The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet (25 page)

“Good luck, you two,” Mrs. Spencer said when she saw we had it under control.

“I always think you look funny without your skateboard,” I said, trying to figure out something to talk about that wouldn’t lead to the confrontation that needed to happen. A little more avoidance couldn’t hurt, could it?

We wove through the halls, avoiding clueless sixth graders and curious seventh graders. He’d had to leave the board in the car in order to help carry our project in.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.

“Like you’re missing something,” I explained, all of a sudden realizing that this probably wasn’t the best conversational course. “I’m used to seeing you with it.”

He sighed. “I feel naked without it, actually.”

“Good thing you’re not,” Ely said, saving me from more awkwardness as he emerged from the crowd around the caf door. “That’d be a dress code demerit.” We laughed— maybe I laughed a little too hard—and Ely helped us find the numbered table where our theater was supposed to go. The bell buzzed.

“I’ve gotta go,” I said, checking my watch.

“We’re excused from homeroom, you know,” Ty said, following me to the door. “We’re supposed to get the chairs set up in the auditorium and stuff.”

“Pre-al re-test,” I said, huffing as I picked up speed. “The one I bombed? Mr. Symphony said we could take it early if we were in the play.” I gave a quick wave to Ely as I left the gym, relieved.

I slid in the door of Mr. Symphony’s first-period class just as the late bell buzzed. Three other people from my class were there, also waiting for the test. KC, Carter, and Chrissy all stood at the back of the room. I scooted farther in to be near them. Hopefully there’d be some strength in numbers, or something. Ha-ha.

“Miss Kennedy.” Mr. Symphony nodded in my direction. He then started his class on some word problems so he could get us our tests, and brought the sheaf of paper over to us.

“You four will take this in TLC,” he said. “It covers the same concepts as the one you didn’t pass, but doesn’t feature the same problems—or answers,” he said, sending a dark scowl in our direction.

“Gotcha, Mr. S.,” KC replied. He held his hand out for the test pile. Mr. Symphony looked at it, then turned to me.

“
You
may take them, Miss Kennedy,” he said. “Tell the TLC staff to return them to me when you’re done.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied, taking the tests from him. “Thank you.”

He gave us a curt nod and sent us out.

 

“Let’s see it, Puck,” KC said as we walked down the hall.

“No way,” I said. “Why do you want to preview a math test for?” KC tried to snatch it out of my hand, but I dodged him.

“Stop it, KC,” Chrissy said. “Leave it alone or we’ll get in trouble.” Carter didn’t say anything. It occurred to me then: Carter wasn’t a meringue—he was like chicken. Something safe. Something predictable. Something that didn’t stand out . . . kind of like the person I’d spent my whole life up until now trying to be.

KC bobbed and weaved around me like a duck on a pond until we got to the TLC room—more funny than annoying for once. When we arrived, Ms. Grafton sent us to separate tables to work.

This time, when I looked at the test, the letters and numbers made sense to me. I recognized the types of problems and the steps I needed to solve them. Not that it was easy—it wasn’t—but I didn’t feel as though it was written in a language that I’d never seen. I worked my way through, one at a time, using the tools Ms. Grafton taught us during our tutoring sessions. There were twenty problems on the test. I finished all of them and had time to check my work. When I turned my paper in, I smiled at her.

“Nice feeling, isn’t it?” she said. I agreed.

Even nicer? I did it on my own, without help from Dezzie. As I was leaving, KC was finishing. He gave me a thumbs-up and a big freckly grin. I grinned back.

“Wait for me,” he mouthed. I surprised myself by nodding at him.

 

In the hall, I regretted my choice. Why had I told KC I’d wait? He’d probably tease me about the upcoming play. Like I needed my nerves rattled now, when I felt so good about what I’d just done.

I wandered around down the hall a little ways, and found that Ms. Finch-Bean had hung our surrealist projects too. It took me a few seconds to find Dezzie’s because it looked like the others: funky animals, weird symbols, and vibrant colors. She’d been able to fit in a little, after all.

After going through the row of drawings, I’d nearly talked myself into leaving. Then the door opened.

