Chapter 29
Theo and I walk home together after rehearsal.
“I think it went pretty well.” I’m relieved.
“Yeah, all things considered,” he says. “Will did well.” He looks at me sideways. “So did you. It was like your whole performance just lit up.”
“Oh!” I feign surprise, but I know he’s right. Even in a messy stumble-through, I felt different. “Well, thanks. And yes, thank goodness for Will.”
“So, what’s going on there?” he asks.
“I don’t know what you mean.” But I do.
“Mirabel.”
“Theodore.”
“You like him.” He stops and faces me.
“I like him!”
Theo laughs. “Oh, wow,” he says. “Well, this is fun. So, what’s happening?”
“Um, nothing,” I say. “We have held hands with intense eye contact three times, he has punched my ex-boyfriend once, and I have slept in his bed with a gay man once.” I pause. “What’s the catch?”
“With Will?”
“Yeah. There’s always something. What is it?”
Theo laughs. “There’s nothing. Mirabel, he’s the best guy. The best, most solid guy I know. He just has one huge flaw that I will never be okay with.”
“What?” I ask, alarmed. Of course there’s something. I should have known.
“Well, he’s into women.”
“Ha! I can live with that.”
“I cannot.” He laughs. We keep walking. “But seriously, not my business. I will just say, he’s been through it. Losing Jonah nearly broke him; he wasn’t himself for a long time after. And now he’s back to good. He’s not someone for a quick rebound or whatever. Don’t hurt him.”
“Yeah.” My smile is gone. “I know, Theo.”
“I’m just saying, what can really happen? You’re leaving after the show, right?”
“Well, for starters, I don’t love the implication that I would hurt him.
” I give him a chance to take it back, but he doesn’t.
I change the subject. “The show asked me to come back.” I say it for effect.
I don’t know why I keep telling people when I know I won’t do it.
Maybe because I have so little else going on, it feels good to sound in demand.
“As a lead. Tons more money.” This would be enticing to most people, but not Theo.
“Mira,” he says. “You are an artist. You’re really gifted.” I look at him, surprised. “No, really, you’re so good in this show, and I see how you are working with the others, what you can bring out in them. Listings . . . It . . .”
“It sucks, I know.”
“It really does.” He looks at me pointedly. “It’s fine if you want fame and a paycheck, but I’ve seen so much change in you just since you arrived. I know you see this as just a summer gig, a dumb community theater show.”
“No,” I say quietly. “I did, for sure, initially. But . . . no.” As I’m saying it, I realize how true this is.
“Well, good, because there’s something happening to you.” He looks at me sideways. “Something good.” I smile to myself. “Something more than a flirtation with a gorgeous man who slays your dragons and pours you cider.”
I nod slowly. “Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.” There is a wall of fog in my mind. I can’t even begin to factor the possibility of Will into this.
“Maybe it’s as simple as you’re just rediscovering theater?” he asks. “Like, you weren’t happy in TV, were you?”
“Theater just didn’t happen for me,” I say. “As a career. I don’t want to be on that shitty TV show, but I want to work.”
“I mean artistically,” Theo continues, “as an artist.”
It’s been so long since I’ve thought of myself as an artist, but of course he’s right. “Yeah,” I say. “No.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” says Theo. “If it’s working for you.”
“Yeah, we can’t all have two leads a season at Stratford!” I say. I’m still jealous of him. I always have been.
He looks at me sideways. “Sounds like you might need to unpack that,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe I do.” I change the subject. “What about you and Max?”
He accepts the olive branch. “Max is a dream.” He pretends to swoon. “He’s an absolute dream. I’m probably going to marry him.”
“Wait, what? Theo! You’re joking!”
“I mean, sort of. But also, it’s really good. He’s amazing.” I’ve never seen him so lit up. “I’m moving to New York, after Mom . . . I mean, I’m here as long as she is. And then, yeah, I’m going to see if I can get into Broadway, and Max is going to come.”
“Wow, Theo. That’s amazing!”
“When you know, you know.”
I keep thinking about that after we part ways.
I keep walking, past my house, down the street, and up past the church toward the secret garden, the fairies’ garden.
I slip in the hidden entrance in the hedge, and I am back in high school, back to the girl who loved theater more than anything.
I am starting to recognize her again in myself.
It feels good. There is a new bench under the apple tree, a new flagstone path that someone laid by hand.
The garden feels fuller, not overgrown so much as bursting.
It’s lovely. I stand there for a moment, longing to be sixteen again, to kiss a boy while apple blossoms fall around us, to live in the bliss of the unknown. That feels like a lifetime ago.
It never occurred to me for a minute when I signed on to do this play that it was anything but temporary.
I came here so reluctantly. And what, a play, a guy, a couple of pub nights, and I’m just .
. . back? I think of Theo: He won’t stay forever.
He’s here for his mom, and he will come and go, I know.
He’ll always come back here. He has family here.
He has roots, friends, siblings. Theo always liked it here.
I never did. I try to picture myself living with my parents; the thought makes me laugh out loud.
Even if I were as far across town as I could be, what?
Would we have dinner together? Would I be in their shows?
I’ll admit that they put on good ones. But that’s not a career, it’s not a living.
My parents have money that allows them to do this, and sure, it will be mine one day.
I have money from the show, I have my condo.
I think of that job at the college theater program.
Am I even qualified? Would I even like teaching young people how to act?
The question lands gently in me. I let it sit there.
Yeah. Maybe I would. Who knows. I turn around and head back home.
I arrive in front of my parents’ house. It’s golden hour. It’s the prettiest street in town, lush Victorians and wild cottage gardens. It feels alive and brimming with realness. Something else I’ve been missing. Could I live here, now, as me? Is there a life for me here?