Only in the Movies (9 page)

“I need to talk to you. It’s really, really important. And private,” she added mysteriously, looking around to see if she had been overheard.

“Okay,” I replied. “What’s it about?”

“Not here. Can you meet me after rehearsal today?”

Can the sun find the energy to rise tomorrow morning? I wanted to ask. Does the grass bend when the wind blows?

“Sure,” I said. “Where?”

“At the bridge. We’ll be alone there.”

“Great.”

“See you then.” And with that, she hurried away, leaving a trail of scent that would melt the heart of a warlock.

“G
OD
! I
THOUGHT
P
ANOFSKY
would never shut up. He explains things in detail, then explains them all over again. In more detail. He thinks we’re deaf, or stupid, or I don’t know what.”

I had gone to the bridge in lots of time to meet Alba. Too much time. I had been waiting since school got out, even though I knew her rehearsal would take an hour and a half at least. It was a sunny afternoon, with a light breeze. I was sitting at the edge of the river where I had stood not many days before, repeating Vanni’s lines to Alba. I was tossing stones into the riffle and daydreaming a torrid movie scene.

When I heard Alba’s voice I hurriedly climbed back up the bank and stepped onto the bridge, painfully conscious that Vanni wasn’t with me this time.

“Er, hi,” I said.

“I mean,” Alba ranted, sounding anything but romantic, “we
know
the play, right? We told him that we had studied it in school. But he acts like we’ve never heard of the Bard of Avonlea.”

“I think it’s Avon.”

Alba’s brows creased with displeasure. “Whatever.”

I cursed myself for correcting her. “It’s nice to see you again,” I said. “I’m beginning to think of this as
our
bridge.”

The sun was behind Alba, adding gold to her hair—and making me squint.

“Anyway, Jake,” she said, dropping her eyes as she rested her hand on the railing. “Thanks for coming.”

“You’re welcome,” I said—like a store clerk clinching a sale. I mentally kicked myself. Think! I commanded my brain.

“I … this is difficult,” she went on. “I have something to discuss with you.” She turned and looked down into the trees that flanked the river.

My heart began to thump so loudly I was sure she could hear it. Could this be, I hardly dared to ask myself, what I’d been hoping for? Did she share my feelings? She hadn’t seemed to, but she had never spurned me. Maybe all this time it was shyness that had made her seem unenthusiastic. She certainly seemed shy now. She must have liked my letters after all. I said a silent thank-you to Vanni.

“It’s hard to talk about,” Alba murmured, barely audible above the purling river, which, thank goodness, had receded to its normal state.

Take your time, I wanted to say, but my mouth had dried up.

“It’s about … love,” she said, softly. “I know I can say this to you.”

My pulse hammered in my ears. I wanted to jump a mile into the air and yell, “Hooray!” I stepped a little closer to her so that we were side by side at the railing, shoulders touching. I felt her heat through our clothing.

“Because you’ll understand. I can tell from your letters, and from our conversation here that day, that you’re not afraid to speak of love. You’re different from the others. You have a poetic soul.”

“Yes, I do understand. I feel the same way.”

“I knew you would, Jake.” She turned and put her hand on my arm. “I’m … I’m in love, for the first time in my life.”

She smiled shyly, eyes downcast. God, she was beautiful. She looked so vulnerable at that moment.

“And so am I,” I said softly.

“But it’s hard for me to express my feelings, you know?”

Tears formed at the corners of my eyes. I ached to embrace her, but I told myself to wait.

“Yes.”

“That’s why I need your help,” Alba was saying.

“It’s all right,” I reassured her, all my nervousness swept away by a warm tide of euphoria. “You can tell me. You can say it.”

“I’m in love with a boy at York.”

I nodded to encourage her.

“I think you know him.”

You bet I do, I thought.

“You know Chad, don’t you?” Alba asked.

At first, for one numb moment, the name didn’t register. I had been waiting, yearning, to hear “Jake” cross those perfect lips, the lips that I had been desperate to kiss since our
first conversation—or, if not my name, that simple, magical pronoun “you.”

