The Boy I Love (17 page)

“The school makes DVDs of the performances,” I said. “You can buy one for ten dollars.”

“Oh, great!” Holly said, like this solved everything.

“Great!” I imitated her singsong, cheerful voice. “Well, since that solves everything, I'll see you when I see you.”

“Wren, wait,” Holly said. She could tell I was about to hang up. “I know that doesn't solve everything. But things are so tense I really don't think it's a good idea for me to come. I love your mom so much, you know I do, and once this whole Hillsdale thing is settled—”

“Hillsdale thing?”

Now it was Holly's turn to go quiet. I sat there, listening, and even though she didn't so much as breathe, it was the loudest silence I had ever heard.

“What's Hillsdale?” I said, getting a little loud myself.

“Um . . . I think you should ask your parents, Wren. I didn't realize they hadn't said anything to you.”

I racked my brain trying to think if the word “Hillsdale” had floated up from any of Mom and Dad's umpteen fights. Nothing. Clearly the name was loaded enough that even in the heat of fury they'd remembered to whisper it.

Then I thought of something. “Wait. I know what it is,” I said, recalling the plan they'd come up with at the Indian restaurant. “It's a boarding school where Mom can teach riding. Right? We're moving there?”

This time I heard Holly take in a breath. “You might be,” she said, leveling with me. Clearly now there'd be no convincing her to come to the play. My parents were going to kill her.

“And where is it?” I said. “Where is this boarding school?”

“New Hampshire,” Holly said.

New Hampshire! It might as well have been Timbuktu. I turned off my phone and dropped it in my book bag. I wasn't trying to be rude. I just felt stunned. New Hampshire. I pictured mounds and mounds of snow. Classrooms filled with rich northerners just like Devon.

Tim handed me one of his tiny doughnuts. He had white powder across his chin, and I could see from his face that he understood, without asking, exactly what had happened. It was too bad Holly wouldn't come to
Finian's Rainbow
, because it looked like it could very well be my one and only play on the Williamsport High School stage. I closed my hand around that doughnut, put my head on Tim's knee,
and just stared down the aisle of the bus, hardly moving the whole ride, and not saying a single word.

*   *   *

There was no time the rest of the day to feel sad, even over the complete and total ruination of my life. I had to go to classes, and the whole cast had lunch together in the auditorium, because Ms. Winters wanted to make sure we had light but protein-packed meals just like she'd told us. Of course I had packed my own. I didn't even know if my parents remembered that tonight was the first performance. I sure hadn't bothered reminding them.

As soon as the last bell rang, we all met for last-minute blocking and hair and makeup. I wore an old-fashioned dress with an apron over it and a kerchief in my hair, plus shoes with thick heels, since Annie and Elizabeth Claire were both about six inches taller than me. This didn't worry me. My voice was plenty big even if I wasn't.

*   *   *

If only I could take that first performance and bottle it up—keep it somewhere so that anytime I wanted I could just step right inside. Because for the first time in what seemed a million years—long enough to find an alligator and ship him off down further south, long enough for me to lose my old best friend and gain a new one, long enough to lose our horse farm to a catering business—none of those thoughts entered my head. All I saw was that pulsing, happy audience. Not
their faces, which just looked like a million dots, but their applause and their attention. When I wasn't onstage I hid out in the wings, watching Tim sing his lines and dance with Caroline Jones. I felt so proud of both of them, Caroline dancing so prettily, and Tim so funny and charming, his voice sounding so strong and good. And we must have done a decent job with our “Necessity” song, because the whole audience got to their feet and gave us a standing ovation.

Reality didn't enter again till after the performance. Mom and Dad were waiting for me at the front of the auditorium, holding a huge bouquet of sunflowers, my favorite. They both had smiles on their faces, the first I'd seen in ages.

“Wren!” Mom said. Her face looked bright and lit up and happy. “You were so wonderful! You were perfect! Didn't I tell you that song was a showstopper?”

