Never Enough (13 page)

I didn’t turn around again until her footsteps echoed down the hall.

I came home to find Josh, with his head down, walking for his car.

“Hey,” I said, forcing some volume so he’d be sure to hear me.

He looked up and his face broke into a smile. “Hey, yourself.”

“Leaving already?” I wasn’t sure where the words were coming from. My mouth seemed to be spewing them without the help of my brain.

He glanced to the upper floor of our house and pursed his lips like he wasn’t sure what to say. Then he just looked back at me and nodded. I wondered if he and Claire had a fight. Josh didn’t make a move for his car, but I had no idea what else to say. I really needed to take a class in Small Talk with Boys.

“Not out with your boyfriend today?” he asked.

I looked at him blankly. Did he mean Marcus? How would he even know about him? Did he and Claire talk about us—about me? “Marcus? He’s not . . . my boyfriend,” I said finally, looking down at my feet with a twinge of regret. I’d always known I didn’t have a chance with someone like Josh, but I guess I had let myself get my hopes up with Marcus. Now it didn’t look like that was going anywhere either.

“Huh.” Josh reached for his door handle. “Too bad for him.”

I stood in my driveway with my mouth hanging open, unable to form a good-bye, until Josh had driven down our street and turned the corner.

When I could finally prod myself in the front door, I smelled his lingering cologne. And the aroma lasted all the way up the stairs.

Claire’s door was shut, so I suspected she was putting her prim appearance back together after a quickie. A strong pang of jealousy hit and I headed back downstairs to grab some food to distract myself. Claire’s uneaten lunch wasn’t on the counter. Even though I knew I shouldn’t be angry about that—it was
her
lunch, after all—I was. But also, when I opened the fridge, the pan of leftover lasagna had disappeared. Had Claire fed it, and all of its protein, to Josh? Lasagna was my
favorite.
I checked the sink, the cupboards, even the garbage, but the pan wasn’t anywhere.

I didn’t see it until I walked past Claire’s empty bedroom
to go down for dinner later. I nudged open her door with my foot—just trying to see her room through Josh’s eyes for a second—and there on her dresser sat the empty pan.

Even if he had a huge appetite, I found it hard to believe Josh could have eaten all of it. So Claire would only eat vegetables at the table with our parents, but she’d feast on meat and pasta all afternoon with sweet, wonderful Josh? Was her dinner-table eating all an act to one-up Mom? I don’t know why it got to me. Honestly, I wasn’t mad about missing out on a delicious after-school snack. I could probably use the calorie curb, but my whole body still heated up in a jealous rage.

Why did Claire always get exactly what she wanted, and I couldn’t even seem to get the scraps?

“Where’s the lasagna?” I said pointedly to Mom across the dinner table. I looked over at Claire, too, but she kept her face in her cell phone.

“Eat what I made you first, Loann,” Mom said, her eyes in the newspaper as she chewed a bite of potatoes. It used to be an unwritten rule that we spent dinnertimes focused on one another. Now I felt like I needed to bring a book to the table just to fit in.

“Yeah, I know, but there’s none left.”

She sighed. “Is it gone already?” She said it like
Ho-hum, another thing to buy
.

“There was half a pan yesterday,” I added.

“Hmm?” Mom said, without looking up. She was no help at all.

Claire had stopped studying her cell to look at me. She mouthed the word,
“Sorry.”

At first, I thought she was sorry because she understood that she got everything and I got nothing. But after a second I realized it was just about the lasagna. Still, she flashed me a smile, and my grudge softened.

She did deserve Josh. She did. I was just feeling insecure about Marcus.

And when Marcus was cold to me again Monday, only talking about our set, my normal playful comments took a turn for the worse. “Let me guess—you want to spend lunch staring at a computer again.” With all the times Marcus had jilted me lately, my tone came out more sarcastic than I meant it. On the upside, in my free time I’d been taking some excellent photographs around town. Mr. Dewdney had also started letting me use class time to develop photos when I told him about our drama project.

Our check-ins with Mr. Benson were going extremely well. The more he saw of our photo-display backdrop, the more he appreciated our ingenuity. Aside from the need to go back and resize a few things, they looked even more impressive on the scrim at the back of the stage than I had expected. A forest of trees appeared on the right of the scrim, with my
cute little squirrel blown up on the left. Mr. Benson hovered over us in the sound booth of the auditorium, but I barely noticed him.

“That looks so . . . amazing,” I said as Marcus flipped his PowerPoint onto the next image, a house that Marcus had doctored up to look like a cabin in the woods.

He nudged his leg against mine under the computer desk. “Yeah, it does.”

We hadn’t been close since that day up in the costume storage—we’d barely made eye contact—and the sudden touch felt shockingly friendly.

Mr. Benson jabbered on about how each photo would work with the play, not noticing our silent connection. I hadn’t even been planning on going to the play, since Shayleen had been bragging through the hallways for weeks about her part in it. But now, seeing our art up there on the big screen . . . how could I miss it?

“So do we get complimentary tickets or something?” Marcus asked, reading my mind.

“Oh, I think that’s the least we can do,” Mr. Benson said. And I could tell by his tone that Marcus and I could expect something better than a B this term.

But as excited as I was, I felt sad, too. Now that the set was pretty much done, Marcus and I would no longer get to spend drama block alone. We wouldn’t be working toward
something together. And with summer looming, I started to fear that we might lose touch completely.

Through the next weeks, life whizzed by, though, and I didn’t end up having much time to think about it. My exam schedule was heavy and I studied most afternoons. Marcus and I still sat together in drama class and he flashed me the occasional smirk. The class was small; only a handful of us weren’t off rehearsing for the play. At least I only had to see Shayleen’s daily glare for the first few minutes of each class.

