Like It Never Happened (13 page)

At home I became invisible, which to be honest was kind of a nice change from the preceding sixteen years of my life. Mary and Jeffrey had decided to get married in December, at the Clines' country club. My mother was disappointed; she had apparently always pictured Mary getting married in the church downtown. Odd, given that we only went there on Christmas and Easter, and Dad always fell asleep halfway through the sermon.

Mary was officially staying in Lake Oswego until the wedding, but she had taken to coming over unannounced. Every time she burst through the door, Mom and Dad performed this whole ritual of exclaiming and hugging her. Like they were filming a scene entitled “Mary's Homecoming” and trying to get a take they were happy with. Mom was pretty desperate to meet the fiancé, whereas Dad was content to watch old recordings of Jeffrey's most crucial golf moments. Periodically he would whisper, “Jeffrey Cline. Well, I'll be damned.” As a result, I had gotten a few good looks at the guy. The cameras tended to zoom in on his face, because a game of golf doesn't get more exciting than a twitching upper lip.

Jeffrey didn't look like much to me.

Finally Mary agreed to bring him to dinner on Thursday night. Mom made a leg of lamb braised in a red wine reduction. She said the phrase “red wine reduction” so many times that if quizzed on my deathbed, I will remember exactly what my mother cooked the night Jeffrey Cline didn't show up for dinner.

Mary arrived alone and said the lamb smelled wonderful but unfortunately Jeffrey had a work-related emergency. Dad huffed, untucked his shirt, and went into his office to spend time with the televised Jeffrey, who
never
let him down. But Mom, in her best chartreuse sweater set, promptly burst into tears. Mary launched into a defense, making Mom cry even harder, and I texted Charlie and asked him to meet me in the alley.

I realize it's not particularly classy to meet your boyfriend in the alley. But I needed to get out of there.

Smiling, Charlie pushed me against a garage door on which somebody had spray-painted
Call Your Mom
. We kissed. I had that feeling you get when you're exactly where you always want to be, and it's excellent, but also sad that things don't get any better. He slid his hands inside my jacket and then under my shirt. He unhooked my bra.

It scared me how much I liked kissing Charlie. There were so many moments when I felt sexy and powerful, like I could break his heart if I wanted. But then sometimes—like when his phone rang and he angled the screen away from me—I wondered if I was sorely mistaken.

I took a breath and looked up at him. He whispered my name, the sound somehow nicer than any compliment.

I decided to ruin everything by asking, “Why do you ignore me?”

With one hand beneath my bra, he squeezed, like that proved me wrong. “I don't ignore you.”

“At school. Backstage. With everyone else.”

He pulled back and kind of frowned at me, like he was trying to remember if I was telling the truth.

“There's so much going on,” he said. “With the play, and junior year being the one that really counts. If I spent all day thinking about how you're my girlfriend, and how I'm allowed to touch you, I would just—”

He leaned in to kiss me again.

“You would just what?”

“Dissolve,” he said into my mouth. “I would dissolve.”

I wondered how it would make Blanche DuBois feel to kiss somebody in an alley full of broken glass and discarded furniture. I wondered how she should feel in the second-to-last scene of the play, when Stanley says something like, “We always knew it would come to this,” and lunges for her. I was going to have to scream like I was actually scared of my own boyfriend.

Of course, by that point, part of me would be. What I loved most about acting was immersing myself in a character until it didn't even feel like acting anymore. Playing Blanche DuBois, I knew, would require me to go a tiny bit insane.

The assembly was held in the auditorium,
our
auditorium. First the debate team gathered onstage and sped through the pros and cons of the death penalty. It was clear they took themselves very seriously. Then the mathletes did something uncaptivating. A representative from Writers' Workshop whispered a poem about punching a mirror and gazing into the broken pieces. The so-called Heroes of the Hallway took the stage to outline their agenda for the year: LGBTQ support, aid to Africa, and flag football on Tuesdays.

Then it was our turn. The five of us, plus Hadley and another nonessential, stood seven abreast to sing the insufferable “So Long, Farewell” from
The Sound of Music
in which the Von Trapp children take forever to go to bed. It was Tim's idea, and it was somehow more rebellious than refusing to perform altogether. Certain members of our audience understood this, and laughed along. The rest stared slack-jawed, unable to comprehend why we would humiliate ourselves so thoroughly.

