Dreamers Often Lie (20 page)

Mr. Carter spun toward Pierce, who was still thrashing in the grip of the other officer and several cast members. “Mr. Caplan, I expected much better from you. My office. Now.”

Pierce threw off the other students’ hands. Sullenly, he stalked off between the officer and Mr. Carter, his footsteps hammering the hollow floor and echoing away up the aisle.

There was a moment of stunned silence. No one moved.

Then, without thinking, I flew after them.

I leaped off the edge of the stage, barely feeling the jolt of my brain against my skull—the pain couldn’t get any larger anyway—and raced up the narrow strip of carpet, chasing them straight through the auditorium’s closing doors.

“Mr. Carter!” I yelled. “Mr. Carter! Wait!”

The vice principal halted. A few steps ahead of him, Pierce and the security officer hesitated too.

“Mr. Carter.” I skidded to a stop beside him. “Please. It wasn’t Rob. Pierce started it. He grabbed him. He tried to hit him first.”

Down the hall, Pierce shot me a look of such fury that my searing skin went cold.

Mr. Carter scanned my face. His eyes traveled upward, to the scar. I’d been truant with this new kid just yesterday. Now he was caught fighting with the school’s golden boy, and I’d come running, out of breath, probably looking like a delirious fever patient, to defend him.

“We’ll take that into consideration, Miss Stuart,” he said slowly. “You take care of yourself.” He pivoted on his shiny brown shoes and strode away.

The officer gave Pierce a nudge. They set off after Mr. Carter, Pierce throwing me one last look that lingered on my skin like frost.

Back in the auditorium, rehearsal had dissolved into a total mess.

Cast members stood in knots onstage, their voices overlapping. Tom and Nikki and Anders and a few others formed one tight group. Michaela Dorfmann had planted herself at the center of another knot. I could hear her loudly repeating, “I can’t
believe
Pierce would do that. He would
never
do that.” Upstage, the crew was trying to
repair the damaged set pieces. Just below the stage’s lip, Mr. Hall was stalking back and forth between Ayesha and the first row of seats, his face red and furious.

“That’s if we’re even going to
have
a show at this point,” I heard him shouting as I inched down the aisle. “Our Oberon’s in a brawl, our crew members are getting expelled, our Titania’s falling apart—”

Ayesha’s eyes landed on me. They went wide.

The other voices died as people turned to stare.

Mr. Hall spun around. “Jaye,” he said quickly, “I didn’t mean that you—”

“I’m not falling apart,” I said. “I am
fine.
”

“I am but mad north-north-west,” Hamlet agreed, looming over my shoulder. “When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

“No,” I muttered.
“No
.” Even when I cupped both hands around my eyes, I could feel him waiting behind me, a terrifying shadow. “I can’t—I’m not—”

Wake up. WAKE UP.
But the room wouldn’t fade.

I turned and plunged back up the aisle, moving so fast that I hardly felt the wet weight dragging at my legs.

“Jaye?” Tom’s voice called after me.

I slammed through the doors into the brightness of the hall. The weight around my legs was getting heavier. I glanced down. My gray jeans were soaked with blood. It rose up from the cuffs, as if I had waded into it. It was
climbing even higher now, creeping over my calves, dyeing the fabric with its warm, patient crawl.

A blast of freezing air hit me as I rushed out into the parking lot. Cold sliced through my clothes. The blood crystalized, making the damp denim stiffen. Still, I struggled forward, arms wrapped around myself, leaning into the wind that kept trying to force me back.

D
id you just
walk
home?” Sadie demanded as I scurried past her into the living room. “It’s almost two miles.”

My chattering teeth were enough of an answer. I grabbed a blanket from the couch and sank down beside the radiator.

Sadie towered over me. “And where the hell is your coat?”

“I for-forgot it at s-school.”

“You forgot it. In January. In below-zero wind chill.”

“I’m—wearing a thick—sweater.”

Sadie grabbed the afghan from her chair and draped it over me like a giant doily. She plunked down in front of me. “What happened? Is this because Pierce and that weird new kid got into a fight over you?”

“What?” I shoved a flap of afghan off my face. “How did you hear that?”

“Word travels at the speed of texts. Faster than a stupid girl with no coat can walk home.”

I wrapped both hands around my throbbing head. My
brain ground against bone. “It wasn’t a fight over me. It was idiotic.”

Sadie picked up my right boot. For a second, I tried to jerk my blood-stained leg away, but when I looked down, the blood had disappeared. Sadie pulled off the boot and tucked my foot under the blanket. “You’d better hope you don’t have frostbite,” she said, yanking off the other boot. “I guess the new kid is going to be expelled.”

“What?”

“That’s what everybody’s saying. Pierce might get suspended too, but Mr. Hall is trying to pull strings, for the sake of the show.”

Oh god. The show.

The reality of what I’d just done sank into my thawing brain. I’d just run away from rehearsal, like the damaged little psycho I’d sworn I wasn’t. If there had been any way to make this mess worse, I’d probably just done it.

