4. Mandy
“It’s not like I never thought about dating Tommy. He was tall, good-looking, and smart. After Clyde dumped me and left for college, I spent my entire junior and senior year being ignored by Jed, and Tommy was really my only friend. Of course I thought about him that way, but I knew he didn’t like me like that, so I stopped considering it almost as soon as I thought about it in the first place.”
“But how did you know?” Maren asks.
“Yeah, what did he say, exactly?” Emery asks.
“There’s no way she remembers after all these years,” Amanda says.
She’s right of course. Memory blurs things, but there are a few memories that I hold dear. A few memories that are still bright and haven’t faded with age. Most of those memories are the ones with Tommy in them.
“Why do you look like that?” Emery asks.
“Like what?” I frown.
“Like you’re looking at something we can’t see?” Emery cranes her head around, staring at the wall.
“I was zoning out,” I say. “Thinking back a little.”
“On what?” Emery’s half-smiling, and then she claps. “Ooh, I know. I bet you’re thinking about a time when you wondered if he liked you.”
My jaw drops. Is she telepathic?
“I knew it.” Emery sits again. “Now tell us.”
“Tell you what?”
“All about that moment, the one where you thought maybe Tommy liked you back.” She’s beaming.
Maren and Amanda are staring at me expectantly, and it makes me remember the very first time I ever really wondered.
The whole thing started with a news article, actually.
* * *
“Did you see this?” Tommy drops onto the seat next to me in the cafeteria and shoves a newspaper in my face. His dad’s the only person in town who gets the Salt Lake Tribune. Everyone else does just fine having the Vernal Express show up a few times a month in the mail, but Mr. Collins insisted it didn’t have reliable news.
I pick up the paper and scan the page. “The whole Berlin wall thing is really sad, but I don’t know Ida, so?—”
“No, no, not that.” Tommy frowns. “I mean, that is really sad. That woman jumped out of her window to try and get free, but no. I’m talking about this.” He taps the article below it.
The King and I Broadway Revival.
Not this again. “There’s no way the Bishop’s going to approve this for the church’s roadshow. You asked last year, and?—”
He’s shaking his head. “No, not that, you dummy. Mrs. Rasmussen said we could do it for school.” His eyes are practically shining. Of all the impractical careers in the world, Tommy wants to be a movie director one day.
“Are you serious?” The King and I has been popular for almost ten years, but a play about a man with ninety wives and concubines who then falls in love with a white lady just isn’t going to hit well in Manila, Utah, of all places. “I think that’s a bad idea.”
“It’s what the rest of the world has been performing for a decade, Mandy. Can you imagine? Manila could finally catch up.”
“I think we should just be happy we weren’t drowned.” I stand up and grab my bag. “But I’m happy you’re happy.”
Tommy hops to his feet. “I still can’t believe they just made everyone from Linwood move—the dam could have been put somewhere else, and the whole town wouldn’t have been flooded out.”
We should be pleased—after all the Linwood people had to evacuate their homes, a lot of them moved to our area. Our tiny school grew by a third. “Anywhere they put the dam would have flooded someplace.” I shrug. “That’s just how life works.”
“I guess,” Tommy says. “But hey, I need you to help me with the play. I promised Mrs. Rasmussen I’d make fliers and help with whatever she needs.”
“That sounds like a problem for you to deal with.” I smirk as I head for math.
“Why are you leaving early?” Tommy frowns, clearly annoyed at having to jog along without having eaten his lunch. “You hate polynomials.”
“I haven’t finished my homework,” I say.
“But you can’t do it in the classroom. Mr. Ulrike will see you.”
I shrug. “You got me. I’d rather get a zero on my math homework than sit in there while you badger me about the play that’s never going to happen.”
“Actually, it’s a musical.” He’s back to smiling.
I groan. “That’s even worse.”
“You’re the only junior who can really sing.” He’s skipping now, like the joy in his body simply can’t be contained and is escaping against his will. “You have to at least try out for the role of Anna.”
