My Invented Life (15 page)

I take my cell phone for a walk around the field to clear my head. It likes the fresh air. It likes talking to Andie.

Me:
For the latest breaking headlines, the RoZ News Channel.

Andie:
Hey.

Me:
Don’t you think Carmen could be bi?

Andie:
Stop with the labels, already.

Me:
So what makes you think she isn’t Jonathan’s girlfriend?

Andie:
I know what I know.

Me:
I prithee take the cork out of thy mouth, that I may drink thy tidings.

Andie:
If you come over after rehearsal tomorrow, I might give you a few hints.

Me:
Sorry. Too much homework.

Homework in the backseat of Bryan’s car.

As I near Sapphire’s house, a dot of orange glowing through the blackness suggests that Jonathan is smoking outside.

Me:
Got to go. Later.

I drift over and drop down on the porch step next to him ever so casually. “Don’t you know that smoking gives you STDs?” I grab his cigarette and stomp it out.

“Thanks for saving me,” he says. The angle of his neck reads dejected.

Whenever we’re together like this, breathing the same air in and out, I almost come clean about Eva’s dare. He’s the only one I feel guilty about deceiving. But my good sense of timing prevents me from being honest. Before yesterday we were having too much fun together. And
now he’s too moody. Confessing would be a selfish act, and he might not understand.

I toss and catch the pack of cigarettes before offering it to him. “Go ahead. Give yourself gonorrhea,” I say.

He ignores my attempt to lighten the mood. “Lay off Carmen, will you?”

“Carmen and I go way back,” I say. “Our feud goes way back, I mean.” After learning Carmen’s secret, I do regret how I’ve acted toward her. Not that she entirely deserves my sympathy after how she’s treated me. And she’s using Jonathan as a decoy boyfriend. That isn’t exactly nice. “Anyway, our feud is over as of this minute.”

He puts a cigarette between his lips and lets it dangle there.

I’m dying to tell him the truth about Carmen, but Eva’s assessment of my foot-in-mouth disease keeps getting in the way, not to mention my solemn vow to take the secret to my grave. Jonathan’s little romance with her piques my curiosity. There’s a limerick about that. A pansy who lives in Khartoum, took a lesbian up to his room . . . . “It’s sweet of you to defend your girlfriend,” I say.

He brushes his thumb across the lighter.

“So you’re going hetero,” I say, fishing for how much he knows.

Jonathan claps his free hand over my mouth. He’s shaking. “I’m not gay enough for you now?” he says.

He drops his hand again. I can’t read his face hidden by shadow. If I try to hug him, he might reject me. Or light my hair on fire. “
I
go both ways, too, remember?” His shoulder doesn’t yield to my affectionate squeeze.

He jerks away from me. “I’m not black enough. I’m not gay enough.”

“I didn’t say that. I mean, I’m sorry if I—” But he’s already gone, with the door banging behind him, leaving me alone in the dark. Why do I always ruin things when I really care about someone? I start obsessing that my feelings are flowing down a one-way street, and I panic.

I creep back across the field through the black night. With my luck, P. Tom will accost me before I make it home. “And I thought I was a mess,” he’ll say.

My American history class lets out early. I cruise to the Barn before rehearsal starts, hoping to surprise someone in the act. Anyone. Any act. I’m not picky. The place is deserted, but someone came ahead of me because a crudely made sign sits by the door:
QUIT THE PLAY ROZ OR YOU’LL COME TO A BAD END
. Yellow-green paint drips like alien drool down the scrap of plywood, an authentic touch that gives me the heebies. Still, I have to hide it quick before Sapphire sees. Carmen must be beyond desperate to pull a stunt like this.

By the time the theater geeks start arriving, I’ve stashed the sign behind some props in the area we affectionately call backstage. Andie comes in, and I drag her off to a private corner to talk to her. The metallic red eyeliner and dark purple lip goop she has on says vampire. When she opens her mouth, I expect fangs.

“Who did the sign?” I whisper.

She looks at me curiously. “What sign?”

“Never mind.” Hah! I detect a crack in her perfect knowledge.

She shakes her head. “I’ve got something to show you.” She removes a bit of paper from under the band on her funky blue hat. It’s a photograph of Nico in profile on a rock next to a river, his hair sleeked back like he just came out of the water. No shirt. He looks hot, and I’m not talking about the weather.