“You stuck around,” KC said.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” I snapped. I turned toward the stairwell. “I just wasn’t in a hurry to set up chairs.”

KC skittered behind me. “Why’re you so grouchy all the time, Bits?”

“Because you’re
annoying
,” I pointed out, as if he didn’t know the obvious. I went down the stairs. “Do I want to know what Bits is?”

KC slid on the rail next to me. “Bacon Bits.”

My insides tightened. “You should get off the railing,” I said through clenched teeth. Waiting for him was definitely a bad idea.

“And you need to lighten up,” KC said, sliding to the very end. He jumped off and his sneakers made a soft slap on the floor.

“I’m thinking about the play,” I said. I pointed out that I had to
perform
. In front of an
audience
. My heartbeat thrummed.

“From what I’ve heard, you don’t have to worry,” he said. “You’re a great Puck.”

I raised an eyebrow at him, but the compliment made me feel good.

“And besides, I wasn’t teasing you about the play. Just your name.” He jumped up, taking a swipe at a banner advertising the Salute to Shakespeare hanging from the ceiling.

“I know.” My face flushed. Why didn’t he get why that was an issue?

“I’ll tell you a secret,” he said. He was making me all jittery inside. Did I want to know his secrets?

Maybe I did.

“It’s Kelley,” he said.

“Huh?”

“The C’s for Christopher. But the K, it’s for Kelley.”

“That’s a girl’s name,” I said. KC just stared at me.

“Oh!” I cried, and blushed. I tried to recover. “That’s not so bad.”

“Of course not—it’s not yours. That’s the point. Some people worry too much about what other people think of them, and need to have more fun—like in the play.” He ran one hand across the front of the lockers that we were passing.

“The play is
not
fun.”

“But it can be,” he said. “You could have fun acting.”

“People will say stuff if I mess up,” I said. “Or if I do too good a job.”

“Most people are lame-os. That’s why you have to have fun.”

“Most people are,” I agreed, thinking of Saber and Mauri. My irritation faded a tiny bit. We were at the door to the caf.

“So Bits isn’t so bad?” he asked, his face scrunched into a goofy grin.

“Not so bad,” I admitted, “especially considering everything else you’ve called me.”

“Bits it is,” he said. “Oh—and you forgot something.” He held out his hand.

“I did?”

He leaned over, and, in a flash, slipped a folded paper into my palm and planted a kiss on my cheek. Before I could even register it, he was gone.

It tingled. A smile spread across my face.

And in my hand was an origami pig.

Eeeeee!

iii

In the caf, chairs had already been put out, and the plastic tables tucked away, but nothing would get rid of the greasy fried lunch smell. At least there was no mac and cheese on the menu today. Thinking back to that day almost made me laugh. Almost.

I wandered around, looking for something to do, but everything seemed to be taken care of. Ty, who had begged Mrs. Wimple to do lights instead of play Theseus—and who got his way—was wedged into a booth in the back of the room staring at switches and dials. I was sick of avoiding things and tired of trying to figure out what he did or didn’t mean. Plus, now that things had . . .
changed
with KC, I needed to talk to him.

It was now or never.

I hovered at the edge of the lighting setup—a flat rectangular panel with levers, dials, and switches labeled with pieces of masking tape.

“Hey,” he said, eyes down.

“Hey.” I bit my lip. “That stuff looks pretty complicated.” Ty slid a lever up the board and a spotlight glowed on the other side of the room. “Not really, if you know what you’re doing.”

“Uhhh, look,” I said, not really sure where to begin. “I’ve been acting strange lately. Stranger than usual. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you’ve been
very
strange.” His bangs hung in front of his forehead. I couldn’t see his eyes, which made it a little easier to speak.

“It’s just . . . we’re friends, right?” My heart pounded and my throat went dry.

“I thought so.” Ty shrugged.

“Well, being friends is important to me. Friends with you, I mean.” I sounded like an idiot.

“Okaaay,” Ty said. He brushed his hair back and finally met my gaze. “What’s going on, Hamlet? Just say it—I have stuff to do.”

His directness surprised me so much, I just blurted it out without thinking.