Mr. Benson had bragged about our photo-set during our first class back in the drama room, and Shayleen hadn’t wasted any time telling him she hoped someone “professional” would be running the computer for rehearsals.

She obviously didn’t want us around, which was just fine with me. Things started to feel more relaxed between Marcus and me, and I started to wonder if this was better: being back in a classroom, where things were less threatening.

*   *   *

Coming up to opening night of the play, I didn’t bother to tell my parents about the photo-set we’d done, since Claire’s grad, and all of the many events surrounding it, obviously took priority. When they were home, Mom and Dad bantered constantly about which nights each of them would have to take off work to drive Claire and her friends around. I sure didn’t want to be an extra obligation on their schedule.

I met Marcus outside the school on opening night.

It hadn’t occurred to me to change out of the jeans and T-shirt I’d worn to school that day—I mean, it
was
a school event—but it surprised me that Marcus now wore khaki pants with a navy button-down shirt. I felt embarrassed at my inability to be a normal girl who knew when to dress up for things. And because I was so embarrassed, it took me way too long to choke out some words.

“You look really nice,” I said.

He let out a breathy laugh, like he either didn’t believe me or was equally embarrassed by my comment. He led the way to the door and handed the ushers our tickets. They directed us toward the front of the auditorium.

“Wow,” I whispered as we sat down. “First row?”

“You don’t know how good your pictures are, Loann.”

My face warmed. Now it felt like we were on a date. I stared straight ahead at the sepia cabin picture, the one that would fill the scrim until the play started, and gripped my armrests. “It wouldn’t have worked at all without your expertise,” I said, barely able to get out the words.

Silence fell between us, but it wasn’t the comfortable silence from the Arts Club. No, this was different. I fidgeted with the side of my armrest and turned over my ticket stub again and again in my hands. Marcus sat totally still. Rigid. It was a relief when the lights finally dimmed.

Fifteen minutes into the play, Marcus leaned in and whispered, “The backdrop is the best part.” His warm breath tickled my neck and his arm rested against mine on the armrest. I nibbled at the inside of my lip.

The people beside me murmured about the set, and oohs and ahhs sounded each time the picture faded into a new one, which made me flush even more. It wasn’t until right before the intermission that I realized I hadn’t seen Shayleen yet. I knew some of the parts had been trimmed due to time, because Mr. Benson had talked about it during drama class, and most of the lead parts had been given to seniors. But still, where was she? I was about to ask Marcus when all of a sudden, there she was: stage right.

“Wow,” she said in an overprojected voice. “I think I like it out here!” Ironically, she made a motion to the back of the stage, to our photo-set with a picture of an open expanse of overgrown grass and wildflowers, when she said it. She swept across the stage like a windstorm, distracting the audience from all the other actors until finally she exited off of stage left. And
that
. . . was the last we saw of her.

Even though I really wanted to gloat, at least inwardly, part of me felt bad for Shayleen. I’d seen many of her outrageous attempts at being noticed over the years. But I don’t know, her trying to make her one line into something it wasn’t just seemed so public and embarrassing. Even though
she could be mean, I’ve always known that it was because she just didn’t feel good enough.

On our way out of the theater after the show, Mr. Benson called Marcus and me over to where he stood in the lobby. “I’d like you to meet our set designers. A couple of my most creative students,” he exclaimed to his friends, some faculty members from his old college. “They came up with the setting for the play all on their own.”

Nods of approval came at us from every direction. I stood there, soaking up their compliments, until I felt Marcus’s tight grip on my arm. My overactive sweat glands reappeared, even more so when he leaned in and whispered, “Can we go now?”

I made a big deal of thanking the teachers, telling them we didn’t want to keep them, and then nudged our way out of the circle and toward the front doors.

When we were almost there, Shayleen came into view, surrounded by her mom, who I recognized, and a few other vaguely familiar family members. They all chatted among themselves, ignoring Shayleen. Over the years I’d been to plenty of Claire’s dance performances, and afterward all the dancers could be found in the lobby with their families. But the focus was always on them. I suddenly felt worse for Shayleen. No matter how small of a part, your family should be there for you, congratulating you after the show. Shayleen shifted from side to side, like she couldn’t wait to get out of there.

Since we were close enough, I veered slightly toward her and tapped her on the side of the arm.

She looked at me with surprise. Before she registered why I was tapping her, I rushed on with my words. “Good job up there, Shayleen.”

Her eyes scanned my face and her forehead crinkled.

“That’s all I wanted to say,” I told her, and headed for the door. It wasn’t like I was trying to repair our friendship. At all. I didn’t want to be her friend. Tonight, I don’t know, I just couldn’t leave her feeling that way.

When we were outside, Marcus walked slower than usual, keeping pace with me instead of rushing on ahead like he usually did. The way he kept glancing over, I could tell he wanted to say something, and I’ll admit, my hopes rose that it might be about us. The two of us. Together. I tried to give him a meaningful look that said,
Whatever it is, you can tell me
.

We walked in silence for a while. Then he said, “That was pretty cool, what you said to Shayleen.”

Even though Shayleen was
not
the subject I wanted to be on, I loved that he understood how hard it was for me to compliment her. But at the same time, I wasn’t trying to get her back on my side or anything. He understood it all without me having to say it. “Thanks.”

He nodded, and didn’t say anything else for at least a block. “I’ve never had a friend like you, Loann.” He looked up at the
cloudless, darkening sky. “Someone who just accepts me for who I am. Someone who understands things and doesn’t ask questions all the time.”

Even though I really wanted to know how he felt about me, I decided right then that I would do my best to keep my mouth shut.