“Madam, I come to whet your gentle thoughts on his behalf,” she says.

“Hmmm,” I say, slipping the photo in my bag. Oh, great. Now I’m having wanton thoughts about the weird boy. What next? Andie looks hot too. If you have a thing for ghouls.

“There’s Jonathan,” I say. “I need to talk to him.” I bound over like an enthusiastic puppy. Maybe he’ll accept my apology this time.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” he growls.

His hands are splattered with green paint. I back away slowly.

My fantasies are turning toward the Stephen King–esque
.

Actually, Jonathan’s hands are clean. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. A beetle maybe, but not a fly. He most definitely wouldn’t hurt me.

When I bound over, he says, “I don’t want to talk to you. I’m in a mood.”

“Just read this,” I say, giving him the coming-out story I found on the Net.

Sapphire makes an entrance. Everyone quiets down.

“I leave tonight,” she announces. “I’ll be gone all next week. Jonathan, too.”

Oh. So maybe his mood isn’t just about me.

“Eva was supposed to strut her directorial stuff today,” Sapphire continues. “Unfortunately, she’s out sick. What does she have, Roz?”

Eva stayed home from school? “Just a cold,” I say, too embarrassed to admit my ignorance.

Sapphire moves a chaise longue to one side on the stage and settles in. “Carmen will direct, and Andie will read Eva’s part. Pretend I’m not here and go at it. Act four, scene three.”

Carmen looks like she just died and was reincarnated as Sofia Coppola. That’s when I notice a faint sprinkling of green paint on her sexy mesh sleeve. Before, I suspected. Now, I have proof. I contemplate which violent death would be best for her, but after the bear pit, the poisoning, and the beheading, my thoughts take a new direction. Carmen risked Sapphire’s wrath and the demise of the play for the slim chance of playing the lead. How sad is that?

The poor girl has become completely unhinged. Maybe Carmen lied to her mom and told her she got the lead. In that case, she’d have to do anything she could to make that happen. Including bumping me off. My insides become a tangle of annoyance and sympathy coated with a thin layer of fear. Think spaghetti with olive oil.

I try to focus on the play. In the first part of the next scene, Nico delivers a letter from Carmen wherein she declares her love for me, a woman disguised as a man.

“She has a leathern hand,” I say about Carmen after reading the letter. “I verily did think that her old gloves were on, but ’twas her hands.” Feeling sorry for Carmen
doesn’t have to dampen the pleasure of insulting her in the play.

Bryan looks at me like he can’t wait to devour me after rehearsal. I forget about Carmen then and start obsessing about my secret date with him. My internal spaghetti gets so knotted up, I’m forced to try a relaxation technique Sierra taught me. You’re supposed to picture yourself in a soothing place far away. But when I close my eyes, the picture that comes—Bryan kissing me in his car—only makes my pulse rev faster.

Despite my yummy daydream, I’m dimly aware of the rehearsal going on around me. Oliver (played by Noah, a theater geek I haven’t mentioned because he’s not terribly interesting) comes out of the forest clutching a handkerchief soaked in Orlando’s blood. While he tells the tale of the wounding, he and Andie fall in love at first sight.

“I like the way Andie bent down her head in the scene,” Sapphire says. “It gives her the right mix of shy and bold. Tell Eva to try it.”

“I’m the director, am I not?” Carmen says.

“Sorry. Carry on.”

“Excellent scene.” Carmen writes a note on her script. And then reality makes another unwelcome intrusion into my invented life. “Roz! Pay attention. Start downstage for the story and float upstage for the swoon.”

In the spirit of niceness, I stow the attitude and comply. Still, Carmen as director falls into a specific category of nightmare—the kind where you’re at the front of the school auditorium wearing an undersized coconut bra and
plastic hula skirt to debate the relevance of the United Nations. Except you forgot to prepare.

At the end of rehearsal, Sapphire shouts “Bravo! Olé!” She leaves with Jonathan before I can talk to him. Bryan slips out behind them. I know where he’s headed. The guilt over my impending tryst taints my euphoria.

M
y invented life is
about to turn real. Sadly, I have to lie about it to my friends and slink out the back to meet it. When I cross the deserted field, the wind blows through the dry grass, whispering
RoZ iZ stalking Eva’s ex-boyfriend
.

