Understudy (11 page)

Derek helps me pick up props after rehearsal. I don’t say a word until I see Margot leave and ensure that the door has closed behind her. Only a couple cast members still linger in the auditorium, all talking to each other or cleaning up trash from food wrappers. We walk to the back of the stage and stack plastic chairs on top of each other. I glance around to make sure no one is eavesdropping. “That was interesting.”

Derek shrugs. “All in a day’s work, I guess.”

“Do you think he’s going to be a problem again?” I ask. Derek’s phone beeps with a new text message but he leaves it in his back pocket as we fold up the fake water fabric and tuck it into a box offstage.

“I don’t know. You better make sure all your lines are memorized just in case.” He snaps his finger and points at me with a smile. He’s joking, but—shit. He has a valid point. I haven’t even bothered memorizing my lines as Understudy. I guess it never occurred to me that Gwen might not be able to act if her boyfriend throws a fit on opening night.

“You look like you’re going to puke,” Derek says as we walk to the edge of the stage. He hops down the four feet distance and holds up and hand to me. I don’t need the help, but I take it because, duh, it’s Derek’s hand.

“I feel like I’m going to puke. I have none of Gwen’s lines memorized.”

He shakes his head in a mocking way of being super disappointed at me. “Wren Barlow… tisk tisk.”

I roll my eyes but feel my cheeks flame at the way he makes fun of me. He is so freaking cute, even when I’m the object of ridicule. The auditorium lighting is dim, so when Derek’s phone beeps with yet another text message, I don’t look at his screen on purpose. I just can’t help but glance over instinctively because the tiny screen is so bright.

It’s a good thing Derek’s attention is on his phone and not at me. Because this time I really do look like I’m going to throw up.

The text on his phone was from someone whose name is saved in his phone as Lexie.

With a heart next to it.

Margot’s next two weeks of dashing off after rehearsal to visit Jordan turns out to be a great thing. It means I get to hang out with Derek after school and not have to make up lies as to why I can’t sit on Margot’s pillowtop mattress and watch reruns of Supernatural with her.

I’m sitting on Derek’s futon which is so far from a pillowtop mattress, I don’t even know how he sleeps on it, but that isn’t the point. The point is that I’m sitting. On. Derek’s. Bed. His mom didn’t even care when he suggested that we go to his room because his dad’s poker friends were making too much noise from the den.

The pink glittery spiral notebook I purchased from the bookstore sits in my lap. It’s half-full, not with poetry like I had originally intended for it, because that’s what you write in a notebook that costs ten bucks, but with notes for the play. My finger fumbles with the sticky note I’d pressed into a blank page during first period.

Derek clears his throat. “So we have a problem with our lead actress.”

“Is she leaving us for America’s Next Top Model?”

“Not quite that bad.”

Derek’s sprawled out on his side of the futon with his head lying across the back so he can gaze at the ceiling. He runs his arms down his knees and fumbles with the rips in his jeans. I watch his fingers as they play with the denim frays; it makes me forget what I was about to say. His head flops to the left and our eyes meet. “What’s the problem?” I ask.

“Her boyfriend has forbidden her from doing the make out scene with Jeremy. Well, not Jeremy but that guy who plays Jeremy. I can’t remember his name.”

“Ricky,” I say.

Derek shoots a finger gun at me. “Yeah, Ricky.”

I pull off the sticky note and start folding it into a paper crane—anything to distract me from staring at Derek. Because when I see him and the little things he does, I go crazy. Like how he runs his tongue along the bottom of his teeth while he’s thinking about something, or the way his biceps bulge in exactly the right places as he tucks his hands behind his head with his elbows in the air. It’s like everything he does is sexy to me. And I can’t think like that, because his sexy mannerisms aren’t for me to enjoy. That girl who texted him—Lexie with a heart—flashes in my mind. She gets to hug him and hold him and laugh at his stupid jokes, not me.

“Unfortunately for Gwen’s boyfriend, I think Ricky is pretty psyched to make out with her.” He shudders. “I don’t know why, the girl looks sticky.”

“Rude personal observations aside,” I say, finishing my paper crane with a bend of its beak, “What are we supposed to do about it?”

“You’re the director. I am but a lowly stagehand.”

“You’re my only ally,” I say. “And you’re better than a stagehand. You’re the Top Stagehand. That’s like being Assistant Director. I need your help.” And it’s truer than he knows. Especially since Margot moved away to Jordan-Land and my aunt refuses to speak a word to me about the play.

“Can I have that?” He points to the pale yellow crane I just finished folding. I hold it back out of his reach. “Only if you help me figure out what to do.”

“Easy,” he says, holding out his hand. “I already have the perfect plan for that.”

I place the paper crane in his palm, keeping my fingers away from his skin. I know from experience that a single touch from Derek will send chills up my arms, and I so don’t need that right now.

“Here’s what we do.” Derek leans forward like he’s a coach telling me a football play. “You dress like Gwen and I’ll dress like Ricky. And right before the make out scene, we’ll switch places with the real Gretchen and Jeremy.” He claps his hands together. “Bam. We make out, and then switch back. Problem solved.”

“Shut up, Derek.” I shove him with my elbow. I take the way his voice said the words
we make out
and save them in my mind to be played over and over again for a later day. “I’m being serious here. We need to alter the script or something so that they just church kiss.”

“Church kiss?”

“Yeah you know. Like a sweet peck on the cheek.”

“So you want to turn the make out scene—the total
climax
of the play—into a churchy peck on the cheek?”

My shoulders fall and my hands slide between my knees as I slump over and stare into my lap. “You’re right. We can’t cut that scene.”

