A Step Toward Falling Read online

  A couple of times Nan has said I could talk to the nice doctor I met at the hospital about what happened if I want to. Every time she says this, I say, “No, thank you.” I’m scared if I talk about Mitchell Breski, it’ll feel like it’s happening all over again. Sometimes words can do that. They can make something happen again in your mind. That’s why I didn’t talk about anything for a long time after it happened. I was scared if I did, I’d say his name accidentally and then it would feel like he was there in the same room with me. That’s what happened when I said his name to the police. It was like he was there with his hand over my mouth.

  Afterward the policewoman who’d been asking me questions said, “Just keep the box of Kleenex if you need it for the ride home.”

  She was very nice and said she didn’t think she’d ever forget talking to me. That surprised me because I assumed she spent every day talking to people who had terrible things happen to them. When I asked her why, she said, “You’re so brave,” she said and started to cry, too. “You didn’t get any help from those cretins who saw what was happening, but you stopped it anyway. You got help yourself. And now you’ve identified the perpetrator. You’re a star, Belinda. You really are.”

  That made me feel good. I still cried on the way home which made Nan drive even worse than she usually does, but her calling me a star made it easier to breathe again.

  I loved being a star every time I was one. Linda who ran Children’s Story Theater said everyone was a star whether they had a big part or not, but that’s not really true. Townsperson Number Three isn’t a star. Neither is the clownfish in Little Mermaid. When I played Fern and Little Red Riding Hood I was a star. I felt like it and everyone said so afterward.

  Driving home from the police station with Nan, I was still sad and scared, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what that policewoman said. It made me feel better. Like what had just happened wasn’t real. Like I was an actress in a scary movie and I’d done a good job playing my part. But now it’s confusing. It’s like now that I’m acting again, I keep being scared of the same thing happening. Like if I stand in the light, someone will step out of the dark and do something terrible.

  Sometimes I have dreams about it that make me sweat so much I think maybe I wet the bed. Once I did wet the bed but I didn’t tell Nan or Mom. I washed the sheets myself so it was like it hadn’t happened. I’m allowed to pretend things never happened if I clean up myself and if it doesn’t show anymore. Like Anthony doesn’t need to know what happened with Mitchell Breski. If I don’t want to tell him, I don’t have to.

  And I definitely don’t want to tell him. If he knows, he will look at me different. I also think he will probably stop saying he loves me and wants to marry me all the time. I used to hate when he said that, but I don’t hate it anymore. Now I understand he doesn’t mean we should get married right now. He means he wants to be my friend and help each other on things like plays. I can help him be brave and be an actor and he can help me be brave and eat lunch in the cafeteria. It’s good that we’re a team now because he worries a lot.

  One time he got so worried I thought he might cry and I hugged him even though he hadn’t asked for it. He started to laugh and rock and asked me if I would be his girlfriend now.

  I didn’t say my usual answer, which is, “No, Anthony. I’m too old to be your girlfriend.”

  Instead, I said, “Maybe.” Then I said, “I promise I won’t be anyone else’s girlfriend, but we’re busy with this play right now. Let’s get through this play and then maybe I’ll be your girlfriend.”

  I could tell he thought this meant yes. He was laughing and blushing and covering his face with his hands.

  “It’s a big decision, Anthony. Being someone’s girlfriend means your life changes a lot.”

  He stopped laughing and looked at me. “It does?”

  I explained some of the things that have to happen if we’re boyfriend and girlfriend. We’ll have to share food and watch TV together and sometimes we’ll have to watch shows we don’t like. “For instance, you like wrestling and I don’t,” I said. “But if I was your girlfriend, I’d have to say, okay, I’ll watch a little bit of wrestling.”

  “We have to kiss, too, Beminda.”

  I looked away because that was the part I was hoping maybe he didn’t know about. Part of me doesn’t mind the idea of kissing Anthony and part of me is very scared to do anything at all like that. I think if he knew what happened with Mitchell Breski, he would say no, thank you to being my boyfriend. He would think I was dirty for being on the ground like that with Coke on my skirt and popcorn in my hair.

