Heartstopper (18 page)

Megan watched his performance from her seat on the left aisle of the second row. She’d heard Mr. Lipsman had once had aspirations to be an actor, but that his mother had disapproved of so frivolous a career, and so he’d never pursued it. Now, as Megan watched his oversize gestures and near operatic sighs, she concluded he’d missed his calling. It was a shame, she thought, feeling almost sorry for him—almost, because he was such a doofus it was hard to sustain much sympathy for any length of time. Still, she concluded, it must be terrible to spend your life doing something that was, at best, a second choice, and to watch others, many less talented than yourself, assume the mantle that might have been yours, had you only had the courage of your convictions and the determination to follow your dreams. As well as the stamina to stand up to
your mother, she added, flipping her long brown hair over her shoulder with fresh resolve, and swiveling around in her seat as the group of wayward seniors sauntered slowly down the aisle toward the front of the auditorium.

Greg Watt was not among them.

Megan suppressed her own sigh of disappointment. She’d been hoping Greg would show up for the auditions, despite gossip his father had put his foot down, insisted his son stop wasting his valuable time on such “pansy-assed pursuits.” At least, that’s what she’d overheard Joey Balfour telling a group of boys in the hall this morning. What was the matter with parents anyway? Were they all so pathetic and self-absorbed? Oh, they made a big show of claiming that all they cared about was their children’s happiness, but when push came to shove—and it was always the parents who did the pushing; kids only shoved back when cornered—the only people’s happiness that really mattered was their own. Mrs. Lipsman hadn’t wanted her son to be an actor, so he’d compromised both his talent and his ambition, settling for the role of high school drama teacher instead. Mr. Watt frowned on his son’s more artistic interests, insisting Greg devote his time and energy to the family business. And
her
mother had decided she wanted to return to Rochester, blithely assuming her son and daughter would automatically acquiesce to her wishes. Well, Megan wasn’t about to give in on this one. She wasn’t going to leave Florida, she’d decided over the weekend. And it didn’t matter that she hadn’t wanted to come here in the first place, or that she missed her friends up north, or that Liana Martin had been murdered.

“It’s not safe here,” her mother had argued.

“It’s safer here than in New York,” she’d quickly countered.

And then another girl had gone missing, and her mother had been positively apoplectic. They hadn’t even
buried Liana, she’d railed, and now a second girl had disappeared. A third, if you believed the rumors. And then it turned out Brenda Vinton hadn’t been kidnapped after all, so all her mother’s crazed rants about a serial killer on the loose, preying on young girls, were nothing but conjecture. Statistics said that it was far more likely that Liana Martin had been killed by someone close to her than by an itinerant sociopath. So no way she was moving back to Rochester, Megan had insisted, continuing to press her point even after she understood its irrelevance. She knew, perhaps even better than her mother, that the real reason her mother wanted to leave Torrance had nothing to do with serial killers and everything to do with straying husbands. Could she blame her?

Megan looked toward the end of the aisle where Delilah Franklin sat hanging over the end of her plush, red velvet seat, waiting for Mr. Lipsman to proceed. The girl filled the room like a stray cloud, her very presence threatening to ruin everyone else’s fun. Why does she have to be everywhere I go? Megan wondered, knowing she was being unfair. The poor girl had every right to go wherever she wanted, and she was obviously here because she wanted to be in the school play.

It was also obvious, from the distance the other students kept from her—the several seats on either side of her and those directly behind her were jarringly empty—that none of the other students welcomed her presence. And truthfully, Megan couldn’t imagine what part she’d be right for. With any luck, Mr. Lipsman would feel the same way, and Delilah would be consigned the thankless job of painting scenery or sewing costumes. Hadn’t that been her job last year?

This was a dumb idea, Megan thought, as Mr. Lipsman began handing out copies of the script. She shouldn’t have come. She didn’t really want to be here. She had no interest
in appearing in the school play, even if she was handed the starring role.

At first it had appeared the production would be canceled. It had already been postponed once, after the death of Mr. Lipsman’s mother, and after Liana’s body was discovered, the principal had toyed with the idea of shelving it altogether. But Mr. Lipsman had made an impassioned speech about the need for hope over despair, claiming the play would take the students’ minds off their grief and fear, et cetera, et cetera, all of which was just an elaborate way of saying, “The show must go on.”

