Understudy (5 page)

A lump forms in my throat. “Yeah, okay.” I rush to my next class, making a mental note to track down Greg and the others at lunch and ask them to stay after school.

Margot saves me a seat at our regular lunch table. I find Greg sitting with the cheerleaders and I choke. I don’t have the self-esteem to go up to him while he’s surrounded by beautiful, charismatic girls who flirt with him to get help on their homework.

The only other stagehand is absent today. And I probably wouldn’t have asked him anyhow, because he breathes loudly and always stares down my shirt. I return to our lunch table, defeated.

“It’s funny,” Margot says, dipping her French fry into a ketchup and mustard mix. “I auditioned for the lead role and you didn’t, and yet here you are working harder than I am.”

“How is that funny?” I pop the tab on my Diet Coke and it bends my fingernail backwards. Gasping in pain, I shove it in my mouth and bite down hard, trying not to think about how this is probably a sign from life that today is only going to get worse.

Margot snickers at my misfortune. “Not funny
haha
, just you know. Funny.”

“Right.” I shove the soda can aside, no longer wanting to drink it. “It looks like I’ll be stuck working on sets with Derek tonight.”

Margot’s mouth falls open. “Alone?”

“Yep.”

She grabs her purse off the floor and digs around in it, retrieving a hot pink keychain with a small can of mace. “Keep this on you, in case he tries anything.”

“He’s not going to murder me.”

While she’s in her purse, she grabs her lip gloss and reapplies it. “And if he does, I’m going to give a great ‘I told you so’ speech at your funeral.”

Derek sits at a workbench flipping through a fresh copy of LOVE & SUICIDE. An empty bag of skittles sways in the wind from the large fan across the room and threatens to become litter on the floor. Two piles of Skittles sit on the table: a big pile of all the colors and a smaller one with just green and yellow. I toss my bag on the floor and sit on the stool next to him.

“So I guess we’ll be working together.” Though I tried to say that friendly and upbeat, it came out a little gloomy and morose. Derek doesn’t seem to notice.

“Good thing I know my way around the miter saw,” he snorts. He scoops up a handful of Skittles, drops the green and yellow ones in the small pile and puts the rest in his mouth.

“Why are you doing that?” I ask.

“I don’t like those colors.”

I pick up a green one and eat it. “You’re kidding. Green and yellow are the best flavors.”

He shoves his script out of the way and looks up at me. He smiles and it melts away all the nervousness I’ve been harboring. “You’re insane.”

I eat another one to prove how delicious they are. “Plus green and yellow are the school colors.”

“School spirit is for chumps.”

“You’ve clearly never been to one of Lawson’s famous pep rallies.” Right as I say it, I feel like I’m punched in the gut with my own stupidity. Of course he’s never been to a pep rally—he spent the last five months in juvi. I wonder if he knows that I know. I mean, he has to, right? The whole school talks about him. My face burns. I grab my notebook and flip through it, hoping he doesn’t see how red my cheeks are.

The silence probably lasts a few seconds, but it feels like an eternity. Derek rests his head on his left hand and watches me as I flip through pages of the detailed notes Greg had made in my notebook. “Um,” I start, and my voice comes out all croaky. I clear my throat, and without looking at him I say, “Do you want to read through the notes I made earlier?”

“We’ll switch notes,” he says, taking my notebook and giving me his. “I was hella bored in calculus today, so I wrote down some ideas.”

Like Greg, Derek had broken the script into scenes and acts, and listed ideas for how each set should be designed. His ideas are a million times better than Greg’s.

“You’re right. I haven’t been to a Lawson pep rally.” Derek’s voice breaks the now comfortable silence a few minutes later, and thrusts us back into an awkward conversation. I look up from his notes. Should I acknowledge him? Play dumb? Make a joke?

“You didn’t miss much,” I say, when it’s obvious he wants a reply by how he won’t stop staring at me. I’m suddenly very aware of the fact that Mr. Harrison is not in his classroom today. How did Derek even get in here without the key?

Now it’s Derek’s time to clear his throat. “I was in juvi.”

My heart rate speeds up to ten thousand beats per minute. The spandex-wearing guy on my abs DVD would be proud. “Oh?” I say, taking the playing dumb route.

“Yes. And it sucked. Everyone in there is incredibly stupid.” He takes my pen and crosses out something in my notebook. “But I’m not a bad guy, and you don’t have to get all tense around me, you know.”

My skin pigmentation morphs into a permanent shade of crimson. My first thought is to deny it, say I have no idea what he’s talking about. But he’s right, I am tense around him. I am both captivated with how insanely gorgeous he is anytime he’s doing
anything
, and also terrified of him going off on some Hulk-like rampage and kicking my ass.

“Sorry,” I blurt out, wondering what I’m apologizing for. It just seems like the thing to say when someone calls you out on being scared of them.

“Want to start over?” Derek asks, his head tilted in exactly the right way that makes him look like a vintage Vogue model. Do psychos say things like this right before they murder someone? He slides the green and yellow Skittle pile in my direction as a peace offering.