  He would hate me very much like I hate myself when I think about it.

  I wish I could take a pill and not think about it. I told Anthony some people are couples but they never kiss at all. That’s just how they are. They don’t like kissing, so they don’t.

  He said, “Nuh-uh. You love someone, you kiss them.”

  This makes me even more nervous. It’s like Anthony seems to know a few things already.

  At our next rehearsal, I start to think maybe Emily and Lucas like each other. He looks at her a lot when she’s giving us directions, then he writes down everything she says so he won’t forget. Once Emily says, “You don’t have to write this all down, Lucas. It’s just something to think about.”

  I think he felt stupid, like I sometimes feel when someone says, “You don’t have to try so hard, Belinda. Just relax.”

  I wanted to tell Emily, “It’s hard to relax when a lot of things are happening at once. He should write down whatever he wants to write down.” She doesn’t know that she makes him nervous. One time she said, “This is like that scene in Sense and Sensibility,” and he said, “What’s Sense and Sensibility?” I started to say, “A movie starring Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant,” but she said, “Jane Austen’s second most famous book, Lucas? Does that not ring a bell?”

  I don’t think she meant to sound mean because she reached over and patted his shoulder, but I knew he was embarrassed. Thinking about Lucas and Emily helps me not think too much about Anthony and Mitchell Breski or the things that I am trying not to think about.

  When the cable access people come to meet with Emily and Lucas about filming the show, Emily hugs Lucas afterward and thanks him with a smile. Hugging Lucas is hard because he’s so big. She has to get up on her tiptoes to put her arms around his shoulders. Afterward he holds her hand for a little while. It looks like his hand has swallowed hers up. I think we aren’t supposed to see them holding hands because when Anthony says, “What did they say?” really loud, they remember us and stop.

  “They’re going to film the whole thing with lights and sound equipment and they’re going to air it three times the week afterward!” Emily smiles and looks at Lucas.

  Even though I thought I wanted them to film our play, I’m not so sure anymore. I wanted Mom and Nan to be able to see it but now I keep thinking if it’s on TV, that means Mitchell Breski or Ron or the rest of the football team can see it. Just thinking this makes me feel like I have to tell Emily and Lucas I’m sorry, I was wrong, I don’t want to be on TV. I’ll have to say, “I thought I wanted that but now I know I definitely don’t.”

  They’ll probably say I’m being too demanding. I can hear Nan saying, “No one wants to be your friend when you act so bossy, Belinda.”

  I want Lucas and Emily to be my friends. I want to be Anthony’s girlfriend when this is over. I don’t want them to think I’m a bossy person who changes her mind all the time.

  I can do this, I tell myself, except I’m not sure if that’s true.

  There are a lot of things I can’t control like panic attacks and crying and not being able to breathe. I can’t control hearing Mitchell Breski’s voice sometimes in my head.

  I can’t control seeing his face when I close my eyes at night.

  EMILY

  HERE’S A SURPRISE: BEING around each other more, every day after school for an hour and a half, seems to
make Lucas and me more shy with each other. If we get to the theater before Belinda and Anthony, we laugh at the surprise of being alone and whisper like we’re scared of getting caught any minute. I told him that I didn’t want Belinda and Anthony to know there was anything going on between us. “It would be terrible if she found out,” I said. This isn’t the general in-school self-consciousness we feel around each other. Your friends aren’t like my friends is entirely different than We met while you were being attacked and now we’re going out. “We have to be completely focused on the play. This is about Belinda first and foremost. That’s it. Period.”

