Like It Never Happened (19 page)

I ignored the question. “So you knew him.”

Shaking her head, Mary claimed, “I hardly knew anybody, even when I thought I did. I was self-absorbed. But I guess that's normal.” She looked at me pointedly. I wondered when my sister had changed so much.

“Don't kiss your teacher,” said Mary, as if in summation. “Go to bed. Study hard.” And then, like the lecture exhausted her, she flashed me a wan smile. “And don't smoke cigarettes with anyone but me.”

I stomped into the house, not caring if she followed. But I didn't go to bed.

I stayed up for another hour, staring at Nadine's letter and flipping through the torn paperbacks. Each of the novels was about a secret relationship between two girls. I tried playing The Smiths CD on my computer, but after a lot of angry noises it spit out the disc, which was too badly scratched.

I knew it was complicated, loving a girl. Loving anyone was probably complicated. Mary had most likely broken up with Nadine for a lot of different reasons.

But nothing could explain her transformation—from the wild kind of person who would kiss her best friend in a cemetery, to the handbag-toting fiancée of the world's most boring man. My parents might have welcomed this new, country club version of their daughter, but I preferred Mary as remembered by Nadine.

That girl, I was pretty sure, did what she wanted.

R
ehearsals had been going surprisingly well
.
Charlie and I might not have been born to play our parts, but we were perfect for them now. Onstage he looked at me like I was a bug he could smash beneath the heel of his palm. Enduring that look made me practically hysterical, exactly as Blanche was supposed to be.

It's not that I was scared of Charlie, the way my character was scared of his, or the way I had been scared of that boy two summers ago. Charlie was human. I knew he wouldn't hurt me. Sometimes still he gave me that melted-candle feeling, by touching my arm when the script didn't call for it, or moistening his lips as I delivered my lines. But when things between us crept toward normal, he would remind me that he knew too much. With a look from Mr. McFadden to me and a disgusted roll of his eyes, he would assure me.

He knew.

On Friday, rehearsal was awful. First Mr. McFadden got mad at Liane for touching her hair too much. Then, halfway through the poker scene, Mr. McFadden cleared his throat.

“Charlie, it's true that Stanley might be prone to vain flexes of the biceps, but you are approaching
Popeye
levels of gratuity.”

Charlie looked equal parts embarrassed and enraged. For a second I thought he was going to erupt, and backstage, my heart leaped into my throat. But after taking a deep breath and tensing his arms for good measure, Charlie continued with the scene.

Tim soon got in trouble for looking “as bewildered as a suburbanite on the subway.” For Tess, Mr. McFadden recycled a favorite criticism: “You're supposed to be acting as Eunice, not acting as an actor acting as Eunice.”

It was typical for us to have a bad rehearsal in the weeks leading up to opening night. But that didn't make it any less agonizing. I could feel everyone resenting me for escaping Mr. McFadden's wrath, as usual, but I guess my loyalty had shifted. At least, his approval meant more to me than the Essential Five's. Maybe it always had.

Charlie and I were rehearsing the first scene, in which Stanley interviews Blanche about her mysterious past, when Mr. McFadden cleared his throat. He said my name.

He was reclining in the second row, making a big deal of massaging his temples. “Miss Rivers,” he groaned, “please stop acting like you know how the whole play ends! It's only scene one. Blanche DuBois still has her dignity—tell me, what happened to yours?”

My jaw dropped. From backstage came a collective gasp. Did he actually expect me to answer that?

Mr. McFadden was all exasperation, pulling at his hair and fidgeting in his seat. Charlie looked frantically from him to me, performing some kind of calculation in his head. Before I could endeavor to read Charlie's mind, our director gestured for us to get on with the scene.

My costar's eyes burned, furious. “Have a shot?” He delivered his line, offering me a bottle half full of apple juice.

I couldn't figure out why Charlie was so upset. Wasn't this what he had always wanted? For Mr. McFadden to embarrass the hell out of me?

“N-no,” I stammered as Blanche. “I rarely touch it.” I steadied myself and tried to look at Charlie like I was seeing him for the first time. Like I had just walked into my sister's messy, un-air-conditioned apartment in New Orleans and there he was—this narrow-eyed, snarling man she had married.

Like he could turn out to be anyone.

After rehearsal everyone wanted to go to the 24-Hour Hotcake and Steak House. Saying no was most likely a bad idea. I could feel the loss of the Essential Five's respect, draining as I claimed my parents were forcing me to come home. I couldn't tell if my costars believed me or not. Charlie stepped forward to give me a perfunctory peck on the lips—him being my boyfriend and all.

