A Step Toward Falling Read online

  She steps into the light so I can see her face and her furrowed eyebrows. She looks worried but not panicky. “Well, I have Anthony. He wants to audition for a small part, not a big part. Can’t we just audition and then we’ll see what happens?”

  I’m not sure what to say or feel except gratefulness when Lucas leans forward and suggests, “Look, we have one scene with Elizabeth and her father, right, Em? Why don’t we have them read from that and see how they do?”

  They both nod. I prepared xeroxed scenes to read from, so I hand them each one. I know Belinda can read but her eyesight isn’t good. In our old play rehearsals, the director always made large-print copies of her scripts. We weren’t expecting Belinda to show up, so I haven’t made any of those for her.

  “I’m not sure how we should do this, though. I haven’t got a script that Belinda can see well enough.” I say this softly to Lucas. I don’t want to embarrass her in front of Anthony.

  Apparently I haven’t. “I don’t need a script,” Belinda says.

  Lucas and I look at each other. “You don’t?”

  She closes her eyes. There’s no smile on her lips, but I feel the pride of her accomplishment. Her old gift.

  “Have you memorized the lines already?” I ask.

  “Not all of them,” she says. “But the girl’s ones, yes.”

  Lucas smiles and claps his hands. “Great, then. Why don’t we do the first scene with your father?”

  Belinda is so serious about acting that sometimes she misses the point—to relax and have fun. Her scene with Anthony is a hand-wringing recitation of Elizabeth imploring her father for help reining in her overly flirtatious younger sisters. Still, there are touching lines delivered too softly by Anthony: “Not everyone can be as book smart as you, dear Lizzie.”

  It’s almost impossible to understand a word he says, but the way he looks at Belinda with so much tenderness and admiration kills me. It also reminds me that I’ve forgotten one of the main points of the story: Elizabeth is too intellectual for her own good. She overthinks things too much. She doesn’t rely on intuition. Maybe it’s just as well we’ll never put on the show, I think. Instead of proving a point about Belinda’s abilities, it might do the opposite.

  When they’re done, Lucas asks if they’d like to try another scene. Maybe one with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. Anthony blushes and puts his hands over his face. “I’m not Mr. Darcy. Not me.”

  “That’s okay,” Lucas says. “I could read that part if you’d like to try another scene, Belinda.”

  This is so kind of him, I wish I could squeeze his hand again. If we can’t do the play, he’s giving her a chance to play Elizabeth Bennett for an afternoon at least.

  “Yes,” she says. “I’d like that.”

  “Why don’t we read the first scene at Pemberley? Do you remember this one? When she sees him unexpectedly?”

  Belinda nods. She knows the scene, of course.

  Lucas hops up onstage, clears his throat, and shakes his head to get into character and then—boom—he is. He doesn’t use the affected English accent that Belinda is trying out, but his voice is different than his usual soft monotone. It fills up the room and startles all of us: oddly, even the piano next door goes quiet. “Why are you here, Elizabeth, if it so offends your sensibilities?” he booms.

  Belinda sneaks a look at him, smiles, and finds her line. “I had no choice, sir. I came with my aunt and uncle.”

  “You should know that you’re welcome anytime.” As they keep going, I’m amazed. Lucas really gets this story. He understands that so much of what they say is the opposite of what they mean. It’s even possible he’s demonstrating how to do it in ways that Belinda picks up on. Because this isn’t one of my short xeroxed scenes, they keep going from the script, running the whole scene. Belinda needs prompts on a few lines, but not many. The scene gets better and better as they go along. Anthony steps off the stage and sits down in the front row to watch them.

  It’s so compelling I don’t even hear the door open behind us.

  I only realize others have come in when I hear people talking and turn around to see Lucas’s girlfriend, Debbie, sitting in the back with two of her friends. One of them has her hand over her mouth, like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. Debbie’s staring at Lucas, not like she’s surprised by what a good actor he is, but like she’s mad.

