The S-Word (4 page)

So I think, but Shelby’s in rare form today, smoking an imaginary cigarette and lounging on the piano like she’s preparing for her solo. Great, multipaneled dividers fan out from the piano like wings. The entire room looks like a set tailored to flatter her: mahogany walls draped in velvet, antique chandeliers dangling from the ceiling.

The kind of beauty that has to be donated or it wouldn’t exist.

Shelby greets me with a husky “Hello, sugar. What’s your poison?”

“Reality,” I quip, and climb onto the piano beside her.

“That’s what they all say.” Shelby bats her pretty brown eyes.

So she wants to play Hide Behind the Character. So what? Drama class is a veritable free-for-all at the end of the year and I’ve got nothing but time.

She can play the dame. I’ll play the old-timey detective.

Whatever gets the canary to sing.

“Nice to see ya, sweet cheeks,” I say, tipping an imaginary hat.

Shelby’s smile spreads across her face. She’s wearing a purple 1950s-style cocktail dress. The hem dances just past her knees, all propriety. But her attitude says floor-length, slit-up-the-thigh red satin.

“What can I do for ya, daddy-o?” she asks.

“Got some questions for ya.”

She leans back on her elbow. “Ask away.” She’s got that dark hair twisted into finger waves. She must get up at five in the morning to perfect this look.

I launch right into my attack. “How did you feel when one Elizabeth Hart clinched the role that many believed to be yours?”

Shelby’s eyelids flutter. For a second, I think she’s considering dropping the act. Given such a serious topic, she has one of two choices: forgo creativity and face up to the truth, or hide from the ugly facts.

Shelby’s an actor. So she hides.

“Casting is not a democratic process,” she says in that manufactured sultry voice. “I did my best.”

“Gonna give me a song and dance, eh?” I slide off the piano and begin that classic detective circling bit. It’s difficult, with these dividers in the way. But I do my best, weaving in and out of view, giving her moments to hide, and to be seen. “You’ve been the lead in every production since you first set foot in this school. Having that role snatched from you must have been infuriating.”

Shelby huffs, entirely unfazed. “Titania is hardly the heftiest role in the play.”

“Fair enough. But she is the most regal.”

“Oh, sugar, what do you know about it? Elizabeth won the role
fair and square.” Her cheek twitches. “She even added her own flair to it, if you recall.”

“I heard something about it.”

“And I was nothing short of appreciative of Lizzie’s talents. An actress is always diplomatic.”

“Hmmm. Not according to Lizzie.”

She touches her chest. “Excuse me?” She’s slipping into southern belle, but I don’t spoil her game. “She said something about me?”

“As if you didn’t know.” I shove the bottom corner of Lizzie’s page in her face, the one that mentions Shelby by name.

An eyebrow raises. A hint of the real Shelby slipping out before poise is recovered, quickly, and it disappears. “And what, pray tell, is the relevance of my participation in the Sisterhood?”

I don’t have an answer for that. So I say, “It’s been a very influential institution.”

Shelby, baby, I know of your penchant for flattery.

She touches her cheek, feigning a blush. “We did convince the Players to put on
A Raisin in the Sun
.”

“I loved your hair in that.”

She touches her perfectly arranged coif—quite a departure from the Afro she sported in that play. “
Noir est belle,
” she agrees.

“Indeed.”

Shelby frowns, and the façade slips away. “You sounded just like her then.” After a moment, she adds, “Lizzie.”

“I knew what you meant.”

“Indeed.”

A shiver, slow starting, shimmies up my spine. Lizzie loved to talk high society, but only as a means of playing pretend.

I shake the icicles off my back. “So . . .”

“So,” Shelby mimics, a perfect imitation of me. She could play any one of us if she tried.

I gesture to the page. “What did you do?”

“Who says I did anything?” She snatches the page from my hand. My blood boils as she eyeballs Lizzie’s secrets, but I wait for her to finish before taking the entry back. “She mentions
my name
and my political prowess. Two months before prom night, when her troubles began. So I don’t see the connection—”

“Don’t you?” I fold the page in half. “Opening night was a lot closer to prom. And Lizzie pinned a lot of hope on that performance . . .”

I don’t have to say the rest. We both know how this story plays out. Lizzie is giddy. Lizzie is getting respect. Then, come opening night,
Shelby
emerges from the recesses of the stage to play the role of Titania.

