Authors: S. Stevens
Tags: #General, #Fiction
“Pretty damn awesome, after years of torture,” he said, running his tongue over his front teeth and laughing at himself. “My Aunt Ellen was as happy as me when they came off. She got to see where all her money went.” He scooped up the crackers and pushed open the back door with his shoulder. “Come on, let’s sit outside.”
We perched on his weathered, gray picnic table, side by side, feet resting on the benches. My new sandals looked cute, but I cursed myself for not polishing my toenails before coming over.
“Sade, why are you so quiet?” he asked between chews. “Aren’t you going to tell me about your summer? Or ask me about mine?”
I mentally kicked myself for acting like an idiot. I had sat shoulder to shoulder with him a million times, so why was I holding my breath now? I closed my eyes and went back in time, to the old us. It’s only Alex, I told myself.
“Okay, tell me about your summer. Did you have fun with your cousins?” I kept my eyes closed, figuring that wouldn’t look weird since he wouldn’t be staring at me like I had the urge to do with him.
“It was sick. I had so much fun you wouldn’t believe it. We played hoops every day, and basketball camp was awesome. The coaches taught me some new moves, and said I’ve got real potential.” He stopped abruptly. Alex wasn’t one for bragging. In fact, the coach probably said a lot more than that.
“I actually liked hanging out with my relatives,” he said, changing the subject. “My aunt and uncle were pretty laid-back. It was weird having a man around though.” Alex’s father left home years ago, which was a relief overall because he was an alcoholic and drug addict. Still, he was Alex’s dad. Alex didn’t talk about him, ever.
“You didn’t challenge his authority or anything stupid, did you?” I flinched at my own, really bad joke, and decided to focus on Alex’s voice, which hadn’t changed from the deep baritone he acquired during last year’s show. Maybe that would settle the unfamiliar squirming in my stomach. And maybe then I could locate my intelligence.
As usual, Alex ignored my tactlessness. “No, he wasn’t around much. He works a lot. But sometimes he’d play ball with us, or Tommy and I would help him with projects. It was like basketball camp, shop class and – I don’t know – family hour all wrapped up in one.” I could tell he missed it. A pathetic bile-green wave of jealousy rolled through me.
“But hey, you’re home now -- that must feel good, right?” I glanced at him, hope in my voice.
He looked at me like I had two heads. “Hmm, let’s see, a nice house in California with a pool, two parents, two other guys to hang with, real dinners every night, and I got to play sports all the time. Versus--”
“What you have here. I get it.” I hoped he was referring to his rundown house and his mother working two jobs to provide for them, not his next-door neighbor. “It looks like you turned into a real surfer dude while you were there.” Oops, my delivery of this teasing comment was too sharp, almost catty. Alex’s eyes narrowed. “I just mean, you’re tan and all, and your hair’s a lot blonder.”
His eyes softened. “We were outside practically the whole time. I got tons of Vitamin D, that’s for sure.”
“Is that why--” I stopped myself. I could ask the old Alex anything – we were like girlfriends as much as anything – but somehow it felt like prying to ask him how his complexion got so much better. Like the old Alex, he read my mind.
“The zits, right? You’re wondering what happened to them?”
I nodded self-consciously, glad that the pimple on my chin was on the side he couldn’t see.
“My aunt got this prescription medicine for me. My mom could never afford it, but Aunt Ellen got me enough for six months. But tell me your stuff. How was theatre camp?”
Typical guy, changing the subject before I could ask him more about his medicine, like was he willing to share. My skin wasn’t too bad, but any zit is one zit too many.
I closed my eyes again and inhaled, recalling the hairspray, old wood and new paint smells of Dayton Community Theater. Our dressing room was re-painted two weeks before the show, and the strong, musty odor of eggshell nomadic desert dominated my memory.
“Oh, you know, I love a show.” I looked at my feet, which jiggled nervously without my approval. “I only got the part of Ado Annie, though, not the lead. But I had a solo and one duet.”