  More than mad, actually. She’s furious.

  Which makes me think—wait, didn’t he ask her to come and audition? Weren’t the cheerleaders meant to be at a competition? And that’s when I realize—there isn’t any competition.

  Lucas hasn’t told them anything about this play.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BELINDA

  EXCEPT FOR THE POLICE right afterward, no one has ever asked me what happened with Mitchell Breski. Nan doesn’t want his name said in our house, so Mom can’t ask. Cynthia and Rhonda, my teachers, haven’t asked me either.

  I don’t think I want to talk about it, but sometimes I would like someone to explain what he was doing. I thought at first he was trying to help me. He knew I was crying and embarrassed and he kept saying, “Shh, shh . . . it’s okay. I’ll help you pick up your things.”

  I said, “Thank you,” because I needed help. Everything was broken and there were a lot of pieces. Then he started rubbing my arm, which didn’t make sense because my arm wasn’t hurt. He said those guys were a swear word and I shouldn’t pay any attention to them.

  He was touching me more which I didn’t like so I tried crawling away, but he grabbed my sweater and said, “Hey, girly, not so fast—you can’t walk back out there like that, all covered in dirt. Let me wipe you off first.”

  I stood up near the gate to the field. It was very dark where I stood and bright up ahead. I thought maybe he was right—if I walked out everyone would know what just happened and would laugh at me. I knew I couldn’t go back and sit with the band, with Coke on my skirt and popcorn in my hair.

  “Let me help you,” he said again.

  And then he was so close in the dark, I could smell his breath which was terrible, like he’d been eating metal. He touched my hair and put his mouth on my neck. It felt like when a dog licks you. You want to push the dog away but Nan always says you have to be nice to dogs, they’re just dogs, so you shouldn’t push them away. I tried to push him away, but he kept doing something with his mouth like he wanted to eat my neck.

  “You have pretty yellow hair,” he said.

  “I have to go,” I said. I definitely didn’t want him to put his mouth on me anymore but he was holding my shoe box. “Can I have that back, please?”

  He held it away like he wanted to make it a game, where I grabbed for it and he kept holding it back farther. I didn’t want to play that game but the rest of him was trapping me against the fence. He kept leaning so I had to grab the fence to lean away from him. My hair got caught on the fence and hurt when I pulled. I started to cry it hurt so much and I was so scared.

  He said, “Shh, don’t cry.”

  Then he started touching my chest but I don’t think he liked what he was doing. His face was red and sweaty and he made noises like it was hurting him.

  Then he said, “Don’t look,” and he unzipped his pants.

  I did look even though he told me not to. I looked and that’s when I screamed so loud that a janitor came.

  I knew what it was called but I had never seen anything like that before. It scared me because it was ugly and his face was red and ugly when he pulled it out. In school we learned about personal space and good touch/bad touch. Good touch is things like hugs from your family. Bad touch is people who hug you when you don’t want to be hugged or touch your private parts. Private parts are any places on your body that a bathing suit hides.

  When we talk about it in class, everyone asks, “Is a belly button private?” “Is your neck private?” When Anthony said this, I told him to please think before he asked questions like that. “Is your neck underneath your
bathing suit? I don’t think so.”

  I got mad at Anthony because I didn’t think boys and girls should all be in the same room learning this stuff. I thought it would only give the boys ideas and they were already too girl crazy to start with. All Douglas wants to talk about is girls, girls, girls. I think sometimes you should not talk about certain things, the way they do in Pride and Prejudice when no one wants to say what a bad singer Mary is or how Lydia is flirting too much. They are polite and don’t say anything. That’s how I think we should all be about sex. We should just not say anything.

  When I told Rhonda this she said it was not a good idea. She said that sooner or later we will all have feelings about wanting to touch somebody else and sooner or later someone will want to touch us and we have to learn how to say no if we don’t want it.