And I’m supposed to blame coincidence?

Please.

“ ‘Tonight, the role of Titania will be played by Shelby McQueen,’ ” I recite, quoting the programs. “But it wasn’t just opening night, was it?”

She sucks in a breath.

“So here’s the thing.” I slide the page into my pocket. “Whoever’s passing these around thinks you’re important. And until I know why, I have no choice but to imagine the worst of you. Trust me when I say my imagination is an ugly place these days.”

Shelby holds my gaze for several long seconds. Finally she sighs, dropping the act. “Fine. But I have to show you.” She pushes off the piano, leading me past an utterly distracted Madame Swarsky. “We’re going to the costume room,” she calls as our teacher flings scarves about, dressing a fellow actor for a role as a gypsy.

The Drama annex is separate from the main part of the school, so we have to cut across campus to get to the costume room. The closest door is only a few yards away but Shelby takes the long way
to avoid passing under the clock tower. I raise my eyebrows at her decision but secretly I’m thankful.

Anytime I pass it, I feel like it’s going to fall on me.

When we reach the costume room Shelby sweeps inside, banging the door against a gangly creature measuring the hem of some sparkly pants.

“Damn, Shel,” says Jesse Martinez, enigmatic transfer student and professional chameleon—the only boy in our class who can pull off a rock ’n’ roll tee and ripped jeans on Monday and a wasp-waist dress on Friday. In our production of
Midsummer
he played Puck. He might even be a better actor than Shelby, but he never gets cast as the romantic lead. As with-it as Madame Swarsky may be, she knows boys who wear skirts make the upper crust nervous. Last thing she wants is to piss off the straight-laced alums who keep the Drama program alive.

“Ladies changing,” Shelby sings.

“Scary,” Jesse shrieks, pulling his knit hat over his eyes. His black hair pokes out beneath it, curling on the ends.

Shelby and I laugh as he skitters to the door. “Boy wears more dresses than either of us,” she says when he’s gone.

“Business, business,” I remind. “Show me.”

Shelby blushes and turns away.

“Why, Miss Shelby McQueen. Is that embarrassment I see?”

She screws up her face, pushing past rows of dresses to get to the back. I just hang out, touching satin and lace, leather and velvet, feeling like I’m traveling backward through history. And I don’t mean the America-was-ripe-for-the-picking shit we get in History class. I mean elaborate medieval and Renaissance gowns hanging from the ceiling, brushing our heads, stacks of bell-bottoms and peasant tops filling the built-in shelves, and row upon row of retro dresses crowding the floor racks. Swarsky is a purist when it comes to costumes—“Anything that can be authentic
should be authentic”—so while the damsel-in-distress–type gowns are obviously fakes, most of the stuff from the last century is true vintage.

Shelby emerges from the abyss clutching some long, mangled thing. A gown, I think, once adorned with beads and leaves. Now ripped all the way down the back, dangling loose threads.

Yeah, I recognize it.

“Isn’t that—”

“Not exactly,” she says.

I step closer, and Shelby unfolds the green and purple mass of strings. A disconnected sleeve slips to the ground. Beads follow in its wake, too tiny and too many to count.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Positive.” Shelby’s face is a mask, and I can tell she’s hiding something beneath it.

“It looks like the dress you wore in
Midsummer
. The one Lizzie was supposed to wear.”

“It
is
the one she was supposed to wear,” Shelby says. “I should know. I chose it.”

Not surprising. Shelby’s been advising Madame Swarsky since she was fourteen.

Still, something about her story rings false. “Why did you pick out a costume for a part you didn’t get?”

Shelby’s dark eyes flash. “I picked it out before the cast list was posted. I picked it out for
me
.”

“Ah. There it is.”

She runs her fingers over the gown, caressing a torn leaf. “When Lizzie got cast, I was . . .”

“Spiteful?” I suggest, unable to stop myself. “Enraged?”

“Disappointed. I’ve stood by Madame Swarsky’s side for years. I’ve consulted on the costumes, the music, everything. Under my leadership, I’ve transformed our pathetic Drama Department into
a thriving success. We’re actually making money on our productions—do you know how many years it’s been since that’s happened?”

“Twenty-three?” I guess.

Shelby doesn’t laugh. “I took a program that was failing miserably and I gave it new life. And Swarsky repays me by ripping away my rightful part and giving it to a, a . . .”

