I made at that moment. I sounded like a congested walrus.

Pierce stayed in the doorway. He wore a thin winter jacket. Jeans. Nikes. Beads of melting snow hung in his hair. A soft gray scarf was looped around his neck, surrounding his perfect face like a frame.

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry if I startled you.”

Blushing made my whole face sting. I felt the scar tighten, the fresh skin on my cheek burn. “A little.” I jerked my head to the right, trying to shake my oily hair over the worst parts, and felt the ache slam sideways. “So. Hello.”

Pierce’s eyes wandered away from me. They coasted around the room, taking in the walls, the books, the bed. “This is pretty different from the room I remember. Everything used to be pink.”

“Yeah. A long time ago.” I tugged at a hank of hair. Pierce went on gazing around my bedroom, and the itchy
embarrassment that filled me started to harden into something like irritation. “A
really
long time ago.”

Pierce leaned against the doorframe. “The rest of the house looks exactly the same, though.” His eyes flicked back to me. “Sorry. How are you feeling? I should have asked that first.”

My shield of hair swung back to its usual place. “Pretty disgusting.”

“Well, you look . . .”

“Disgusting? Yes, I know.”

“No. You look good. I mean—better than I thought you would.”

“Oh.” I turned the scarred side of my face away, tilting my chin into my chest. My eyes caught a flash of fuzzy pink. That’s right. I was still wearing the ancient, peachy-pink sweater and khakis that my mother had picked out. Fantastic.

“Well, you don’t need to just stand in the door,” I said a bit grumpily. “You can come in.”

Pierce stepped into the room. His jacket swung open over his snug
WILSON HS TRACK
T-shirt. I could smell the cold air on him, the minty scent of his soap. He looked around again. I was in the only chair. There was nowhere else to sit except for my bed. After a beat, Pierce lowered himself onto the very edge of the mattress.

“So, what are you doing here?” It came out like an accusation. “Sorry. I was just—”

“No. It’s . . . it’s weird for me to be back here too.” He paused, looking like he’d caught himself saying something wrong. “But I’ve missed coming here. I don’t want you to think . . .”

“I don’t think,” I said, when he didn’t go on. “I don’t think anything.”

We were both quiet for a second.

Pierce lifted the folder he had pinned under one arm. “I brought you some stuff from Mr. Hall.” He held it out to me. “An updated script with all the blocking written in. So you can catch up a little over the weekend.”

The thought that I wasn’t going to be doing any catching up over the weekend flashed through me, followed by a rush of anger, and then another rush of fear. But I just took the folder, keeping my face tilted awkwardly to the side. “He asked
you
to bring it to me?”

“I volunteered.”

“Oh.”

I searched my brain for something else to say. Pierce’s nearness triggered a smear of memories, along with that hot prickling in my face and a buzzing in my stomach. It grew stronger each time I caught the scent of his skin.

Pierce didn’t speak either. I wondered if he was remembering too, or if he was just counting the seconds before he could escape without looking like a jerk. But he didn’t move.

We were still sitting there, watching each other from the corners of our eyes, when the nurse from
Romeo and
Juliet
burst out of my bedroom closet. She bustled toward Pierce, her long robes flapping.

“A
man,
young lady!” She held both hands over him like he was the grand prize on a game show. “Such a man as all the world—why, he’s a man of
wax!
”

“Verona’s summer hath not such a flower,” another voice murmured, closer to my ear.

Shakespeare and his black tights were perched beside me on my dressing table.

“Nay, he’s a flower, in faith,” the nurse gushed. “A very flower!”

Pierce tilted his head. “Are you okay?”

I must have been staring into space like a hypnotized cat. I glanced to my right. Shakespeare smiled back at me. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Here.” Abruptly, Pierce was beside me, one sturdy arm sliding beneath mine, wrapping around my back. His other hand grasped my elbow. The folder fumbled in my fingers. He half boosted, half guided me across the floor and set me down on the bed, bracing me with his body. Against my side, he felt solid and warm and reassuringly real. “You don’t look okay. Should I get your mom?”

“No,” I said quickly. “Don’t. I just felt dizzy for a second.”

He didn’t let go of me. “Are you sure?”

“Totally sure.”

Across from me, the dressing table was Shakespeare-less once again. Juliet’s nurse had vanished too.

The mattress bounced softly as Pierce got to his feet. “I guess I should let you rest.”

“You don’t need to—” I caught myself, but it was already too late. “I mean—you don’t have to leave so fast. Mom’s making dinner. You could stay.”

Pierce shook his head in a way that actually looked disappointed. “I promised I’d be home for dinner. My parents are having people over.”

“Oh.”

“But ask me some other time. It would be good to catch up. With all of you, I mean.”

“Yeah.” I looked at his collar. “Some other time.”

He backed toward the door. “I’ll see you Monday, right?”

“Yes, you will. Thanks for the script.”

In the doorway, Pierce paused. “Hey. I’m really, really glad you’re all right.”

I still couldn’t quite meet his eyes. Or speak. I just nodded, shaping my lips into an almost-smile, staring at the button on his collar.

Pierce turned away. His steps thumped along the hall, down the stairs. I heard the murmur of Mom’s voice intersecting with his again, the creak of a hinge, and then the front door thudding shut.

I dropped the folder onto the carpet.

My chest felt tight. The ache in my head pounded from side to side like clothes in an unbalanced washing machine.

I’d been so close to falling apart. In front of Pierce
Caplan. If there was anyone I
didn’t
want to see me crumble into a pathetic, messy pile, it would be Pierce. In all the years I’d known him—basically my entire life—I’d never seen him fail at anything. He didn’t spill things. He didn’t trip on bumpy pathways. He never said or wore or did anything that was less than exactly right. Pierce was golden.

