A Step Toward Falling (19 page)

I
T
'
S 3:05 AND NO
one is here.

Auditions are happening in the small theater beside the music room where the choir practices after school. Through the wall, I can hear a boy and girl singing a duet with a piano. It sounds like a love song, but they stop so much it's hard to tell. The auditions don't officially start until 3:15, so I spread out the scenes I've xeroxed and the sign-up sheet for people to write their name and contact info. On it, there's room for thirty people to sign up.

There are voices outside in the hallway, but when I look, no one is out there waiting to come in.

By 3:14, I start to panic. Even Lucas hasn't shown up.

I walk out into the hallway to see if he's on his way. Maybe he's bringing a group of his friends in from the parking lot, I think. Then I check the main door that leads out to the parking lot. No one's there. I run quickly to the hallway where his locker is.

Empty.

Now it's 3:19 and I'm not sure what I'm doing except avoiding the room where no one has shown up. Finally, I head back and open the door as quietly as I can. One person is seated in the last row. Lucas.

He doesn't even turn around to see if it's me.

“No one, huh?” he says.

“Not yet,” I say, but we both know. The school is empty. Busses left twenty minutes ago. No one is coming.

“What happened to your friends?” I say softly. I know I shouldn't blame him, but I do.

“They're not my friends,” he snaps. “I told you that.”

“But you asked them, right?” I don't know why I can't let this go. I picture his lunch table with thirty people. Isn't this the point of popularity—so you can get people to
do
things?

“No, I didn't ask most of them. I couldn't.”

“What do you mean—you couldn't?”

“I couldn't . . . ask these guys to be around Belinda. It wouldn't have been right.”

“Why not? What are you talking about?”

For a long time, he doesn't say anything. Through the wall, we can hear a piano playing while two voices argue about a progression.

For a while now I've wondered if there's more to Lucas's story than he told the disciplinary committee, the way there was more to my story than I could bear to tell anyone. That I knew Belinda once. That the first day of high school I screamed at her and told her never to hug me.
That I can still remember her face, how happy she was to see me, and how I hardened myself to ensure that she didn't mistake us for friends. But what could Lucas have to feel guilty about?

As gently as I can manage, I ask, “Did you know Belinda from before?”

“I knew
of
her. None of us knew her except for Ron and a few guys who went to this Best Buddies dance last spring.” He takes a deep breath and turns around, as if he wants to be sure no one is coming in who might hear what he's saying. “Everyone on the team is supposed to do community service every year. Ron and Wayne hadn't done any, so Coach made them go. It pissed the rest of us off because they were getting away with doing this one event and the rest of us have to do twenty hours, but that's how it is. They always get away with things like that.”

The music next door has started up again louder. I move over to where Lucas is sitting. His voice has gotten so soft and it's hard to hear.

“Except this time it turned out to be a joke on him. Ron thought he was getting it over with, doing this one hour, but then he met this girl who wouldn't stop following him around. She thought they were going out now because he asked her to dance once. She kept inviting him over to her house in front of other people, which really pissed him off. Finally he complained to Coach about it right before the Mansfield game.”

There's a noise outside in the hallway that makes Lucas stop and spin around in his seat. I can tell that he'll be in
trouble with his crowd if they find out he's telling me this story. Still, he keeps going: “That game should have been a breeze. We were favored to win by fourteen points but that whole first half, we couldn't get our act together. We weren't connecting; we hadn't even made it on the scoreboard. We were down by seven at half time. In the locker room, everyone was ripshit and blaming each other, which we're never supposed to do. Then someone looked out the window and saw Belinda standing outside the locker room holding a box. It was like in that moment, she brought the whole team together again. Suddenly, everyone was saying
this
was our whole problem this year. People expected too much from us. We were supposed to win games and be fucking Boy Scouts, too. Then it just got worse. They said it was her fault we were losing. They made all these threats about what they were going to do to her when they got out there. They were going to rip her a new one for bothering Ron in the middle of a game. They were going to show a few people what happens when you ask too much of football players.”

He stops for a second and shakes his head—as if he's remembering worse threats he doesn't want to tell me. Then he takes a deep breath and starts again. “This is the worst part: I didn't say anything. I could have. A few other guys were trying to say, ‘Ignore her, man,' but they were getting drowned out by this tidal wave of trash talk. That's when I realized what assholes these guys are. They're given all this power and they're so insecure they're gonna beat up this poor girl because we're
playing shitty
?”

I'm sitting next to Lucas. Our legs are so close our jeans have touched. I want him to know it's okay he's telling me this story, so I do the boldest thing I've ever done with a boy: I reach over and take his hand. I squeeze it so he understands that I'm his friend and it'll be okay. If he's surprised by the move, I'm even more surprised by what happens next: he cups my hand in both of his and lifts it to his mouth. He kisses it and presses my palm to his cheek.

It's a million things at once and it makes my insides twist. Is it a kiss if it happens on your hand, which is—well, an arm's length away from your mouth?

It feels like it.

We sit for a minute with my hand against his cheek. His eyes are closed, as if he wants to stay in this moment forever. I wouldn't mind doing that, but I have to ask, “What happened after you left the locker room?”

He opens his eyes. There's enough light to see there are tears in them. I can also see that he doesn't want to tell me the rest. But eventually he does. He tried to warn her. He ran out ahead of the rest and told her to run. Then Coach called him back to berate him for breaking huddle early. As the rest of the team headed out, Coach gave him a lecture with a finger stabbing his chest plate. “You keep your mind on the game. You think about your plays and about your teammates. You don't worry about other people. There's a million fucking sad stories out there, you don't think about any of them. You stay right here in this game.”

That's when Lucas ran out and saw one thing he expected—Belinda's box and its contents spilled
everywhere—and something else he didn't: Mitchell Breski trapping Belinda against a fence.

