Now You See Her (10 page)

L.A. and New York, and looking for paying roles that might be suitable for me or Logan. I cut them out and slipped them through the slots in his mailbox, and I would watch, hiding myself just for fun, as he took them out and pretended to be all puzzled.

I wish we had just stuck to The Plan.

The Idea messed up The Plan. Alyssa Lyn must have

had something to do with it. Because the Logan I knew, my Logan, would never have double-crossed me that way. Now I realize that the minute that The Idea was born, The Plan, and our love, started to die.

But I didn’t know that yet. Rehearsals went on, and I never got any bad notes. (Notes, if you don’t know, are things the director writes down when you’re rehearsing. Like “We can’t see you in scene two, act one, because you’re turned the wrong way” or “The emphasis has to be on ‘grave’ man. It’s a joke, but it’s also a pun. He knows he’s going to die.”) You get sometimes a whole page of those sentences, and they hurt. You get them after a rehearsal, and you have to fix the things you did wrong or you get in trouble, or even out of the show, replaced by somebody else. Brook was super-critical of Alyssa Lyn, saying, “You’re going to be out there in two weeks. Out there! And I don’t see that you’ve taken this to your soul! And I don’t want to see you play Juliet, and I don’t care if you have before; I want you to
be
Juliet. Like, I’m not seeing desperation in the scene where she’s begging the Nurse. I need to see panic. This girl is about to lose her mind!” She spent a lot more time onstage than I did, but that was just because she wasn’t as good. I would just sit in my seat, smug as the cat who got the cream, waiting for my turn to show her how they did it
downtown
(and I don’t mean downtown Black Sparrow

Lake, Michigan). I never got notes, not once. Brook just kept saying, “Very fresh. Very fresh. Follow that, Hope. . . .” almost like he was distracted, because I didn’t really need direction; and then he would give pages of notes to every- body else. You could tell Alyssa Lyn was jealous, because she started mocking me.

This one time? I was in the lounge reading, and there was this guy, Brent Sawyer, sitting in one of the big arm- chairs. His girlfriend was sitting on the chair, sort of fool- ing with his hair, the way I always sat on the arm of a chair with Logan. She was clearly imitating us. Logan was studying at a table by the fireplace. Then Alyssa Lyn and her best friend, Monique, came in. “There she is,” Alyssa said. “She clings to him like the fabric softener sheets cling to the ass of my pants.”

“I’d like to put the toe of my boot up her ass,” Monique said, loud enough for anyone to hear. “She thinks she’s so all that.”

“She has no ass!” Alyssa said, and the two of them collapsed all over each other the way the idiots back in Bellamy used to, like what they said was so, so funny. “Logan!” Alyssa called then. “Can you come outside just for a minute? I have something to show you.” She said it all sexy. That was one of the times I really hated being secret the most. I would have so loved to tell her Logan was
mine
.

He played along, though. He got up and followed Alyssa Lyn, but he turned back and shrugged and winked at me.

At least nothing could spoil our joy in working together. When we rehearsed the death scenes, Brook closed the set. It was just Logan and me. (And Alyssa Lyn. And once in a while, Logan’s understudy.)

If I loved Logan before, I loved him even more when he sat down on the boards they had set up on a sawhorse as the stone bench Juliet lies down on in the crypt, and let his head drop into his hands. He had a new way he wanted to do the famous scene where Romeo finds Juliet dead and decides he has to kill himself with poison to be with her. She thought he was dead and that was why she killed herself . . . it’s all very confused, but peo- ple in Shakespeare are always doing stuff because they think another person did something that they really didn’t do. Anyhow, Logan hesitated so long that Brook almost said something, but just at the last moment, he let his hand trail down my face and my body, between my breasts, as if he were feeling for my heartbeat. He said, “Here’s to my love!” He began to laugh, this sad, awful laugh; it was unbelievable. “O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.” And he shrugged, like a kid would do, and grabbed his stomach and made a lot of sort of gagging noise and fell to his

knees, all curled up.

Brook said, “Do you think that’s over the top?”