There was another footstep in the doorway.

Mom breezed into my room. She leaned back against the wall, smiling almost coyly. “So,” she said, pointing the smile at me. “That’s what Pierce Caplan looks like these days.”

I made sure there was nothing coy in
my
voice. “Yes, it is.”

Mom shook her head, still smiling, her gaze wandering past me toward the darkened window. “It’s so funny to go from seeing him every day to maybe once or twice a year. He practically
lived
here when you were little.”

“I know, Mom. I remember.”

“He had his own toothbrush and towel and everything. It’s like he’s aged in fast-motion. He’s gotten so tall and handsome, hasn’t he?”

I looked at the tops of my socks. “Hmm.”

Mom was quiet for so long that I thought she must have gone away. But when I glanced up, she was still standing there, leaning against the wall with her arms wrapped around herself. Her eyes were shiny with tears.

I hated it when Mom cried. She didn’t do it often. That
she did it
ever
was bad enough. It made me feel like my spine had been split in half and pulled out through the soles of my feet.

“What?” I said. I sounded irritated. Angrier than I meant to.

“It’s just nice to see you two together again,” Mom whispered. “Lots of good memories.” She pulled herself away from the wall. “Dinner will be out of the oven in twenty minutes.”

I knew how I’d missed Pierce for the past two years. It was sharp at first, like a smaller, cleaner version of the wound Dad left, and then it grew increasingly dull, until what I felt wasn’t missing him anymore, but resenting him for making me miss him in the first place. I hadn’t thought much about what Mom might feel. We’d certainly never talked about it. Once that hideous winter was over, we’d never talked about
any
of it. The Caplans had been our best friends, and when they’d disappeared along with Dad, Mom had lost four people at once. I’d assumed it was the ugliness that distanced us. Everyone wanting to avoid the reminders, the conversations. But the way Mom looked now, smiling and teary, just because Pierce had spent a few minutes in our house again . . .

“Hey, Mom?”

She halted in the doorway.

“You didn’t, like . . .” I slowed myself.
Watch your words.
Neutral tone.
“Did something happen between us and the Caplans?”

Mom blinked. Her tone was neutral too. “What do you mean?”

“Like—maybe—when you were dividing up the business afterward?”

“They bought us out. Which was just what we wanted.”

“So there wasn’t—with what happened—” I groped for the words. “We weren’t going to sue them or something?”

Mom’s eyebrows twitched, but she barely looked surprised. “Of course not,” she said softly. “It was an accident. Everyone knew that.” She tapped one fingertip on the doorframe. “Twenty minutes.” Then she turned and glided out of view, revealing Sadie lurking in the hall behind her.

I sighed. “Well, you might as well come in. Eavesdropper.”

Sadie sauntered across the room and flopped down onto the bed beside me. “I thought you loved an audience.”

“Not right
now.
I didn’t want anybody to see me
right now.
And they already have.”

We both stared into the dressing table’s wide mirror.

“We could get you a wig,” Sadie suggested, after a second. “Or a cute hat.”

“I’m not really a hat person.”

“How about a helmet? We could paint ‘I shouldn’t have gone skiing without this’ on the sides.”

“How about just ‘I shouldn’t have gone skiing’? Of course, then I wouldn’t have needed the helmet in the first place.”

In the reflection, Sadie’s face tightened.

“What?”

“Do you think Mom and I don’t feel bad enough for making you go with us?” she demanded. “Do you think I don’t feel terrible for even suggesting it in the first place?”

“No.” I made my tone milder. “I know you feel bad.”

For a beat, we studied our reflections. My tanned, shiny-haired sister. Softer, paler, shorter me, now with a giant zipper of scar tissue on my forehead.

Sadie shook her head. “I really thought you would have gotten over it by now.”

“Over what?”

“The little-kid, drama-queen stuff. The way you’d pitch a fit any time we did something
you
didn’t want to do.”

I frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Camping. Waterskiing. Hiking. Ski trips—”

I pulled away from her so that our arms no longer touched. “I was genuinely scared.”

Sadie gave a skeptical head tilt.

“I was terrible at those things,” I lunged on. “I thought I would get tangled in the tow rope and drown, or fall off a mountain, or crash into something . . .” I gestured to my head, my voice rising in false surprise. “And look!”

“Oh my
god.
” Sadie leaned away from me. “Ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

The pain in my head was thumping like a giant drum now, but I wasn’t going to back down. “It’s proof that I
wasn’t
just being dramatic. I knew, and you all still pushed me. That’s why I hated it. And Dad—”

There. The word was out, dangling between us.

Keep going.

“Dad was so
mean
about it.” My throat filled. My voice started to wobble. “I still remember all the . . .”

“Jaye.” Sadie whirled toward me. “He was trying to
encourage
you. He was pushing you to try harder. To do your best. That’s what he did to everybody.”

I swallowed. “This was different.”

“Jaye . . .” She let out a long, irritated sigh. A second later, she threw both arms around me, jostling my skull. I fought back a wince. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should be humoring you. You’re supposed to stay super-quiet and calm, not have a meltdown an hour after getting home.”

“I’m not having a meltdown.” I snuffled. I glanced at the mirror again. Now the paler, smaller, injured one of us also had watery red eyes. “God. I look horrible.”

Sadie squeezed my shoulder. “Remember what the nurses said about not looking at yourself until you feel back to normal.”

“The nurses said that?”

“Several times.”

I touched the ridge of the scar again. It felt rubbery and dead, almost like it had been made of putty and stage
makeup. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m going to go back to school and rehearsal, and then everybody
else
will look at me, and then Mr. Hall will replace me—”

“Replace you?”

“Have you ever seen a fairy queen with staples in her head?”