Chapter Eighteen
Here’s the thing, Zach tells himself as he watches Parker lean over Isaac’s Physics notes at the lunch table on Monday.
Parker looks like Paige. Zach has spent a considerable amount of time wanting to kiss Paige.
So, he’s probably, like, superimposing wanting to kiss Paige onto Parker because he’s hormonal and seventeen and—
Zach has been trying not to think about whether possibly wanting to kiss Parker makes him gay, because worrying about that doesn’t seem very productive.
Midterms are coming up, and opening night for the play is approaching fast. He doesn’t have time in his schedule to worry about kissing. So, he does his best to stay focused.
He’s been successful, for the most part.
Except for moments like this one, where he’s watching Parker frantically scribble Physics equations on the inside of his wrist, because he’s been copying all of Isaac’s homework and now has to fake his way through a test. Something about watching Parker commit academic dishonesty makes him want to kiss him more.
Briefly, he tries to think about kissing Paige instead.
But that just leaves him feeling squeamish and weird.
Any attempt to rekindle the crush he’d had on her for the last four years fizzles out and dies.
Zach still thinks Paige is perfect in every way, but that’s truer of this Paige than the cardboard cutout he’d created in his head.
Loving Paige this way is easier, better, and Zach can’t make himself turn back the clock.
Time does not stop moving forward while Zach worries, which is pretty unfair. He’s not sure how to focus on exams and the school play when it feels like his entire reality has been hit by a speeding semi-truck.
Zach considers talking to Isaac about it.
He even drafts a few Facebook messages trying to get the words out right, but in the end he gives up, because Isaac likes making fun of people more than he likes offering meaningful advice.
Talking to Isaac would guarantee that Parker would find out within a matter of minutes. Probably the whole school too.
He almost asks Bea about it. She’s probably the only one who would actually be helpful in this scenario.
In the end, though, he chickens out. And there’s no way in hell he can talk to Paige about whether he actually wants to kiss her brother, or whether he’s going crazy from stress or something.
So, he focuses on the tech crew. He studies for exams. He drags himself through the last stretch before opening night, doing his best to act completely normal.
Maybe because he’s already so anxious, no one really seems to notice that he’s a little twitchier than usual.
The end of November brings sheets of snow.
For one glorious afternoon, it coats the entire city in fresh, picture-perfect white before sleet and dirty brown slush take over the sidewalks and roads.
The temperature drops and the snow continues into December, leaving Zach almost desperate for Parker’s heated Subaru seats at the end of every play practice.
If Isaac is soured by Zach accepting more rides from Parker, he doesn’t say so.
They usually pull into their driveways at the same time anyway and Isaac comes over to hang out with them before supper.
A week before opening night, Zach enters the auditorium to find everyone in a panicked uproar.
Both cast and crew are standing near the front of the stage, their voices overlapping.
Mr. West is trying to calm everyone down and as Zach draws nearer, he can see and hear the issue: Both Puck and Puck’s understudy are missing.
“I knew they were hooking up,” Isaac says hotly as Zach approaches. “Both of them out with mono? Are you telling me we’re supposed to believe that’s a coincidence?”
“What are we supposed to do?” Paige frets, twisting her fingers around and around in the end of her ponytail.
Bea looks like she’s about to cry. She holds her stage manager’s binder tightly in her hands, her brown knuckles losing color with how hard she’s gripping it.
Zach feels a flutter of panic, even though this is not his fault and he is not obligated to find a solution to fix it.
Still—they all worked so hard, and now everything is falling apart.
How are they supposed to have a show without one of the main characters?
Parker appears at Zach’s elbow. He shrugs. “I can do it,” he says.
“Huh?” Isaac laughs. “What, seriously?”
Parker looks immediately uncomfortable with his suggestion, but he doubles down as he shoves Isaac in the arm. “I have the whole script memorized, asshole.”
Bea fixes her very intense gaze directly on Parker. She reaches through the throng of people and grabs him by the front of his denim vest.
“You’re serious?” she asks.
Parker looks down at her hand, then back up at her face. He nods. “Yeah. I could do any of the parts, probably.”
Bea nods, a slow smile spreading over her face. She pulls Parker by the front of his vest toward the director.
“Mr. West!” Bea says, projecting her voice so it overwhelms the cacophony of the other students. “Parker says he knows the part!”
Parker drags along behind her like a rag doll. Zach watches, heart somewhere in his throat, as Mr. West tilts his head back to look at Parker more fully. Parker curls his shoulders in, tucking his hair behind his ears compulsively.