Logan got up and said, “You’re the boss. But I studied it. And this stuff he would have swallowed, it hurts. It burns. He’d have trouble talking. It’s not like you just fall asleep. They make the dagger scene so pretty too. But you know how hard you have to push to stab yourself? She’d be huffing like a choo-choo train.”

Brook said, “Good point.” He laughed. “Just a . . . little less gagging? But the rest of it, okay. . . .”

The great part for me was that I didn’t have to act. I
was
Logan’s love, and he was mine. Like once, I passed Logan with The Big Blonde. I remember it was snowing and they had to put off the big bonfire that the school had in the fall every year, so people were kind of down because it was supposedly a lot of fun, a lot of people performing and singing and stuff. Logan had his arm around The Big Blonde, but he winked at me, and said, “Hey, Shortie! ‘A greater power than we can contradict Hath thwarted our intents’!” Anyone who didn’t know would have thought he meant the bonfire and was just using a line from
Romeo and Juliet
. But I knew it was meant as a message for me, that we couldn’t let anyone know, that he didn’t really want to be with her. It was all for the sake of appearances. I understood; it was torture, seeing him walk around like he was a player, and then

having to forgive him when he was lying in my arms. I would tell him how much it hurt, and he would ask me, “Why do you let it get to you? Why don’t you just blow it off?”

He just couldn’t get it. He had all those friends. I just had him. I really had hoped that the people at Starwood would turn out to be mature enough that I could be friends with them. They turned out to be just as stupid as the people back home. By Halloween I knew people suspected Logan and I were going out, because the mocking got worse. Other girls would pass me and burst out laughing, because I have this habit of repeating my lines when I’m walking along. They made fun of it instead of respecting it. Once Alyssa Lyn, that bitch, said, “Are you getting any answers back from whoever you’re talking to, Hope?” I just ignored them. But it wasn’t easy. I had to remember that in just a year, Logan and I would be together. I would think of us as being one of those power couples on the red carpet, with every girl

wanting to be her and every guy wanting to be him.

And that was why I went along with it when he sug- gested The Idea. That, and I knew he loved me more than anything on Earth. Logan said we couldn’t be sure that we’d be able to afford to live only working in restau- rants. Big cities are expensive! And if my parents had some objection, and they really stuck to it, what would

we do? Logan’s parents were going to be pissed off about him dropping out of college unless it was for a movie role. We both knew that in time, our parents would come around. But coming back would not be an option. It would be absolutely unacceptable. Logan was worried about what we would do when we first got there. That was what led to The Idea. That, and how furious I got at Logan for getting
me
in trouble at Homecoming!

That night, I was supposed to wait for him to come to my room after the dance. He would sneak in, as I’d snuck out five or six times before. I spent Homecoming night sitting in my room, trying not to give in and eat a whole bag of Twix my mother had sent. (My costume had a twenty-two-inch waist. I didn’t dare eat anything.) I had to stay awake. I knew he would come to me after the dance. So I kept taking off my makeup and putting it on until three in the morning, going down and check- ing the door, because I had stuck a folded piece of card- board in it so the alarm wouldn’t go off when Logan came.

But he never showed up, and Lisa found the card- board in the door just when I was coming down to check for Logan. Because I’m an honest person, I admitted that I had been the one who put it there.

Lisa
said
it wasn’t a big deal because I really hadn’t done anything, only planned to. But then, she made a

report! I got written up for putting the cardboard in the door. I had to go to the girls’ dean, Miss Lobelier, and be given the third degree.

“What was the purpose of trying to defeat the secu- rity system, Hope?” she kept asking me.

“I just like to go out at night sometimes. It helps me think. And it’s totally safe here. You know, there’s no one around,” I said.

“Hope, we have a security system for a reason. It’s not to keep our students in. It’s to keep others out.”

“I know. But I’m not used to so many rules,” I said. “Hope, three serious write-ups means dismissal,” said

Miss Lobelier, looking down her big nose at me over her half lenses. “I’m going to have to tell your parents about this in a formal letter.”

“They’ll take me out,” I said. “They’re very protective.

They’ll make me leave immediately.”