“My brain froze,” he says softly.

It's a feeling I remember too well. He's still holding my hand, only now our fingers are laced and his thumb is rubbing the cuticle around my thumb. “I thought Coach was watching me. I thought this was a test to see what I'd do, if I'd stop and get distracted. Like that makes any sense, but that's what I thought. I jogged past a guy trying to rape a poor girl and the only thing I let myself think was, At least it isn't one of my teammates doing it
.
”

I understand what he's saying. I know the logic of panic makes no sense.

Now that he's told me all this, I want to be honest myself. This will probably be my last chance since after today our play won't happen and we won't be friends anymore. Not the way we have been. I want to tell him I've been cruel to her once myself. Before I can, though, the door opens behind us.

My heart does a somersault. We drop hands and turn around to see two figures standing there.

One is Belinda. “Are these the auditions?” she calls.

Lucas stands up. This morning I was so nervous about who might show up that I had Lucas tell Belinda not to come. “Tell her we already know her acting and we know we want to use her,” I said so her feelings wouldn't get hurt.

Now, as if to explain herself, she announces loudly, “I brought someone who wants to audition. This is Anthony.”

She points to the thin boy with thick glasses standing beside her. I don't think I've seen him before, which means he's probably an underclassman, one who travels the hallways with his head down, trying to draw as little attention to himself as possible. He still has braces. And pimples. He looks like he hasn't started shaving yet.

Lucas waves to Anthony. “The thing is, we're trying to decide what to do here. We haven't had as many people show up as we hoped.”

Try: we haven't had anyone show up. He's trying to carry this off, but we have to tell her the truth.

“It looks like we can't do the play, Belinda,” I say. This is the first time I've talked to her since that awful time in the hallway. “We don't have any actors. They're all busy doing
Guys and Dolls.
” I gesture toward the room next door with the piano. “We wanted to do it. We really did, Belinda, but all the theater people are busy.”

She steps into the light so I can see her face and her furrowed eyebrows. She looks worried but not panicky. “Well, I have Anthony. He wants to audition for a small part, not a big part. Can't we just audition and then we'll see what happens?”

I'm not sure what to say or feel except gratefulness when Lucas leans forward and suggests, “Look, we have one scene with Elizabeth and her father, right, Em? Why don't we have them read from that and see how they do?”

They both nod. I prepared xeroxed scenes to read from, so I hand them each one. I know Belinda can read but her eyesight isn't good. In our old play rehearsals, the director
always made large-print copies of her scripts. We weren't expecting Belinda to show up, so I haven't made any of those for her.

“I'm not sure how we should do this, though. I haven't got a script that Belinda can see well enough.” I say this softly to Lucas. I don't want to embarrass her in front of Anthony.

Apparently I haven't. “I don't need a script,” Belinda says.

Lucas and I look at each other. “You don't?”

She closes her eyes. There's no smile on her lips, but I feel the pride of her accomplishment. Her old gift.

“Have you memorized the lines already?” I ask.

“Not all of them,” she says. “But the girl's ones, yes.”

Lucas smiles and claps his hands. “Great, then. Why don't we do the first scene with your father?”

Belinda is so serious about acting that sometimes she misses the point—to relax and have fun. Her scene with Anthony is a hand-wringing recitation of Elizabeth imploring her father for help reining in her overly flirtatious younger sisters. Still, there are touching lines delivered too softly by Anthony: “Not everyone can be as book smart as you, dear Lizzie.”

It's almost impossible to understand a word he says, but the way he looks at Belinda with so much tenderness and admiration kills me. It also reminds me that I've forgotten one of the main points of the story: Elizabeth is too intellectual for her own good. She overthinks things too much. She doesn't rely on intuition. Maybe it's just as well we'll
never put on the show, I think. Instead of proving a point about Belinda's abilities, it might do the opposite.

When they're done, Lucas asks if they'd like to try another scene. Maybe one with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. Anthony blushes and puts his hands over his face. “I'm not Mr. Darcy. Not me.”

“That's okay,” Lucas says. “I could read that part if you'd like to try another scene, Belinda.”

This is so kind of him, I wish I could squeeze his hand again. If we can't do the play, he's giving her a chance to play Elizabeth Bennett for an afternoon at least.

“Yes,” she says. “I'd like that.”

“Why don't we read the first scene at Pemberley? Do you remember this one? When she sees him unexpectedly?”

Belinda nods. She knows the scene, of course.

Lucas hops up onstage, clears his throat, and shakes his head to get into character and then—boom—he is. He doesn't use the affected English accent that Belinda is trying out, but his voice is different than his usual soft monotone. It fills up the room and startles all of us: oddly, even the piano next door goes quiet. “Why are you here, Elizabeth, if it so offends your sensibilities?” he booms.

Belinda sneaks a look at him, smiles, and finds her line. “I had no choice, sir. I came with my aunt and uncle.”

“You should know that you're welcome anytime.” As they keep going, I'm amazed. Lucas really
gets
this story. He understands that so much of what they say is the opposite of what they mean. It's even possible he's demonstrating how to do it in ways that Belinda picks up on. Because this isn't
one of my short xeroxed scenes, they keep going from the script, running the whole scene. Belinda needs prompts on a few lines, but not many. The scene gets better and better as they go along. Anthony steps off the stage and sits down in the front row to watch them.

It's so compelling I don't even hear the door open behind us.

I only realize others have come in when I hear people talking and turn around to see Lucas's girlfriend, Debbie, sitting in the back with two of her friends. One of them has her hand over her mouth, like she can't believe what she's seeing. Debbie's staring at Lucas, not like she's surprised by what a good actor he is, but like she's mad.