  Lucas understands this. He never pushes it or flirts the way Chad did in class. He never refers to things we’ve done or said outside of rehearsal when we’re in rehearsal. Not that we’ve done a lot beyond message each other and talk on the phone at night. I have to admit, I like the way circumstances have forced us to get to know each other slowly. At rehearsals I watch him out of the corner of my eye and I notice a million little things: He’s not on his phone so much these days, thumbing through texts. He reads more and even keeps a book tucked in the back pocket of his jeans. When Belinda asked him what it was, he held it up so all of us could see the title: All Quiet on the Western Front. “My mom always wanted me to read this,” he said.

  “Why?” I asked softly. Rehearsal hadn’t started. Belinda and Anthony were talking to each other.

  He smiled, though his face looked sad. “So I wouldn’t join the army, I think.”

  I couldn’t say any more. It was too private a conversation, considering the fight he’d told me about with his dad, but I noticed all of it. I noticed that he was reading to figure out options for himself. I noticed that he mentioned his mother more often. Once during rehearsal, he brought her name up, and Belinda asked if she was coming to the show.

  “No,” he said. “She died a few years ago.”

  Hearing this again, I understood why he hardly ever brings it up. Nothing stops a conversation quite like this information. What can anyone say when every option—I’m so sorry! That’s so sad for you!—feels wrong? Or at least it seems so to most people. But not Belinda and Anthony, who both perked up with lots of questions. They started with how she died and then they kept going.

  “Did she lose all her hair and wear a wig?” Belinda asked.

  “Yeah,” Lucas said. “I think everyone who has chemotherapy loses their hair.”

  Belinda nodded. Anthony’s turn: “Were her eyes open when she died?”

  “No,” Lucas said. “She was asleep so they were closed.”

  “Did she make a sound when it happened? Or say anything?”

  Even though it was the middle of our rehearsal time, I let them keep going because Lucas didn’t seem to mind and I was curious, too. He even smiled as he answered. “No, no sounds. She was at home so that was good.”

  Belinda asked, “Was she alone when she died?” and Lucas said no. “My dad and I took turns sleeping on the floor next to her bed so she wouldn’t be.”

  I imagined huge Lucas, on the floor beside his mother, his hand raised to hold hers. It’s so completely the opposite of my first impression of him: seated outside the guidance counselor’s office, arms folded across his chest, legs stuck out in front of him. I wondered how long it would have taken me to hear these stories if Belinda and Anthony hadn’t asked their questions. Maybe I never would have. Maybe I’d never have the picture in my mind of Lucas on the floor holding his dying mother’s hand.

  Those are the moments when I appreciate Belinda.

  As we get closer, though, there are fewer of those. Belinda’s anxiety escalates until we are spending a good part of every rehearsal reassuring her that nothing horrible will happen while we’re putting on the show.

  “This will be a very friendly audience,” I tell her. “You’ll see. They’ll probably give us a standing ovation.”

  “They can’t whistle,” she says. She’s biting her fingernails now, a habit I don’t remember seeing before. “Whistling hurts my ears. You have to say no whistling.”

  “Fine, Belinda. We’ll tell them no whistling, but you shouldn’t worry about that.”

  She nods, but she’s worried, I can tell. Her eyebrows are furrowed and her gaze is clouded like she’s waiting to get on some terrifying roller coaster other people are forcing her to ride. I don’t know what to do about this or if I should even acknowledge it.

  In our second-to-last rehearsal—our “wet tech,” as we call it, because Belinda loves her theater lingo—she seems a little better. She is focused and in character and helps Anthony when he skips a whole scene and starts saying lines that are ten pages ahead in the story. “Not yet, good sir,” Belinda says, staying in character. “We must talk about the ball first.”

  In editing the play, I’ve boiled the story down to eight scenes. Gone are all the fun, contemporary high school parts. That would be way too confusing for this crowd. Instead, it’s two couples wearing old-fashioned clothes who meet in every other scene and spend the in-between scenes discussing their misconceptions about each other.

  As I’ve edited it, some of the scenes make almost no sense. We don’t know why he’s asked her to marry him and we don’t have the Wickham backstory to explain why she turns him down so angrily. With this crowd, my guess is it won’t matter. I know this audience and their attention span. They don’t need plot details that they won’t be able to follow anyway. They’ll enjoy the drama of the fight without understanding the reasons behind it.