  We practiced that a lot in class. We took turns saying, “No, you’re in my personal space. I don’t want you to stand so close.”

  It worked fine in class where the other kids knew they had to step away if you said it. Mitchell Breski didn’t step away, though. Now I think maybe Rhonda was right—that it’s okay to talk about some of these things because I would like to understand what happened and what I did wrong.

  Anthony did a good job at the audition, but he was very nervous, especially around the armpits. When he asked if I could tell they were sweaty I said yes because I don’t like to lie to anyone, especially not to Anthony. “It’s okay, though, because other people didn’t see it,” I said, which wasn’t true. His face was sweaty and everyone could see that, too.

  For me, auditions are fun. They don’t make me nervous anymore because I’ve had lots of practice doing them. For Anthony it was different. He sounded like he was saying his lines with food in his mouth. It was very hard to understand him. I still told him he was great afterward, though, because I thought he was.

  Then I get home that night and I start to worry: What if I get a part and Anthony doesn’t? I’ll feel terrible if that happens. Maybe I’ll find Lucas or Emily tomorrow and tell them that Anthony works very hard and gets much better at things with practice. When he first got to high school, he couldn’t open his locker which didn’t surprise me because no one in our class uses the lockers we got in ninth grade. We all tried to open them once and we couldn’t so we left our things in our classroom and forgot about our lockers, but Anthony kept trying and trying. Every morning he went back and finally in November he opened it by himself. Then he offered private classes called How to Open Your Locker. We each took turns being his student. He taught me in three days which made me his best student, he said.

  Maybe that’s when I first knew Anthony liked me but I couldn’t like him back because he was in ninth grade and I was in eleventh.

  Now he says age doesn’t matter if you’re in love.

  I tell him, “We’re not in love, Anthony!” which we aren’t.

  Except I’m so worried about him getting a part in this play that it’s almost like I care more about him being in it than me. Which doesn’t make sense except I can’t help it.

  EMILY

  I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW MUCH time I’ve wasted sitting on my bed, staring at my phone. I’m waiting for Lucas to call so we can decide what to do about our failed play project, but really I want him to tell me what happened with Debbie after the audition. By the time she interrupted us, it was already 4:15, just enough time to end our auditions and get Belinda and Anthony onto the late bus. Packing up our things, I tried not to be obvious, but I watched Lucas talk to Debbie in the corner. He didn’t look embarrassed so much as tired of whatever conversation they were having. She did most of the talking. He listened and nodded.

  If he’d never told her what we were doing—which seemed pretty obvious by the expression on her face—how much of a couple could they really be, I thought, but maybe I’ve got this wrong.

  When I first saw Debbie in the back of the theater, I thought I knew what was going on. The reason no one had shown up to our audition was that Lucas hadn’t told any of his friends—including his girlfriend—what we were doing. Earlier today that would have made me mad. I thought I wanted popular people to show up so we could prove to Belinda that lots of people will help her even if we didn’t that one time. Now I understand the story is more complicated. Lucas has ostracized himself from this group because they aren’t the people to demonstrate anything to Belinda, least of all kindness.

  His teammates were terrible to Belinda. Ron was the worst, but every one of them had run by her without stopping to help her up. Lucas was right. None of these people should have been part of our show. He understood that and I didn’t.

  Now I see all the ways Lucas has distanced himself from his teammates. He not only agreed to be in a play, he found just the right one. When no one showed up, he felt as bad as I did and something happened—something real—in that moment when he held my hand. I’m sure of that. Which is why I assume he’ll call me the minute he gets done breaking up with Debbie.

  Except he doesn’t.

  Fine, I think. He doesn’t have to call me, but he can’t keep going out with her. He just can’t. He’s too kind, he’s too decent; he’s too smart to waste himself on a girl like her. That’s all I want to tell him. You don’t have to date me, just don’t date her. Please, as your friend, I’m begging you not to date someone who doesn’t appreciate you.