The futon squeaks as Derek slides closer to me. “The play is one month away and that’s years in teenage dating time. Gwen’s asshole boyfriend will probably be long gone by then.”

“We can’t count on that.” I take a deep breath, trying to pull my brain out of the million directions it’s headed, reel it in and force it to follow one thought path: solving the play problem. Not thinking about how Derek just got closer to me, not remembering how he joked that we should make out, not thinking about how I might have forgotten to put deodorant under my left armpit and I can’t lift it up for the rest of the day.

“We need to focus,” I say, both to my brain and to Derek. “Unlike the dilemma with the speakers in the back of the stage, this is a serious problem.” I look over at Derek to make sure he’s listening and notice that not only is he looking directly at me, his arm is now draped across my part of the futon, almost begging me to lean back into it.

“I agree,” he says, his eyes going wide for a second as he looks at me through slits of hair across his forehead. “Have her grab his face and pull him to her all passionately.” Derek reaches his hands out, miming what he’s saying. Our eyes meet, and he takes my face in his hands. “Like this.”

A chill that’s both scalding hot and freezing cold zips down my spine at his touch. His thumbs rest on my cheek as his fingers curl around the sides of my neck. I stay right where I am, afraid to move under his hands because if I do, he might stop touching me. He swallows and it’s loud in the silence. His bottom lip curls under his teeth. “And then they can just smoosh their lips together like they’re kissing. But they won’t have to open their mouths or anything so it’s not really a kiss.”

I raise an eyebrow. “That sounds stupid.” Derek moves his hands away from my face and I have to resist the urge to reach up and touch the skin where his hands had just been.

“It would work.”

I cross my arms. “You are the worst problem solver ever. I’m demoting you back to Lowly Stagehand.”

A smile spreads across his lips and his eyes seem to be watching something insanely entertaining. Something far away that he can see straight through my head. He can’t possibly be looking at me with such an amazed expression on his face. “What?” I ask tentatively.

He tucks his hair behind his ears and leans forward like he’s about to tell me a secret. “Tell me if this is convincing.” His hands are back on my cheeks and before I realize what’s happening, he presses his lips onto mine. No,
smooshes
them onto mine. My hands dig into the sides of my jeans and my heart races. But after three seconds, I realize we aren’t really doing anything. He’s just sitting across from me, his hands on my face and his lips smooshed rather unsexily on my own lips. I guess from far away this would appear to be a passionate kiss, but from my view, it’s nothing more than being really awkward with a guy I barely know. A criminal with a girlfriend, no less.

I can’t help but smile under Derek’s lips. He pulls away from the kiss, but keeps his hands on me and lets his forehead rest on mine. We look at each other but his eyes are so close they form into one Cyclops eye. “What’s so funny?” he whispers.

“That was weird.”

“It kinda turned me on.” He gives me an evil grin. I stick my tongue out like I’m just totally disgusted and it’s the biggest lie I’ve ever told. I reach up and take his wrists in my hands, sliding my hands up his until our fingers line up. My body is alive with energy, all scrambled and unreadable like a static channel on TV. He closes his eyes and I close my eyes and then his lips press into mine for real this time. My breath catches in my throat as I let him tilt my head slightly to the right. His lips are warm. His breath tastes like spearmint.

I slide my arms around his neck and kiss him again, harder and longer this time. Derek’s arms wrap around my back and lower me slowly on the futon. I feel every one of his fingers pressing into my spine and it sends a chill through my legs and out my toes. His hair falls down, covering our faces and making our own little world inside of his room.

And this is when I realize what’s happening. I’m in Derek’s bedroom and we’re making out. It’s such a simple concept but it has a ton of baggage with it. Derek is exactly what I want. He’s always been what I want, ever since that day in woodshop. But he’s some crazy guy with an anger problem and Margot would kill me if she knew I liked him. Plus he has a girlfriend and now he’s cheating on her.
Cheating on her!

I shove him off me. He sits up, runs his fingers through his hair and looks around his room as if seeing it for the first time. “Whoa,” he says finally looking in my direction.

I sit up and fix my hair, pull my shirt back where it belongs. The electric feeling in my stomach is gone, replaced with nausea. Faster than the speed of light. I try to say something, but Derek beats me to it. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have—”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

He points a finger at me. “You participated.”

“You’re horrible, you know that?”

“I hardly think kissing a beautiful girl makes me horrible.”

I stand up, the futon squeaking in protest. “You have a girlfriend, and that’s what makes you horrible. God, Derek.” I shudder. “Now I feel dirty.”

He lifts an eyebrow. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Then who is Lexie less-than-three?”

Immediately he knows who I’m talking about, I can see it in his eyes. But instead of getting defensive, his face falls. “She’s a… close friend.” He scratches the back of his neck. “We can’t really hang out any more.”

“Was she your girlfriend?”

He shakes his head slowly. “No.”

“But you wanted her to be.”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what is it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

I grab my purse from his desk and shove my notebook inside it. It doesn’t fit that well but I don’t care if it gets bent right now. “That’s just a nice way of saying yes.”

He grabs my arm. “No, it’s not. It’s the truth. I’ve never liked her that way.”

“No guy is just friends with a girl who has a heart in her name.”

“Right,” he says, dropping my arm. “Just don’t believe me and think whatever the hell you want. I’m sure that will work out for you in the long run.”

My teeth grind together as I stand, fists clenched so hard at my side that my fingers hurt. I don’t know what to say, but I refuse to let him have the last word. I grab my bag and zip it closed.

“I don’t even like you anyway,” I snap, the words escaping my mouth before I realize how out of place they are. Derek’s hard expression doesn’t change and I leave his room with no intention of ever going back.