Dad had his hands shoved in his pockets. Despite being all pale and bloated, he looked almost like himself when he said, “Wren, you were just great. You sang that song so loud and pretty.”

I took the flowers and let them hug me. “Did you see Ry was in the audience?” Mom said. “I thought he was going to stick around and say hi; I don't know where he went.”

I shrugged. What in the world mattered less than Ry these days? I had a real life to worry about.

“Allie was here too,” Dad said.

The exhilaration of the performance faded right before
my eyes, and the real world came crashing down. The word “Hillsdale” came into my head, but even I wasn't mean enough to throw it out at my parents just then. They still had the glow of the performance, even if mine had disappeared.

“Let's go home,” I said. “I'm fried.”

I barely got to see Tim in the shuffle. He was off with his parents and his sister, who'd come home from college to see the play. We waved to each other as we filtered through the crowd with our families.

On the drive home I told my parents about the cast party. I decided not to phrase it like a question. “Tim's going to have his mom's car, so you don't have to worry about driving me.”

They both sat quiet, and I could tell they were agreeing without saying anything or even looking at each other, which reminded me of the way they used to be. Then Mom said, “You can go to the party with Tim, but we'll pick you up. At midnight.”

“Midnight! The party won't even start till eleven!”

They were quiet again, that little telepathic back and forth.

“We'll pick you up at one, then,” Mom said.

“But, Mom—”

“One thirty,” Dad growled. “And that's my final offer.”

I knew two things from his voice: He was willing to
compromise because I'd done so well in the play, and he wasn't willing to compromise a bit more than one thirty.

“Okay,” I said.

“And in case you're wondering,” Dad said, “I've still got that Breathalyzer.”

Given what I'm about to
tell you, it makes sense that this is chapter 13. Not that I'm a suspicious person. And probably you're thinking, what more bad luck could there be? Or maybe I've got it all wrong, and you think that I've spent a lot of time whining about nothing. I mean, apart from Allie, and the farm, things had been going just fine for me at Williamsport High.

In addition to the farm, though, the “apart from Allie” was a big deal. Please don't think I didn't have feelings about that, because I did. I would see her across the room with her new best buddy, the two of them all dolled up (Ginny had taken to outfits and makeup just like Allie), and I would feel this combination of jealousy and sadness. You can't have a best friend your whole life and not feel like you lost something when she's gone.

Plus, the fact that I was loving Williamsport High made
the fact that I probably wouldn't be able to stay so much harder. Those three days of performing
Finian's Rainbow
were the best and worst of my life all at the same time. Because I felt so alive; I felt
successful
. And at the exact same time I knew it wouldn't last, because I was about to get yanked right on out of it all.

But truth be told, the worst thing, the thing that's about to happen, didn't even happen to me. And maybe it had been a long time coming, and maybe things would turn out okay after it happened—a darkest-before-the-dawn scenario. At the time, though, it just seemed like about the most awful luck a person could have. Worse than losing your best friend, or your career in high school theater, or even your farm. It felt like the absolute end of the world.

*   *   *

Before it all blew up, before it got to a point where we—pretty much everyone I've been talking about so far—had to admit that nothing would ever be the same again, life went on just revolving around the play. One thing I knew: Wherever I ended up, I wanted to keep acting in plays. It made me sad not to be able to tell Allie this. If we'd still been friends, we could have hatched a plan to spend a year in New York after high school. She could be a model and I could try out for plays. Or maybe I could go to drama school. But of course that wasn't going to happen now, because here we both were in North Carolina, never saying a single word to each other.

But I didn't think about that on Friday, and I surely didn't think of it on Saturday when we had two performances. Every performance went better than the one before, and on Saturday night—the last performance—when I stood up there for my curtain call holding hands with Annie and Elizabeth Claire, I concentrated on soaking up every single clap from the audience, and every single whistle and hoot.