And the whole mess was my fault to begin with. If I’d never spoken to Rob, he wouldn’t be getting expelled, or gotten punched in the face. And Pierce would have stayed the near-perfect thing I thought he was.

God, I wished I had never seen that look in his eyes. I wished I hadn’t seen the way he’d pounded his fist into Rob’s face again and again . . .

My stomach lurched.

“I’m going to lie down,” I mumbled, heaving myself toward the stairs.

Sadie called after me. “You know, taking care of you would feel like less of a waste if you’d take any care of yourself.”

Still wrapped in the afghan, I fell face-first onto my bed.

Maybe Sadie had heard wrong. Maybe Mr. Carter had believed me. Maybe Pierce had told the truth. Maybe Rob wouldn’t be expelled after all.

But there was no way to find out. I’d left my phone with my bag and coat and everything else in that backstage corner. Besides, I realized, I didn’t have Rob’s number. And I’d never given him mine.

What was I thinking? There was no way he’d ever want to speak to me again. I’d staggered into his life, stayed until it was almost as messed up as mine, and then told him to keep away.

Purple and blue bursts spread across my vision. Burying my head under the pillows, I tried to take deep, slow breaths, but the ache was a spear twisting in a wound, and the flashes of dark color fizzed inside my eyelids.

I’d ruined everything. Rob had no idea how I actually felt. And now he’d never know.

He probably hated me anyway. I’m sure Pierce detested me now. And Mr. Hall had every reason to give up on me at last. I’d thrown it all away.

I’d been warned. I’d been warned, and I’d screwed up in spite of it all. Dad had been right. Pathetic. Stupid. Sad. Wrong.

A hand came to rest on my ankle.

I could have sworn I heard someone say, in a voice I hadn’t heard for two years, “What’s the matter, Blue Jaye?”

I flipped over. Pillows tumbled to either side.

Shakespeare sat at the end of my bed. His forehead was puckered with concern. “How now? A conduit, girl? What, still in tears?”

I kicked his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

Shakespeare tilted his head. “But still thy eyes, which I may call the sea, do ebb and flow with—”

“Please. Stop.” I sat up straight. My throat clenched, and I could feel my face crinkling into ugly-cry position. “Please stop doing this to me. Stop talking to me in quotes and riddles, stop appearing out of nowhere, stop judging me and spying on me and trying to make my already ruined life
worse.
”

There was no answer this time.

After a moment, I turned my head. Shakespeare was gone.

I pressed my face back into the blankets.

Downstairs, there was the thump of a door. “Hello!” called Mom’s voice. Sadie answered.

Other sounds trailed through the house. Water running. Cabinets clicking. The distant, nasal ring of the phone.

My skin went cold.

Mr. Hall: It had to be. He’d have called the landline instead of a cell phone. He would have waited until my
mother was likely to be home. And now he would tell her what had happened. He would tell her that he had no choice but to give my role away.

I held my breath, listening. I couldn’t hear any voice at all—just the sound of footsteps squeaking up the staircase.

There was a knock at my door. Before I could get up, it swung open, revealing Mom on the other side.

“May I come in?” she asked softly.

“Yeah.” I wiped my face, sitting up. “Come in.”

Mom sat down so delicately on my bed that the mattress barely moved. She didn’t speak.

I sniffed and wiped my face again. “Who called you?”

Mom stroked my quilt absently. “Mr. Hall called me at work. He said that you’d just rushed out of rehearsal, leaving all your things behind. He said there’d been some kind of fight during practice, and you’d been involved somehow, and no one was sure where you’d gone. So I tore out of the office and drove up and down the streets between here and the high school, looking everywhere for you. That’s when Sadie called me and told me that you’d walked home and had just gone up to your room.”

“I didn’t mean to make anybody worry,” I said. “I just came straight home. I didn’t do anything you said I shouldn’t do.”

Mom sighed.

I looked down at the ragged ends of her fingernails. “So Mr. Hall didn’t—did he say he was going to replace me?”

“Jaye . . .” Mom sighed again. “No. He didn’t.”

I relaxed for a split second, flush with relief. “So—who called just now?”

Mom’s eyes moved away. “That was Patrick Caplan.”

Relaxation over.

“Mr. Caplan called you? Why?”

“He wanted to let me know that Pierce had just been disciplined for fighting some new boy with a long record of behavioral problems who has recently been hanging around with
you
.”

I kept still.

“I’m guessing this is the same boy you skipped school with.” Mom paused. She still wasn’t looking at me. “Am I wrong?”

“. . . No.”

“Didn’t I tell you that I didn’t want you spending time with him?”

“You just said I couldn’t do anything outside of school and rehearsal with him. And I haven’t. You didn’t say I couldn’t even
talk
to him, or—”

“Fine,” Mom stopped me. “Apparently I wasn’t specific enough. I don’t want you around him at all. Is that clearer?”

“But—he’s in one of my classes. And he’s on the stage crew. I can’t just—”

“Jaye, do you want to be pulled out of school entirely?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then just agree.”