“Tell him,” Bea urges.
Parker clears his throat, rocking up onto the toes of his boots then down again. “I—yeah, I know the part. I know Puck’s part.”
Mr. West looks skeptical. He’s probably thinking of all the times Parker has come to practice and not participated at all. “I don’t know,” he says warily.
Parker scowls, his face pinching up in a way that Zach has come to be so familiar with. It’s the face Parker makes when the next words out of his mouth are usually, fuck you. Instead of saying that, he drops his messenger bag off of his shoulder and steps back a little.
He recites: “The king doth keep his revels here to-night. Take heed the queen come not within his sight, for Oberon is passing fell and wrath, because that she as her attendant hath a lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king. She never had so sweet a changeling—”
Mr. West holds up both hands. “Okay, alright!” he says, trailing off into an incredulous laugh.
“I know the part,” Parker mutters, expression growing embarrassed.
“You know the part,” Mr. West agrees. “We’ll have to figure out a costume for you. You’re… tall. And we’ll have to work on getting your blocking down. You have a lot to learn in a very short amount of time.”
Almost everyone cheers, Isaac the loudest. Except for Paige. She’s quiet, watching her brother as he gets swept away by the other students and Mr. West. Zach sidles up beside her, nudging his shoulder against her own. When she looks at him, she musters some sort of half-smile.
“Kind of cool, huh?” he asks.
Paige exhales slowly. “Yeah, I guess,” she says, crossing her arms tight over her torso.
“Or…” Zach fidgets with the hem of his sweatshirt. “Or not cool?”
“It’s silly,” Paige says, shrugging. “I’m just being the dumb, jealous twin.”
“What?” Zach asks, frowning. “You’re not… Well, okay, first of all, you’re not dumb.”
“Parker just… he came to tech crew to hang out with you,” Paige blurts out, “while I worked really hard on this play. Now he’s, like, this big hero and that’s all my parents are going to focus on when they come to see it.
” She sighs, scrubbing one hand over her face like she’s trying to stop herself from getting teary.
“Which is a silly thing to care about. Parker never does shit like this, I should be… like, happy for him, or whatever.”
Zach turns to face Paige more fully. He places his hands gently on her upper arms, giving her a soft squeeze.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “Parker wouldn’t have even shown up to this thing if you hadn’t done it first. Neither would I. Or Isaac. You’re like… super cool, okay, and like… you made doing tech crew cool.”
Paige laughs, her voice tight. She looks like Parker when she laughs. Zach adds that to his extensive catalog of things not to think about.
“I know I should be happy,” Paige says, shrugging her shoulders a little. “I know I’m being a baby.”
Zach rubs his hands up and down Paige’s arms. “I think you can feel however you want,” he points out. “But there wouldn’t even be a play without you. Or, well, without all of us, but you know what I mean. Tech crew is super important.”
Paige laughs again, letting her shoulders fall. She turns her head, watching Parker awkwardly attempt the blocking for Puck’s first scene up onstage.
“I guess if he screws up, everyone will see it,” she says.
A surprised, nervous laugh bubbles up and out of Zach’s mouth. “Exactly,” he agrees, even though he very much doesn’t want Parker to mess up. “We get to hide backstage.”
His brain circles back to: He came to tech crew to hang out with you.
Did Parker tell Paige that, or was it somehow obvious to everyone but Zach?
Zach had thought that maybe Parker showed up because he had nothing else to do while he waited for Paige to drive him home.
Then again, Parker had kept showing up, even after getting the Subaru.
Maybe he’d been doing it out of habit or because he didn’t want to return to his big, ornate house all alone.
Paige’s mood lightens a little, but another thought pings in the back of Zach’s head and he says, impulsively, “Do you remember in the eighth grade, when I tried to ask you to the dance?”
Paige looks at him with a little pinch between her brows, lips curling into an incredulous smile. “Kind of,” she says. “Is that what you were doing?”
Zach flushes, letting his hands drop from her shoulders. “Um, yeah, I think so.” He rocks back and forth onto the balls of his feet then back down. “I mean—I’ve always thought you were cool. Even way back then.”
Paige’s face softens and she reaches for his hand. She squeezes it, and Zach squeezes back. Despite all the confusion surrounding how he feels about Parker right now, he’s glad that he gets to be here in this moment with Paige.
“Thank you,” she says. “For, like, everything. For letting us borrow your mom and letting us stay. For being Parker’s friend.”
Zach swallows thickly. Parker’s friend. His best friend. Just his friend.
“Easiest thing on earth,” Zach replies.