Alex nodded, used to me being denied the lead. I’m always the supporting role, the comic relief, the bit player. It’s my job to make other people look good. I get roles like Kelsi in
High School Musical
and Yente in
Fiddler on the Roof
. If I had a chance to be in
Wicked
, I might be cast as Elphaba because she’s green and ugly and scary. But then the director would realize Elphaba has a lot of solos and the part would be yanked away and given to someone prettier and possibly less talented. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, my mother would say.
“Sing me the solo,” Alex said, and I almost broke into “I Cain’t Say No” before catching myself. We needed to get back to normal before I could break into song in front of him again.
“It was called ‘I Cain’t Say No’,” I said instead. “That’s cain’t, by the way, not can’t.”
“Way-ulll, I do declay-ah, that sounds like a fiiine song,” he drawled in a dead-on Southern accent. We laughed, salvaging some of our lost camaraderie.
“What about the job at Graffam’s?” he asked in his normal voice. “How’s that?”
I looked up and held his glance a few seconds before gazing off into the distance as if working at remembering.
“What you’d expect. Lots of scooping sticky ice cream and dealing with cranky old customers, and crying babies, and more scooping ice cream. But there was one good thing – remember Adrienne Black and I were friends in second grade?” He made his you-really-expect-me-to-remember-that face. “Well, we were, and she works at Graffam’s too. It’s been kind of cool getting to know her again.”
“Should I be jealous? I thought I was your primo amigo.” His eyes narrowed into slivers of green.
“Hey, when you leave me for the whole summer, what do you expect?” I punched his arm in a throwback to elementary school and jumped up before he read on my face how much I had missed him. I didn’t even bother correcting his Spanish. Instead, I picked up a basketball near the door and challenged him to a game of Spot, not even caring when he laughed at my weak attempt at dribbling, which quickly ended in a runaway ball. It was so good to hear his laugh again.
After that, Alex and I fell into our old patterns, watching movies and rating the performances, acting out the best parts, lazily watching YouTube videos, and playing basketball – or rather he practiced shooting while I rebounded.
I can’t say things went completely back to normal. Every time I stared at him, which was pretty much every time I could without being obvious, I’d feel little tingles going off around my body, like miniature fireworks displays. That never used to happen. It kept me off-kilter. I tried to find the old geeky Alex in this tall, handsome boy, but I couldn’t. Alex, though, acted as if everything were normal, and why wouldn’t he? I hadn’t changed, after all.
Our “reunion” lasted all of seventy-two hours.
2: New Species
T
HE LAST WEEK OF SUMMER VACATION, a time we always spent together, I barely saw Alex because he tried out for the soccer team. Evidently, he and his cousins played a lot in California and he fell in love with the sport. Pretty amazing turnaround if you ask me, since he and I had made fun of our soccer-obsessed town for years. I guess everything changes when suddenly you’re in demand as an athlete. The team needed a goalie and newly giant Alex was the perfect candidate.
I could stomach that. But what he told me while waiting for the bus the first day of school was impossible to choke down.
“So, Shady Sadie, I’ve been thinking,” he said, switching his backpack to the other shoulder. Alarm bells went off in my head, because he hadn’t used that stupid nickname in years. “I don’t think I’ll have time for the school play this year. What with sports and all.”
My eyes widened in horror. I slipped further off kilter. In my head, I screamed, “Are you insane? What are you talking about? We’re a team, Alex! We’ve done every show together!” All that trickled out of my mouth was a weak “Huh?” My inability to speak scared me as much as Alex’s words. I was used to my thoughts getting stuck inside when confronted with teachers, other adults or even the popular kids at school, hidden behind a dumb stare or sometimes a cutting remark that popped out before I knew what I was thinking. But with Alex, I could always say what I wanted.
He watched me, waiting for a coherent reaction. I grasped for something logical.
“Lindsay plays sports and does CDC. You can do both.”
“I know I can, technically. But first of all, it’s not like I’m that good at drama club -- at least the singing part, and you know it.” My mouth opened to protest but he talked over me. “And I don’t love it like you do. You’re the theatre addict, not me.”