“No way.” I can carry a tune, but I hate doing it in front of people. His idea is my worst nightmare.
“Come on.” He blocks the door into math. “I’ll give you whatever you want.”
Just then, Jedediah Brooks reaches the door behind Tommy. “Excuse me.”
For a split second, I think maybe he’s talking to me, but then I realize he was asking Tommy to move. Tommy rolls his eyes, but he shifts so Jed can squeeze past. Before I can follow him in, Tommy whips back into place. “Not so fast.” His finger is hovering in front of my face again, waggling toward my nose. “Anything you want, remember?” He’s staring at me with wide eyes. “Just name your price.”
“Get him to forgive me,” I say. “And then I’m in.” I mean, it is what I’d like, if pigs could fly, but it’s also never going to happen. Which means I’ll never have to be in the play.
I should have known that Tommy wouldn’t give up just because I laid down an impossible gauntlet. I skip the tryouts on principle, but the next day, when they post the roles for the musical, next to the name Anna, it says Amanda Saddler, in big, bold black letters.
“You have got to be kidding me.” I round on Tommy so fast that he actually stumbles back. “I didn’t even go to the tryouts.”
“Your reputation preceded you.” He’s half-smiling.
“Thomas Collins, you can’t do that.” I drop both hands on my hips. “I am not going to be in that musical.”
“The cast list doesn’t lie.” He’s beaming.
“Well, the joke will be on you when I never show for a single practice. You can take it up with the cast list.”
When he drags me into the corner, one hand over my mouth, I think about biting him. Hard. “Just listen to me for a minute.”
I shake my head and shove him off. “Not even for a half a second.”
“You didn’t see who’s listed as the understudy for King Mongkut.”
My voice sounds a little too loud and a little too shrill, even to me. But my sense of injustice is now enflamed. “Who cares?”
“It’s Jedediah,” he whispers. “And I’ll get sick on the day of the play.”
Wait. It’s. . . “You’re playing King Mongkut?”
He rolls his eyes. “I mean, for now, but only because Jed said he’d only be willing to be the understudy. But think about it! I can just say I’m sick. Then he’ll have to take over.” He grins. “And then you’ll have to interact. King Mongkut’s Anna’s love interest.”
“This is a terrible plan.”
“He hasn’t talked to you in over a year. Do you have a better one? Because I’m sick of watching you moping around.”
I can’t argue with that. Nothing else I’ve tried to get Jed to forgive me has worked.
“As an understudy, he has to step in and play the role at one practice a week, too. We can use that as well. He’ll have to talk to you—or at least at you.”
I’m rolling my eyes, but I’m listening. “It’s not a horrible plan. I’m surprised he agreed to it.”
Tommy’s smile is diabolical. “I didn’t play fair.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know his mother loves plays, so when I bumped into them at Steinaker’s Market, I talked to him about how amazing it was that Manila was finally catching up to Broadway, and oh, boy. She was so excited that he couldn’t say no to the auditions.”
“I know Jed. He could still have said no.”
Tommy smirks and drops his voice again. “Not when she said that she was so disappointed when Clyde didn’t get a role in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and that was with seven guy roles.”
“But they all had to sing, and Clyde can’t sing at all.”
“You’re missing the point,” Tommy says.
I’m not, though. He brilliantly used Clyde’s failure and his mother’s encouragement to goad Jed into auditioning, and then he somehow convinced him to take a role that forces him to interact with me weekly. He may not have granted my impossible wish yet, but he’s gotten closer than I thought possible. “Fine.”
“Fine. . .as in you’ll do it?” His eyes light up, his longish hair falling over his brow again. He sweeps it back over the top of his head in a familiar gesture. “Say yes.”
I nod slowly. “I guess so.”
He pumps his fist. “Yes. This play is going to be amazing.”
I’m afraid he may be dead wrong about that, but it might do something more lasting than any regular play could boast. It might fix things between me and Jed. I’m sure that if he would just start talking to me again, we could at least go back to being friends.