“We’re just going for a drive,” I tell the grass, “so shut up.” I’ve made up my mind to limit today’s activities to talking. If he tries anything, I’ll tell him to keep his hands to himself.

Clouds of exhaust billow from Bryan’s ancient Trans Am at the far edge of the back parking lot. Bryan, wherefore art thou Bryan? Translation? I wish I were meeting Romeo instead.

“Get in quick before someone sees,” he says. Romeo he’s not, in more ways than one.

I duck into the passenger seat.

He shifts into first gear. “I didn’t think you’d come.” He flashes me the forlorn-puppy look.

Now that he’s inches away, his magnetic properties work their magic on me. “Why not?” I say. “You’re good to look at and fun to be around.”

He laughs and his lips are at their most kissable. Okay, maybe one little make-out session to test my sexual orientation before I put on the brakes.

“What do you see in me?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“You don’t know?”

“You make me feel good, I guess.”

My hopes and dreams circle the drain. I wasn’t exactly expecting, “You’re the most beautiful woman on earth, and I love you.” Still, he should’ve at least said, “You’re hot, and I’m into you.”

He pulls into the old peach orchard at the edge of town. The engine clicks as it cools. He inches toward me. Despite my resolve, I can’t resist the touch of his lips. But when I kiss him back, he puts his hands up my shirt. That’s when I detect alcohol vapors. Here lies RoZ Peterson, killed in a senseless car wreck with her sister’s stupid ex-boyfriend.

I push him away. “You’ve been drinking.”

“I don’t believe in alcohol. The bottle is under the seat. Want some?”

I shake my head. This is turning into the date from hell.

Bryan puts his hands into his jacket pockets. “Pick a hand,” he says.

“You got me a present?” I ask. “How sweet.” As he uncurls his fingers, I gasp. A beautiful ruby ring rests on his palm.

I would have settled for a semiprecious stone. But no
.

He opens his hand with a flourish and reveals a foil-wrapped condom.

Both my fists thump the middle of his chest. “I said
slow, Bryan. By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you. You suck romance from a date like a weasel sucks eggs.” Translation? Another Roz fantasy bites the dust.

“You knew what I wanted. You want it too.”

I roll down my window and drop the condom onto the ground. “My father was no prostitute,” I say. “No wonder Eva broke up with you.”

The way Bryan bites his lip reveals everything.

“
Craven, dissembling rabbit-sucker!
You didn’t break up with her?” I yell. That makes me the sorry side dish. RoZ iZ coleslaw. I push open the passenger door with my elbow. “I hope you lose all your teeth and hair. I hope you die ugly and alone. Today.”

I start marching back toward town. The engine roars to life and he creeps alongside me,
creep
being the operative word.

“I didn’t lie,” he whines. “I never said I broke up with Eva.”

“
Mewling coxcomb
,” I growl without looking his way.

“But I’ll break up with her soon.”

I’m sick of his excuses and breathing his exhaust. I pick up a rock. He rolls up the window in a hurry. A satisfying cracking noise says I don’t throw like a girl. He accelerates abruptly, kicking up a storm of grit.

As I trudge down the lane, I picture myself taking a baseball bat to his precious Trans Am. I slash his tires in my mind. Hell hath no fury like a woman falsely seduced. Translation? I’d rather blame him for my crazy self-deceptions. Soon self-pity takes over from anger. After walking a few miles in my invented shoes, they’re giving
me blisters. The sad part is how I fooled myself into coming today because I wanted to. But at my core there’s a small voice, and if I listen carefully, it speaks the truth. If only I could hook an amplifier to it.

On the outskirts of town, a painful laugh rises from deep inside. I
finally
have proof about Bryan’s two-timing, lying ways. Too bad I can’t tell Eva without having to explain my role in it. I’ll use that as an example of irony in my next English paper. There’s a rock in my shoe, and I leave it in for penance. A quarter mile later the Woe-Is-Me channel grows tiresome, and I switch it off. Poor Eva has it worse. Bryan is her
boyfriend
.

After dinner and in the privacy of my room, I write
BRYAN
#1
ASSHOLE
across my arm with a permanent black marker. I write it a second time. Maybe after a thousand repetitions I won’t forget. When I’ve finished covering my left shin, the phone rings. For one mentally ill second, I imagine it’s him calling to apologize. I let the phone ring while I work on my other shin.