Now You See Her (9 page)

Then Logan said, “But halt. . . ,” and he took me by the hand and led me into the wings. Then he lowered me down on my back on a pile of the old curtains that had just been taken down and left on the stage. He unbuttoned my coat and sweater as gently as he could.

And that was when we did it, for the first time.

People say your first time is always awful, but mine was totally natural and it was totally exciting. I had never even kissed a boy. I never wanted to. They were all so gross, sweating and farting and sickening when they ate. And I was already so charged up from getting the part that every inch of my skin felt like it had a separate can- dle burning under it, so when he reached up and slipped off my bra, I didn’t even think to stop him. We were like one person, and it didn’t even hurt, the way other girls said it did. It was like we were two beautiful spirits who had our own world all to ourselves, and I knew this

would be the only time I would feel this way or he would feel this way. I don’t know if it took minutes or, like, hours. You don’t think of time when you’re with someone you love. It’s just like you want to study every part of that person’s face and hands and his chest and everything. He looked like some magazine ad for Dolce

& Gabbana, like if it weren’t dark, he would be sun- tanned, posing on the deck of a ship. And I would be there too, just as beautiful, his perfect match. I loved Logan. I totally, completely loved Logan, and when I let him make love to me, I knew it was something we didn’t even need words for. And I totally trusted that he would never tell anyone. He would protect me, because telling anyone would make it seem like I was a slut.

When we were
finally
dressed, he didn’t walk me home. He put my coat around my shoulders, and we went out to his car. He drove me to town. He had his own car, because seniors were allowed. We went to Chatters, and we ate.

Logan said, “You know that meant something to me. I hope you didn’t think I was just trying to take advan- tage of the moment. I hope it meant something to you, too. I don’t want it to be something that ends.”

“I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t wanted to,” I said, but I was starting to freak out a little. I was starting to realize that, just like Juliet, I had given my virginity to a

guy right away. If it hadn’t been Logan, I would have been scared. I said, “I don’t ever want it to end.”

It was close to midnight when we got back, and Lisa, my dorm advisor, had to unlock the door. She came swooping down on us like this big spider.

“Brook Emerson kept us late,” Logan told her. I didn’t say anything. I was sure she could see it all over me, what we’d done. It’s true. You do look different, and I could see how jealous she was.

Lisa was probably in her twenties, really a lot older, but she was all over Logan. She asked, “Are you Logan Rose?” and Logan was like, yeah, sort of humble, and Lisa said, “I saw you in
Miss Fortune
. I think it’s cool that you’re finishing school here.”

He said, “People who don’t finish are stupid. They end up zoners half the time.”

Lisa asked, “Are you going to college or right to L.A.?”

“College. If they’ll have me. There are no guarantees in the business,” he said.

“Yeah, but you’ve already been in a movie and on TV,” she was saying, all gushy. “You know you could go to any college.” He just sort of nodded. “Would you take a year off if you got a part in a movie?” He nodded again. “That’s totally understandable,” Lisa said.

She would have gone on talking all night, and I just

wanted to be alone in my room and relive the whole thing, and I knew Logan did too, so I started to squeeze past her and go upstairs so my poor Logan could finally leave. Lisa said then, “Hope. Your mother called, like, ten times, and I didn’t know what to tell her. You’ll have to be written up. . . .”

“You won’t write her up,” Logan pleaded, getting down on his knees. “Blame me. Write me up.” Lisa blushed like she was my age or something. Logan knew what to do in any situation.

“Well, not this time.”

I ran upstairs and tore off my clothes. I was going to jump in the shower like I always did, but who would want to wash Logan away? Then I opened my window and leaned out so my cell phone semi-worked and called my mother. Okay, so I wasn’t supposed to have a cell. But it was a stupid rule.

“What the hell is going on?” she yelled at me. “It’s one in the morning! Tryouts were over at nine!”

