Eternal Spring A Young Adult Short Story Collection (6 page)

Well, the human characters, at least.

Almost overnight Bethany had landed an agent, a seven-figure
advance, and a movie deal, and was being called “one to watch” in both the
indie community and New York publishing circles alike. Because she was a recent
graduate of Mountain Shadows Academy of the Arts, all my friends back home in
Sparta thought it was “OMG, so cool!” that I went to the same high school as
her. Of course, I’m just a freshman, so I’ve never met her because she’d
graduated last June before I got here (plus the dancers and writers only have
academic classes together – nothing in their majors), but my
upperclassmen friends had.

Her prose was more than a little melodramatic and could
probably benefit from a nice long waltz with a red pen, but a million readers
can’t be wrong. It had that certain
je ne sais quoi
and tapped into our fears and
dreams on a purely visceral level, with raw, emotional angst.

Oh, and vampires and werewolves. You can never have too many
fangs.

“The Eric-Robyn-Jackson love triangle is classic!” I
continued.

“Sure, it’s right up there with Catherine, Linton, and Heathcliff,”
Maya Sapp said as she scrubbed off stage makeup so thick even Lady Gaga would
call it a no-no.

“Who?”

An incredulous expression marched across Analisa’s face.
“Um,
Wuthering
Heights
? Emily Bronte?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t taken sophomore lit yet, duh.”

Maya laughed. “Not a big loss, Spevak. I couldn’t stand that
book. Talk about a drama llama. And Heathcliff…hello? Controlling much? I kept
rooting for them all to just die out there on the moor. Put us out of our
misery already! Instead the book just kept going on and on and on…”

“What?”

“I mean seriously,” Maya said. “Catherine was TSTL. How she
could put up with that crap, I’ll never know.”

Analisa furrowed her brow, her eyes turning to slits so
small I couldn’t believe she could actually see out of them. “TSTL?”

“Too stupid to live. You know, like the dumb cheerleader in
a low-budget horror flick who goes into the scary house where the guy with the
chainsaw is.”

“It just happens to be one of English literature’s greatest
masterpieces,” Analisa said with a disapproving sigh.

She didn’t look away from the dressing room mirror so I
couldn’t be certain, but I was pretty sure Maya was rolling her eyes. Some
things never change. Whatevs. My friends just don’t have a sentimental bone in
their bodies. No wonder they didn’t have boyfriends, unlike me.

Or did I? Sure, we’d kissed – a lot – but it
wasn’t like he’d asked me to prom yet.

I’d had a crush on Craig Washosky pretty much since the
first time I saw him across the table in the cafeteria, way back on the day I’d
moved into my dorm here at Mountain Shadows. Thick brown hair artfully tousled
in a way that was supposed to look über-casual but took most guys a vat of gel
to achieve (although in Craig’s case, he probably did just roll out of bed),
eyes so piercingly blue you could lose yourself in the depths of the Caribbean,
bronze skin perfectly kissed by the Arizona sun during hours of pick-up
basketball on the quad…he epitomized the cliché of the tall, dark, and handsome
Hollywood leading man.

Which he was, of course.

Oh, that’s right. You’d know him by his stage name, Craig
Walsh. Yes,
that
Craig Walsh. At the beginning of the school year he was just an attractive
young theatre student in one of the nation’s most prestigious arts schools, but
ever since his film debut in
First Down
got all that buzz at Sundance a couple of months back,
he’s been “
The
Craig Walsh.” The critics are even talking about a possible Oscar nod. Even
though it was a super small part, he’s spent more time recently doing the whole
red carpet thing than going to class.

Ouch, that made it sound like I wished him ill will. I
so
totally
didn’t. He deserves all the accolades being thrown his way. For serious. He’s
enormously talented.

It’s just that he never would have gotten that role if it
weren’t for me.

Not to mention the one he was away in LA filming right now.

The one where he was playing Jackson to Amber Alexander’s
Robyn. And that meant hours and hours of rehearsals and retakes of that super
hot kiss on page 236 of Bethany Beyer’s bestseller. You know which one I mean.
Yowza. I blushed just thinking of it.

Yes,
that
Amber Alexander. There was no way I could compete. Especially
after that game of tonsil hockey, even if it was just acting.

