How Not to Spend Your Senior Year (3 page)

“You'll like Drama,” Alex promised a couple of hours later. We were walking across a wide swath of green lawn that separated the school's Little Theater from the main classroom building. “Mr. Barnes, the teacher, is great. He makes the whole thing really interesting and fun. Even the performing part isn't too humiliating.”

“Gee, that's a relief.”

On the far side of Alex, I heard a snort of amusement and knew it had come from the third member of our group, a girl named Elaine Golden.

I wasn't quite sure what to make of Elaine. She'd shown up with Alex a couple of times as he'd walked me from one class to another. I had to figure either Alex had asked her to do this, hoping we'd become friends, or she'd tagged along of her own
free will, determined to keep an eye on him. It was obvious they were tight, though equally obvious that they weren't a couple. The vibe between them just wasn't quite right.

If ever there was a person whose name suited her perfectly, it was Elaine. Everything about her was sort of . . . golden. She was tall, with hazel eyes and a head of softly waving gold-blonde hair. Even her skin looked vaguely tan, at a time of year when practically everybody else in Seattle still looked like the inside of a mushroom.

“Actually, Alex is correct,” Elaine said now. “Even if he expressed himself in a completely pathetic way.”

Alex made a face at her. “I get no respect,” he sighed.

“Who ran your incredibly successful election campaign?” Elaine asked sweetly.

“Who ran unopposed?” Alex inquired.

“Oh, that,” Elaine said.

One of the things I'd discovered during the course of the day was just how big a BMOC Alex Crawford truly was. He'd been class president every year since he'd
been a freshman. As a senior, he was considered such a shoe-in for student body president that he'd run unopposed. After graduation, he was expected to follow in his father's footsteps and study law at Harvard, or so a girl with the unbelievable-yet-apparently-true name of Khandi Kayne had informed me at morning break.

This was right before she further informed me she was taking Alex to the girl-ask-boy dance that Friday night. A thing which went a long way toward explaining why my strong instinct had been not to turn my back on her.

“Just so long as you've finished the unit on Shakespeare,” I said as Elaine, Alex, and I neared the theater door. We'd go in through the lobby, Alex had explained, but class was actually held in the auditorium.

“I had an English teacher my sophomore year who used to make us read it aloud in class. I was completely hopeless. My tongue kept getting all tangled up.”

“In that case, I really hate to break this to you. . . . ” Elaine began.

I stopped short. “Please tell me that you're joking.”

“I'm joking,” Elaine said obligingly. “Unfortunately for you, I'm also lying.”

Fabulous,
I thought, just as Alex opened the Little Theater door and ushered us through it with a definitely Shakespearean bow.

My first Drama class at Beacon was either:

a) not so bad, or

b) worse than I could possibly have imagined.

Depending entirely on which portion of the period we're talking about.

It started off just fine. The class
was
doing scenes from Shakespeare, a thing you've probably already gathered by now. The bad news was that Mr. Barnes made it clear from the outset that, since I was now a class member, I'd be expected to participate right along with everyone else. Beginning now.

The good news was that the class was working “on book,” a term that means with scripts in hand. This meant I wouldn't automatically be at a handicap because I didn't already have something memorized.

I could see right away why Alex and
Elaine liked Mr. Barnes. He wasn't stuffy or pretentious, though he did dress sort of preppy, like he'd originally come from the east coast.

But his whole approach was simple and straightforward. What did the words mean? Why should we care about them in the first place? Why give a rip about Shakespeare after all this time? That complicated high-flown language couldn't possibly be expressing things we'd understand, maybe even go through, could it?

As far as Mr. Barnes was concerned, the answer was, “Duh.”

To illustrate his point, Mr. Barnes had chosen scenes from a variety of Shakespeare's plays, all with the same thought in mind: to demonstrate that the emotional content was current, even if the language wasn't.
Romeo and Juliet
was a particularly good example of this. I assume I don't have to explain why.

During the course of the period, I'd watched students enact conflicts between best friends and bitter enemies. I'd heard Romeo talk about his latest girlfriend, knowing perfectly well he was going to
forget all about her a few scenes later when Juliet came along.

I'd even read Juliet's lines myself, in a confrontation with her father, and gotten so carried away with trying to make the guy playing Dear Old Dad see my side of things that I'd forgotten all about my previous bout of getting tongue tied.

After each scene, Mr. Barnes prompted the class discussion. What seemed real to us? What didn't? If we suddenly found ourselves in a similar situation, how might we respond?

Then Alex and Elaine got up. They were to be Romeo and Juliet themselves. Not in the famous balcony scene, but the much shorter scene where they first see one another, literally across a crowded room. A crowded dance floor, to be precise.

Alex faced the class, while Elaine stood with her back to us, her face turned in profile. Romeo/Alex then gave his first impressions of Juliet/Elaine.

“O! She doth teach the torches to burn bright. It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear; Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a showy dove trooping with crows as yonder lady o'er fellows shows. The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand and, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.

“Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.”

Then, as if the measure, the dance that Juliet was engaged in during this speech, had ended, Alex moved to Elaine and Romeo began to act on the strength of his first impressions.

One thing you can definitely say about Romeo: That boy did not waste time. The first meeting between Romeo and Juliet is actually incredibly short. But, before it's over, Romeo has managed to get in two kisses.

Actually, Alex-as-Romeo only managed one.