“I had to stay late, and Mom, there was this guy.” I had to make something up fast. “It was when I was cross- ing the road, and he followed me in his truck, and we had to run—”

“We, who’s we?” she asked. “What do you mean, fol- lowed you?”

“Like in a creepy way. And ‘we’ was Logan Rose.

Mom, he’s been in a movie with Ben Stiller and he’s been on
Wailea Alive
and he’s eighteen and he likes me. He’s here to finish senior year, and he’s going to be Romeo.”

“Oh,” she said, and I could hear the excitement in her voice. “He likes you, like, a girlfriend?”

“Yes, but that’s not all.” I paused and breathed in the moonlight. “Mom, I got Juliet.”

“Oh my God, Hope.” She started to cry. I could hear her yelling for my father, and him in the background, all slurring, obviously having had his customary four “dirty” martinis. Him saying, “Way to go, Bernadette!” “You mean, they didn’t give it to a senior?”

“No, me! Well, there’s this one girl who’ll probably do some of the shows. But she’s sort of my understudy... .”

“Oh, Hopie! I never would have believed this was possible!”

“Well, believe it!”

“You’ll have to get your hair streaked again!”

“Mom, Juliet didn’t have highlights! He likes it black—Brook Emerson!”

“Oh my God! Mark! It’s Brook Emerson. From
Feast of Fools
! That’s the guest director. When do you start rehearsals? Now remember, no white food between now and then. No bread. No milk . . .”

“Mom! I know how to do this,” I said. I wanted to get

off the phone. My beautiful dream was fading. I had to think about it, feel it, let it come back to life. “I have to get to sleep, Mom,” I began.

Then she asked, “Did you tell your friend, Levon . . .” “Logan . . .”

“Or your advisor, or whatever she is? About the guy on the road?”

I was actually relieved. She was totally off the track. If I had been older, or if we had been closer, I could have told her that I just had the most totally emotional time of my life. I could never tell her. Not now or two years from now. She’d have pulled me out of Starwood so fast, I wouldn’t have had time to grab my toothbrush. Or maybe not. If she thought it was somebody who could get me someplace, maybe she would have been almost okay with it. Knowing my mom, she’d have sent me a care package with chocolate chip cookies and condoms.

VI
‌

L

OGAN AND ME
.

That was my whole world. Logan and me.

See my journal heading up there, for today? I haven’t actually written anything for two weeks because I’ve been too tired and busy with homework crap. But there it is. The arrow that pierced my heart and me. Side by side, always.

Logan. And me.

It was a week until rehearsal began. I hadn’t seen Logan. Not that we were avoiding each other, or any- thing. When I did see him, for the first read-through, I sort of blushed. But once rehearsals began, it was as if we had been together for our whole lives. As if there were nothing we couldn’t tell each other. And we were

together constantly, every moment that we weren’t in class or in public.

By “in public,” I mean we didn’t eat lunch together or dinner or anything, because people would have started talking. That was my idea. I didn’t want to be gossiped about. People were jealous enough.

When the casting was announced, a couple of the senior girls actually started to cry and ran out of the hall. This big, mean blond girl who’d played Rizzo in
Grease
the year before said, “Bite me on the leg and call me Rover. That little shit! I can’t believe it!” As if they were going to cast some big fat chick as Juliet. I’m so sure. She was lucky to get in at all, as Juliet’s mother. That’s not a bad role.

I did what my mother said and kept my head low. “People are going to be jealous of you your whole

life,” she said when I called to tell her she needed to send me a bunch of new rehearsal clothes. I was using Brook’s cell and I put Logan on. He was a little shy, but he said, “Uh, hi, Mrs. Romano.”

I could hear my mom. “‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo’?” she asked, like she didn’t even know that “wherefore” meant “why.”

Later Logan told me his mom was mostly the same way. “It must be genetic,” he said. “You know, like those pillows that say anyone can be a father, but it takes

someone special to be a dad? Well, anyone can be a good mom, but it takes someone special to be a stage mother.” I laughed so hard I had to stop running and catch my breath.

