Don't Touch (29 page)

She nods again. “Okay. Apologies accepted.”

But she doesn't look at me.

“Are we still friends?” I ask, and waiting for her to answer is as scary as holding my hand still for Peter. She doesn't respond for a long time.

“I think you and I will always be friends, in a way,” she says.
In a way.
“We have a history together. That's important.”

I nod, but my mind's racing, thinking how to make it up to her.

“I don't know, Caddie,” she says, and she ashes onto the grass. “We don't even know that much about each other—not recent stuff anyway.”

“I
want
to know,” I say. “I want to talk about it.”

“About what?”

“About . . . you and Drew. About my weirdness. About the state of affairs in the Middle East. About how to get Livia to give up on Hank. Whatever you want.”

Mandy's quiet for a long time, staring out toward the ridge. Bats dip and play, and at first it takes me by surprise to see them there. In my mind, they came out special for the party—atmosphere for Peter and me. But here they are, a week later, not caring about me and my little drama, just doing their own batty thing.

“She's really making an ass out of herself,” Mandy says.

It takes me a second to register that she's talking about Livia.

“I don't know if I'd go that far.”

“No, it got worse after you left. Hank knows that she likes him; she knows that he knows; he and Oscar make faces about it as soon as her back's turned. Maybe . . .”

“What?”

“Maybe we could get Livia to go for Oscar.”

“Oh, I do not see that happening.”

“No? Yeah, you're probably right.”

“Not everybody has to be coupled up.”

Mandy's turned back toward the pool, where her eyes follow Drew as he paces beside Peter's chair. Peter's laughing; Drew isn't, emphatic about whatever position he's taken, per usual.

“I think I'm afraid of being alone,” she says, and she looks to me, eyes full and dark. I used to think of Mandy as never being afraid of anything.

She breaks away from watching Drew and lies back, looking up to the sky. I slip from the trampoline and lie down beside her, leaving maybe half a foot between us. “You're thinking about breaking up with him?”

She takes a long drag, lets it out. “I love Drew, but we aren't always nice to each other. We're too much alike. But the thought of letting him go . . . it makes me want to jump out of my skin.”

Crickets sing, and I don't have to say anything. Just listen.

“Did you ever think about how brave your parents were,” Mandy asks, “to split up?”

“Maybe there's something to that.”

She says, “You're looking very couply with Peter.”

“Am not.”

“Are so.”

We both laugh. I haven't felt this much myself since Dad left, nothing forced or performed. Mandy rolls onto her side, propping up on one elbow to face me.

“So, you and Peter? How's that going to work, if you can't . . .” She holds a finger in the air between us, and I raise one gloved finger to meet it.

“. . . touch anyone? Yeah, it's a problem. For the play, too. I was hoping you might help me work on that.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

And as my love is siz'd, my fear is so.

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;

Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

—PLAYER QUEEN, HAMLET (III.II.117-19)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

I tell Mandy everything, and she doesn't look at me like I'm contagious. She listens like I'm the most important person in the world, nodding and saying a sympathetic, “Oh, Caddie,” when I get to sad parts.

“It makes so much sense now that I know,” she says.

“You always suspected I was crazy?” I meant it as a joke, but I realize I'm eager to hear her answer.

“No, no, I never thought you were crazy, but you used to space out sometimes.”

“I'd be going through things in my head, making deals with myself, trying to make sure I didn't think the wrong thing.”

Mandy nods. “And I knew you had panic attacks. My mom told me.”

“She did?”

“But she told me not to bring it up to you, that it wasn't polite to talk about. I should have said something.”

“I should have told you. I was always so freaked out, and . . . when we were drifting apart, I thought maybe it was because you could tell something was wrong with me, that I was weird.”

“No!”

“It seems dumb now.”

“I could tell there were things you weren't sharing with me. I thought—”

“You thought I didn't want to be your friend.”

Mandy wipes her eyes with her scarf. “God, it's so dumb.”

I shake my head. “I'm not going to hug you right now—because I can't—but Mandy, when I'm better, I may hug you to death, okay?”

She nods, sniffling. I never imagined, back in middle school, that it might have hurt Mandy to lose me.

Dr. Rice offered to squeeze me in first thing Thursday morning, and Mom jumped on it. Waiting in the office isn't as nerve-racking as I remember. For one thing, Mom's not crying.

She actually makes a joke when I'm called. “If she gives you a hard time,” she says, “just blame it on your parents.”

When I first met Dr. Rice, she terrified me. Not because she's particularly scary—she looks like a soccer mom and her office smells like cinnamon—but because I feared she might know more about me than I did about myself. She might have figured out horrible things about my brain that she'd tell Mom and Dad but not me.

But now, she seems more like a regular person, a lady with a job. A job that involves listening to me babble for an hour about my problems.

“Your mom mentioned the divorce and your new school,” she says. “You've been under a lot of stress.”

“I guess.” I feel a bit patronized, like she's trying to win me over with her understanding.

It's true there's been a lot of stress. But Mom and Dad are the ones splitting up. The academy's a change for the better.

“A lot of folks would have needed to come see me sooner,” she says, and the smile lines around her eyes, the one giveaway to her age, crease. Her voice is neutral, but that smile says,
Come on, Caddie, what took you so long?

It's a fair question.

“I'm pretty good at hiding it when things upset me,” I say, studying the faded tips of my gloves.

“Well, I'm glad you came back to see me,” she says, “when you weren't feeling right.”

She helped me before, when the panic grew so frequent and fearsome that even a hint was enough to make an attack start in force.

“I didn't exactly come right away,” I say. “Things have been bad for a while.”