How can a girl say no to green and yellow Skittles? And what’s the harm in being nice to the guy? I’m sure he didn’t beat up that teacher without a good reason. So I tell him, “Yes, let’s start over.”

He drops a handful of Skittles in his mouth. “It smells like a dumpster in here. Want to take this meeting to my house?”

I don’t know what I’m expecting when I walk into Derek’s normal-looking middle class brick home to meet his parents. Two deranged washouts, passed out on the floor with heroin needles sticking out of their arms? Okay, maybe not that bad, but what do the parents of a juvenile delinquent look like?

“I’m sure my mom will want to meet you,” Derek says, pushing open the screen door and motioning for me to go first. I duck under his arm. “So let’s get that nightmare out of the way, yes?”

The house is surprisingly normal and devoid of any noticeable drug paraphernalia. Also it smells like cinnamon. A stack of Latin Dance DVDs rests on the coffee table, next to a coffee mug that says TRUST ME, I’M AN ENGINEER.

“Mom, I’m home,” Derek calls out, tossing his backpack on the couch.

The sound of high heels clicking across a tile floor gets closer. “What do you want for dinner? I was thinking pizza because I’m sure as shit not going to cook tonight after painting all day.”

“Pizza is cool.” Derek steps out of the way, revealing me behind him.

“Oh!” Derek’s mom wipes her hands on her jeans and rushes toward me with her arms extended. “Who is this?”

“This is Wren. We’re building stuff for the play.” Derek slides his hand through his long hair and gives me an apologetic look. I go to shake his mom’s hand the normal way but she cups my hand in both of hers. Drops of blue paint decorate her bangs and parts of her messy ponytail. “Hi Wren, I’m Jody.”

“Hi,” I say. She’s a female version of Derek, with the same sharp nose and dark brown hair. The awkward handshake finally ends. She wraps her arm around Derek’s back and pulls him in for a quick hug. “Now you call me Jody, not
Mrs. Hayes
. I hate being reminded that I’m old.”

“If it helps, you don’t look old.” I’m not even sucking up—she really doesn’t look old enough to be the mom of a high school senior.

“Married at seventeen, baby Derek at eighteen,” she says, poking him in the arm. “Not that I would recommend that route for you, Wren. It sucked, I assure you.”

“Yes ma’am.” I hope she isn’t implying that I want to have Derek’s baby in a year.

“None of that
ma’am
crap either.” She wags her finger at me then turns back to the kitchen. “I’ll order us pizza.” Derek grabs my elbow and pulls me to the couch as fast as his legs will take him. “She can be a bit much,” he says.

I sink into the couch, which is so fluffy it feels like I’m diving into a cloud. “I like her.”

He scoffs. “You would.”

“No one likes their own parents. But I’m allowed to like yours.”

“You don’t like your parents?”

“I like them. I mean, my mom thinks all she’s good for is to be a house wife so she’s dropped out of community college like six times and my dad is never home because he has to work so much, but I yeah like them.”

Derek cocks his head to the left. His question was a simple yes or no question. Quick and dirty, just the way guys like it. So why did I ramble on like an idiot? I glance around for something else to talk about besides my boring family. “I like how your mom has paired denim blue curtains with the mocha walls. It’s a great color scheme.”

“Yeah,” he says, gazing around the room with a roll of his eyes. “Totally.”

“Shut up.” I playfully punch his arm. “You don’t have to mock me.”

His hand grabs the part of his arm that I had just punched. He leans in close—like only ten inches away from my face close—and says, “I wasn’t mocking you.”

His voice is all raspy like he just woke up, and some of his hair falls into his face, covering his left eye. My stomach twists like a rubber band has been stretched across it way too many times. I feel like a thirteen-year-old girl with her first crush, not like a seventeen-year-old who’s made out with more guys than she can count.

I lean back a little just in case my Skittle breath is rancid. “It may sound stupid to you, but I notice things like that. I’m going to be an interior designer one day.”

He smiles a little, probably still mocking me. “Of course you are.”

His lips are slightly parted and I can’t stop staring at the tiny sliver of space between them. I shake my head, pushing all the thoughts of making out with him into the deep recesses of my mind. “I’m talking too much.”

He shrugs. “Your excessive talking just balances out my lack of talking.” Reaching into his backpack, he unfolds a piece of cardstock that’s shaped like the stage, flattening it on the coffee table.

Transfixed, I run my finger along the pretend stage, reading the notes he’s written in perfect uppercase letters. Dimensions for possible sets and furniture pieces are laid out with sticky notes cut to shape.

“What do you think?” he asks. “Does it suck?”

I fall back on the couch and cover my face with my hands. This is too good to be true. I’ve spent the last few nights lying awake in bed, agonizing over how I’m going to figure out the stage layout and manage being around a guy who I thought was a deranged psycho. Now, with no action on my part, I’m here with that same deranged psycho who happens to be normal and sexy and not a psychopath—and he’s done all the stage work for me.

“You hate it,” Derek says, biting his thumbnail.

“No…” A tingle runs down my spine. “It’s perfect.”