At least I hoped it was just acting. No way to know for
sure, unless you believed the tabloids.

And I didn’t. Believe the
tabloids, that
was
.

Much.

“Give the girl a break, ladies.”

Once I’d determined the source of the voice, I wondered when
Miss Piggy had sprouted wings and learned to fly. Clearly she must have, since
Hadley Taylor was defending me.

Hadley unwrapped the satin ribbons of her toe shoes and shot
me a smile so sugary sweet it would probably throw my dad into a diabetic coma.
“Little Miss Dani just wants to know what Craig is doing out there in Cali. Or,
if you listen to the
Informer
— who.”

I guess Miss Piggy was just as earthbound as Kermit after
all.

“Why don’t you just STFU?” If looks could kill, Maya would
be doing life without parole. Oh yeah, she had my back. “Just because he dumped
your scrawny butt last summer—”

“Speaking of scrawny butts…Dani, you still seeing the
counselor about that eating dis—”

“Play nice.” As always, Analisa was the voice of reason.

“—order?” Hadley let out an exaggerated overdrawn
sigh. “Fine.” She pulled several bobby pins out of her bun and let her
$300-a-month-blonde waves bounce over her shoulders, then glanced in a bulb-lit
dressing room mirror straight out of a 1940s musical and smugly smiled, as if
pronouncing herself ready for her close-up. She turned to me, a glint dancing
in her cat-like green eyes. “I guess Dani doesn’t want to know where Craig’s
filming next week.”

“That’s easy,” I said. “Studio G of the Sandler Brothers
Pictures lot. He’s in makeup by seven every morning.” Wow, that sounded like I
was stalking him.

Hadley’s laugh tinkled. “Aren’t we Little Miss Know-it-all?
Only not in this case, apparently.” She paused for effect, clearly enjoying the
attention. “He’ll be in Sedona all next week.”

The legendary Sedona Red Rocks have enchanted visitors for
generations with their spectacular natural beauty. Huge rock formations almost
glow a brilliant orangey-red, silhouetted against a bright blue sky, forming a
breathtaking backdrop for, well, everything. Even the local McDonalds was
prettier, with the only teal arches in the world.

It wasn’t surprising the director would want to film on
location in the actual town in which Bethany’s book took place. What
was
surprising
was that Craig didn’t tell me.

Particularly since I was going to be there, too.

No, really. I wasn’t stalking him. I swear.

The Southwestern Teen Arts Festival takes place every year
during Spring Break in Sedona. Mountain Shadows students always participate,
showcasing their dancing, singing, acting, music, or studio art. He knew that.
Craig had been going since his freshman year, but I guess now that he was a big
Hollywood star he couldn’t be bothered to remember such a trivial matter.

So what if it also happened to be my fifteenth birthday? He
was so above all that high school BS.

Mental wrist slap
.

Bad Dani. I really needed to stop thinking poorly of him. He
was probably just busy and forgot. Or maybe he thought it was a different week.

Of course, there was only one way to find out. I grabbed my
purse and dug around. Lip gloss, EpiPen, wallet, phone.

HEY! R U IN SEDONA? IM ALMOST THERE. MISS U!

I bit my lip as my finger hovered over the “send.” Was “Miss
U!” too forward? Not forward enough?

Did I look as desperate as I felt? At least I didn’t type
“Luv U!” Yeah, it had to go.

I deleted the message and tried again.

I HEAR U R FILMING @ SEDONA. ILL
BE
THERE FOR TEENARTS.

WANT 2 GO OUT 4 MY BDAY?

Delete.

R U IN SEDONA?

Short, sweet, and to the point. That ought to do the trick.

I hit “send” and sunk back into my seat to wait for a
response as the school bus chugged up the twists and turns of I-17.

An hour later, I still hadn’t heard anything. And this was
the third text I’d sent him this week. Was he ignoring me? Maybe he didn’t want
to see me anymore now that he was hanging out with Amber Alexander. Duh. That
had to be it.

Why didn’t he like me?

“I’m going to sneak onto the set of
Midnight
,” I announced.

“Oh no,” Analisa said, shaking her head in punctuation.
“No.”

“No what?” I asked, feigning innocence.

Analisa raised her arms almost in defense. Against what, I
had no idea. “No more snooping, no more sneaking around, no more breaking and
entering.”

