Understudy (2 page)

Mr. Harrison is asleep in his chair when I walk into wood shop. The heavy metal door slams shut behind me, making him jump. His fist rears back instinctively like he’s about to punch someone. When he sees me, his fist lowers and clutches his chest. “Wren, you almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry about that.” I drop my backpack into one of the cubby holes at the back of the warehouse. I grab a pair of safety glasses out of the bucket and wipe them clean with the bottom of my shirt. Mr. Harrison is the oldest and coolest teacher at Lawson High. He’s part war hero and part adorable grandfather. He’s the only teacher who can swear like a sailor in class and not get in trouble. Pretty much nothing is off limits in his class except talking about the war. One time this idiot on the football team asked Mr. Harrison if he had ever killed anyone. His face went blank for the longest time, and some people say he had a bit of drool drooping out of his mouth by the time he finally snapped out of it. Then he called the student a pansy ass and sent him to detention.

“I did half of the work for ya,” he says, leading me to the back of the warehouse. “But the other half is up to you.”

I groan. “Hands-on experience is so over rated.” He shakes his head at my cheesy smile and takes the canister of chewing tobacco out of his back pocket.

I took woodshop freshman year, on accident. My first two choices for elective classes filled up before I remembered to sign up and so as a last resort, I was forced to choose between woodshop or dance. Freshman year was a weird time for me. I tried being all punk rock and dyed the tips of my hair hot pink. Dance class
so
wasn’t an option back then.

But woodshop ended up being a million times better than dance. It was the last class of the day and Mr. Harrison always let us out fifteen minutes before the bell rang. Not surprisingly, I was the only girl in the class and ended up meeting my first two serious boyfriends there. (Not at the same time, though.)

Mr. Harrison helped me get through my breakup with that first guy after he left me for Margot, by teaching me how to use a rotary saw and make fleur-de-lis necklace holders. Since then, I’ve become addicted to the art of woodworking, particularly when it comes to fixing up our house. All week I’ve been working on a three piece crown molding for my bedroom renovation. When it’s done, I’m hoping it looks like a relaxing French boudoirs. Oh, and Margot didn’t actually date him, thank God. She’s a better best friend than that.

School has been out for thirty minutes so I’m surprised to find a student in the back of the warehouse using the skill saw. I don’t recognize him from behind, but from what I can see of his backside, he’s too hot for Lawson High. Maybe he’s a movie star researching his next film role. He’s wearing jeans a tight fitting black shirt. His brown hair touches his shoulders and is as silky smooth as mine is after an hour of flat-ironing it to death. Ugh, why do guys always get the best hair?

Mr. Harrison gives an old man arthritic grunt as he settles onto his work stool. He slides the longest piece of molding across the workshop table toward me. “Cut this on the chalk line.”

I slide open my tape measure, but he stops me. “Use the square. Come on girl, I taught you better than that.” Of course he did. The normal me would have known to grab the square to mark a perfect line, but right now I can’t think over the thudding of my heart in my chest. How is it that I’m more nervous standing across the room from a guy who hasn’t even noticed that I exist, than I was moments ago while auditioning for the biggest role in the school play?

I head over to the pegboard wall with all the tools on it. The square, which actually looks like a triangle, should be on the lower left corner but it’s not. I check the workspaces around me but still can’t find it. I’m about to tell Mr. Harrison that someone stole his tools again when I see it.

It’s shoved in the back pocket of the hottest ass I’ve ever seen. I make my way over to the possible movie star, miraculously not dropping dead from cardiac arrest. A sheepish grin falls over my face. “Can I have that square?”

Hot Boy turns around, a carpenter’s pencil sticking out of his mouth. He takes the square from his pocket and hands it to me. “Thanks,” I say. He glances over at my project and then back at me, and I’m pretty sure his eyes graze over my entire body in a split second, but it feels like it takes an hour.

“Crown molding?” He says it like he’s confused. Like we’re in a shoe factory instead of wood shop.

I give an awkward shrug. “I want my room to look like a French boudoir.”

He nods and this smirk spreads across his lips as he looks at the molding and then back at me, as if suddenly understanding my entire personality.

There’s something in his smile that makes me want to rip off my shirt and throw myself into his arms, declaring my soul as his love slave, like some lunatic in an Axe body wash commercial. He holds out his hand. “I’m Derek.”

A tiny voice in the back of my subconscious starts squealing,
“I get to touch his hand! I get to touch his hand!”
and I try not to burst into giggles as I reach out and place my hand into his. “I’m Wren.”

“We’ll be using the miter saw,” Mr. Harrison says, jarring me back to reality. Derek raises an eyebrow and nods to the right, signaling that I had better get back to work. I take a place next to Mr. Harrison at the work bench. Taped to it is a drawing of my L-shaped bedroom, with most of the wall lines checked off. “You only have three pieces to cut, and then I’ll give you some tips for installation.”