He was right, at least about me. Some kids at school called me a theatre snob because I insisted on spelling the word “theatre” like my favorite teacher Mr. Ellison did, instead of “theater”, the common spelling. I didn’t agree with the snob label, but an addict? Definitely.
I put conversations with my friends into script format in my head for the fun of it, or analyzed how to adapt the action on a TV show for the stage. In the middle of a normal, mundane activity like laundry, I’d find myself singing “Watching the Clothes Go Round” by my mother’s favorite band, the Pretenders, as if I were in a musical about my life. My father said once I liked make-believe better than the real world. Bold talk, coming from a history teacher, stuck in the past.
Theatre wasn’t a passing fancy for me. I fully intended to be an actor some day, or maybe a playwright, or both. But first, college, and then, the Yale School of Drama. Until then, Dayton Community Theatre, and the drama club at Crudup High in Smalltown.
The place I lived wasn’t really called Smalltown, but it might as well have been. The main attractions in our typical rural Massachusetts town were a small grass common, a white-steepled church, a library, and a few old farms with names like Gooding and Burning and Gough.
Crudup High was, however, really the name of our higher learning institution, and the name inspired great pride among the student body, as you might imagine. Decades ago, some Crudup guy from the Carolinas – Ebenezer or something -- ventured up north in search of new pastures. We paid the price for his wanderlust when he sprinkled his name all over our territory. Crudup Library. Crudup Street. And Crudup High School.
If only the gorgeous actor Billy Crudup would come be our mascot. That would stop kids from rival schools calling us Cruddy High, Crudupchuck High, Drink-up High, Puke-up High, or that old favorite that starts with an f.
I unwillingly pulled my attention back to Alex, who was still defending his heinous decision.
“And the coach wants me to train for basketball during soccer, to get ready for varsity. So I won’t really have time for CDC.” At most schools, this athletic double-dipping wouldn’t be allowed, but at our tiny school the basketball and soccer coaches were the same person, so conflict avoided.
“You already know you’re going to make the varsity team this time?” I asked, feeling mean, but it was a fair question since he’d barely made JV the past two years.
He ignored my jab. “Sadie, I’m six feet tall now, in case you hadn’t noticed. Trust me, I’m making varsity.”
I pouted. “I guess if you don’t want it badly enough, then you can’t fit both in. I understand.” We both knew I didn’t.
His voice softened, sounding like a five-year-old’s. I hated when he did that. It wasn’t fair. He usually only sounded that way when he talked about his mother, and how she worked too much. “You know how long I’ve wanted to be a starter on the basketball team.”
I flashed back to little Alex with his hair in his eyes and his skinny arms heaving the basketball up, over and over, barely hitting the rim. “And making the soccer team is a bonus. I’ll be in great shape for basketball when the time comes.” He pretended to shoot a jump shot, shattering my tender memory and reviving my irritation. I rolled my eyes. Why couldn’t I have a girl for a best friend? She wouldn’t ditch me like this, or play imaginary games in front of the approaching school bus. “You’re not mad, are you?”
I ignored his question and his eyes, which bored into me, and stomped onto the bus. I huffed down on the cracked vinyl seat, Alex’s news sinking in all the way to my toes. I couldn’t imagine CDC without him. It wouldn’t
be
CDC without him. Alex and drama were intertwined in my brain. How was I ever going to land a lead role without him there supporting me? Already I felt ghost pains starting, as if I’d lost an arm or a leg instead of a cast mate. I wanted to suffer alone, but he slid in next to me, oblivious.
(TYPICAL SCHOOL BUS IS TWO-THIRDS FULL OF STUDENTS MOSTLY AGED TWELVE THROUGH SIXTEEN YEARS. SMALL TOWN SCENES FLASH BY THROUGH THE WINDOWS.)
(SADIE PLAYS WITH HER IPOD THE WHOLE RIDE RATHER THAN LOOK AT ALEX IN THE SEAT NEXT TO HER. ALEX LOOKS AT SADIE REGULARLY AT FIRST, THEN STOPS AND STARES STRAIGHT AHEAD THE REST OF THE RIDE.)