“Why not?”

“Uh, perhaps because B&E is illegal?”

Okay, so she had a point. But I couldn’t help it –
crazy stuff just happens to me. Besides, it’s all worked out in the past. And
if we hadn’t snooped those other times, we never would have stopped some very
serious crimes from occurring. Who cares if we might’ve sorta kinda broken some
laws in the process? The ends totally justified the means.

Right?

“Fine. We won’t break onto the set.”

“No, we’ll get on totally legally,” Maya agreed. Told you
the girl had my back.

Analisa sighed. “Don’t encourage her!”

“She’s not encouraging me,” I said. “I’d go even if she
didn’t come along.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Analisa pushed her bangs off
her forehead. “Fine, we’ll all go. But the movie set is not our priority. We’re
here to dance. Not stalk celebrities.”

“We all know
you’re
not here to see celebs, Ana.” Maya
stretched her long legs out into the aisle, alternating between pointing and
flexing her toes. “You spend more time keeping out the Kardashians than keeping
up with them. Your idea of a reality show is the Republican debates.”

“Well, you have to admit they’re this year’s must-see
TV…drama, backbiting, trainwrecks, Cinderella stories…”

I tuned out my friends’ bickering and stared out the window.
The bus turned a corner on the winding mountain road as we entered Sedona city
limits, and we got our first glimpse of the Red Rocks.

Was this place for real? Surely it had to be a movie set. Or
maybe the local artists colony down the road in Jerome spilled their
watercolors and infused the landscape with a symphony of burnt sienna,
mahogany, rust, teal, and aqua. The effect was spectacular, like the
leprechaun’s rainbow come to life. Colors that vivid couldn’t be formed by
nature. Could they?

There’s an old saying that God created the Grand Canyon but
lives in Sedona. I now knew it was true.

No wonder my Grandma Rose loved coming here for New Age
retreats. They say Sedona has one of the largest concentrations of spiritual
energy vortexes and the conditions are perfect for meditation, prayer, and
healing. Grandma Rose was here a decade before I was born for the so-called
Harmonic Convergence, when thousands of people around the world gathered at
sacred places simultaneously to combine their psychic energy to keep the Earth
from slipping out of its “time beam” and spinning off into space – and
create a new era of harmony and love in the process.

I wasn’t sure if I bought into it all. It seemed a little
too woo-woo for me. Grandma Rose claims she’s psychic – my dad claims
she’s crazy. But looking around at the scenery, I could totally see why she’d
believe it. And ultimately the Earth didn’t slip off its orbit and spin into
the Great Unknown. Besides, she’d helped me solve some crimes in the past, so
maybe there was something to it.

But I wasn’t here to debate my grandmother’s spiritual
beliefs. I was here to see Craig.

Er, I mean, I was here to dance.
Focus, Dani, focus.

Chaîné, chaîné, chaîné, chaîné
…

I spun off stage left in a series of quick turns alternating
feet in progression, as if forming the human chain that gave the dance step its
name. I couldn’t see them, but could hear the audience erupt in applause.
Someone passed me a Dixie cup of coconut water. A couple swigs was all I had
time for before running on for the
coda
, which brought all the dancers back to the
stage to dance in unison.

Two minutes later, we hit the final pose of George
Balanchine’s abstract ballet
Rubies
and the audience roared. I smiled as I looked out at the
audience in the open-air amphitheatre. What a view! We must have danced really
well to command their attention. I’d be very distracted if I was in their
place, surrounded by Red Rocks as far as the eye could see.

I stepped forward with the rest of my line to curtsey and
spotted Craig in the crowd. He did remember! He must have gotten the text and
wanted to surprise me. Maybe he wasn’t so “Mr. Hollywood” after all.

My smile grew extra wide as I tried to catch his eye, but he
leaned over to whisper something to the girl sitting next to him.

Even though she was wearing shades to try to remain
incognito, I could spot those fake boobs anywhere. Amber Alexander.

Damn.

I stepped to the side of the stage to let the next line come
forward for their curtain call and craned my neck to catch a glimpse of
Hollywood’s newest vampire royalty. They got up to leave, but were stopped by a
swarm of fangirls who wanted their autographs.