But the wave of happiness crested, and crashed, and disappeared.

“Chad,” I spluttered. “I see.”

“I knew you would, Jake. That’s why I came to you.”

“I see.”

“He’s everything to me,” Alba said. “I can’t get him out of my mind.”

I suppose that if I had to, I’d admit that Bromley was the male counterpart of Alba—tall, lean, good-looking in a movie-star sort of way and, as if all that wasn’t enough, rich.

“I see.”

“But he doesn’t know I exist!” Alba almost wailed, dropping her hand.

How could any male human being not know you exist? I wanted to ask her. Instead I said, “I know what you mean.”

“So I thought, if I could find a way to talk to Chad when we’re alone, explain how I feel, maybe I could win him over. Maybe—and I hardly dare to think so—he feels the same way about me and can’t find a way to let me know.”

“I see.”

“You know what boys are like.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, scuffing the planks with the toe of my shoe. “I do.”

“But I don’t know what to say. How to begin.”

“Right.”

“That’s why I need your help.”

“Me?” I blurted. “What help can
I
be?”

“You’re so good with words, Jake. You’ve proved that to me.”

“But I—”

“I was thinking I could talk to Chad alone at one of our rehearsals. Panofsky wants us to practise our lines together, just the two of us, right on the set, so we can get used to our surroundings and each other. He’s even told us to do the scene playing each other’s parts. He says we have to know
all
the lines, not just our own. You see? It’s the perfect opportunity.”

“But—”

“You could hang back in the wings, behind me, and tell me what to say to him, like a prompter.”

I was starting to get dizzy. Had Alba known all along that someone was under the bridge that day, feeding me lines? The forest around me began to revolve. “Well, I don’t know …”

Then she put a hand on each of my shoulders and held me with those wide grey eyes. The fragrance of her perfume, her lipstick—her—made me drunk. Her lips parted slightly.

“Please?”

I seethed with jealousy and disappointment and anger. So she liked guys after all—but not the guy standing in front of her now. I wanted to push her off the bridge, watch her flail in the water. I wanted to run down to the river and save her, and hold her, kiss warmth back into her lips. I wanted to shout at her that she was an idiot to fall for an empty bag like Bromley, to shake some sense into her. I yearned to press against her, kiss her hair. I fantasized Bromley tearing down York Street in his gleaming German-engineered coupe, swerving, skidding across the pavement and cartwheeling into the ditch in a howling, screeching confusion of tortured metal—then exploding in a fireball.

I lowered my eyes, breaking Alba’s magnetic hold.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll help.”

“A
WAY OUT OF HERE
with that,” Vanni scoffed.

“I know it sounds crazy,” I countered, “but—”

“Crazy, is it? Every word that comes out of your mouth lately seems insane. But this goes way beyond nuts. It’s
demented
!”

We were at our usual table by the window in the Blue Note—Vanni with a carton of 100 per cent pure juice of some kind and a low-fat muffin, me with a lukewarm latte and a sticky bun. The surly waiter was waiting in the corner, ready to insult the next customer unwise enough to come in out of the blustery wind.

“I admit it’s complicated.”

“Complicated, is it? Let me get this straight,” Vanni said, setting down her juice with more force than necessary and tearing her muffin in half. “You want me to hide in the wings during their rehearsal and whisper words of love to you.”

“Right.”

“You are also hiding in the wings.”

“Yes.”

“You in turn pass on my words to Her Loveliness, who is
not
hiding in the wings.”

“Correct.”

“Her Loveliness knows you’re there, because she asked you to help her, but she doesn’t know
I’m
there. She in turn speaks my words—always supposing everyone concerned has perfect hearing—to Chadwick Bromley the Stuck-Up, who doesn’t know you’re there or I’m there and who thinks that Alba is saying her own words.”

“Yes.”

“It’ll be like passing buckets of water along a relay line at a fire.”

