Chapter 18
Madeline
Drama rehearsal went horribly. I couldn’t concentrate on anything except for the fact that a significant portion of the football team had caught Cooper and me kissing.
There was no containing that sort of news. The whole school would find out. I’d called Dahlia his homewrecking date, and now I was the one who looked like I was his secret side fling.
I’d always had a good reputation. And now, well, when people said, “Your reputation precedes you,” they wouldn’t be talking about musical theater.
Had Cooper admitted that we were fake dating for our parents’ sake? He probably had, but his teammates wouldn’t believe it. Because how do you make a kiss that is nowhere near your parents seem like it’s for your parents’ benefit?
We’re fake dating would seem like the lamest excuse ever.
How long did I have until everyone in school found out and the crippling judgment began?
It was common for people to scroll through their phones while they waited for their turn onstage, but it seemed like more than usual were on their phones.
Which of the cast members already knew? The room felt hotter and like there wasn’t enough air in it.
Onstage, I recited all of my lines wrong. I knew I was reciting them wrong even before Mrs. Russel stopped the entire performance and said, “This is supposed to be a comedy. You’re helping young lovers find happiness, not leading them to an execution.”
“Sometimes you don’t understand people’s motivation,” I said too loudly. “Sometimes you could, say, catch someone in a situation that looks bad, but there’s a perfectly good explanation for it, only the person just can’t divulge the reason.”
Mrs. Russel sniffed with a look of sour distaste. “Yes, perhaps sometimes. But that’s not really Dolly’s motivation, is it?”
“That’s what I’m saying. Sometimes you don’t know people’s motivation, and you shouldn’t judge them.”
Now everybody was gawking at me. Maybe because I was babbling.
Mrs. Russel in particular looked at me like I may be in the midst of a nervous breakdown. “Why don’t you take a few minutes to think about your lines. We’ll work on another scene.” She dismissed me and clapped her hands to get the next group’s attention.
I had never been told to go think about my lines before. Any other day, I would’ve felt the reprimand with a sharp sting. Now I was just glad to get off the stage.
Kinsley and Harper were part of the next scene and passed me on the way to the stage, each looking at me questioningly. I just shrugged. What could I tell them?
I didn’t pick up my script or look at my part. I knew it by heart. As I walked across the theater, I checked my phone. Dahlia had messaged me on social media. She’d only written one word, and it wasn’t a nice one. Well, she knew. Who else did?
I pretended I needed to go to the bathroom, went out into the empty hallway, and called Selena. I told her what had happened, the words tumbling from my mouth in a rush.
“You kissed him?” she asked in disbelief. “What happened to the girl who firmly said ‘ew’ to kissing the quarterback when I warned you he would suggest it?”
“I don’t know. His plan made sense. We needed a dress rehearsal.”
“Did you, though? Or is the guy using you?”
He wasn’t, was he? “Cooper isn’t like that. He just wants his parents to get back together.”
“Fine. Then let him come up with a plan that doesn’t involve ruining your reputation or batting your heart around like a cat toy.”
Selena knew me too well. Even without me telling her, she knew my heart was taking a beating.
“Dump him as a fake boyfriend,” she went on. “You need to find someone who’s interested in dating you for real.”
She wasn’t wrong. She said a few more things, all trying to cheer me up—a fruitless task. I’d been away from rehearsal for too long. I said goodbye, hung up with her, and trudged back into the theater.
As soon as I slumped down in a corner, Claire came over and sat beside me. “What’s wrong?”
She’d know soon enough. I explained what had happened and showed her Dahlia’s message. “She’ll tell everybody. Maybe she already has.”
Claire checked her phone. “Hasn’t reached my friend group yet.
Although maybe no one has said anything to me because I’m Cooper’s sister.
” She set her phone down and gave me a sympathetic look.
“Cooper is the one who’ll lose his homecoming date over this.
In some ways that makes things easier for both of you.
And on the bright side, I won’t have to put up with Dahlia coming over to my house after Cooper’s ungrounded.
I guess that’s only a bright side for me, but I’m still counting it. ”
I glanced around the room at my friends onstage and the people sprawled everywhere on their phones.