“Let’s make
Kiss Me, Kate
our tribute to Liana Martin,” the principal had subsequently proclaimed over the loudspeaker, encouraging all students to involve themselves in the production in some capacity, be it on the stage or behind the scenes.

“Much better for the students than grief counseling,” Mr. Lipsman was overheard to say, although counseling was also offered.

Megan couldn’t understand how going ahead with
Kiss Me, Kate
, would do anything for Liana’s memory, nor did she pay a visit to the grief counselor who was brought in, despite her mother’s encouragement. She had no interest in discussing Liana’s death with a stranger. Nor did she feel like talking about the murder with anyone she knew, especially her mother, who kept pressing Megan to tell her how she felt, asking her over and over if she was all right, until she was dizzy and felt like screaming. “I’m here if you want to talk about it,” her mother said.

But Megan had always been more comfortable with silence. Unlike most girls her age, she preferred keeping her thoughts to herself. If you didn’t acknowledge your feelings out loud, you didn’t have to deny them later. In any event, she much preferred the anonymity of the Internet, which allowed her to share her anxieties without revealing her voice. Clearly, many others felt the same way.

Isn’t it awful?
one person wrote.
Isn’t what happened to Liana the most awful thing?

Poor girl
, wailed another.
Poor, poor girl.

And yet another:
My heart breaks. My soul bleeds. This is truly the end of the world.

Of course, there were other postings of a completely different sort:

She was a bitch.

Who gives a shit?

She got what she deserved.

Undoubtedly the authorities were tracking the writers of these missives and would be able to determine who’d sent them. Not that such a discovery was likely to amount to much. Megan assumed that anyone smart enough to kidnap someone in broad daylight, murder her, dispose of the body, and then elude capture for this long wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave so obvious a trail. Sheriff Weber and his deputies had questioned the entire town, some people more than once, and had yet to turn up anything concrete. Except, of course, Liana’s body, which the coroner had yet to release. There was talk of a funeral, or at the very least, a memorial service, to be held later in the week. Megan didn’t want to go. But how could she not?

Would Liana’s killer be there? she wondered. Would he bow his head in prayer like the rest of the mourners and whisper words of condolence to the bereaved family? Would he stand next to the grave as Liana’s body was, once again, lowered into the cold ground? Would he stand next to her, brush up against her shoulder?

Megan shook her head, determined to dislodge the uncomfortable thought. She glanced toward the back of the auditorium, hoping Greg Watt had snuck inside and was even now standing there, hands on his hips, smirk on his lips, surveying the scene. But the three sets of auditorium doors were closed, and Greg was nowhere to be seen.
It appeared that everyone who planned to audition was already here. Her eyes returned reluctantly to the front of the theater.

Considering the number of people, it was quiet. Everyone looked vaguely shell-shocked. Ginger Perchak and Tanya McGovern huddled together in the front row, fussing over their scripts. Amber Weber sat in the row behind them, mouthing some lines of dialogue to herself. Brian Hensen sat several seats to her left, arm extended toward Mr. Lipsman, waiting for his copy. Farther back sat Peter Arlington, his arms wrapped around his chest, eyes staring resolutely at the floor. Victor Drummond was there, as was his ghoulish friend, Nancy, the one with the raccoon eyes and weird piercings. There were other students whose faces Megan recognized, although she didn’t know their names. Even Joey Balfour was in attendance, for God’s sake, although Joey had made it clear he was there only because he considered actresses—even those at the high school level—to be both uninhibited and oversexed, and hoped he might get lucky. “As a tribute to Liana, of course,” he insisted, and everyone laughed in spite of themselves. Judging by the way several of the freshmen girls were looking at him now, he might be right, Megan thought, wondering if that was the way she looked at Greg Watt.

A copy of the script suddenly dropped into her lap. “Please have a look at the part of Kate,” Mr. Lipsman intoned solemnly from somewhere above her head. He opened the script to the appropriate page, his fingers touching hers. Megan quickly withdrew her hand, dragging the backs of her fingers along the front of her jeans, as if to rid them of his touch. Mr. Lipsman was still standing over her. When she raised her eyes to his, he winked.