I was Liesl, and I caught Mr. McFadden's eye as I sang, “I'd like to stay and taste my first champagne!” He was sitting with the other teachers, arms folded, shaking his head as if in shame. But his movements were exaggerated, ironic. I could tell he was proud of us.

Tim, as Gretl, sang the final line with his lower lip protruding. “The sun has gone to bed and so must I!”

Charlie, as Friedrich, grabbed Liesl by the waist. I was surprised, couldn't help gasping into the microphone. My boyfriend placed one hand on the back of my neck. He pressed his lips into mine.

First there was the silent shock of hundreds. Then one of the Von Trapp children—probably Gretl—applauded her siblings' incest. The rest joined and within seconds the whole school was cheering. My spine straightened, my heart beat fast with sudden elation. Charlie Lamb, Charlie Lamb, Charlie Lamb was kissing me.

And everybody knew he was mine.

O
n Monday morning
,
an office aide interrupted first period to drop a note on my desk—
Please report to S. McFadden
—which normally would have meant he needed help unloading his car or moving scenery flats. But since Liane and Tim were both in my class and didn't get summoned, I was nervous. Kissing Charlie to the thunderous applause of the entire student body wasn't explicitly forbidden, but neither were a lot of things nobody ever tried.

Backstage, Mr. McFadden was sitting at his desk shuffling papers around. I always wondered if he did that for show. It wasn't like he had tests to grade.

“Good morning, Rebecca,” he said evenly as I slid into the chair opposite his desk.

“Hi,” I squeaked.

“How's school?” He sounded like an indifferent relative.

I surprised myself by saying, “It's torture.”

This amused him for some reason. He flattened his lips and fiddled with a miniature stapler. “Do you know why I've called you in here today?” he asked casually.

“Not really,” I admitted.

“It was a unique interpretation of
The Sound of Music,
to say the least.”

Now we were essentially talking about kissing, and I didn't know how to talk to a teacher about kissing. “I, for one,” he continued, “never sensed those kinds of tensions between Liesl and Friedrich.”

My hair was hanging too far in my face. I pushed it back. “Look, Charlie kissed me, and I was caught completely off guard, and I'm sorry.”

He held up his hand. “It's okay.” He sounded suddenly sincere. “You're not in trouble. At least not with me. I just . . .” He paused, turning over the stapler like it was a fossil or a precious stone. “I wonder why Charlie did that.”

I stared at him, incredulous.

“Can you think of a motivation?” he asked.

Was I that repulsive?

“He's my boyfriend now,” I explained. “He probably just wanted to make that clear.”

Mr. McFadden's eyebrows twitched. “To the entire school?”

I shrugged.

Casting aside the stapler, Mr. McFadden stared me in the eye. “Charlie is very smart, and very driven. He is the most ambitious teenager I have ever met and I'm sure he will go far in, uh . . .”

“Law,” I supplied. “He wants to be a lawyer.”

“Law!” Mr. McFadden brightened. “Charlie will make a ruthless lawyer one day, no doubt. But I've noticed he likes to win
every
game, to always get first place. Do you know what I mean?”

I nodded. “Charlie First-Place Lamb, we call him.” Stupid and not true.

“Between you and me . . .” Mr. McFadden cleared his throat. “When you're onstage, Charlie gets second place.”

My cheeks got hot and a kind of perverse joy seeped through my chest. “Charlie is a good actor,” I said, like a loyal girlfriend.

“He is,” agreed my director. “But you're better.”

The funny thing was that, the moment he said this, I wanted to leave. Not because I was upset, but because I wanted to hold very still and let his words echo in my head indefinitely.

“Is that it?” I asked, flustered and flattered. “Can I go back to class now?”

He studied my face like he wanted to read my mind. I kept it blank, just in case.

“Yes you may,” he said quickly. “Just remember to watch out for anybody who tries to convince you you're not talented. It's going to happen all the time, for the rest of your life. And come see me soon, so we can talk about college. You want to go for theater, yes?”

Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I nodded.

“Good.” He resumed shuffling his stack of papers. “See you at rehearsal tonight. Be ready to block the first three scenes.”

My chair screeched against the floor.

“And, Rebecca?” Mr. McFadden waited until my hand was on the door. I turned and a lock of hair attached itself to my glossed lips. “Don't kiss anyone on my stage.”

I opened my mouth to point out the obvious. My director held up a hand to silence me.

“Unless I tell you to.”