Understudy (14 page)

He peers at me over the dimly lit table. “What are you thinking about?”

Derek isn’t like any of the guys I know from school. He doesn’t deserve some bullshit answer. “I was just wondering if you were thinking that the waitress is hot and if that made you feel shitty for being here with me, who is like, a one compared to Miss Surgically Enhanced Boobs, who is totally a ten.”

He laughs. His elbows are on the table and he laces his fingers together under his chin. “She’s hot in a
showering-and-you-need-something-to-think-about
kind of way. But since you’re wondering, I wasn’t thinking that.”

Our waitress pops out of nowhere, balancing a tray of our food on her shoulder. She calls Derek
Honey
and me
Sweetie
as she sets down our food and asks if we need anything else. Derek and I stare at each other as she walks away, both wondering if she had heard us talking. “There’s no way she heard that,” Derek says, answering my unasked question.

I cut my cheeseburger in half, a practice Derek seems to think is blasphemous, but I tell him I don’t care because the only way you can eat one of the Fisherman’s bacon avocado cheeseburgers is to cut the thing in half, otherwise everything slides out the end when you take a bite.

Derek starts yapping about the play and it kills the pretend first date mood I’m in. For once, I just want to hang out with him without discussing the play or working on the play or doing anything to do with the play. And maybe there’s something in the water, or my burger has mad cow disease or something, because suddenly I’m saying, “Are you going to tell me what you were thinking?”

He bites the body of a shrimp off, holding the tail between his fingers. With his pinky finger he pushes that strand of hair behind his ear again. “I was thinking that I was going to grab the check when our hot waitress brings it, and that if you tried to pay for your food instead of letting me get it then I’d be crushed.”

“Why would saving money crush you?”

“Maybe emasculate is a better word.”

“So you’re one of those guys who think they have to be manly and the woman is just housewife material who needs to be sheltered and taken care of because she’s so fragile?”

He takes another bite of shrimp. With his mouth full of food, (which for some reason I find sexy) he says, “Never said that.”

“Good,” I say with a bit of a snobby inclination. “Because I don’t want to be a housewife. But… yeah, you’re still buying dinner.” I stick out my tongue and he rolls his eyes.

The Warf’s parking lot is just a bunch of gravel and sea shells, something you’d be pissed off about if you wore high heels and had to walk through it. I’m wearing a pair of glittery flats, which is a hundred times better than heels but the soles are so thin I can feel every sharp edge of seashell digging into my foot. I tell Derek this and he laughs. “Who would have thought that a shoe made of glitter would prove to be impractical?”

“Shut it.” I go to slap him on the arm right as I step in a sink hole the size of Texas, so my slap turns into a desperate grab for something solid to steady myself. That something solid is Derek’s elbow. Derek says how anyone watching us right now would think he slipped alcohol into my drink.

He’s smiling, and then I’m smiling and it’s one of those embarrassingly huge smiles that probably show the metal filling in my right molar. The kind of smile you have in those old photos of Christmas morning when you were five and ripped open the wrapping paper of the BEST PRESENT EVER. I become aware of this the second I let the smile consume my face, but I can’t stop it from happening because at this very moment, I am so freaking happy it’s not even funny.

Maybe it is funny. I love the way Derek’s bare elbow skin feels against my palm and I love the way he’s walking really close to me and letting me keep my hand there. I love that Derek is so abnormally normal and honest and that he paid for my dinner and that he smells like a fresh winter stream.

I don’t love the way someone standing by a car next to us clears their throat. I’ve heard that same throat clearing sound a million times, and it occurs to me how shockingly similar it sounds to Professor Umbridge. But I don’t have the luxury of thinking about that right now. Because I’ve been caught.

“What the fuck is this?” Margot’s shrill, reality-TV-show-rivaling dramatic voice pierces through the air. “You texted me that you were busy.”

I drop Derek’s elbow. The headlights on his car blink as he presses the unlock button. I should lie. No, deny it. No—tell the truth in a denying/lying type of way. “I am busy,” I say. I give her this sarcastic look like it’s totally obvious. “I’ve been working on this play all damn day and just came to get food real quick.”

A woman gets out of Margot’s mom’s BMW, and, oh god, it’s her grandmother. Please, please, god don’t let Margot make a scene. “Hi Grammy,” I say, waving at her. Margot’s hand flies out, stopping my wave. “No,” she says. “No.”

Grammy looks utterly confused, but that’s no different from how she looks every other time I see her. Margot tells her to wait inside and she’ll be there in a minute. When Grammy leaves, Margot slams her purse down on the hood of her mom’s car. Now I know she’s pissed because normally she throws a fit if a fly so much as lands on the precious pearly white paint job. “You knew I was having a boy crisis and you blew me off. And not only did you blow me off, you’re hanging out with—” She glances Derek’s direction. “I can’t even—just—whatever.”

“Margot, I’m sorry. But it’s not what it looks like. I wasn’t blowing you off. I was going to call you later.”