The first half hour is mostly me talking. She asks whether the exercises she taught me still help with the panic. And she asks about my “unwanted thoughts.” She gives me an assessment for OCD, and I tell her what Mom said about her cleaning.

“That doesn't surprise me at all,” she says. “Anxiety tends to run in families.”

She makes it sound like eye color, or shoe size, the luck of the genetic draw. Nothing any individual person can control.

And that actually makes me feel a little better.

Maybe the looks are my imagination. I can't trust it after all, but I feel like everybody in the hallway is staring at me—even the musicians. And I refuse to believe that the cast of
Hamlet
called up the horn section to dish about my swan dive. It's just. Not. Likely.

Sane people don't assume everybody cares what they're doing.

I'm nearly to my locker without a single mention of my midnight swim, when Livia pounces. “I can't stop thinking about you!” She blocks my path so I almost run into her. “Sorry, sorry! I just wanted to say, I was impressed by what you did at Mandy's party.”

“Impressed?”

“You did what came to you and didn't care what anybody thought.”

“I should have cared. I wasn't thinking straight.”

“Exactly!” she says. “You were thinking curvy.” She waves her hands in a double helix in front of my face. “I've got to get better at that.”

“Livia,” I say, “you're one of the curviest-thinking people I know.”

Her smile's solar-powered. “Thank you!”

“Not a problem.” She walks at my side to my locker.

“So.” She takes a long pause. “Have you figured it out yet?”

“Figured what out?”

“You know,” she says, holding her two pointer fingers up in the air and bringing them together. She knows I can't touch.

My heart. My heart.

“Oh, God. Does everybody know?”

Hank and Drew are talking at their lockers, but they stop and look our way.

Livia waves her hands. “No, no, no. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said—I just—I picked up on it a while ago. I thought you knew that I knew.”

“No!”

“Well, I don't think everybody knows, but it's not hard to see if you're paying attention.”

I wonder if I should tell her how equally obvious her secret is. “I know something about you too,” I say.

She lights up. “Ooh, go on!”

I whisper, “You're in love with Hank.”

She smirks and without taking her eyes off me, says, “Hey, Hank, Caddie just told me that I'm secretly in love with you.”

He doesn't flinch. “Who isn't?” he says, looking meaningfully at Drew, who shakes his head.

“Friends know things about you,” says Livia. “That's kind of the point. Let's make a pact that before this year is over we'll tell each other some real secrets.”

“I heard you were back,” April says, sitting down in the row behind me in the auditorium.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry . . .”

“Don't be,” she says with a sniff.

“I mean, not sorry, but . . .”

“I had fun reading Ophelia while you were gone. Peter's such a good actor. He almost made me feel like he was into me in real life.”

She smiles coyly, and my sorry-ness burns away.

“It's your part,” she says, and then widens her eyes. “Don't mess it up.” She pops the “p,” making a sassy-mean-girl face. She's joking, but that doesn't mean it's not a real warning.

Nadia strides in, looking like an elfin warrior with her giant bag slung across her back. As she passes my row, she says, “You're warm? Ready to go?” which I take as a not-so-subtle invitation to get onstage.

All I have to do is act.

That's all.

“We've got today, tomorrow, then three weeks before tech.” Nadia says it to the whole room, but I feel like it's for my benefit. “Three weeks
minus
Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving.”

I've been thinking we have a whole month before we open and the Bard judges come, but put this way, it sounds like no time at all. There are scenes we've barely touched.

“Let's try your scene from the audition, Caddie,” Nadia says, and my throat gets tight.

“I feel like I'm trying to breathe underwater,” I whisper to Peter as we take the stage.

He whispers back, “So? You're an actress. Act like a fish.”

I try not to anticipate him touching me, try to think only about what I want from Hamlet.

In auditions, when I asked, “Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?” Peter grabbed me, pulled me toward him. But this time he's gentle. He touches my waist. “Ay, truly.” My shoulder. “For the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty . . .” My gloved arm. “From what it is to a bawd . . .”

He touches my gloved hands. Never my skin. He touches me like he might touch a glass that's going to break. “Than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his”—he pauses, reaches for my hair, like he might smooth it, then drops his hand—“likeness.” And he steps away. “This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.”

Facing away from me, he says, “I did love you once.”

“Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.” I want him to come back, touch me.

But I know that he won't. Hamlet won't. And Peter won't.

Not my skin. Not without permission.

“It was quieter,” Nadia says, when we finish the scene, “but more tender, too. We'll probably bring back some of the fireworks from the audition, but for today, I'm happy.”

“Me too,” Peter whispers, and he squeezes my gloved hand. “Good job.”

“Thanks,” I whisper back, but anxiety gnaws at the edges of this small success. It's one thing to avoid touch in a scene, but in real life . . . Peter is patient, but if our places were reversed, I'm not sure how long my patience would last.

“When is your friend coming back?” Jordan asks.

He leans into the kitchen island across from me and steals a pinch of grated cheese.

“Careful, Jordan. You'll make me grate your finger.” My fingers, of course, are safe in my gloves, but that means I have to hold the cheese in plastic wrap.

Taco sauce bubbles on the stove behind me, filling the kitchen with the cheery scent of chili powder and paprika. We're on our own for dinner since Mom was invited to some art thing—like a book club, she said, but in a gallery. Dad would never have been okay with that. He was always highly protective of “family time,” except when he decided to spend it in his office.

Mom made me swear up and down that I didn't mind her leaving us, but how could I mind? Watching her get ready to go, humming to herself, made the house feel like Christmas.