Don't Touch (18 page)

“So, I'm wondering, wouldn't it be cool if Ophelia never touches Hamlet onstage, like it's this barrier they can't cross?”

“I like how you're thinking,” Nadia says, “but do we want our Ophelia to be the traditional girl who goes along with everything? Because Mandy made a good point at the auditions. Ophelia might not be so innocent.”

“Well, but at least, on the surface, where people can see.”

Nadia nods, but I'm not sure she's sold.

“What I like about this,” she says, “is that it points to a tension—between what Ophelia wants and what she's allowed.”

I nod, too eagerly I'm sure, and she goes on, “I like the idea that she's holding herself together tightly. So when she breaks—which I think she does in that scene you read at auditions—it can be a striking change. What if Ophelia's proper in those early scenes with no physical contact, and then later, she might be very hands-on.”

I stare at a stack of colored gels. They're only stiff, beat-up cellophane with numbers scribbled in wax pencil, but put them in front of a light, and they'll change the mood of the play, turn the scene melancholy blue or fiery red. There's a disc of metal—a “gobo” because it “goes between” the light and its beam—patterned with skeletal trees, which can turn the stage into a forest, maybe for the scene when Hamlet confronts his father's ghost.

I used to feel safe on stage, but that was silly. The stage
transforms
us, makes us
more
of whatever we are.

As long as I focus on the equipment, Nadia might believe that I'm turning her words in my mind, thinking how best to deliver the performance she wants.

“I'm not sure,” I say, “if I got that far in my thinking.”

When I exit Nadia's office, she calls Hank, leaving Livia partnerless. She's studying one of the flats backstage. The plywood wall on a shoddy frame has probably been painted a hundred times for a hundred different sets. I join her and see that the unpainted back is covered with drawings and scribbles. She gives me a sly smile.

“What's this?”

“Wall of Infamy,” Livia says. “People write on it during productions.”

Most of it is dirty. There's a running theme: Blank did it with blank in blankety-blank way. “They just leave this up?”

Livia shrugs. “Tradition.”

I follow her eyes to where the wall reads, “On this spot during sophomore showcase, Livia did it with Hank while wearing an Elvis mask.”

Below that, in different handwriting it says, “Then he took her mask off and saw that she wasn't a dude.”

“No way!” I say. “You mean, that's not true?!” and she snickers.

We're silent for a while, reading the scandalous stuff on the wall, and then, because I feel like she won't make a big deal about it, I ask, “So what does it mean when a guy does something nice for you, and you say thank you, and it seems good, and then afterward, he acts like it never happened?”

“That he's gay?” she deadpans, and then twists her lips into a smile. “That's what it would mean if you were talking about Hank and me, but that's not what I think that means coming from Peter.”

Am I so transparent?

If Livia catches my frustration at her calling me out so bluntly, she has the grace not to acknowledge it.

“I'll tell you what I think that means,” she says, and I nod, please. “I think that means it's your turn.”

I let the others go ahead of me at the end of rehearsal while I scribble down last-minute notes. I want Nadia to see me working hard, but I can't concentrate. Livia's right. It's my turn to encourage Peter, let him know that I want to be friends, or . . . something. It's safer with him avoiding me, but I miss him.

When I finally get to the junior hall, the sight of Peter sitting cross-legged in front of his locker, almost like he's waiting for me, makes me stop in my tracks. He looks up and smiles—I must look funny frozen here.

I swallow my fear, walk up, and sit across from him, so close our knees almost touch.

“Peter, what are you doing this weekend?”

He shrugs. “Watering the neighbors' plants, mowing lawns. What about you?”

“Nothing. Well, working on Ophelia.”

“Nice.” He's enthusiastic, friendly, but he's not going to help me.

“Do you . . . would you want to get together sometime to talk about our characters?”

It's the most obvious thing, the least frightening.

And Peter says, “No.”

His bluntness throws me.

“Oh.”