“Slut?” I bait.

“A
nobody.
”

“Lizzie had talent.”

“Lizzie could sing,” she says flippantly. “But she couldn’t act as well as me and you know that. I’m not saying it to be rude, Angie. It’s the truth.”

“Maybe they wanted some fresh blood.”

“They had plenty of parts for new talent!”

“She does look like a fairy.”

Did,
I remind myself.

“But not a Fairy Queen,” Shelby says.

I have to stop myself from glaring. “Why didn’t you just ask Swarsky what her reasons were?”

“And appear undiplomatic?”

The laughter falls from my mouth. Her words are too ridiculous. “You destroyed her dress!” I yank the gown from her hands. It rips further in my carelessness. “It’s kind of sad, really. This was the best you could come up with?”

Her face is devoid of amusement. “That dress was handmade by Swarsky’s great-grandmother. Worn in an actual Broadway performance of
Midsummer
. It was worth a fortune.” She touches the dress. “Four thousand hand-sewn beads. You can still find them rolling around on the floor if you look.”

“Okay, this is getting less funny.” I hand the dress back to her. It’s making my hands feel dirty. “Does Swarsky know?”

“Do I look expelled to you? I convinced her it was probably some ill-tempered freshman. I said I’d look into it.”

“How philanthropic.”

“Look.” She hangs the dress back on a hanger. Robbed of its structural integrity, it keeps trying to slip to the ground. “I made a mistake and I paid for it. Literally.” Reaching to a nearby rack, she pulls out another dress—a modern-day version of the vintage original. “When Lizzie heard what happened to the dress she was devastated. Not for herself.” She huffs. “For Swarsky. She agreed to sew a new dress.”

“For money? That doesn’t sound like Lizzie.”

“For free. I paid for the fabric.”

“Poor baby.”

“It was expensive!”

“I’m sure it was.”

“So Lizzie got her dress and the glory of re-creating it. And the play didn’t suffer for it.”

“And Swarsky lost a priceless heirloom,” I point out.

“She’d already donated it to the school.”

“And Lizzie never even got to wear it.”

Shelby crosses her arms over her chest. “She got to wear it during dress rehearsal.”

“I’m utterly disgusted. Are we done here?”

“That’s up to you, Detective.”

“If I’m the detective, then you’re my suspect, and you’re not making a very good case for yourself.”

“I’m not trying to make a case for myself!” She gestures to the dress. “You think I’d be showing this to you if I were guilty?”

I think it’s the
only
time you’d be showing it to me.

But to Shelby I say, “So you
didn’t
force Lizzie out of the play?”

She waves a hand dismissively. “The girl got cold feet. I’m sorry it’s not more scandalous than that.”

Oh, sure, I’m the drama junkie here.

“And you’re not floating the diary entries?”

She cocks her head. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“Guilty conscience?” I suggest. “An overwhelming desire to get caught? You already confessed to something pretty massive—you’re the actress, you tell me the motivation.”

Shelby doesn’t flinch. She’s so well versed in authority, she doesn’t have to push me around to show me who’s boss. “I have no reason to feel guilty. I righted my wrong. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .” She brushes past me, heading for the door.

But I’ve got one more question to ask. “Did you write SUICIDE SLUT on the senior lockers?”

Shelby freezes. For one, brief moment, I think I’ve ruffled her feathers. But when she turns, she doesn’t look affronted. She looks perplexed. “I saw it in the auditorium.”

“Wonderful.”

“And no,” she adds before I can launch into a tirade about the lacking moral integrity of Kids Today. “I did not write SUICIDE SLUT on the lockers. Hell, I didn’t even write regular-ass SLUT.” She laughs. “Nice world we live in where SLUT acquires categories of its own.”

“It
is
a category of its own.”

“It’s a tool,” she says simply. “To dehumanize people—like the N-word or any other derogatory name. If a girl is a slut, you don’t have to treat her like a human being. But you already know this.”

I nod, though I’m not sure if she’s implying I’ve been a victim of the S-word myself, or if I should understand because of what happened to Lizzie. Shelby’s a smart cookie. Too smart for the high school crowd. Couple of decades ago, she’d have become a playwright whose views on race and sex would’ve changed the world. This day and age, she’ll probably rise to fame as a social media starlet and end up on some second-rate cable network.