Then the lights came up, and everything kind of washed over me. A sadness—like the best moment of my life had passed and here I was, only sixteen years old, with nothing good to look forward to.

“What are you talking about?” Tim said, when I told him this. We were standing in the middle of everybody in the auditorium, all our cast mates along with people in the audience who'd come to tell us how great we were. It was so loud that I could tell him something like that in his ear, about how I felt, and not worry that anyone else would hear me.

“You can try out for
A Midsummer Night's Dream
,” he said. Ms. Winters had told us that would be the spring production and everyone had groaned, but I already had my copy from the library. Even if I got a part, it just wouldn't be the same. Nothing would ever be the same, I felt sure of it.

By now pretty much everyone who had to tell me I did a good job had already done it, and Tim—being one of the main stars—still had a lot of well-wishing to get through, so I broke out of the crowd to go say good-bye to my parents,
who were sitting together in the back row. I guess it's only fair to mention that they came to every single performance, and also bought DVD copies for themselves and Aunt Holly.

“You're probably tired of us telling you how fabulous you were,” Mom said, as I came up to them. I shrugged. I sure didn't feel like telling them how down I felt and almost wanted to say that I'd come home with them and skip the party. My hand throbbed a little, like it was remembering what happened the last time I had a big social event.

But I didn't ask to go home. I just kissed them both, and they reminded me that they'd be picking me up at one thirty on the dot, and if I wasn't waiting for them on the front porch, they'd come on in after me. Dad tried hard to sound stern when he said this, but his voice couldn't shake that giddy sound of pride. Instead of making me happy, it was just one more thing that seemed depressing.

*   *   *

Tim and I drove to the party just the two of us, which felt kind of like a miracle, since there'd been so many people mobbing him. He looked so happy it sort of lifted my spirits. These last few days he had been in the same boat as me, on this temporary high on account of the play. The difference was that he didn't seem to be experiencing any kind of letdown; he looked more like his old happy self. We didn't talk about anything serious, we just joked around, and luckily, his good spirits were contagious. By the time we pulled into
Caroline Jones's driveway, the two of us were singing songs from the play at the top of our lungs.

Of course Tim knew the way to Caroline's house, and I thought it was nice that the two of them had become friends again. I tried to picture what that relationship had been like. It turned out that Tim got off pretty scot-free, because Caroline had broken up with him to go out with Tyler. That didn't last much longer than last summer (I think she and Tyler broke up right after my hand-in-the-fire incident), but Tim got to take the high road. The only thing Caroline had ever said to me about the time they'd spent together was that Tim was always a perfect gentleman. I took that to mean he never pressured her to have sex.

Anyway: Caroline lived in this part of town called Woods Hill. It was one of the oldest sections of Williamsport, and the houses were grand and stately. Caroline's was a big white one with columns and a circular drive. I could guess just by looking at it that they had a pool in the backyard and her parents never, ever had to fight about money. I could feel my spirits sink right back down to where they'd been.

“Cheer up, Necessity Girl,” Tim said, as he parked his mom's car on the street. I blushed, guessing he could read my mind, which he probably could. It was kind of funny—that Tim and I had become almost like my mom and dad, always knowing what the other was thinking. At the same
time, I didn't like that I'd become the kind of person who got mad just seeing someone else's nice home. But it sure was hard to be happy about it when you were about to lose your own!

Don't ask me how so many people got to Caroline's house before we did. The front hallway was packed. Tim and I took off our coats and threw them into a room off the side of the foyer, a little den with a couch and desk. I'd had time to wash the makeup off my face, and wore jeans and a T-shirt under a cardigan sweater, my hair in a ponytail. Tim hadn't had much luck wiping off his Og makeup; he still had kind of a greenish tinge around his jawline. Even if you hadn't seen the play, you'd know all the cast members from their dampish hair and shiny faces. Everybody looked exhilarated, like we had all this leftover adrenaline and didn't know how to get rid of it.