“Mr. Lipsman,” Delilah called from her seat at the far end of the first row. “You forgot me.”

Mr. Lipsman extended a script toward her without bothering to turn around. “Sorry about that.” Once again he winked at Megan, as if to say he shared her revulsion, as if to say he was one of them.

Megan felt an unexpected twinge of sympathy for Delilah as the ungainly girl rose from her seat. That twinge grew into an outright ache as Delilah tripped over a stray foot that appeared suddenly in her path to send her sprawling across the laps of several horrified students.

“What the hell …?”

“I’m sorry,” Delilah quickly apologized.

“Have a nice trip?”

“Get off of me!”

“I’m really so sorry.”

“See you next fall.”

“Get off.”

Delilah struggled to her feet, smoothing her long, black peasant skirt across her hips. The skirt would have looked fashionable on anybody else. On Delilah, it looked like a collapsing tent.

“I saw England,” Joey Balfour recited in a grating, singsongy voice. “I saw France. I saw Big D’s underpants. Oh, wait a minute. What am I saying? She isn’t wearing any.”

“Oh, yuck,” someone said as everybody laughed.

“Gross,” echoed somebody else.

Megan waited for Mr. Lipsman to put a stop to the cruelty, but he continued to hand out copies of the script as if unaware anything untoward was happening.

“I didn’t get my copy,” Delilah reminded him sheepishly in her little-girl voice, as the last of the scripts was distributed among the students.

“Well, I’m afraid that’s the last of them. I guess you’ll have to share.” Mr. Lipsman scanned the rows for volunteers.

No one raised a hand.

“She can share mine,” Megan said after a pause, watching Delilah’s face light up with gratitude.

At the same time, the faces of Ginger Perchak and Tanya McGovern darkened. What am I doing? Megan wondered as Delilah moved gracelessly toward her. Now she’d have to change seats, and she’d been perfectly comfortable where she was. And Ginger and Tanya probably wouldn’t talk to her now. She should have sat with them in the first place, instead of sitting off by herself, hoping Greg would show up.

This was all her mother’s fault, she decided as she moved over to let Delilah sit down. Her mother was always saying that the most important thing in life was to be kind. The Golden Rule.
Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.

Somebody should have told that to whoever killed Liana.

“Thanks,” Delilah said, burrowing in against Megan’s side, her thighs spilling over the boundaries of her narrow seat, pressing against Megan’s. “What part should I look at, Mr. Lipsman?”

“Have a look at the chorus,” Mr. Lipsman said.

“The whole chorus?” Joey Balfour asked to more laughter.

Megan would have laughed too, but she stopped herself when she felt Delilah’s body stiffen.

“All right. That’s quite enough of that,” Mr. Lipsman said in a belated attempt at disapproval. “Is anyone here familiar with this play?”

Megan raised her left hand. “I saw it on Broadway a few years ago.”

“She saw it on Broadway,” Joey mimicked, and Megan saw Ginger sneer.

What’s the matter with me? she thought. Why can’t I keep my big mouth shut?

“I’ve never been to a Broadway play,” Delilah whispered, smiling at Megan as if they were the best of friends.

God, get me out of here, Megan prayed.

“Does anyone realize that this musical is based on a play by William Shakespeare?” Mr. Lipsman continued. “Can anyone tell me its title? Megan?”

Megan shook her head, although she knew the answer.
The Taming of the Shrew
, she said in her head as Mr. Lipsman said the words out loud. He went on to explain the plot, and how the musical differed from the original. He said he’d listen to everyone read first, narrow down his selections, then hold the singing auditions later in the week. “Ginger,” he said. “Why don’t we start with you. The part of Kate.” Ginger rose from her seat and climbed the several steps to the stage. “And, Brian, why don’t you give Petruchio a try?”

“I thought that was my part,” a voice boomed from the back of the auditorium.

All heads swiveled toward the voice except for Megan’s, which remained bowed, her eyes focused resolutely on the script in her lap. She didn’t have to turn around to know Greg was here, and if she looked, she knew her face would betray her instantly. She took a bunch of deep breaths to calm the suddenly erratic beating of her heart.