“I'd rather do something else. But if that's my best chance of getting to hang out with you, then sure.”

He's teasing me, truth or dare.

One of his hands touches the strap of his backpack, the other his knee. Mine touch the insides of my gloves. So why do I feel like he's holding me tight, like I can't look away?

“Well, we could make it fun. Send ourselves on a mission?” I say with no idea what that might mean.

“Only if the safety of several foreign countries and the fate of a small child is at stake.” His answer's so perfect so fast, I'm not sure I can keep up.

“I'll see what I can do.”

“Roger back,” he says with a smirk, and he's up and gone.

When I'm home, I text Peter. The few lines take me nearly an hour because I want to strike a balance between super spy and silly, but it can't feel like I worked too hard, and I still have no idea what the mission is, and I don't want it to sound like I'm asking him out on a date, but I kind of want it to be a maybe date. . . .

I finally come up with this:

Agent P, you have, in poor judgment, agreed to take part in a mission. The fate of Denmark and a small section of the southern US are at stake. The only child I know is my brother, and if you decline, I will be sad, which will probably make him happy, so let's scrap this part.

Please transmit your availability Saturday through Monday.

Further instructions forthcoming.

Agent C

I hit send and panic rushes through me. Even those few lines ask too much. He'll say no, and I'll hurt, hurt, hurt. Or he'll say yes and then no, and I'll hurt worse. Or he'll say yes, yes, yes, but I'll have to say no because I'm untouchable.

It's too late to take anything back. The damage is done.

Peter doesn't make me wait or wonder. He writes back within a few minutes:

Agent C,

Nothing will deter me from my mission.

I'm free tomorrow.

Agent P

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Peter's truck is a true antique—an unrestored, falling-apart antique—but beautiful. The green paint's so faded it seems yellow in places, gray in others, and not an inch of it shiny—it's chalky and flat as limestone.

As I near the truck, Peter gets out and comes around to meet me. Standing there in his nubby barn jacket, raking his hair back and out of his eyes, the hint of a question in his smile, he's far too touchable.

“Ready to do some shooting?” I ask.

Peter plays dumb. “Nah, I don't hunt,” he says, “to my dad's eternal sorrow.”

“I learned to shoot from my mom,” I say, holding up the fancy hand-me-down that hangs around my neck.

“Nice camera,” he says. “Mine's point-and-shoot.”

What if Peter thinks I'm spoiled? “This is a fringe benefit of having a professional photographer for a mom.”

I move toward the truck, and he stops me. “Should I offer to meet them?” he asks. “Your parents, I mean?”

“Aren't you the gentleman?” I say.

For once, Peter seems more awkward than me. It's sweet.

“My momma raised me right,” he says.

“Well, it's just Mom who would be here.” I don't want to get into it, but the way I said that, he might think Dad's dead or something. “My dad . . . he doesn't live here right now. Temporarily? We're not sure.”

“Got it,” he says. “Sorry.”

“No, you don't have to be sorry.”

Suddenly, this feels very much like a date. An awkward date.

“Well, so should I introduce myself to your mom?”

“No, she's working. She does wedding photography. Saturday's a big day for weddings.”

Ugh, I did not mean to be talking to Peter about weddings.

“Right, well, tell her I tried?” he says. “I wanted to make a good impression.”

He did?

I guess I knew what I was asking for when I invited him. I knew there was potential for things to feel romantic between us, but now that we're here, I'm not sure my heart can take it.

Peter opens the passenger door for me. “Can I give you a hand?”

I almost laugh because a hand is exactly the worst thing he could offer.

I say, “I've got it,” and haul myself into the cab.

Inside, the truck smells like Band-Aids and rubber, cut branches, and wet dog. It's altogether comforting.

“Love me, love my truck,” Peter says as he wrestles with the ancient gearshift and backs out of my drive.

“I already love your truck,” I say.

Oh, Lord, did I just suggest I love
him
? I keep talking too fast. “I thought we could work on our self-portraits, for our character journals.”

