Since You've Been Gone (24 page)

“Wonderful,” my mother said, her face relaxing. “I’ll figure out some food and you can cast it.”

My dad looked around, then pointed at Frank. “You can play Duncan,” he said, and Frank shot me a look.

“Dad,” I said, setting the pile of plays down and taking a step
forward. Duncan was the second lead, after Cecily, and that was a lot to throw at someone who’d only come into the house in a futile attempt to get hydrated. “I’m not sure that—”

“And we need a Cecily,” he went on, talking over me. “Andrea,” he yelled in the general direction of the kitchen, “who can play Cecily?”

“Oh, god,” my mother said, coming back into the room and trying to run her hand through her hair, apparently forgetting there were curlers in it. “I have no idea. Maybe Pamela’s daughter?”

“If we don’t have a good Cecily, the whole play falls apart,” my dad said, shaking his head. “You remember what happened during that performance in Chicago.”

“I know,” my mother said. “Let’s see. . . .”

“I’ll do it.”  The words were out of my mouth before I realized I’d even thought them. My parents turned to me, both looking shocked. Frank, though, was giving me a smile from across the room.

“Seriously?” Beckett asked, sounding deeply skeptical.

“I think that seems very appropriate,” my mother said, crossing past me to go back into the kitchen, giving my arm a squeeze as she went. “Thank you, Em.”

“Yes,” my dad said, after a small pause, still looking at me like he wasn’t quite sure who I was. “That’s . . . wonderful. Now let’s move this couch.”

This was how, an hour later, scripts in hand, Frank and I
ended up standing behind the doors of the dining room, looking out as the audience assembled. If I hadn’t been so nervous about what was to come, I probably would have been much more embarrassed that Frank had been pulled so far into my parents’ world and then forced to act against his will. I was beginning to feel dizzy, and it was becoming clear to me that it was much easier to volunteer to do the brave thing, and much harder to actually have to follow through with it.

I could see Dawn sitting in the back, and when she caught my eye, she gave me a wave and a thumbs-up. When it turned out we had almost no food in the house that we could serve, I’d proposed just getting pizza, and my mother had instantly agreed, putting me in charge of it while she tried to get the house in order. I’d called Dawn’s cell, and told her we needed ten pies and assorted salads and breadsticks. Dawn then told me that she had just finished her shift, but if I called the actual restaurant and paid with a card, she could bring the order to me and then go home. When she’d arrived, she’d helped me set up the food, and when she’d found out what was about to happen, had asked if she could stay, and had ended up helping my mother do the last-minute cleaning.

The crowd suddenly seemed much bigger than it had in previous years. And why had I never considered how disconcerting it was to have a room full of people staring at you? I rolled my script in my hands. I was hanging on to it for dear life, even though I really didn’t need it.
Bug Juice
had been such
a part of our lives for so long that I had committed most of it to memory years ago, after seeing it performed over and over again.

“Two minutes,” Beckett said, sticking his head into the dining room and then skating away again. He was in charge of reading the stage directions and holding the book. Even though all of us would have scripts in our hands, I’d been to a number of Living Room Theaters where people lost their place and then fumbled through their script for what felt like hours, trying to find their line.

“We should probably go stand with the rest of the cast,” I said. The other main players were clustered in the kitchen, waiting for the play to start. The cast was big enough that people with one or two lines were just sitting in the audience and sharing scripts, and would make their way to the “stage” when it was time for their scenes. But the main actors—who included my mom’s department secretary, the Elizabethan scholar in the English department, the assistant costume designer, three of the set guys, and a few of my father’s grad students—had a green room for the night. Frank nodded but still looked nervous, and I suddenly realized that Frank Porter—who’d gotten up in front of the whole school, who was always making speeches, who seemed more together than anyone I knew—was nervous about performing a makeshift play in my TV room. It looked like he was much more nervous than I was—which for some reason made me feel brave.

“You’re going to do great,” I assured him.

Frank looked over at me, and gave me a half smile. “Thanks,” he said quietly. I smiled back just as Beckett stuck his head into the kitchen again.

“Places!” he yelled.

An hour and a half later, the play was starting to wind down, and no major disasters had occurred. My first few lines had been rushed, the script shaking in my hand and my voice high and trembly.  And it was a good thing I had the lines memorized—it didn’t hurt that eleven-year-old me had pretty much written them—because in my first scene, my vision was too blurred and my script was vibrating too much for me to have read anything on the page anyway. But as the play continued, I could start to remember what it felt like to breathe normally again. And it wasn’t like I was acting with Broadway’s best, either—the Elizabethan scholar playing Camp Director Arnold said most of her lines with her back to the audience, and the grad student who played Tucker had lost his place four times in his first scene, which was impressive considering he’d only had three lines.

To my relief, Frank, as Duncan, had more than held his own. I wasn’t sure I was going to encourage him to change direction and start auditioning for all the school plays, but he spoke his lines clearly, followed along with the script, and faced the right way. He also revealed an innate sense of comic timing I’d never guessed he had. So I was feeling like the evening hadn’t been a total disaster, and had actually gone okay, as
Frank and I took the stage together for the final scene.

Duncan and Cecily had been on quite the whirlwind together, as they went from enemies to friends, until Cecily became convinced Duncan was only pretending to be her friend after it appeared he had turned against her during her court-martial after the color war. But it was just a misunderstanding, and in the final scene, on the last day of camp, the smoldering embers of what remained of Camp Greenleaf behind them, they finally cleared things up.

“I’m sorry,” Frank-as-Duncan said to me.

