Chapter 9
The show is still over a week away, but after last year’s Little Shop of Horrors debacle where the plant left her mic in the dressing room and Mr. Mushnik had a major wardrobe malfunction, Mr. Price has decided on double tech and dress rehearsals.
Which I guess in this case works out, since he has two female leads.
My run-through is starting any moment now.
I shift from foot to foot, fidgety energy tingling in my limbs, as Asha attempts to suit me up with a cordless mic.
Asha is into all things audio. Usually that means she DJs the dances in the gym, which she asserts is the best way not to ever have to deal with the social-anxiety cesspool that is a school dance.
This month, however, her talents have made her sound boss for the play.
“Ouch!” I yelp as I feel tiny peach fuzz hairs near my ear detach from my skin.
“Well, stop moving!”
“I will if you stop torturing me!”
She coos fake sympathy, peels the cordless mic off my cheek one more time, and retwists the wire. “So is Richard your boyfriend now or what?”
Asha is uncannily good at asking things that I’m afraid to ask myself. I attempt to deflect the question. “Asha, I love you, but you are a shit listener. I told you. I don’t think there’s going to be a label like that. I’m pretty sure that’s not the way things are done anymore.”
She frowns and makes an incredulous phhht sound. “Who told you that? Him?”
“Look, not all of us can get with college boys. Try not to judge the rest of us lowlies.” Both of Asha’s parents teach at Cornell, which is her stated preferred environment for looking for love.
Although, from what I can tell, that’s as far as she tends to get.
Looking. Can’t really blame her, though.
There might not be a guy within a thousand miles actually good enough for Asha.
She leans in so that I can smell her cinnamon gum and hooks the wire back over my ear. “My sympathies,” she says. She tears a strip of tape with her teeth and secures the mic again, while I try to ignore the follicles pulling at my temple. “Just don’t forget to be the interviewer.”
“What?”
“Don’t you remember when we went to that thing on career day? The guy said, when you go to a job interview, they’re interviewing you, but you’re interviewing them, too. Like, do you even want this job?”
“Okay, so?”
“So, you got to do that with boys, too.”
“Um, he’s hired.”
“All I’m going to say is, he’s at all the dances. Occupied.”
“Well, of course. He’s a really good dancer,” I say, defensive.
Asha puts a hand up, like, no offense. “All right, don’t let me yuck your yum.
” She gives the mic one last tug, squints at me, and nods to herself.
“Practically invisible.” Then she tucks the other end of the wire under the tunic overlay on my costume.
I wiggle around, letting gravity pull the wire straight.
“Great. Let’s let my love life go for a hot second. New subject,” I say.
“What did you think about what Nolan said the other day, about different dimensions?” she says without missing a beat.
One might assume I’d have a clear answer for her, since I’ve seen Mason—what—four times now?
I could easily say, “Nope, he’s still in this dimension, and he doesn’t look like a baby shark.
Although he seems to be glowing.” But I have a reservation or ten about revealing to Asha that I might be a few French fries short of a Happy Meal in the sanity department.
“Oh, you know Nolan,” I say. “His whole life is a response to whatever media he’s absorbed in the last forty-eight hours. Remember when we watched that James Bond marathon? He thrifted a tuxedo and wore it to class for a week.”
Asha seems dissatisfied with this answer. She hooks the controls to my waistband, plugs in the cord, and clicks on the volume. Then she sits down at the soundboard and throws on headphones. “Now talk.”
“I was talking already,” I point out. “You just didn’t respond.”
“All it takes is a mic and this girl goes straight diva. Say ‘testing one, two,’ please, Your Highness.”
“Testing one, two. How’s that, Headphones?”
“Perfect.” She pulls the headphones off again, lays them down, and exhales deeply, tapping freshly manicured nails on the soundboard.
“I don’t know,” she says finally. “I mean, I never thought I’d say this about Nolan, but maybe he’s got the right idea.
Typical heaven doesn’t seem to make much sense, logically, you know?
Like certainly nothing up in the clouds with wings and shit.
But the thought that everything we are just disappears when we die doesn’t seem right, either.
There’s got to be some sort of energy transfer.
” She said that before, at the lunch table.
Something about energy. But the particular phrase energy transfer makes the hair stand up on my arms. Is that what’s happening?
I feel like I’m holding out on her, like I’m hogging Mason all to myself, but I don’t know how to get around it.
“I like this theory, that somehow our energy is forever,” I say.
“I have to think that way, ’cause otherwise I can’t stop imagining Mason at the bottom of the lake, all white and waterlogged and bloated.” She shudders.