I hadn't chosen a location, but the layers of color on Peter's truck make me want to time travel, to take Peter to the Paleozoic era of my childhood. The train cars from Mom's series pop into my head.

“Let's go into old Irondale. I feel like there'll be some cool stuff there to inspire us.”

For years, Mom and Jordan and I would drive this way to a pool set back in the woods against a stretch of tracks. Every couple of hours, a train would go by, blow its whistle, and all the swimmers would turn to watch something heavy and old rumble by.

We cross Crestwood Boulevard, with its dilapidated shopping plazas where only the hardiest big box stores survive. Train tracks in old Irondale stretch like capillaries from a giant artery, the rail yards that border Ruffner Mountain.

We cross one set of tracks arcing over a hill, and Peter's truck wheezes. It's too easy to imagine it stalling there.

“I have an idea for a picture,” Peter says, “if we can find some tracks that aren't out in the open.”

I point us in the general direction of the pool because I know those tracks go through the woods, but we make turns on instinct and once by the sound of a whistle. Something about being with Peter makes me believe we'll find just what we're looking for.

We're going through an old neighborhood—tiny houses with peeling paint and broken shutters, one with a sign advertising
CHEAP DENTAL WORK, HOME OFFICE
—when the sound of a train makes Peter pull up next to an overgrown lawn and open his door.

“Do you think it's safe to leave it here?” I ask.

“A, this truck is a piece of junk,” Peter says, “and B, it's all families living here.” He gestures toward a plastic baby pool on the lawn. Rubber toys float in dirty water, a moldy film ringing them. We're not so far from the Gate City projects and Eastlake, where people get shot. I want to tell Peter that crazy crack dealers have families too, but he's excited, so we walk between two houses and into the woods toward the sound of the train.

The woods go deeper than I expected, a buffer for the tracks when this neighborhood was new. At one point we have to cross a little creek, and Peter offers a hand to help me.

“I'm not afraid,” I say and make a show of balancing on a wobbly rock before hopping to meet him, never taking his hand.

The further we go, the more we have to step over broken trees and push brambles aside. Beneath the top layer of plant matter, the ground's mushy and damp from the rain. I reach to grab hold of a tree for balance and pull back just in time to avoid smashing my glove into a slug.

“How you doing?” Peter asks.

“I miss this. I used to go exploring all the time.”

Mandy and I would go. This adventure is the kind of brave, random thing I associate with her, but we used to do this sort of thing together, and it wasn't always her idea.

We see the break in the trees before we reach it, a relief from the dense tangle of branches overhead. A lane of open sky cuts across the woods as one might over a river, but here it's making way for the train. The tracks cut a wide corridor that seems to narrow to nothing as it winds away into the woods.

“Awesome,” Peter says as we step onto the rise of orange pebbly dirt supporting the tracks, and he presses a palm to the rail. “Still warm. Feel it.”

He takes my hand and starts to pull off my glove, but I stop him, saying, “No. That's okay. I don't need to.” So much for bravery. “I don't like to think about how recently the train came through. Would we hear it coming?”

“Yeah, we'd hear it. We'd feel it,” he says, stepping onto the rails and wavering for balance. “Let's find our pictures.”

I step up behind him and make a game of matching his footsteps, trying not to dislodge extra pebbles from between the tracks. They seem so precarious as it is. “What are we looking for?”

He turns to face me, walking backward on the rail like a balance beam. “Hamlet can't bring himself to take action, right? Since I'm impulsive, Nadia says it might be a challenge for me to get that about him.”

I smile. “Maybe
I
should be playing Hamlet.”

He wobbles and pivots forward without having to step down. “Maybe you should. Ophelia doesn't really make decisions for herself.”

“Well, except when she dies.”

“But is that a decision, or is she just crazy?”

A pressure rises in my chest, at my throat, and my words tumble out.

“Yeah, it's a decision.”