“I don’t like you,” I said. “I mean, I do, but not in that way.” My stomach quivered and I hoped I wasn’t going to yurk on the light board.

“You don’t
like
me?” Ty said, looking just as surprised as I felt. “You mean,
like
me, like me?”

I nodded and hoped that the ceiling would fall on my head and end this exchange. Shock was not the reaction that I expected—okay, I had no idea what to expect—but this was not it.

“No offense, but I’m glad. That’d be kind of gross.” He laughed.

“Yeah, it would be,” I said, getting irritated at Ty’s amusement with the situation. I’d been worried about this for over a month and he thought it was
funny
? “So why do
you
like
me
?” I crossed my arms.

I’d read about it, but never actually seen someone’s jaw drop until just then. His mouth literally fell open.

“I
don’t
like you,” he said. “Where’d you get that idea?”

At the same time, we both said it: “Judith.”

Ty shook his head. “I
told
her not to say anything to you!”

“That’s what made her think that you did,” I said. Now I felt dumb.

“It was KC,” he explained. He’d heard that KC liked me? “But he’s such a jerk to you all the time, I figured you’d freak out if you knew.”

“And?” I prompted, knowing that there had to be more to Ty’s grouchy behavior.

“And I was kind of afraid that if things changed, maybe you wouldn’t want to hang out anymore,” he confessed. “Especially after I saw how much fun you were having with him in the hall that day a few weeks ago. You hadn’t been that comfortable with me in a while.”

I flashed back to the day Ty saw me with KC, then all of awkwardness when we were building the Globe and at the Chilly Spoon. No wonder he was upset. “I’ll always want to hang out with you,” I told him. “And I kind of figured the KC part out.” I thought of the origami pigs and the nicknames, then the kiss, and my cheek warmed again.

Remembering it made my insides tinkle like the bells on my purple scarf. “Uh, I’m not so freaked out by it.”

“Really?” Ty raised an eyebrow at me.

“Welllll,” I said. “Shakespeare would say, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth.’ ”

Ty watched me for a second, and must have realized that I wasn’t going to say anything else. “So what do we tell Judith?” he said instead.

“Nothing.” I smiled. “We just call her Puck.”

Mrs. Wimple started waving her arms and yelling that we had fifteen minutes to get ready for the start of the show. I smiled at Ty, relieved that we could still be who we always were together. I’d spent so much time worried about how things would change, I hadn’t seen how much they had changed by me avoiding him. Lame!

Feeling better, I went to find a quiet corner and pulled out my script. This wasn’t like when I tried softball, or weaving, or even flying under the radar—this was a new Hamlet: front, center, onstage—a main character. I paced back and forth, reading and rereading my lines. It was Shakespeare—who I tried all my life to avoid—and I
liked it
. And I would be good at it. And everyone would be watching.

Across the room from me came familiar high-pitched giggles. Saber and Mauri were hunched over a notebook, their script scattered on the floor, not paying attention to their parts or anyone else. Carter approached them. His green eyes and blond hair held no magic for me anymore—next to KC’s freckles and energy, Carter seemed kind of dim.

They were too far away for me to hear what they were saying, but when Saber showed him their notebook, even I could tell they were playing hangman.

A small shape caught the corner of my eye. Dezzie had come into the room, and from where she was she could also see their game. She saw me looking her way and nodded, a wide smile spreading across her face. Then she tugged at the collar of the tunic she was wearing, revealing the trim of a T-shirt underneath. What was
that
about?

 

What seemed like seconds later, Mrs. Wimple wooshed us backstage. I added the scarf to my outfit of jeans and a dark blue T-shirt, and gave the bells a tinkle. They chimed softly in the din. My nerves jumped about eight notches higher. I paced around, then peered between the curtains to see the auditorium filling up. Dezzie was in the front row. There were two seventh-grade language arts classes, Principal Obin, and several teachers—including Mr. Symphony—and a group of older kids I didn’t recognize. They seemed too old to be high schoolers, and I couldn’t figure out why they’d be there anyway. It seemed like a lot of people. I was sure this was my parents’ doing. Why couldn’t it just be what it was—a junior high play? My stomach bunched like the stage curtain.