I took a breath. Put on my disappointed/resigned face. “Okay. Fine. I’ll try.”

Mom was silent for a minute, looking at me, and I wondered if she’d somehow seen through the mask. But then she leaned back, looking around at my collage-covered walls. “Patrick is worried, of course,” she resumed. “Pierce isn’t the type to pick a fight, so I’m guessing he had a very good reason.” When I didn’t speak, Mom took another breath, her narrow shoulders rising and falling. “Fortunately, because of his record, Patrick thinks the school is going to take it easy on him this time.”

The words shot out of me. “But—Pierce started it.”

Mom didn’t look surprised. “That’s what Patrick said. Pierce admitted it. He said he got involved because he was trying to protect you.”

“Protect me? From
what?
”

“Jaye.” Mom shook her head, gazing at the window. There was a beat. “You know, loving you is pretty hard on the people who try to do it.”

These words hit like a punch. Like four punches, really. One for Mom. One for Sadie. One for Pierce. One last knockout for my father.

I couldn’t speak for a minute. I stared at Mom’s hand again. Besides the ragged fingernails, her knuckles looked red and chapped. She obviously hadn’t been wearing
gloves on her morning jogs, or using lotion to combat the dry winter air.

I touched one knuckle, gently, with my fingertip. “I’m not the only one who doesn’t do a great job of taking care of herself.”

“I know.” Mom gave me a tiny smile. “Maybe you got that from me. We’re both very good at making our own mistakes.”

“When did you ever make a mistake?”

Mom met my eyes now. “Oh, I make them. I just usually make them by being too cautious. Too quiet.” She smiled again. “That’s something you definitely
didn’t
get from me. And I’m very glad about that.”

My eyes started to sting. “I don’t know.” I pushed the hair over my scar, trying to hide my face.
You’re fine. At least
pretend
you’re fine.
“Being me apparently means doing lots of things wrong. Even when I know I should do something else, it’s like . . .”
Stop crying, you idiot.
But I couldn’t put the mask back on. “I know I disappoint everybody. I know Dad was—”

I stopped. I turned my face aside, so Mom wouldn’t see the tears sliding past my nose and over my jaw.

“I don’t think you
do
know,” said Mom, very softly.

For a few minutes, we were both quiet.

But I knew. I remembered. I remembered perfectly. It was just the blank spots between the memories that
made me doubt myself—the things Pierce had told me, the things Sadie had said. They were like gaps between the slats of a high, swinging bridge. I needed more to hold on to.

“Mom,” I began, “why was Dad with the Caplans when it happened? Why wasn’t he driving his own car?”

Mom sat up a little bit straighter. “You know why.”

“I know. Just—tell me again.”

“He and Patrick had been on a business trip together. They’d had several trips that winter. Meeting with designers, visiting suppliers, opening the new stores. Remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.” I toyed with a fold of my purple quilt. “Just . . . if it was a business trip, why was Pierce with them?”

“Because—” Mom hesitated for a second too long. “They were on their way home from the trip. They must have picked Pierce up after school.”

“Then . . . why didn’t they pick up me and Sadie? We couldn’t drive yet.”

Mom’s voice hardened. “Why? Are you wishing you were with them?”

“No. That’s not—that’s not what I mean.” Flashes of Dad’s face. Smiling at me. Angry at me. His tanned forearms. His half-empty closet. I rubbed my head. “I’m just trying to remember. Because Pierce said—”

Even harder. “What did Pierce say?”

“Nothing. He just said that Dad had been with them a lot. Right before.”

“That was nothing new. He and Patrick were together every day.”

“No. I know.”

“Jaye . . . I think I know what’s going on.” The edge in Mom’s voice dulled again. “You’re trying to make sense of things. Why what happened to him happened. Why what happened to
you
happened. Why they ended differently.” She touched my ankle. “It isn’t fate. It’s nothing anyone did wrong. It’s just what happened. And I’m so glad—” Her voice choked a little. “I’m just so glad you’re here.”

I couldn’t answer.

We sat next to each other on my bed for a while. I rubbed itchy tears away with the back of my wrist. Mom stroked my leg so lightly I could barely feel it.

Then she leaned over, gave me a kiss on my forehead, and stood up. “Come down and be with us when you’re ready.”

I waited until the door had shut behind her. Then I slid over the edge of my mattress and pulled the bundle out from under my bed.

I buried my face in Dad’s old T-shirt. Faint scents of sweat and detergent, laced with Coast soap and his usual cologne. I had to breathe deep to catch it all. Most of it had already faded away.

I remembered when those scents had disappeared from
the house. It had happened gradually. Not finding him already in the kitchen when I woke up, checking the online news, sipping his black coffee, his eyes tired and his mouth tight. Not having to step over his running shoes on the doormat. Dinners without him. Weekends without him. And the times when he was home, when he and Mom were shut behind their bedroom door, just the wisps of their overlapping voices escaping through the cracks.

I breathed in the scent one more time. Then I pushed the bundle back under my bed. This time I didn’t push it quite so far.