You could have heard a pin drop—the auditorium was so quiet as Alex and Elaine came to the crucial moment. Slowly, as if testing both her nerve and his, Romeo/Alex leaned in. Juliet/Elaine stayed perfectly still. Softly, almost tentatively, their lips touched.

I wonder what she's feeling,
I thought as I felt my own lips begin to tingle. I think that was the moment I acknowledged the truth. I had fallen, hopelessly, for Alex Crawford.

Romeo/Alex eased back from the kiss. He and Juliet/Elaine stared at one another. The air seemed to hum with a funny sort of tension.

These guys are really good,
I thought. Then Juliet/Elaine broke the spell. In the scene, instead of melting at Romeo's feet, Juliet makes a snappy, teasing comeback. Maybe Mr. Barnes was right about this Shakespeare-is-relevant thing after all. Not to be deterred, Romeo tries for kiss number two. Elaine waited until Alex's lips were a breath away before providing a snappy comeback all her own.

“I don't think so, pal.”

Alex jerked back with a strangled laugh, just as the rest of the class joined in. The two sat down to a round of raucous applause.

“So, what do you think?” Mr. Barnes asked when the class had quieted. “Is what Romeo and Juliet experience love at first
sight? Is true love possible after only a few moments, or should we just write off what these two teenagers experience to raging hormones?”

“Is there a difference?” a guy named Matt Kelly quipped.

“In the case of some people, probably not,” Mr. Barnes responded calmly.

“Does it
make
a difference?” I heard a voice say over the laughter that followed. “I mean, is whether or not love at first sight is possible even Shakespeare's point?”

“Okay,” Mr. Barnes said at once. “What is the point, Jo?”
Now you've done it, O'Connor,
I thought as I realized the voice had been mine. I'd gotten so carried away with my own inner-monologue, I'd spoken my thoughts aloud.

“The point is that
they
believe in love at first sight,” I said, somewhat haltingly as every eye in the class turned toward me. “Romeo and Juliet
believe
that they're in love. They believe it so much they're willing to die to prove it. I'm thinking that's a bit extreme, even for hormones.”

A ripple of quiet, appreciative laughter traveled through the room.

“And what about you?” inquired Mr. Barnes.

“What about me what?” I asked. “My hormones are fine, so far as I know.”

“Thank you for sharing,” Mr. Barnes said over another round of laughter. “What I'm asking is: Do you believe in love at first sight?”

I opened my mouth to say of course I didn't. To say that just because I could believe in Romeo and Juliet's love at first sight didn't mean I had to believe in my own.

That was the minute that Alex Crawford turned his head. Just as they'd done first thing that morning, his blue eyes met mine. Alex's eyes were almost expressionless. There was no challenge in them. Instead they seemed incredibly patient, as if they were waiting for something. Looking into them I found I couldn't do the thing my brain was urging. I simply could not bring myself to lie.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do,” I said.

Then, much to my relief, the bell rang before I could say any more.

The rest of the day passed in a blur, with me trying to recover from what I had done. Instead of blending in as usual, I'd fallen in love. Not only that, I'd as good as admitted it in public.

The day had not gone as planned. At all. A thing which resulted in it being the case that, for the very first time in my entire life, I was actually happy when P.E. rolled around. Not only was it the last class of the day, it was the one place I could be absolutely certain Alex wouldn't try to tag along. Not only that, the class was doing a unit on track and field events.

For reasons I assume I do not have to
explain, running was sounding like a pretty good option.

The only potential drawback was that I shared the class with both Khandi Kayne and Elaine Golden. For obvious reasons, I decided to stick close to Elaine.

“For crying out loud,” she gasped now as she tumbled to the grass at the side of the track. “Whatever you're trying to prove, you win. I give up.”

We'd been running for a solid forty-five minutes. Not all that long, of course, if you're a marathoner. But I'd have to be the first to admit I'd set a pretty brutal pace. It had taken all of the time Elaine and I had been able to keep going for me to figure out that, no matter how fast I went, I wasn't going to be able to outrun myself.

“I never asked you to pace me,” I said as I flopped down beside her, breathing hard.

Elaine sopped sweat from her face with the hem of her T-shirt, propped herself up on one elbow, and glared at me.

“I'm trying to be friendly here, New Girl, in case you hadn't noticed. What is your problem?”

I'm not entirely certain what happened
then. I think it was some variation of
Nothing Left to Lose Syndrome
. Absolutely nothing that day had gone the way I'd thought it would. How much worse could things get if I simply admitted the truth? Especially since it was incredibly obvious.

“I can tell you in two words,” I said. “Alex Crawford.”

Elaine stared for a moment, an expression I couldn't quite read on her face, then dropped down flat on her back. “You're insane, you know that, don't you? Any girl on this campus would love to have your problem.”

“Including you?” I asked, images of the scene from Romeo and Juliet dancing through my mind.

“And come between him and Khandi Kayne?” Elaine answered promptly, her tone sarcastic. “I don't think so. Personally, I'd like to live to attend my own graduation.”

“So I was right.”

“About what?”

“I thought she spent most of lunch period trying to figure out how to stab me in the back with her plastic salad fork.”

Elaine gave a sputter of laughter. “You
know she's taking him to the dance this Friday night, don't you?”

“Of course I do,” I said. “She told me so herself. Apparently she thinks this means he'll ask her to the prom.”

“Traditional, but not foolproof,” Elaine informed me.

“I have a question,” I said.