“Harper and Kinsley are going to find out about this. What reason can I give for kissing him? We agreed not to tell people we were fake dating, so he might have come up with another excuse. I don’t want to give people a different answer. ”
“You’ll just have to avoid talking to anyone after rehearsal. Don’t even look at your messages until you get your story with him straight.”
She was right. I needed to talk to Cooper, but at the same time, I dreaded doing it. When his friends caught us kissing, he’d jolted away from me, and I’d seen the look of horrified regret on his face, of pure embarrassment. I couldn’t erase that look from my mind.
He hadn’t minded kissing me when he thought no one else would know about it. He seemed to enjoy it. Or at least he’d enjoyed turning my insides into a pile of quivering nerves.
I’d been the eager fangirl during that kiss.
But he didn’t want a relationship with me.
He didn’t want his friends to think he liked me.
The look on his face made that clear enough.
So I could never reveal how I felt. If I did, I would see that same look, and then he would avoid me for the rest of my life—which would be especially hard if our parents ended up getting married.
Yeah, I could never let him know how I felt.
I had the acting skills to hide my feelings. I would have to rely on them.
And avoid everyone I knew until I talked to Cooper.
“Do you want a ride home after rehearsal?” I asked Claire.
“Cooper won’t be there,” she said. “He goes to work after practice.”
“I know. But there’s less chance anyone will come up and talk to me about Cooper if you’re with me. Message Davika that I’ll take you and we’ll make a beeline out of here the second rehearsal ends.”
“My house is in the opposite direction from yours,” Claire said. “I’ll just walk with you to the parking lot and then wait for Davika.”
“I want to drive you.” I meant it. I liked talking to Claire. “I can help you with your lines on the way.”
Maybe she realized I didn’t want to be alone.
She let me drive her home. We ran a few lines and then I ended up giving her a lesson on what to do while she waited for the next actor to deliver his lines.
Acting is about reacting. Even after rehearsing a scene a hundred times, an actress has to stay in the moment and pretend it’s the first time she’s experiencing the scene.
Helping her made me forget about everything else.
Even after we reached her house, we stayed in my car for a few more minutes working on the piece she’d chosen for regionals.
When we finished, I said, “If I just came off as a bossy, know-it-all, I’m sorry.
” I had, after all, trapped her into this impromptu lesson.
She shrugged and smiled. “It’s nice that you want to help your competition. Who knows, I might win at regionals.”
“You might,” I said. It would be nice if she won.
We said our goodbyes and I pulled away from her house.
Instead of going home, I drove to the drugstore where Cooper worked.
I could have texted him. That would be the easiest thing, but I wanted to see his face and judge his reaction while we spoke.
I wanted to see how upset he was about everything.
And maybe I was a glutton for punishment because I wanted to see if there was a part of him that wasn’t upset that his friends had caught us together.
My dad would never let me go to Cooper’s house to talk to him. This was the only way.
To prevent Cooper from getting into trouble for talking to me at work, if any other employees were around, I’d pretend I was there buying something and had casually bumped into a friend from school. His coworkers wouldn’t think it was strange if I stopped to say hello to someone I knew.
I walked into the store and grabbed one of the first things I saw: a bag of powdered donut holes. It seemed like a believable thing I’d need to buy to bring to a school party or something.
The place was a typical drugstore. Lots of aisles, fluorescent lighting, and ads with happy, smiling people selling products. The store wasn’t that big, so finding Cooper didn’t take long. He stood in the medical equipment aisle, putting packages of tape on the shelf.
When he spotted me, his eyes widened. “Madeline.” His expression wasn’t one of regret, just surprise. That was a good sign at least. “What brings you here?”
He had to ask?
“I needed donuts.” I held up the bag as proof. “And we should talk.”
His gaze was on mine, steady, waiting, and somehow, that made it harder to meet his eyes. I swallowed uncomfortably. “What did you tell the guys on your team?” I cleared my throat and added, “After I left,” as though he required that clarification. Stupid nerves. My palms had gone sweaty.
I momentarily shut my eyes and tried to channel a character who would handle the situation better than I was, someone worldly and confident who didn’t care about their reputation. Natasha Romanov, the Black Widow, would do. I squared my shoulders. “We need to get our stories straight.”