  I am his friend, I think, staring at the phone. And good friends talk like this. They say You’re too smart for that person. Richard says it to me all the time even when it’s not true. He always tells me I’m too good for every boy I’ve ever liked who didn’t like me back. In my case it wasn’t true, but in Lucas’s case, it’s so true it’s almost hard for me to breathe. He isn’t a football-playing, cheerleader-dating idiot. He’s so different from the rest of that crowd that I don’t want him to ever waste his time with them again. He should be hanging out with me and my friends. He should be laughing with us and being himself. He should get to know them so they can get to know him and see what I see: how unexpected and amazing and sweet he is.

  Of course I also realize why this is making me so nervous. I think about the way he kissed the back of my hand and then held it to his cheek. I don’t just want to be friends, I want more than that. I want to kiss him. I want to walk down the hallway with one finger hooked around a belt loop on his pants. I want everything Debbie has and doesn’t appreciate. I want things I can’t have because the laws of social stratification in high school might allow us to be friends for a while, but would never permit any more than that. I’m not blind; I know this much. He couldn’t sit comfortably at my lunch table any more than I could sit comfortably at his.

  I think about watching him up onstage playing Mr. Darcy with tiny perfect gestures: his folded lips, his one raised finger. I think about him looking at Belinda, then at me, then back to Belinda. He feels it, too. I know he does. My heart races stupidly at the thought. At least I think he does. To me it was so obvious by the end of his scene with Belinda that I half expected him to look out into the audience and break up with Debbie right then. After the day we’d just spent, how could he not? But now four hours have gone by and nothing has happened. He hasn’t called. He hasn’t texted or emailed. I feel the knot of expectation in my stomach loosen to make room for the story I’ll have to tell myself tomorrow and the next day and the day after that when we see each other and talk about everything except this.

  I can already imagine it and I can’t stand the picture. We’ll talk about the play and agree we can’t do it. It was a nice idea, we’ll say, but you can’t put on a show if you have no actors. We’ll shrug and walk away from this thing we’ve been working on for weeks because we have no other choice.

  All these thoughts are confirmed the next day when I see Lucas once in the morning, talking to a boy I don’t recognize but who, judging by his size, must be a football player. Lucas holds up a finger in my direction but I can’t tell if he’s trying to say Wait, I want to talk to you or if i
t’s a simple, one-finger hi.

  He doesn’t stop talking, so I keep walking with a laugh that sounds fake because it is.

  At lunch I see him again but he doesn’t see me or look in my direction. I realize that he’s making a choice, not looking over. For two weeks we dropped all self-consciousness with each other. We talked easily in the hallway and in the cafeteria. We had a purpose that made us unshy with each other. As if, because we were talking about a play few people would ever see, we didn’t think anyone would notice us talking.

  Now even looking over in his direction, at the table full of his friends, feels loaded and dangerous. As if a thousand eyes will notice what an idiot I’ve been. As if they’ll see what I’m thinking because it’s written on my face: Why did we do all that if we’re just going to give up? Didn’t we hold hands for three minutes because Belinda’s story wasn’t the only thing that made us sad, the idea of not doing this play did, too?

  I keep thinking that we can’t go this whole day without saying anything, but apparently we can because we do.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  EMILY

  I SPEND MOST OF THE weekend by myself at home. In three days, Lucas hasn’t called or messaged me once. The only explanation I can think of now is that what happened before Belinda and Anthony walked in wasn’t about me at all, it was about the story he told. He hates these guys. Telling me was a relief. Holding my hand was a courtesy. Kissing it was a thank-you. That’s all, I decide. Now that our time in the Boundaries and Relationships class is almost over—we have three more classes—we won’t even share that anymore. Next semester we might say hi when we pass in the hall, but it’s possible we won’t even do that. It’s possible this whole time will be something neither one of us ever understands well enough to talk about.

  We felt bad about what happened to Belinda. Really bad. Then we moved on.