We went running together a lot, and then afterward we made love outside. Or else we would go to this little broken-down hunter’s cabin where the seniors went to drink. There were blankets there and a bathroom with running water. It was cold, but there was a woodstove, and once we started it and stayed for hours.

Logan wasn’t allowed to come into my dorm room.

And I wasn’t allowed in the guys’ dorm, either.

It was hard for us.

Like, there was the time we mutually decided that he would take the big blonde, Grace Carnahan, to Homecoming. Logan didn’t want people to think that we were together the way we were. It would have looked bad for me. I might have gotten kicked out of school. You weren’t supposed to date other students—well, have a sexual relationship at school—even if you were the same age. And definitely not a senior with a sophomore.

And plus, we were starting to talk about The Plan.

Logan brought it up one night when we were lying on the sleeping bag together at the cabin.

“I can’t stand the idea of leaving you next year,” he said. “You’re like the whole world to me, Hope. I can’t

imagine living without you.”

“But what are we going to do, then?” I asked. “I have two more years here, and then college.”

“Well, we could skip out,” he said. “We could just run away, you and me. We could work as waiters until we got work in movies or on Broadway and then when you’re twenty-one, we could get married.”

I was totally over the sun and the moon, then. Logan was asking me to marry him! It was a big decision—a big decision to make at fifteen. But I knew he was the one. It’s like our futures were, like, entwined—we knew we were fated to be together. So I kissed him very softly and said, “Yes, a thousand times yes! I’ll go with you any- where on Earth, Logan.”

So then we really had to start being careful. We couldn’t let anyone suspect we were together. Can you imagine how that felt? We practically had to act like we weren’t even friends: “Hi, Logan.” “Hi, Hope.” If I was going to take off with Logan when he graduated, I didn’t want it to get around that we were in love now. My par- ents would kill me, and the school would be responsible for their most famous student—well, after the play their two most famous students—sleeping together.

What Logan explained to me was this: he was going to go to college in the fall, but at Michigan, not at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, so he could be near me.

Then, when I turned sixteen, in junior year? I was going to quit. We were going to go to L.A. or New York, take his car, use up the credit cards, take out all the money in my account, and just go! My parents would freak, but I’d tell them I was going to go to Stella Adler or the Actors Studio. I could talk them into that, especially if I let them pay for a room at one of those “girl dorms” where acting students live, even if I really, secretly lived with Logan.

I couldn’t believe that in a year, I would be living with Logan, waking up with him every morning, making his coffee, walking to the subway with him and holding his hand, and he’d be coming home every night if he didn’t have a rehearsal and the two of us would have a candlelight dinner. Okay, it might only be rice and beans, but it would be by candlelight! We would live way up on the West Side, or some other cheap place, as long as we could live together. Maybe we would get a big German shepherd. I imagined us walking the dog together on Sunday mornings in Riverside Park, drinking our Starbucks. I imagined Logan tackling me so he could cover me up with leaves and then us making out on the grass on some warm fall day. You probably think it was crazy for a fifteen-year-old to be thinking like this. But I wasn’t any fifteen-year-old. And it’s different with peo- ple in the business. You grow up faster. You can make

decisions better because you’ve had to make so many decisions on the stage that had an effect on your future, because every performance affects your future.

Anyway, you can tell that Logan and I knew we had something that was probably unique in the world—like the real Romeo and Juliet. I know that sounds nuts. But they knew even though they were made-up people. Logan and I didn’t even have to talk to each other every day to totally maintain our connection. What we said with our eyes, at rehearsal, was more than most people say to each other their whole lives with their stupid mouths. I basically lived for rehearsals, and our times alone in the woods. Then we could hold each other close and talk about The Plan. How good the bagels would be in New York. How we could go to the beach in L.A. How it wouldn’t take long to get work. I could do Disney and Nickelodeon things: I was so small I could still play a kid. So Florida was another option. I started subscribing to the casting magazine
Stage Door
, for both