  Then I’m surprised: driving to our last Boundaries and Relationships class before we put on the show next week, Lucas tells me he’s asked Mary if he can talk to the group about the story ahead of time. “Just to prep them a little about the story. Fill in some of the holes.”

  “What holes?” I snap. I’ve gotten too sensitive lately. Today at rehearsal he suggested making a change in the blocking and I couldn’t help feeling annoyed. “Why don’t we just have one director here, okay, Lucas?”

  “Fine,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “You’re in charge.”

  Afterward I apologized. I told him I was feeling nervous and I didn’t want to confuse Belinda and Anthony with last-minute changes. “They’re finally getting better, but we’re not out of the woods yet. There’s still the possibility this will be a disaster of fairly epic proportions.”

  “Exactly,” he said. Now he tells me, “That’s why I asked Mary if we could talk to group about what to expect.”

  It seems like a risky idea to me. A boring plot summary may turn them off completely. When I tell him this, he says, “Yeah, I may do it a little differently if that’s okay.”

  I look over at him and wonder what he has in mind.

  “It won’t be anything long. Just five minutes, I promise.”

  “Okay, fine,” I say. “Go ahead.”

  Thirty seconds into Lucas’s summary in front of the group, it feels like a big mistake. He starts by saying he wants to talk about the “show” we’re putting on next week, which confuses everyone. They think it’s going to be a TV show starring actors they’ve heard of. Sheila is hoping Justin Bieber will be in it.

  “No, Sheila, sorry,” Lucas says. “We couldn’t get the J-Man for this.”

  “But did you even ask?” she says.

  “It’s not that kind of show, guys,” Lucas says, holding up one hand to stop the interruptions. “It’s a play, okay? We’re the actors—Emily and I—along with two of our friends from school. They’re not famous either, so don’t get your hopes up.”

  He flashes me a smile and I smile back. It’s nice that he’s called them friends and hasn’t mentioned their disabilities. There’s also this: the room is silent now, listening to Lucas.

  “It’s an old-fashioned story by this woman named Jane Austen who wrote some books a long time ago about all the rules around people trying to start relationships. Back then the rules were different. They were mostly about how rich your parents were, but there’s
one thing that’s still the same. Everyone judges each other based on the way they look. They meet each other at a party and they all think certain things, like he’s really stuck up, or she’s kind of silly. They don’t take time to ask a few questions and get to know each other.”

  It’s hard to tell how many people understand what he’s saying.

  “Has anyone here ever done that? Where you thought a person was one way and then you got to know them and they were completely different?”

  I’m surprised. Three people raise their hands. “Oh, I have! I have!” Annabel says. “I hated Subway chicken salad and then I tried it and it wasn’t so bad except for the chicken tasted funny and it had apples in it.”

  “That’s sort of what this story is about that, Annabel. Only it’s not about chicken salad, it’s about people taking a little time and getting to know each other before they make judgments. Can anyone think of any other examples?”

  Sheila raises her hand. I can tell Lucas is hesitating. With Sheila, there’s a pretty good chance she’ll respond to a question like this by complaining about her bus driver today or announcing that she’s bought new shoes. Unfortunately, hers is the only hand still raised. “Yes, Sheila?” he says.

  “I didn’t like you when you first came to class.”

  He laughs at the surprise of this. “Perfect example! Why not?”

  “I thought you were too big to be a normal person and you might beat me up.”

  He smiles. “And now?”

  “I think you’re nice and you probably won’t beat anyone up.”

  He walks over to Sheila and shakes her hand, and does a funny, courtly bow. “That was perfectly on topic.”

  He’s right, I think. It was. Of course, the nice moment doesn’t last too long. When he asks if there are any other questions, there are.

  “Will refreshments be served?”

  “Can we talk while the play is going on?”

  “Will people have to pay attention or can they leave if they don’t like it?”