“Oh my God.” I’m shocked.
“Sorry, overshare alert one sentence too late.”
I shake my head. “No, I hear you. Look, I never thought about death at all before and now I think about it all the time. So it makes sense that you’re focusing on what you need to in order to not completely wig out.
” The creek flashes back to me, the unmistakable Mason I couldn’t quite grasp, who seems to be slipping in and out of my reality like a tide with a fierce rip current. Does that make me more okay? Or less?
The walkie-talkie next to Asha crackles to life. “Ten minutes, everyone. Ten minutes.”
“Yikes, I’m behind,” she says. “You’re all set, Queenie. Can you go grab Lancelot and tell him to come get miked up?”
“Sure.” I open the door and there’s Richard, about to knock. He smiles.
This is the first time I’ve seen him since his tongue was in my mouth and the surprise almost makes my knees go out. I gasp, accidentally breathing in a little bit of my own spit. A coughing fit follows. It’s all very sexy.
He seems not to notice. “Just the woman I was looking for,” he says, pulling a blindfold out of his pocket. Asha raises an eyebrow at the blindfold, then looks at me. “Never mind, I’ll radio for Lance. You look like you’re going to be busy not getting labeled.”
“Haha,” I say over my shoulder as Richard pulls me down the steps while I try to suppress the continuing tickle in my throat.
When we get to the hallway, he turns me away from him and ties the handkerchief snugly around my face.
It sinks in that in this scenario, being blind is fun and romantic. How fucking ironic.
“Come with me,” he says, taking my hand. I do, trying not to look helpless and stumbly.
“I’m entirely in your hands,” I say, getting into it.
“As it should be, gorgeous.”
Gorgeous. Am I gorgeous? I’m going to have to check a mirror ASAP to see if I had some sort of radical transformation.
I’m still trembling from this compliment when we stop and he pulls off the blindfold with a snap. We’re by the front doors of the school, facing the wall. A large poster hangs in front of me.
“What am I looking at?” I ask.
Richard indicates the poster with a flourish. “Snowcap Mountain. The school ski trip. I go every year. And I”—he pauses for effect—“have signed you up.”
Richard takes my hands and steps back from me to take me in, looking expectant.
I would go just about anywhere with Richard right now.
I would go into the janitor’s closet next to his left elbow and make out with him in between the bottles of bleach if he was into it.
So I want to give him the response he’s looking for, of course I do, but—
“I don’t know how to ski,” I say, biting my lip. I’ve never been on a ski trip, so I’m not sure, but it seems like knowing how to ski might be a prereq. Visions of me splayed out on the snow like an awkward starfish come to mind. This might not create the romantic scenario he has in mind.
Richard squeezes my hands now in a celebratory way, like we’ve won something. “That’s why you’re going with me. I will teach you.”
This interaction is making it crystal clear.
I am officially bad at surprises. The risk of embarrassment is just too high.
So the excuses keep dribbling out of my mouth.
“Is it expensive? I’m not sure my parents will let me.
” Jesus Christ, Hatts. So you’re a paranoid toddler now?
Remember mystique? Just bat your eyes seductively and say, “Let me check my calendar, darling.” Instead, I say, “And what about rehearsal?” What a downer.
“You know what, Hattie? Sometimes you are too smart for your own good,” he says. He’s determined to get through to me. He comes close and puts both hands in my hair. He tips my face up and rests his forehead against mine.
“Don’t worry about any of that. That stuff is easy.
We are going to spend the whole weekend together.
Just you”—he pulls back a bit and kisses my left cheek—“me”—he kisses my right cheek—“and the mountain.” And he kisses me full on the lips, mouth open just enough to make us interlock perfectly.
We’re now kissing in public, on school grounds.
Plus, we are going away on a trip together.
Asha won’t be able to argue with the official status of that.
“Okay,” I breathe when he pulls back. I feel dizzy.
“Now come on, smartie, we’re going to be late for our scene,” he says, as if this whole thing was my idea.
I float behind him back toward the auditorium, seeing myself for the first time through the filter of the Richard Effect: a girl with a hot romance, a girl entangled with her costar, a girl who will soon be hitting the slopes with that romantic entanglement, no less.
It’s so good, I want to take a screenshot of my brain so that I can always feel this way.
But I can’t think about it too much, the way you can’t look directly into the sun.
Acknowledging it makes me afraid of losing it, and fear and bliss don’t mix.
So don’t think about it, Hattie. Just be that girl.