“Cool,” I say, tearing my eyes away from Derek, who is still smiling at me by the way. I take the piece of molding in front of us and line it up under the saw. “This is an eighty degree corner,” Mr. Harrison says, pointing to my closet on the sketched floor plan of my bedroom. “So what are you going to set the miter saw to?”

“Eighty,” I say, reaching for the dial.

“Forty,” Derek says.

Mr. Harrison claps his hands together. “Damn kid’s only been in my class for one day and he’s already retained more than you have in three years, kiddo.”

My room smells like sawdust. I fall back on my bed, letting the hammer crash on the floor and admire my handiwork. It’s two in the morning and my room officially has crown molding. I’ll have to paint it tomorrow because every muscle in my arm is too tired to do anything else for the next twelve hours.

Still high from the rush of carpentry, I won’t be able to fall asleep any time soon. My TV is tuned to my favorite reality show about triplet heiresses who live in New York City, but I’m not paying attention to it. Two major things are on my mind, both of them equally important and drastically different. One—Aunt Barlow might not give me the lead role, and two—Derek.

I’m trying not to sweat the lead role thing. Sure, she sounded convinced that I was too…
voluptuous
… for the role of Gretchen, but that’s just my aunt’s personality. She once gave me a sob story about how she and my mom spent all morning on black Friday trying to secure me the toy of the year for Christmas but couldn’t find it. Then on Christmas day, I had two of them under the tree. She likes screwing with me.

I’ll get the part.

It’s really unusual for a guy to occupy so much of my brain space after just one day of knowing him. I take pride in my budding self-respect and the fact that I don’t turn into a sappy girly girl who bats my eyes at every cute guy who looks my way. So why is this new guy, with his silky brown hair and his light blue eyes, and—ugh, those muscles—popping into my imagination every three seconds?

He’s obviously a new student, which means he hasn’t been squeezed into a clique yet. He wasn’t dressed like a jock, which is a good thing because jocks never like me. But he also wasn’t dressed like an artist or a skateboarder, the two types of guys who are
always
attracted to me.

It’s amazing how a pair of dark wash boot cut jeans, Converse and a plain black T-shirt can say a million things about a guy. His personality, style and hygiene. Everything, but what he thinks about me.

The next morning I eat my Honey Nut Cheerios like there’s not a huge elephant in the room. Mom’s making Dad’s lunch since he works on weekends now at the fire station. Aunt Barlow sits across from me at the kitchen table, spreading strawberry jam on her toast. She hasn’t said a word about the auditions and neither have I.

Aunt Barlow lives in the apartment above our garage and it doesn’t have that great of a kitchen so she’s always over here for meals. She’s sitting in the same chair she sat in while she wrote the script for LOVE & SUICIDE last summer. Did she think of me at all when she wrote the lead character? She’s right though, I didn’t care about her play until a few weeks ago. I’ve tried to stay far away from acting. Mom put me two commercials when I was a toddler, but as soon as I was old enough to throw a fit over something I didn’t want to do, the acting gigs dried up. I don’t know why Mom thought that I’d want to act anyway, when she’s spent my entire seventeen years complaining that acting supposedly ruined her life. She was in a sitcom in the early nineties that lasted three seasons before being cut. Mom and Dad moved back to Texas shortly before I was born and Mom never acted again.

She always says acting ruined her life, but I think what she wants to say is that I ruined it.

I decide to bring up the auditions in a passive aggressive way. “Hey Mom, I auditioned for Aunt Barlow’s play yesterday.”

Mom slices a sandwich in half and slides it into a reusable fabric wrap. “Oh yeah?” she says. “I thought you didn’t want to be an actress.”

Aunt Barlow glances up at me for half a nano second. I seize my opportunity. “I don’t want to be in movies, no. But I’d hate to miss out on being in a school play. It’s something everyone should do once, you know?”

Mom nods, although I know she doesn’t agree. She puts Dad’s lunch kit on the counter by the back door. “I’m sure you’ll be great,” she says. “Let’s hope Sophie finds a part for you.”

“No worries,” my aunt says as she fills in an answer on the newspaper’s crossword puzzle. “Wren has a part.”

I raise my eyebrows. She continues, “An important part.”

My whole body relaxes. Mom smiles and nods to herself. I knew I had nothing to worry about. Monday at school will be like that one Christmas morning all over again.

Aunt Barlow announces to our first period class that the cast list will be posted on the wall outside of her classroom by the end of the school day. I go out of my way after each class in hopes that I’ll find the list up on the wall. But of course, in true dramatic fashion, she makes us wait until after last period.

My last class is on the total opposite side of the school, across the parking lot in one of those portable buildings because our small school is growing rapidly and the district hasn’t yet received funding to build another wing onto the school.

The whole school is empty by the time I get to room 314 except for a handful of hopefuls who auditioned last Friday. Margot appears out of nowhere and grabs my elbow with her slender but shockingly strong fingers. “Your aunt is such a jerk,” she whispers into my ear. Her breath smells like the mojito gum she chews on a regular basis. I stop short of the list, not that I can see it right now anyway since so many students are in front of it, and turn to her.