Read My Lips (A College Obsession Romance) (29 page)

If I’m honest, I think he scared himself as much as he scared me.

And really, Kellen’s a little shit. Whatever Clayton did or didn’t do to him, I’m sure he deserved it.
But still …

I stop at a tree just before the tunnel that goes under the School of Art, plopping down in the grass by the side of the pathway and sulking. Nothing lately has been easy. I don’t know how I feel about Clayton and I. I don’t know what I feel about the show I’m about to premiere tonight. Part of me has been wanting to call my parents all week, but I’ve refrained because I’m afraid of what they’ll say, and whether or not their words will work to completely unravel me before I step foot on that stage. Believe it or not, my mother has a wicked talent of making my confidence crumble to dust before my eyes, even when she’s trying to encourage me. And I won’t even try to describe my sister’s so-called brand of motivation.

I pull out my phone and reread through texts that Clayton and I have shared over the past few weeks. A few back-and-forth messages revive the smile on my face, and before I know it, afternoon’s come and all that’s left of my day is a light dinner—provided I can keep myself from
un-
eating it—and show time.

After a quick lie-down in my dorm room and a hurried meal in the Quad cafeteria, I head for the theater to face my destiny. Considering how many footsteps I’ve likely taken in my life, it’s bizarre to me that the relatively short trip from my dorm room to the theater would prove to be such a chore. I’m so nervous that my feet keep wanting to kick into one another. I stumble twice as I pass by the University Center, then nearly walk into the wall as I go through the tunnel under the Art building. I might need new feet before the show tonight.

The sky slowly turns over, the deep dusky blue of evening covering it with the fiery sunset nowhere to be found—its view likely blocked by the scorpion tail of the Theatre building itself—as I make my way in through the side door at the back. The lobby is off-limits to us actors, or so I was told before leaving Thursday night’s dress rehearsal.

The stench of stage makeup fills the dressing room. My castmates banter loudly across the room at each other, and there seems to be a hilarious joke every five seconds, for as frequently (and obnoxiously) as they laugh. I take my seat in front of my assigned mirror and, with shaky hands, I pull open my bag and begin laying out all the sponges, foundations, and brushes that I’ll need. Then, after quickly changing into a makeup shirt, I begin the process of slowly becoming Emily Webb by smearing designer mud all over my face.

“You ready for this?”

The question comes from the actress who plays Mrs. Myrtle Webb, my mother in the play. “You want me to lie, or say something happy and encouraging?” I mumble back to her.

She chuckles, rubbing highlight on her eyelids. “Truth. I always go for truth.”

“I’m scared shitless,” I say, hesitating before I apply the tiniest bit of shadow beneath my cheekbones, which I hollow by sucking them in.

“Me too! I always get nervous opening night. Then, once I get the first night out of the way, the rest of the run is a breeze.”

Just when I’m about to respond, I hear the squeaking of wheels. Turning to the noise, I see a costumes rack being wheeled in by two costume crew members, Victoria and some blonde I don’t know.

Of course one of them would be Victoria.

The blonde girl tends to a torn gown, taking it to the corner of the room to stitch it up. While she sews, Victoria hangs by the rack, aloof, pulling self-consciously at her turquoise costumes apron, her fingers playing anxiously with a tiny tomato-shaped pincushion that hangs by her waist.

I return my attention to my makeup. I may never fall in love with the musty smell of it. “After opening night, it’s a breeze, huh?” I smile at that. “Then once tonight passes, everything’s going to be lovely.”

“It’s really like there’s two rehearsal processes,” she goes on. “The one you do without an audience, and the one you do
with
one.”

“Audiences make everything so weird,” I moan, blending highlight on my cheekbones.

“Laughing when you don’t expect them to. Not laughing when you do. Applauding too long. Some guy with a horrible cough in the front row. That
fucking baby in the third
.”

I laugh a bit too hard at her joke, catching sight of Victoria through the mirror. She’s watching me, still picking at that squishy pin-filled tomato and waiting for someone to need something from her.

“Is your family coming this weekend or next?” she asks.

The question makes my hand slip, getting a speck of highlight in my hair. “No,” I answer.

“Too busy to come down all the way from New York, huh?”

I have to remind myself that people here know where I’m from, even if they don’t know exactly
who
my family is. Well, assuming Victoria hasn’t secretly told everyone behind my back.

Then, from the door, two words ring clear through the room.

“DESDEMONA LEBEAU.”

I jerk, looking up. Ariel stands at the doorway looking gorgeous in a blue satin gown, her waves of blonde hair cascading down her front. Her lips are a perfect, plush, red rose petal. I’m so distracted with how elegant she looks that I forget she just shouted my name.

A hush has swept through the dressing room.

“Ariel?” I return.

Ariel pushes past Victoria standing by the door, taking three steps into the room, each of her steps in those heels of hers clacking loudly against the floor.

“Desdemona Lebeau,” she announces again. “Of course. Every bit of it makes sense now. A person like
you
getting the part that
I
deserved.”

I blanch. Now
Ariel
is the one who wanted the lead role? I guess I’d be naïve to think otherwise;
every
woman in the department wanted the part of Emily Webb.

“What do you mean by that?” I shoot back at her, twisting around in my chair.

I couldn’t hear my own thoughts a second ago. Now, the dressing room is so silent, I hear the jingle of a hairpin touching the counter at the other end of the room.

“You haven’t heard the commotion?” she says, making the question sound like an accusation. “They had to bring in campus security to secure the doors of the lobby.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about.

“Make way,” says Ariel demonstratively, waving her hands around the room like a magician, “for the one and only Desdemona Lebeau. Do you all even realize who you’ve been acting with? This
princess
here who robbed me of my senior year lead because her famous mommy and daddy bought it for her?”