“Perfect simile,” I said. “See, that’s why—”

“Never mind your pathetic flattery. I’m not finished. Lord Stuck-Up is swept away by the force of my poetic utterances and falls in love with Her Loveliness.”

“That’s the strategy.”

“Stratag
em
. Your brain is so Alba-addled that you’re thinking backwards. What’s the net result of this plan—
if
it works? Alba and Dimwick are in love! You’ve been away with the fairies, you have. Do you not see the flaw, you thick fool? What will you do
then
?”

“I haven’t worked that out yet.”

“You haven’t worked—? Ach, why am I not surprised?”

Vanni popped a bit of muffin into her mouth and chomped on it for a moment.

“I’ve just thought of another problem,” she continued. “You say Her—”

“Stop calling her that.”

“You say Alba and Prince Charming are rehearsing?”

“Yes.”

“Then she’ll be up on the balcony, won’t she? How can anyone hear all the furtive whispering that’ll be going on? She won’t hear us from the wings, and there isn’t enough room for the three of us on the balcony even if we
could
conceal ourselves. You built the thing. You ought to know.”

“No sweat. Panofsky wants them to reverse roles as part of the rehearsal. Alba will be below; he’ll be above.”

Vanni groaned. “Jaysus. To complete the absurdity, we’ll have a male Juliet and a female Romeo!”

I had no answer for that, so I kept my mouth shut.

“And you’re still stuck with a plan that gets you the opposite of what you want: Chad in love with Alba, who is already in love with Chad.”

I said nothing. Vanni’s eyes flared. “Don’t tell me.”

“What?”

“Eejit! You’ve persuaded yourself that Alba will recognize your generosity, your selflessness, realize she’s given her heart to the wrong man, and in a flash of insight—which, believe me, would be uncharacteristic of her—discover that it’s you she loved all along.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” I said.

“You really think she’ll love you out of
gratitude
? That only happens in the movies.”

“What choice do I have?”

“Listen, Jake. Here’s a news bulletin for you: love isn’t self-sacrificing. It’s the opposite. It’s blind, and it’s selfish.”

Vanni’s face had become flushed with anger and frustration, as if she’d lost patience with a stubborn, dimwitted
child. She slurped the last drops of juice from the container.

“Calm down,” I said. “It’s a moronic idea, I admit. But I promised.”

“You talked yourself into a mess and you want me to talk you out of it. Literally.”

I smiled. “What are friends for?”

“Don’t try to charm me.”

“Help me dig myself out of this hole, and I promise it’s the last favour I’ll ever ask.”

Vanni laughed, her mirth edged with bitterness. “There you go again.”

“What?” I asked, waiting for the punchline.

“What happens when you’re standing in a hole and you keep digging?”

A
COVERED FLAGSTONE SIDEWALK
connected the academic block to the big glass doors of York’s Nelson Makeba Building, where drama classes were held in the two studios built for them and performances were put on in either the Carnaby Theatre or the Carnaby Auditorium, depending on the size of the production. I had a key to the service door at the back because I worked on the sets. The key was functional when the security system was disabled for the school day, from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m.

Vanni and I slipped into the backstage area of the theatre a few minutes after Alba and Chad’s rehearsal was scheduled to begin. For the balcony scene, Panofsky had designed a simple set. Following his directions, I had constructed a stand-alone balcony—really a rectangular platform on a scaffold—that could be wheeled into place in front of a canvas backdrop. The wheels were then locked to keep the structure
secure. Eventually the backdrop would be painted and lit to resemble the wall of the Capulet mansion. More canvas sheathed the framing that held up the balcony. The backdrop had an opening to form the door to Juliet’s “bedroom,” in reality a staircase with a small landing on top. This gave Juliet a place to stand until she stepped through the double doors onto the balcony. The staircase also had lockable wheels. On either side of the backdrop and a pace downstage was a “leg” made of framed canvas screen. The legs would also be painted and, when properly illuminated with stage lights, would become the tall shrubbery in the Capulet garden.