I thought this would stop her: I mean, losing Juliet? And why was she freaking crazy over a nothing little event? She had to know that kids went out to the cabin and drank, practically every night! I was going to say that, when I realized maybe it was not such a good idea because Logan and I went there too. So I put on the sweetness. I said that I really wasn’t going to go any- where. I said I never go anywhere. I said I was getting straight As and the only place I ever went was rehearsal.

I just wanted to go outside and stretch or maybe run. I used to run at night all the time at home, I told her, hop- ing she wouldn’t ask me if I went running at three in the morning. “I was kind of depressed,” I said. “Because everyone else went to Homecoming.” Lobelier’s face seemed to twitch a little. Maybe it was a smile.

“I can’t bend the rules for anyone,” she said, and I could already tell that she was going to do just that. She sighed and leaned back in her chair. I could, like, read her thoughts. She was thinking why did she want to cause all this trouble for a kid who was just lonely and wishing she was at the big dance (like I sooooo cared!). She was thinking about all the people who would be coming to the play and that Brook Emerson would throw a total tantrum if he had to recast. Adults really have no morals. They just pretend they’re going to stick to something, but they always cave in if it’s going to look bad for them. But, hey, I was furious. That night at the rehearsal, when I got to the “wherefore art thou Romeo” part, I was practically spitting at Logan. Brook told me to tone it down. Logan sort of hung his head. Then I practically ate the girl alive who was playing the Nurse when she told me that Romeo had killed Tybalt. “‘O serpent heart, hid with a flow’ring face!’” I cried out at her, raising my hand as if I would slap her, treating her like a rich girl really would treat a servant who brought her bad news.

“‘Beautiful tyrant! Fiend angelical!’” I made sure that Logan could see my face from the wings. Brook said I was overwhelming in my power.

“Just like the spoiled brat Juliet would be,” he said, clapping his hands.

Later on that night, Logan was holding me and kept trying to get me to kiss him, but I wouldn’t. He apolo- gized ten times. I just kept pulling away. We were stand- ing down by the boathouse, where nobody could see us. It wasn’t curfew yet. We’d gotten done early that night. I said, “Look. You say you love me. You have me, body and soul. You want me to go away with you and spend my life with you. And then you just don’t show up and I get in trouble. You so spent the night with that . . . sow. I know you did!”

“Look,” he said finally. “This is the last time I’m going to explain this. You know I love you, Hope. I couldn’t wait to get away from those other jerks. I just went back to my room to change my clothes and I sat down for about five minutes and I just crashed. That’s all. That’s the absolute truth. You know, Hope, you’re not the only one who’s under a strain.”

I let him kiss me then. I said I believed him, and I never saw a guy look more relieved than he did. How could he have wanted to be with Grace Carnahan any- how? She was a total fat ass. She must have weighed a

hundred and thirty pounds.

Funny thing, it turned out that Brook liked the “authenticity” of my anger in the scene with the nurse. So I had to keep doing it.

And Logan was telling the truth. About Grace, that is.

What he wasn’t telling the truth about was worse, a whole lot worse.

But I didn’t know anything about that then. I was just like Juliet, a big-eyed girl in love. I couldn’t see any- thing else.

It was right after Homecoming when he first sug- gested it.

The Idea.

We had been out in the cabin making love during the hour between dinner and rehearsal. We pretended we were going jogging. Sometime I would be so weak from his love, I could hardly walk back to rehearsal.

The way we made love it was always like it was the first time. People say it’s not always like that, that it can become routine. But the sex wasn’t even the important part. It was our bodies doing what our hearts already did, like in a way we could be closer together emotionally. If we could have been inside each other’s hearts, we would have been. Like wherever Logan touched me wasn’t

really alive until he put his hand there. He made me alive and human and real, and the world just snapped into focus when we were together. The rest of the time it was sort of shades of gray to me. If you’ve never done it with someone you love, I feel so sorry for you, because you can never understand this. Maybe it’s only that way for people who are totally sensitive in the first place. Anyway, it was one of those special nights when he showed me the spot off the running path where the bend went up and around a little hill. He spread out a blanket, the same blanket they found me on, and we sat down and held each other. It was a pretty cool night, so we didn’t do it again (Logan actually thought it was kind of gross to do it more than once). And then he asked me, “What would you say your parents think you’re worth?”