Like It Never Happened (3 page)

F
or long stretches of the school year
,
I had managed to forget that there was anything weird between me and Tess. Eventually some comment of hers would remind me of phase one of our friendship, and how badly it had gone, and I would feel overwhelmed by guilt. The rest of the Essential Five had no idea that Tess and I had ever spoken prior to auditions for
The Crucible.

In truth, we had met at the end of ninth grade in health class. We had been watching an ancient film in which Richard Gere suffers from bipolar disorder. We were supposed to be keeping track of his highs and lows—like when he rides his motorcycle at top speed with his silver hair flying everywhere, versus when he says things like “I . . . I can't stop the sadness.”

From across the aisle, Tess passed me a note:
Was it good?

I looked at her warily. Normally when near-strangers passed me notes, they said something dirty.

To clarify, Tess pointed at my binder. Beneath the plastic I kept a playbill from
Grey Gardens,
which my parents had taken me to see at The Armory for my fifteenth birthday and which I absolutely loved. Eagerly, I scribbled:
It was amazing!

And there, in the flickering light of Richard Gere's breakdown, our friendship commenced.

One thing Tess and I had in common, apart from our enthusiasm for theater, was a certain kind of reputation. Mine had been cemented in middle school, after an embarrassing incident that, to my peers, had counted as evidence of my sluthood. Tess's fame for sex was self-inflicted. She used the word
semen
more often than most people said
water
or
ChapStick
.

Naturally, it was tiring to always be hearing about the older guys Tess found loitering outside the clubs on Burnside, or the favors she granted her lab partner “just because.” But her whorish tendencies could also be fun, like when we stayed up watching
Talk Sex with Sue Johanson,
a shockingly old lady who spent her hour of airtime arranging mannequins into undignified positions. I had never laughed that hard, about that kind of thing, with anyone. After enduring years of false accusations about the status of my virginity, Tess made me feel practically immune to embarrassment—like sex, in the end, was only a joke.

Our first friendship had lasted from the beginning of last June through the end of July, when her family invited me to spend a week at their house in Seaside. Afterward, I had spent the remainder of the summer trying to forget what had happened there.

The obvious thing would have been for Tess and me to never speak again, but then school started and we both got into
The Crucible
. I wasn't about to give up my part. So when Tess had pretended to meet me for the first time, I had just played along.

In September, Mr. McFadden had been prone to watching us rehearse with a half-dreamy, half-drunk look on his face. He always sat in the second row with his feet on the chair in front of him. Once, overcome with enthusiasm, he shouted, “Who are you people? Why aren't you hiding in closets weeping to The Smiths like the rest of your miserable peers?”

Broken-character grins stretched across our faces. Even though I had never really heard The Smiths, I screamed in response, “I danced for the devil!” Which happened to be my line, but which happened to feel like the truth.

Halfway through November, things changed. It had been raining for weeks and the whole auditorium smelled like a wet dog. Mr. McFadden frowned in the middle of act two. His face stayed that way through Charlie's recitation of the first nine commandments—then he rose from his seat before Liane could deliver the tenth: adultery.

“Liane, darling.”

Onstage, Liane and Charlie both froze. Mr. McFadden's tone was awful, like somebody's mother attempting to mask rage with a pet name.

“You are single-handedly rendering this production of Arthur Miller's masterpiece a farcical nightmare.”

Liane, who was generally very stoic, panicked and turned to her costar. Charlie just nodded in agreement with Mr. McFadden. He had a tendency to suck up to teachers in a way that would have been completely intolerable, if he hadn't been so damn good-looking.

Liane squeaked an apology, which wasn't like her, and I winced at the sound. Backstage she tried to shrug it off, but she was clearly close to tears. She was a fantastic actress and there was likely nothing farcical about her performance. Mr. McFadden was probably just suffering from some adult problem, like divorce or migraines.

Before I could offer any comfort, Tess was taking Liane's face in her hands, saying, “Don't let that asshole piss on your fire. You are a beautiful actress and he is a bitter old homo with a two-year degree from Spokane's Premiere School of the Arts.”

For the record: Mr. McFadden was not that old, not unhandsome, not necessarily gay.

Later that week, he requested Tim do something about his voice “crackling like a pubescent campfire.” Tim's lips disappeared. Deep creases appeared between his eyebrows, but he bravely finished the scene. A number of uneventful rehearsals followed before Mr. McFadden cupped his hands around his mouth—this time to yell at Charlie.