But when rehearsals start, Jed isn’t there. When Mrs. Rasmussen starts the practice, pointing at me to start reading through the script, I hiss at Tommy. “Where is he?”
Mrs. Rasmussen shoos Tommy away. “You’re not in this scene.” I’m stuck practicing the opening act with Tommy and the other members of the cast, and Jed’s nowhere to be found.
“What was that?” I finally ask, after practice is over. “You said?—”
Tommy grabs my bag and carries it outside. He always does things like that. He’s basically taken over doing all the things Jed used to do. “Jed’s going to be here every Thursday. It’s the only day he doesn’t have football or basketball practice.”
“But—”
“Look, I know you took this to get Jed to forgive you, but he’s an understudy and you still have to do the whole play or it won’t work,” he says. “It’s not like this whole thing’s one big sham, and he’s the only one not in on it.”
I grudgingly admit that he’s right. It doesn’t make the play rehearsals any less onerous. But when Thursday comes around, Jed’s there, as promised, and we work on the Getting to Know You song almost the entire time. It’s a little frustrating learning dance steps and singing, but Jed’s watching, and little kids in the play are cute.
It could be worse. Way worse.
I didn’t really want to do this play, but some of the kids actually crack me up. There’s this one, the little girl who’s playing Princess Yink, King Mongkut’s most beloved daughter, who is absolutely adorable. Her name’s Dolores Gibbens, and she’s obsessed with plants, and she always carries around a little crocheted kitten. At first Mrs. Rasmussen tried to take it away, but she wouldn’t practice without it, so she just let it go. I’m not sure whether they had kittens in Siam, but I doubt the audience will know either.
When we finally finish the song and begin to work on the scene where Mrs. Leonowens, which is me, tells the King that she gave his son, the prince, the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and that she’s opposed to slavery, Jed’s forced to stand up and talk to me. It’s written right there in the script.
“Why aren’t you looking at her?” Dolores asks. “Shouldn’t you be looking at her?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Rasmussen drops her hands on her hips. “I heard that you two had a falling out. Are you going to be capable of doing this play, Mister Brooks? Or do I need to cast another, more cooperative understudy? Because you are replaceable, but she is not.” She arches one eye and compresses her lips.
Jed looks at his feet, still not willing to meet my eye.
“Your mother was just asking me today how the play was going.” Mrs. Rasmussen taps the table in front of her with her fingers. “In fact, she told me that her parents are coming to watch on the off chance you get to perform.” She arches that eyebrow again. “But I can tell her, when next I see her, that you’re just not able to bring yourself to?—”
“No.” Jed straightens. “It’s fine. It’ll be fine.”
“Well, you’ll have to turn toward Mrs. Leonowens, channel your most regal and arrogant thoughts, and speak clearly. Try to remind yourself that this is not Amanda Saddler, it’s Mrs. Anna Leonowens. Do you think you can do that?” Mrs. Rasmussen sounds like she has her doubts.
“It’s fine,” Jed says. “I’ll do it.”
And when we resume, he does. He looks right at me and says, “Shall Mister Lincoln be winning this war he’s fighting at present?” He lifts both eyebrows.
“No one knows, really,” I say, staring right back at him.
Jed looks a little uncomfortable when he says, “Does he have enough guns and elephants for transporting them?”
“I don’t think they have elephants in America, Your Majesty,” I say.
The children all laugh. It irritates Jed, I think, but Mrs. Rasmussen claps. “That was wonderful. You’re a natural at this, Jedediah. You have a sort of grumpy energy that really works for King Mongkut. It’s why I chose you for the understudy. Keep channeling that sense of indignation, just as you have been, and you’ll be perfect.”
Jed smiles, then. Everyone loves to be praised, I think, but Jed more than most. All of his parents’ attention always went to Clyde. I don’t think I realized quite how starved for affection he was until this moment.
