Scene 5
Scene Five
We all gather in the PL on Monday morning, cranky and bleary-eyed.
After Juliet and her parents left last night, I stayed up listening to my parents’ hushed tones.
Even after they went to bed, sometime in the single digits, I couldn’t sleep.
I just kept thinking about Juliet’s words—being impartial doesn’t make you innocent—and the look on her face when she asked me not to tell Rob.
Charlie and Olivia are arguing lightly over who discovered the particular brand of jeans they have on, and the rest of the seniors wandering around are fairly quiet, whispering in small groups or tooling around on the internet.
“Rose, you were there,” Olivia says, not looking at me. “We went to Bloomingdale’s, didn’t we? Tell her.”
Lauren and Dorothy are in a corner, scrolling through something on Lauren’s iPhone, and they look up and glance at me.
I smile and toss some mumbled version of “I dunno” in Olivia’s direction.
Then John Susquich comes strolling in, the San Bellaro News in his hand, and he looks at me before sitting down.
“Damn, Caplet,” he says, and then flips open his paper.
And then my stomach drops like it’s an elevator unhinged.
Because I know what they’re reading, and I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.
Everyone’s eyes are on me, darting like laser beams. I don’t have to see the headline ROCKED BY SCANDAL or the old photographs of Juliet’s dad and Rob’s mom kissing by a car and outside a hotel, or the photos of Uncle Richard groping some woman outside the Capitol.
I already know what’s in there. I guess Uncle Richard didn’t have to announce it, after all.
“Jesus CHRIST.” Charlie grabs John’s paper and shoves it in my face. “Have you seen this? Are you seeing this?” She flaps it wildly so the pictures blur.
“Yes.”
“This is massive. Does Rob know? Rosaline!” Charlie knocks the back of my head, my answer finally dawning on her. “You knew?”
Juliet ducks into the PL, her sunglasses secured tightly to her face. The entire room turns, gawks, and falls silent. It’s one thing for this to be about your uncle. It’s another entirely for it to be about your dad.
She looks small, or it could just be that she’s alone. It’s been weeks since I’ve seen her at school without Rob suctioned to her side. But now Rob’s suspended and her family is the subject of a sex scandal. I feel sorry for her. Especially after last night.
“No way,” Charlie says, like she’s having a conversation with my thoughts. “Don’t go there. This serves her right. Karma sucks.”
“Yeah, it does.” It sucks for all of us. I lost my best friend and my cousin, she lost her parents, and somewhere in there we all lost each other. That’s the thing about free will: Every decision we make is a choice against something as much as it is for something else.
Juliet turns to us briefly, and then she leaves the way she came.
“We’re going to be late,” Olivia says.
Charlie tucks the paper under her arm and cups my elbow. “Rose, let’s go.”
“Hang on.” I make a move to follow Juliet, but Olivia steps in front of me.
“Not happening,” she says.
“What?”
She looks at Charlie, who nods like she’s giving her permission for something.
“You’re quick to forgive,” Olivia says. “You always have been. You forgave Charlie when she forgot your birthday two years ago.” Charlie looks down at her feet, rolling her sparkling water in her hands.
“You forgave me when I decided the Belgian was more important than that piano concert you wanted to go to. And that’s one of the best things about you, because it means you’re willing to look past things and to give people second chances.
But the thing is, Rose, some people don’t deserve them. ”
“She’s right,” Charlie says.
“She’s family,” I say.
“Says who?” Olivia says. “So you share a last name? Big deal! Your family are the people who know you, the people who are there for you. Rose, we’re your family. Not Juliet.”
I think about everything that’s happened, about there being no right choice. And there’s one thing I can’t stop, regardless of what choice I make, because it’s no longer up to me.
“Rob is going to find out,” I say.
“Yeah, he is,” Charlie says. She puts an arm around my shoulder as she leads me out of the PL. “But it’s not your problem to deal with. All of this”—she flaps the paper in the air—“is somebody else’s story.”
“I don’t see why you don’t just quit,” Charlie says that afternoon.
We’re sitting out in the courtyard even though it’s been drizzling off and on since this morning, and we’re talking about the school play.
Charlie has a bottle of nail polish balanced on her palm, and she’s applying a coat of Tough as Nails to her fingertips—a grayish-blackish color she picked up at the mall last weekend.
She makes a face at a group of freshmen ogling us, and they take off toward Cooper House, running.
“Because my entire bio grade is depending on this.”
“It’s not like Stanford cares about bio,” Charlie says. She picks one hand up and blows on her nails. “And I’m sure the dean would fully understand if you told him that the price of admission was you watching your evil cousin prance around the stage with your ex.”
“Rob’s suspended,” I correct her.
“For now,” she says.
I catch a glimpse of Len across the courtyard, and it’s like I’m right back at that piano bench with him.
My entire body lights up, electrified. He’s talking to Dorothy and he’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt.
I can’t remember the last time I saw him in one.
One time, in eighth grade, Charlie and I ran into him on the beach, but I don’t even think he had one on then.
“Cute, huh?” Olivia says, following my gaze.
“Who?” I ask, feigning ignorance.
Olivia rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “Go talk to him,” she says, nudging me in the ribs.
Charlie is swatting her fingers through the air like she’s trying to get rid of gnats, and when I say, “I’ll be right back,” Olivia gives me a small thumbs-up and Charlie just nods.
I cross the courtyard slowly, but when I get about halfway, Len looks up, smiles, and motions me over. Dorothy gives me a little wave and darts into the cafeteria.
“Look who’s in short sleeves,” I say, trying my best to sound cool when my entire body feels like it’s on fire. His black eye has faded, and I can only make out tiny yellowish marks, little fingerprints on his face.
“I’m just trying to be on level with the people,” Len says, making a fuss of gesturing around.
He smiles, and it makes me look away. I’m thinking about being in my house alone together and, despite the fact that everyone is watching, part of me wants to reach out and touch him, to run my fingers through his hair and put my hands on either side of his face.
I take a deep breath. I want to bring up that date, to tell him I think I might want to go, but I’m not sure how.
“You going to be at rehearsal today?” I ask instead.
Len tucks his hands into his pockets. “I pretty much don’t have a choice,” he says. “Without me, there is no lighting crew. No offense or anything.” He looks at me under his lashes. “But you kinda suck.”
I laugh nervously. “Sadly, that’s true.”
He holds up his hands. “So how was the rest of your weekend?”
“Eventful.”
“Interesting.”
“Have you read the paper?”
“I told you I was politically informed,” he says.
“So are you going to say anything?”
“Like what?”
“Like ‘Your family’s really screwed up’?”
He laughs, shaking his head. “You’re a trip, Rosaline, you know that?”
I shrug. “That’s something.”
“Your uncle’s kind of a misogynist. And at one point your parents had a hard decision to make.
But so what? My parents got divorced when I was five, and now my mom lives with a guy who’s been to jail twice, and this morning my twelve-year-old sister broke her arm on the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle.
Just because a newspaper doesn’t write articles about us doesn’t mean we aren’t totally fucked. ”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.”
“This is life,” he says. “We have to take it as it comes, because even though some things are really shitty, there’s a lot of really great stuff too.
” For a moment his eyebrows cinch in tight.
But it’s not a frown. It’s that intense look he gets.
The look I saw when he was playing the piano.
The one he gets when he really cares about something. And right now he’s looking at me.