“Charles Lamb! Can you loosen up? Your shoulders are as stiff as a homophobic gym teacher's.”

Color spread from Charlie's cheeks to the tips of his ears. He looked like somebody experiencing humiliation for the very first time.

So many days would pass between attacks that we would wonder if we had finally won our director's approval. Of course, like any seasoned predator, that's when Mr. McFadden would strike. He described Tess's stage presence as “Courtney Love, the later years.” When Liane had a cold he told her to sit out until she “ceased to sound like a chain-smoking receptionist.” To Charlie he said more than once, “This is not an episode of
Seventh Heaven
!” which none of us had even seen on account of this being the twenty-first century.

In response, we developed a ritual of consoling whomever Mr. McFadden had victimized that day. We assured Tim that the cracks in his voice were barely noticeable. We fed Liane cherry-flavored lozenges and herbal tea. Charlie declared that Courtney Love was a “hot mess,” and Tess returned the favor by calling Charlie “the Ryan Gosling of the thespian troupe.”

I told myself they weren't flirting so much as licking each other's wounds.

“You guys ever notice the way Mr. McFadden looks at Rebecca when she's onstage?” Charlie posed this question on the school steps, after our first dress rehearsal for
The Crucible
. It was early December and the night air was all mist.

Tim clasped his hands and blinked rapidly, like a love-struck cartoon.

“You are weirdly exempt from Mr. McFadden's wrath,” said Liane.

“That's not true,” I protested. “The other day he told me I sound like a chimp when I sneeze.”

“Yeah, when you sneeze,” said Tess, “not when you act.”

“How do you know it was a real sneeze?” I argued lamely. “Maybe it was a performed sneeze.”

Charlie's laugh always made him sound older, and always made me want to attach my mouth to his. “Face it, Rivers.” Charlie grinned at me. “You're Mr. McFadden's leading lady. You can do no wrong.”

“Don't worry.” Tim patted my shoulder blade. “We can forgive your raw talent.”

Charlie stooped to whisper in my ear, “Tim speaks for himself.”

Hopefully the color had faded from my cheeks by the time we stepped into the fluorescently lit 24-Hour Hotcake and Steak House. We stood in line to order milk shakes and hotcakes—plus steak for Tim, who claimed a gluten allergy—then squeezed into the coveted half-circle booth. Liane went to the jukebox for the purpose of changing Hoobastank to David Bowie. Some bearded men in construction hats stared at her butt, causing Charlie's eyebrows to furrow protectively.

I tried not to feel so jealous.

After devouring our food, we were all kind of sleepy. Tess leaned on Tim's shoulder. Liane took long, noisy slurps of her milk shake.

“Rebecca,” said Charlie.

“Yeah?” We were sitting on opposite ends of the curved wooden bench.

“Why did you start acting?”

Tim grabbed the saltshaker and held it to my lips like a microphone. I pushed it away and groaned. “Why did you start acting?”

“College applications,” said Charlie. “I have to have diverse interests.”

Liane rolled her eyes. “There's no time for diverse interests.”

“Wrong,” he said. “Tomorrow I'm volunteering at the homeless shelter on Burnside. Monday at lunch I'm welcoming the latest additions to the German Language Honor Society.”

“Impressive,” said Liane.

“
Schönen dank
.” Charlie licked syrup off his lip. “Rebecca?” he pried.

“It's embarrassing,” I said.

“Why?” His stare was relentless.

I sighed. “So when I was little I was really shy. Like, I wouldn't talk to anyone except my sister.”

“I didn't know you had a sister.” Liane sounded almost offended.

“She's ten years older than me,” I explained. “She lives in California and never comes home. But when I was a kid she was practically my whole world. I didn't really have any friends.”

Charlie took this information in stride. The rest of them were slumped in a hotcake-induced stupor.

“Anyway,” I continued, “when my sister was in tenth grade, she was in
A Midsummer Night's Dream
at Cleveland High. They needed a few younger kids to play fairies, and my parents forced me to do it. I think they thought it would help me to, like, break out of my shell.”

“And?” Charlie asked.

I returned his stare. “I loved every minute of it.”

His eyes went all crinkly. “Of course you did.”

Liane was studying Charlie very intensely. “That's bullshit about your college applications,” she announced. Her tone, as usual, was hard to read.