“Fuck you, Wren Barlow.” She grabs her purse. Her face gets all ugly and distorted for a second like she’s holding back tears. “Or let your criminal fucking friend do it for you, I don’t care.”

She storms off toward the restaurant, walking faster than the power walkers in my neighborhood. I watch her go and then I climb into Derek’s car, my metaphorical tail hiding between my legs. Derek doesn’t say anything and I’m grateful for it. I glance back at her as we start to drive away. She’s wearing high heels. And she doesn’t stumble at all. Not even once.

Dead silence accompanies us on the drive back. My arms are crossed so tightly my fingers feel numb.

Derek breaks the silence first. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t help anything. My best friend hates me and this is all your fault.”

“How is Margot my fault? I did nothing wrong by taking you to dinner. You’re the one who lied to her about where you were going.”

I glare at him and he turns his attention back to the road. “I’m not trying to be an asshole,” he says quietly. His sad features alternate from shadowed to bright as we drive under rows of streetlights. “The last thing I want is for you to hate me.”

“This is your fault. If you didn’t have to be so damned mysterious and secretive then I wouldn’t have to lie to my best friend.”

“You shouldn’t have to lie to her now!” His palms slap the steering wheel in frustration. “If she cared about you then she would trust your judgment.”

Derek pulls into the school parking lot and parks next to my car. I take a long look at him. “I don’t even trust my judgment.”

“Okay, Wren. I’ll tell you what you want to know. All of it. I just need more time.” His eyes plead with me.

“No. You don’t get more time. You tell me now or we are never talking again.”

Derek runs his hands through his hair and squeezes them into fists. “I can’t.”

“Then we’re done, Derek. I’m not some stupid girl who will put up with lies and manipulation. I can’t be treated like a child and I will not date someone who isn’t honest with me.”

He reaches across the stick shift for my hand, and against my better judgment, I let him take it. He pulls my hand toward him and leans forward, resting his head on mine. His hair is messy and smells like saltwater. I close my eyes as he presses a soft kiss to my hair. I love being close to him. I wish it didn’t have to be like this.

This thumb swirls circles in my palm. “I would never treat you like a child. I don’t mean to keep things from you, but I have to. My life is screwed up right now. It won’t be like this forever, I promise. But I seriously can’t tell you what’s going on.” He bumps my shoulder with his and I look up at him. “I legally can’t tell you. When I can, I will.”

A glance at his dashboard clock tells me it’s forty minutes past my curfew. Mom’s gonna kill me. I grab my things and climb out of his car. He starts to open his door but I hold out my hand to stop him.

“Fine, I’ll pretend not to care about your criminal record. But you have to tell me who that girl is.”

The pain on his face gives me an answer before he does. “I can’t.”

“You can’t?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

I throw my backpack over my shoulder. “Let me guess. This girl in your life is also a big crazy secret that I’m just supposed to ignore and pretend she doesn’t exist? I’m just supposed to smile and nod and forget all about how she’s saved in your phone with a heart by her name and how she texts you all the time?”

Derek opens his mouth to object but I cut him off. It’s easy to feel like I should agree with him, but when I say it all out loud I realize how completely moronic it sounds. “Tell me who she is, Derek. Tell me now.”

He looks down, shaking his head slightly.

A delirious laugh escapes me. “That’s what I thought. We’re done, Derek. You can’t have two girls in your life. You can’t have both.”

I slam the door closed and jump into Mom’s Corolla without looking back. My eyes fill with tears. He doesn’t deserve me if he’s going to keep secrets from me. My stomach hurts and my head throbs in pain. I know I did what was right by standing up for myself. But that doesn’t mean I don’t cry on the whole drive home.

The musty smell of the auditorium makes my stomach churn. This is the last place I want to be. I’m starting to think I don’t really need a college education…I could just quit this whole nightmare right now and go work at Quilts by the Bay for the rest of my life.

It’s Monday. Three days after my dinner with Derek and I haven’t heard from him at all. Not that I expected to, but I hate that I kind of hoped I would get a text from him. I made it perfectly clear that I didn’t want to talk to him and he’s respecting that. At least he can do one thing right.

Part of me hopes he will skip rehearsal today. But he appears, five minutes late as usual, hair tucked under a beanie as usual, freaking apathetic look on his face—as freaking usual. I lift my glitter notebook and pretend to study my to-do list as he walks down the aisle and hops onstage.

I want to take it as something that it isn’t but I must keep reminding myself that Derek isn’t doing this play for me, he’s doing it to fulfill his community service hours. Killing time backstage has to be better than picking up trash on the side of the road with a rusty pokey stick.

A strong chemical smell catches my attention from my seat in the front row of the auditorium. “Gwen,” I groan, setting down my notebook and brushing glitter off my fingers. She’s sitting on the borrowed bed of Jeremy’s bedroom set, a bottle of clear top coat in her hand. “Why are you painting your nails? We should be rehearsing. Where’s Jeremy?”