I remembered to grip his biceps, like I wanted him closer. When we pulled apart, Tim clapped his hands. “Very convincing.”

Tess yawned. “Your love is an inspiration to us all.”

Liane didn't look like she gave a shit, whether Charlie and I were acting or not. She looked simply and intensely bored.

“I have to go to my locker,” I lied. “I left something in it.”

I turned, feeling their eyes on my back and also determination warming my blood. I was actually going to do it.

After rehearsal Mr. McFadden always dashed to the teachers' lounge for a final cup of coffee before the janitor emptied the pots. I knew I could catch him if I waited in the staff parking lot.

A mixture of snow and rain had fallen throughout the day. Now a thin layer of ice covered the asphalt. I lifted my knees high and stepped hard, cracking the ice and kicking it aside. I leaned against Mr. McFadden's car, but stopped when I realized how that probably looked. With my arms spread wide, I walked along the concrete barrier, trying not to slip.

Mr. McFadden's laughter echoed across the empty lot. “You look like you're about seven years old.”

Startled, I shoved my hands into my coat pockets. I hoped he wasn't going to ask about my dignity again, because I really had no idea.

“What's up?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“Are you worried about rehearsal? It's normal to have a bad one right before opening night.”

“Can you—” My pulse raced. I felt my sweat turn cold. Nothing made me more nervous than being alone with him, and I hated myself for that. “Can you explain why that happens?” I asked, like a puzzled student.

“I think because we start to realize that what we have made is very different from what we set out to make. It's part of the creative process. Now we just have to accept that what we made might be even better than our original vision.”

“Do you think that it is?” I barely knew what I was saying.

“I hope so.” His breath looked like smoke. He seemed torn between saying something teacherly and something deeper, which was always the problem. None of the adults in my life could decide if they were actually adults.

My resolve surged. I placed a hand on my director's coat sleeve and leaned in close.

He tried to back away but slipped on the ice. We fell against his car, gripping each other. He regained balance and firmly, gently, distanced me. It all happened very fast.

“Slippery,” concluded Mr. McFadden, generously blaming the whole thing on the ice. Embarrassment flooded my cheeks. I couldn't kiss him. I would never kiss him. He was old. He was my teacher. He was looking at his watch and still not offering me a ride home.

But I couldn't help wanting something from him. It still seemed to me like he was the one person who could turn a bad day into a good day.

“Is everything okay?” he asked, like I hadn't just tried to kiss him. “You seem distracted.”

“Right now or all the time?”

Amused, he said, “I guess I meant today.”

“Do you remember a girl named Nadine?” I asked.

He looked confused. “No? Was she a student?”

“She went to your high school.”

He twisted his neck until it made a popping sound. “Oh, that Nadine. Sure. She and your sister were joined at the hip.”

“They were?”

“They were best friends, I mean.”

“Were they a couple, though?”

A startled noise escaped his throat. “I don't think so? But I was a year older than your sister. I graduated first, so I wouldn't necessarily know. Aren't girls your age often inseparable from their best friends?”

“I don't have a best friend,” I said.

He squinted at me. “You must be fiercely independent.” For a moment, he balanced my entire world on the tip of his tongue. “Most artists are.”

I stared down at my shoes. “So you don't remember if they were dating?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” he claimed. “Isn't your sister getting married to a tennis star?”

“Golf.”

“So why the sudden interest in her past?”

Now I stared at him. He seemed to have missed the part where I suspected my sister of being gay. But I didn't know how to be any clearer, so I just said, “The golfer is pretty boring.” Like boredom was the problem.

“True love often is.” Mr. McFadden sighed and unlocked the door to his car. He looked tired. I felt utterly incapable of walking away.

“Look,” he said. “I recently learned that I'm not allowed to drive students home without notifying the office and obtaining permission from the student's parents. They implemented the rule just this year, so I'm a one-time offender. But I'm probably not supposed to leave students in dark, icy parking lots after hours either. So do you want to break the rules for now and confess in the morning?”

He looked at me, his eyes glazed with indifference. My head moved slowly from side to side.

“Okay.” He shrugged. “But don't walk home alone. Promise me you'll call somebody?”

He gave me a half smile as he climbed into his car, like I was something small and lamentable—a missing pet, or a dead bird on the sidewalk.

Just because I was completely in love with Mr. McFadden didn't mean he could tell me what to do. Not in real life, anyway. I walked home alone, even though it was dark and the streets were frozen.