manicpixiedreamgirl (11 page)

It sort of made up for the fact that she hadn’t seemed to notice that I was there. I mean, we’d seen each other at the meeting … in the hallway every day … but at that first rehearsal, she just kept her face buried in her script.

I’d read
To Kill a Mockingbird
before, for an English class, and the play stuck to the book’s story pretty closely. I guess I liked it. I mean, it was a great book and all. But mostly I kept my script up in front of my face just high enough to somewhat conceal my spying on Becky. The Neapolitan chick and a couple of other girls Syd had talked to at the Massengill meeting seemed to keep an eye on
me
, but when I looked at them, they just looked away. I got
dizzy trying to balance my spying on Becky with not getting caught doing it by Syd’s friends.

I spent the next two weeks after school getting a crash course on the lighting system in our auditorium from the stringy guy, Nick. He was cool, though. Pretty laid-back. I had trouble concentrating sometimes, because from the booth—the upstairs room at the back of the auditorium, where I’d control all the lights—I had a clear view all the way down to the stage, where Becky was more often than not.

It wasn’t until after Nick moved away that I spoke to Becky for the second time in my life.

I was on a ladder onstage, struggling with a wrench to attach a lighting instrument to a black steel pipe, when I heard her voice.

“Hey.”

I damn near fell off the ladder. Becky slid slowly across the stage, which was bare except for some colored tape on the floor showing where the set was going to be built.

We were alone.

“Hey,” I said back, trying to sound casual. Like
hell
I wasn’t an actor!

“So you’re the new Nick,” she said, letting her black backpack slip off her shoulder to the ground. She sat down right in the middle of the stage next to it, watching me.

I cleared my throat. “Um, yeah. I guess so. I don’t have a cool hat, though. Or a vest.”

She nodded in mock seriousness. “I think they issue them on opening night.”

I laughed, probably too loud, and Becky smiled. She looked tired, as if the impression she gave of serenity was actually just exhaustion.

I climbed down from the ladder and forced myself to walk over to her. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, feel it thump in my toes. I wondered if Sydney could hear it all the way in the debate room, where she was at that moment preparing a case or an argument or whatever against the death penalty.

“So, I guess technically we haven’t really met,” I said to Becky, stopping about five feet away. “I’m Tyler Darcy.”

“Mistah Dahcie,”
Becky said with a British accent.

I nodded helplessly. A lot of girls have seen and adore all those
Pride and Prejudice
movies, with various hot guys playing Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. And of course in the movies they all have these silly accents.

Although when Becky said it, it felt a little different.

“I’m Becky,” she added.

“Becky. Hi.”

“Hi.”

“So, wait, is it Becca or Becky?” I asked, because I’d continued to hear other drama students refer to her as Becca.

“Becky,”
she said. I thought, at the time, I saw anger flash in her eyes when she said it. I didn’t dare ask why.

“Becky. Got it. Cool.” I cleared my throat again. “I saw you in
Midsummer
last year,” I added. “You were great.”

Becky covered her mouth, as if she wasn’t allowed to smile. “Thanks,” she said. “It was fun.”

“This is a big part,” I went on, trying not to let myself babble. “Scout, I mean.”

She shrugged but kept the shy little smile on. “I guess.”

At which point I hit a complete and total brick wall. I had absolutely nothing else to say. Nothing that wouldn’t have sent her screaming from the auditorium, anyway. I tried leafing through all the make-believe scripts I’d been working on since that first day of freshman year in the cafeteria, before remembering they’d self-deleted from my head when Becky first talked to me in the hall a month or so ago. I had nothing to fall back on.

“So, you’re still dating Syd,” Becky said.

I knew this made me a dick, but I could feel my face fall as I said, “Yeah … I guess.”

Becky turned her head a bit, so her chin rested near her shoulder. Her eyelids were at half-mast. “You guess, huh?”

Was it that this gesture was
universally
sexy, or that
any
move she made was sexy to me? Couldn’t tell ya.

“… I guess,” I said.

And she laughed.

I’d never heard her laugh before. Okay, I’d barely heard her
speak
before, at least “out of character.” Invisible fingers tickled up my vertebrae and pulled me straight up, shoulders back, head afloat.

“Well, your secret’s safe with me,” Becky said.

“She’s really nice,” I said, knowing I sounded like a total dork. I would add that to my list right under “splendid abdominals.”

“Most people are, when you finally see them,” Becky replied.

It took a second for me to pick up on the fact that she was quoting from the play. Before I could form a response, she dug into her bag, pulled out her script, flipped it open, and started reading.

I didn’t know if that meant we were done or what. It didn’t matter, though, because I heard the backstage doors opening and voices spilling in from the back hallway. I suddenly didn’t want to be caught talking to her, like we were doing something wrong. Which we weren’t, of course. But I couldn’t shake the feeling.

“Got any pot, Mistah Dahcie?” Becky asked, without looking up from her script.

I remember reacting physically to the question. Like I’d been jolted by the current from one of the lighting instruments. Which, it would turn out, was an omen of things to come.

“Uh … no,” I said.

“Eh,” Becky said. “Bummer. See you around?”

“Y-yeah,” I stuttered. “I—I’ll be around.”

The rest of the cast slowly filtered into the stage space. I expected all of them to stop and stare at us, but no one did. No one except maybe Neapolitan. I still didn’t know her real name. She darted quick glances at Becky, then me, before waving. At me.