“He crosses to her, stage right,” Beckett intoned from his perch on the kitchen stool just offstage. He had been the true star of the night, always staying on top, reading the stage directions and jumping in with assistance when people lost their place.

“You should have told me what was happening,” I said, as Cecily.

“I know,” Frank said, glancing up at me and then looking down at his script again.

“I didn’t think I could trust you,” I said.

“But you can,” Frank said. “I’m here.”

“He takes her hand,” Beckett read out from the stage directions. Both Frank and I looked over at him, but neither one of us moved. “He takes her hand,” Beckett repeated, more loudly this time, and Frank glanced at me, then took a step closer.

I swallowed hard and could feel my heart start to pound. I
tried to tell myself that it was just acting. It wasn’t a big deal.  And it certainly didn’t mean anything. I transferred my script into my left hand and met Frank’s eye. He gave me a small, embarrassed smile, then reached out toward me. I met him halfway, our fingers awkwardly colliding until we got our palms lined up and he threaded his fingers through mine. His hand was cool, and I was suddenly aware how nicely our hands fit together, our fingers overlapping easily.

My heart was beating hard, and I could feel the blood pulsing in the tips of my fingers. How had this even happened? How was Frank Porter holding my hand?

“Cecily?” Beckett prompted, and I was jerked back to reality as I tried to turn to the last page of my script with only one hand.

“Sorry,” I muttered, and there was low, polite laughter from the audience. I glanced up long enough to see my parents standing in the back, my dad’s arms around my mom, both of them looking more present, and more relaxed, than I’d seen them in a while. I was just relieved that neither one of them seemed furious I had ruined their masterpiece. I flipped to the last page of the script, and there it was, in black and white, two lines away—
They kiss.

I must have totally blocked out that this would be happening. I could feel my pulse start to race, and I worried my palm, still pressed against Frank’s, was going to start to get sweaty very soon.

“Um,” I said, struggling to find my place in the script. “And you’ll always be here?” I asked him.

Now, just a bit too late, I remembered perfectly what came next. Duncan had the line that was always the last laugh of the play, about how he’d be there at least until his mom came to pick him up and take him back to Weehawken. And then Duncan and Cecily kissed while the rest of the campers filed onstage and sang the Camp Greenleaf song.

I didn’t want Frank to feel like he had to kiss me, like he had clearly felt compelled to take my hand. I couldn’t even imagine having to kiss Frank Porter, especially in front of all these people, and my parents and younger brother.  Also, he had a girlfriend. And while real actors kissed other people all the time, this was different. This was—

“. . . back to Weehawken,” Frank said, finishing the line I hadn’t heard him start, and there was laughter from the audience and I knew what was coming. I glanced, panicked, at my brother.

“They kiss,” Beckett read, and I could practically feel Frank’s shock and the expectant pause in the audience.

Frank and I looked at each other. We were still holding hands, but he still seemed impossibly far away from me, and I couldn’t even imagine crossing that gulf to kiss him. Mostly because I couldn’t even imagine kissing him. It was one thing to get to know him, and go running with him, but—

Keeping his eyes on me, Frank took a tiny step closer, and
it was like my brain was wiped clear of thoughts. It was like the world had started moving in slow motion as he moved a little closer to me still, and then started to tilt his head to the side.

“Lights down!” Beckett yelled, jerking me back to reality, and I blinked, trying to catch up with everything that had just happened—or almost happened. “Curtain!”

Everyone started clapping, and the rest of the cast filed out and we all joined hands—Frank and I hadn’t stopped holding hands since Beckett told us to, I realized—and took a bow, and then people started getting up and putting the chairs away and drifting back into the kitchen to see if there was any food left.

Frank and I looked at each other, and after just a moment like that, we dropped hands. He stuck his hands in his shorts pockets and I grabbed the script with both of mine, twisting it into a tight roll, trying not to think about how cold my hand now felt.

“Hey!” Dawn said, coming up to us and giving me a smile. “That was really great.”

“Thanks,” I said, glancing at Frank, wondering what he was thinking about what had almost happened, but he was frowning down at his phone.

“Nice work, you two,” my mother said with a smile as she passed me, giving me a quick hug as she went. I caught my dad’s eye from across the room and he gave me a very dorky thumbs-up.

“Thanks,” Frank said, glancing up from his phone for a
moment before typing a response into it, then looking up at me, his brow furrowed. “Hey,” he said. “So here’s the thing.” He seemed to notice Dawn for the first time, and turned to her, holding out his hand in a manner that practically telegraphed
I’m the student body president.
“Sorry,” he said, “I’m Frank Porter.”

“Dawn Finley,” she said as they shook. “You did a really good job.”

“Well,” Frank said, and he shot me a small smile. “I’m sure that was just due to my costar.”

“What’s the thing?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

Frank looked back down at his phone and said, a little doubtfully, “So apparently Collins is at my house. He wants me to come and hang out, and told me you had to come too.” He looked up and shook his head. “Remind me to take his key away.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering why Collins had invited me specifically. But I had been seeing him more this summer than I ever would have predicted, so maybe he was just being nice, and inviting me to their hangout.

“And you’re welcome to come too,” Frank said to Dawn. “Unless you have other plans.”

“Nope,” said Dawn, looking thrilled by this invitation. “Sounds fun. You know, whatever it is.”

“Emily?” Frank asked.

I looked around at the chaos that was still reigning in my house, all the people standing around and eating cold breadsticks.
I knew well how Living Room Theater nights ended up—the adults hanging out for far too long, exchanging department gossip for what always felt like hours. I had a feeling the house would be filled with people for a while, and if I did stay, I would undoubtedly be roped into cleaning up. “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”