Not that I pity him. He’s the one ignoring me. But now, when he reads his next line, I see his attendance here for what it is. Hope that he’ll get some recognition for once. “No elephants in America?” He sounds horrified.
“None.” I shrug.
“No wonder he’s not winning.” Jed sighs like it’s the saddest thing he’s heard, not to have an army full of elephants for gun hauling and whatever else elephants do in war.
We run through the scene a few times, and he gets better each time, playing on and expanding the things he gets right. A part of me wishes Tommy could just bow out now. A few more practices like this, and maybe. . .
But the second Mrs. Rasmussen dismisses us, Jed shuts down, like a light that’s electricity has been cut off. He just goes dark.
“You did great today,” I say, trying to get him to look at me again.
He shoves his script in his bag and loops around me.
“Jed,” I say. “Wait.”
But he doesn’t. He’s out the door and swinging a leg up over his bike seat before I can even grab his arm.
Tommy’s waiting by my bike, already holding my bag—his backpack on front and mine on his back. “Give it time. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“You’re not a thousand years old.” I huff. “You don’t know how long it took.”
He’s laughing as he hops on his ancient bike and takes off, creaking and squeaking along behind me.
“You should stop taking me to my house,” I say. “It’s way out of the way for you.”
“I don’t mind,” Tommy says, breathing a little heavy. “My mom would kill me if I didn’t.”
“If you didn’t,” I counter, “Jed might actually take me home. He lives next door, remember?”
“And if he doesn’t step up, you’d have to go all the way alone, which I won’t risk.” Tommy said the same thing every single day of rehearsals, and although Jed did get better and better about looking at me and saying the proper lines during practice, he didn’t soften at all after Mrs. Rasmussen dismissed us.
Until the day we practiced the scene where someone calls King Mongkut a barbarian. On that day, after seeing how the king’s unable to admit when he’s wrong, how both of them have to pretend he’s right when he’s not, I’ve had about enough of Jed acting like I don’t exist when we’re not reading lines. He may be playing a prince, but he certainly isn’t one in real life.
The second Mrs. Rasmussen dismisses us, I leap in front of him and grab his bag. I’m out the door and almost to his bike when he finally calls my name.
“Amanda!”
“Mandy, that’s not yours,” Tommy says, as if he thinks I don’t know whose bag I’m stealing. He’s always been a great liar. It’s why he’s great at acting and directing.
“Wait, isn’t it?” I turn toward Tommy. “Yeah, I think it’s mine for sure.” I sling the straps over my shoulders. “Now, let’s go home. I have homework to do. And we have that big test in English tomorrow. I need to finish studying.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see that Jed’s fuming.
“Unless.” I freeze. “Did you want to guess who else’s bag it might be, Tommy?”
He’s suppressing a smile, which is classic. “I think you ought to guess, Your Majesty.”
“That’s enough,” Jed says. “Give me my bag.”
“Did you hear something?” I ask. “It almost sounded like someone was talking to me, but that can’t be. There’s no one here who does talk to me.”
“I can talk to her,” Jed says, “but even if I do, it doesn’t change anything.” He’s staring at Tommy. “It’ll just make things even harder. Tell her to drop it.”
We all stand like that for at least thirty seconds, maybe longer, before I finally toss the bag on the ground in disgust. “Someone who knows how stupid he’s being and doesn’t fix it is the biggest idiot of all.”
Jed takes his bag, gets on his bike, and pedals off.
“This whole thing is a waste of time,” I say.
“The play?” Tommy’s shoulders droop, the strap from one side of my backpack sliding off.
He’s been trying so hard—the whole thing was his idea. He wants to help, so it’s not his fault that Jed’s a bull-headed idiot.
Standing outside the school, one hand on his bike, two backpacks strapped to him, Tommy looks like the kind of person who slays dragons. The kind of person who doesn’t run away when things are hard. The kind of person who I should be spending my time on instead of the stubborn moron who just rode away.
That’s the moment when I realize that I might like Tommy Collins.