“See ya,” I said to Becky, semi-waving back at the neon ice-cream cone.

Becky said nothing, her forehead wrinkled in concentration.

I walked quickly through the auditorium seats to the booth, forgetting to finish plugging in the lighting instrument I’d been working on.

Got any pot?
What the hell was up with that?

I watched the rehearsal from the relative privacy of the booth, struggling with Becky’s question. I was not then and am not now exactly stupid when it comes to, shall we say, illicit substances. But Becky wasn’t supposed to use them. Or even know about them. My Becky, my story Becky, was above that kind of thing. There wasn’t room in my head for this revelation.

So by the time rehearsal had ended for the day, I’d managed to force it out of my head.
Maybe
, I told myself,
she was testing me. Maybe she doesn’t want to date anyone who gets high
.

That had to be it.

“What about you?” I ask Becky, kicking at the base of a light pole. “What’s going on? You said you still want me to come over?”

Try not to sound
too
desperate there, cowboy.

Becky sighs softly. “It would … no, I don’t know.”

“I can,” I say, because by this point, I’m positive I’m okay to drive. Getting my keys back from Robby, though, even if he
is
a bit woozy, will be a challenge. And I haven’t replied to Syd’s text.

“I … I
can’t
,” Becky says.

Her voice catches on the last word, like she’s about to lose it. The thought of her actually crying doesn’t feel quite as sexy as I’d dreamed. It just hurts.

“What is it, Becky?” I say. “What’s wrong, what happened?”

“I don’t know how much more I can take, Ty,” she says. And though she’s not crying, she’s definitely holding it back.

“How much more what?”

I almost add “sweetheart,” but bite it back just in time. Then I get scared, thinking her “more” is us.

“My fucking asshole parents.”

Half of me gets righteously pissed then, ready to drive there right now and swing a tire iron at the Webbs’ kneecaps for making her feel this way. The other half of me—I’m ashamed to say—is just relieved it’s not me she’s upset at.

Play rehearsals lasted eight weeks. I found reasons to be
at every rehearsal, even though I wasn’t required to be.
I still had a lot to learn about the job, I explained to
Sydney. I had to meet with the stage manager, Robin. I
had to meet with Mrs. Goldie about the lighting design. I had to match the
color temperatures
of the
lighting instrument filters
to the paint color of the
set
, do a
light hang
and
focus
, go through a
paper tech
with Robin …

I said all these things to Sydney, throwing around as
many of the theatrical terms I’d picked up as possible to make it all sound legit. Some of it was. Most wasn’t.

And I was pretty sure she knew it.

“I don’t remember Nick doing all that when he was running lights,” Sydney said in week six.

“I couldn’t say if he did or not, but he also knew his business, and I don’t,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” Sydney said. Shaking her head, she leaned over and kissed me. “You go do whatever it is you have to do, Tyler. I’ll be here.”

We left it at that.

As for Becky, we’d say hi to each other every day at rehearsal. Sometimes, during a break, we’d hang out together in the auditorium seats and talk about the show. She really was good up there, no exaggeration. Maybe it was that the rest of the cast was unremarkable, but whatever. I thought she was brilliant, and I told her so.

“You’re just saying that,” she said one afternoon.

“No, I’m not,” I said. “You really are incredible.”

Becky reached over and messed up my hair. It was the first time we’d made physical contact, and it sent lightning through my body.

“Thanks. You’re sweet,” she said.

It wasn’t “I love you, let’s get together,” but it came pretty close.

Speaking of lightning: a week later, I got electrocuted.

I was testing some lights behind the set to make sure all the lamps worked. This junior kid, Pete, was up in the booth,
manning the light board for me. I’d plug in an instrument and yell, “Amp thirteen!” or whatever channel the light was plugged into, and Pete would power up that channel to see if the light came on or not.

This worked for the first three lights. On the fourth, Pete amped the channel just as I was plugging the instrument in, and a blue-white spark shot from the plug and burrowed into my hand. The voltage scurried up my arm, down my spine, and back up again to my skull. The next thing I knew, I was on my back looking up at the high ceiling, with Pete standing over me, laughing.

“You okay, Sparky?” he asked.

I said, “Pity … prissed … pretty …,” and couldn’t say much else as my eyeballs traded places in my skull.

Pete laughed again and hoisted me to my feet. “Happens sometimes,” he said. “Sorry, man.”

I nodded weakly, and Pete hauled me to Mrs. Goldie’s office, where I discovered my hair was sticking out about an inch farther from my skull than usual. I crashed on the couch in the office. Ten or fifteen minutes later, I decided all my muscles were responding appropriately to my commands. I went back to work and got a round of applause from the tech crew and calls of “Hey, Sparky!”

I waved back at them, embarrassed, and checked to see if Becky was paying attention. She was. Grinning, she wriggled her fingers at me from across the stage, and I saw her mouth make the sound
“Bzzzt!”

That kind of made it worthwhile.

Then opening night arrived. The cast ran around all crazy and nervous. I had butterflies myself, worried I’d somehow manage to screw up pushing the big
go
button on the light board at the correct time, or that the whole damn system would crash right as we started and leave us all in the dark and it would be my fault. The guy in the booth running sound, Ross, promised it wouldn’t happen.