Oh, fuck.

Fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck mermaids. Fuck everything.

“Ariel,” I plead fruitlessly.

“So was this your plan all along?” she blurts, spreading her hands. “Bring in your parents from New York on your opening night and cause a scene and make this huge deal over your big Texas debut?”

Wait a minute.

Wait one fucking minute.

“They’re
here?
” I breathe, horrified.

“And call in the press, of course. Channel 11 News. 13. Whoever the hell’s in the area. Weather? Traffic? Who cares. The
Lebeaus
are in town. You are a real piece of work, you know that?”

I can’t even produce words. My heart is lodged somewhere up in my brain, and all I can hear is my pulse and my own erratic breathing. The room spins while I try to imagine the horrific sight of my mom and dad in the lobby right now, slowly being escorted like precious pieces of gold into the auditorium to claim whatever seats they must have secured for themselves ahead of time. Did Doctor Thwaite invite them? Did they come on their own, my mom desperate for more attention and my dad curious to see what his darling Kellen has designed? Is my sister with them?

“I’m sorry.” My voice is so small and pathetic. I don’t know if I’m apologizing to her, or to the whole room. I look around and all I see are confused eyes, contemptuous eyes, blank eyes. I don’t have a friend in this whole building suddenly. Even the actress next to me who I was just talking to, she looks at me like I’m a total stranger. “I’m sorry. I was … I just wanted … Ariel, I’m sorry. I was—”

“Sorry? Sorry for lying to everyone in this room?” she prompts me, her voice turning all sugary again, the same tone she used to warn me about Clayton. “Sorry for … what?”

I lick my dry lips. I can’t seem to swallow. “I’m sorry for—”

“She’s sorry,” says Victoria from the costumes rack, “that you’re being such a royal bitch, Ariel.”

Gasps and whispers wash over the room like a sudden breeze.

Victoria, her arms crossed, saunters away from the rack, facing Ariel in the center of the room. She gives her a pointed once-over.

“Dessie here’s sorry that she even
had
to keep her identity a secret,” Victoria goes on, “because bitches like you can’t handle it.”

Girls snicker in the back. The blonde one from costumes gawps at her partner, her stitching work forgotten in her lap.

“You think you’re the only one who got robbed of that Emily role? I wanted it, too,” says Victoria with a careless sweep of her hand. “Hell, I dreamed about that role all summer. Now, I get to sit backstage and watch Dessie perform it.”

Ariel folds her arms, her eyes seething with derision.

“And does that ruffle my pretty feathers? Sure,” says Victoria with a shrug. “You know what else does? The sheer lack of roles in the Theatre world for people of color. Am I barging into the dressing rooms of every
all-white cast
to tell them about all
their
precious privilege? Fuck no. I’m a big girl. I’ll keep auditioning for whatever the hell I want. I
will
play Emily someday in some other production. But Desdemona Lebeau, she can have
this
production.”

“Yeah,” agrees Ariel, her tone quickly converted from sugar to acid, “and she can invite her famous parents to have a big showy opening night, and
that’s
somehow fair, because—”

“Oh, trust me, I know all about
embarrassing
parents
,” Victoria cuts her off, waving her hand in Ariel’s indignant face. “You don’t want to be moving into the dorms with your dad yelling Cantonese down the halls at twenty words a second, trust me. I can only imagine what kind of hell Dessie has to contend with, and why she had to run all the way down here to Texas to get the fuck away from it.” She whips her head around to face me. “Am I right?”

I suck on my own lips.

“And what do I say to that?” Victoria presses on, her eyes on me. “Kudos to Dessie. And what a shame that her damn paparazzi-drawing family had to follow her. I mean, look at her poor face. Does she look thrilled with your news that her parents are here, Ariel?” She turns back to Ariel, needles in her eyes. “Truth, you wanted. Go ahead. Look in her eyes. The truth’s been there all along. The only one who’s lying to themselves is you.”

Ariel looks at me now. I wonder if she’s looking for any truth in my face, or if she’s just imagining ninety-nine ways to murder me. Her eyes are a completely unreadable mix of confusion and resentment, which is about the farthest from how she’d treated me so far in acting class. For a second, I catch myself wondering if
she
, in fact, was the one dumped by Clayton. I never saw this side of her until now.

Less the mermaid. More the sea hag.

Ariel finally parts her lips, though it takes her a handful of seconds to make any words. “I don’t trust liars. I don’t like liars. Clayton. You. You’re made for each other, a pair of liars.”

“We’re
all
liars,” says Victoria with a roll of her eyes, “or did you not hear Dessie’s song? I’m a liar. You’re a liar. Yay, let’s throw a big ol’ liar party and get the fuck over it.” She takes two steps toward Ariel. “This is the dressing room. Where the
cast
belongs. Seeing as you’re not part of the cast, I suggest you go throw yourself a not-in-the-cast party, and
get … over … it
.”

To that, Ariel lifts her chin, too proud to show how deep Victoria’s words cut her, and strolls out of the dressing room. The others start to break into murmurs and scandalized whispers, even chuckling.

And I’d risen from my chair and didn’t even realize it. My back pressed against the makeup counter, I feel dozens of eyes on me. I have no idea how to feel about what just went down.

Then Marcy, who plays Rebecca Gibbs, tilts her head. In a light and curious voice, she asks, “Who are your parents?”

I swallow, facing her. The others in the room seem to await my answer. Well, out with it. “My mother is Winona Lebeau.”

I don’t even get my father’s name out before three of the girls gasp with their surprise. “You mean the Winona Lebeau who opened
Telltale
off-Broadway?” asks someone across the room.

“Oh my god. She did
Hair
on Broadway. And
Hairspray
, too.”