A Step Toward Falling Page 5

  On our way back to our seats, Chad catches my eye. “Great job,” he whispers. I feel a tingle in my armpits. The truth is, he’s even cuter than Ryan Harding.

  After the Jeopardy! game is over, Mary introduces a new topic: learning how to say no without hurting other people’s feelings. When she asks for volunteers to do a role-play, Chad’s hand goes up. He smiles gamely around the room as if he’s surprised no one else is raising their hand. Frankly, so am I. Surely one of the women would like to do a scene with someone as handsome as Chad, I assume, but no.

  “Anyone else?” Mary asks.

  No one. I look around the room and I think I know what’s happening. I’m not the only person who has noticed how cute he is. He has the aura of celebrity. Last week, Sheila announced that if she could date anyone, she would pick Justin Bieber. Now it’s as if Justin Bieber has joined our group for the night. There is that sort of electricity in the air. They can’t talk and gawk at the same time.

  I don’t know if it’s okay for two volunteers to do an improv together without a student as well but I raise my hand. “I’ll do it.”

  Apparently with a new topic, it is. “Great, Emily! Thank you!”

  I assume our scene will involve me turning down his request for a date. I can already tell Chad has a sense of humor by the way he pats his stomach after he stands up, as if we’re about to eat a big meal. “Ready to go?” He smiles at me. This time the soles of my feet tingle.

  “Ready,” I say, wondering if I can summon the wherewithal to say no to a pretend invitation from this guy. Mary hands us our scenario written on a piece of paper: Jane and Adam are friends from work. Jane keeps asking Adam on a date, but he doesn’t want to go and doesn’t know how to tell her.

  Oh, great, I think. Of course I have to be the sad girl haranguing the boy for a date.

  Chad walks up to the front of the room and starts the scene by stirring a large, invisible pot in front of him. I pick up the cue and pretend to carry a heavy tray of plates back to the kitchen. “Hi, Adam!” I say, putting my load down on the invisible counter next to him. “So I’m glad to see you because there’s something I wanted to ask . . .”

  Chad tastes his invisible concoction and makes a face. “Okay,” he says, salting.

  “I was wondering if you’d like to go out with me this weekend.”

  He looks at me and smiles again, his “spoon” raised to his lips. He’s supposed to say no but the role-play can’t end too quickly. “Go where?” he says.

  “Maybe you could come over to my house. I could show you my music collection. It’s mostly One Direction, but you like them, right?” I’m trying to suggest something pretty unappealing. A few people get the joke and laugh. His “spoon” doesn’t move but his eyebrows go up. “Love them,” he says.

  “Great. So how about seven on Saturday?”

  “Wait! I can’t!” He laughs and drops his invisible “spoon.” “I’m sorry, Mary. I blew it. I’m supposed to say no, right?”

  “That’s right, Chad. Try again. Start the scene over from One Direction, Emily—nice suggestion, by the way—and go—”

  I start again. “So I have six of their CDs. What I like to do is start with the first one and listen to them all straight through. They kind of sound the same but then if you keep listening you think, wow, they’re such great musicians.” I’ve gotten into a groove now, channeling the girls I remember who talked this way in middle school.

  Chad works hard not to laugh. “I’d like to, seriously. It’s just hard cause I’m working a lot and I’m kinda busy these days.”

  “You’ve got Wednesday off.” I surprise myself with how quickly improvisation comes back. One more trick that I remember: the more a character clearly wants something, the easier they are to play. “Why don’t we do it then? Please, Adam?”

  I get a few laughs with my overeager act. Chad looks down and then back up and smiles so sweetly, I stop speaking. He’s having a hard time saying no. A really hard time.

  “Please, Adam,” I say. We are grinning at each other now, like we are not our characters. And the word won’t come out of his mouth. We both have to laugh because he’s terrible at this.

  Mary claps her hands to pause the scene. “Good work, Chad and Emily. Chad’s showing everyone how hard it can be to say no sometimes. What could Chad say, folks? Let’s make some suggestions.”

  Now I wonder if maybe Chad’s silence was intentional. He’s done this before and maybe he knows the rules—like if two volunteers are acting out a scene, they need one person to freeze and get suggestions from the group. Sheila raises her hand. “He could say, I don’t like One Direction, I like Justin Bieber.”

  “He could say no,” Harrison suggests.

  “He should say, I don’t want to go with you,” Francine says. It’s funny—now that we’ve been around her more, she’s easier to understand.

  Mary continues, “Chad, do you want to pick one of those?”

  Chad turns to me, still smiling. “Hmm,” he says.

  “Chad, why don’t you tell Jane here you’re not interested in having a relationship outside of work,” Mary suggests. “Then she’ll know she should stop asking you out.”

  Chad’s eyes never move from mine. “Okay,” he says. “Can we start over?”

  “Sure. From the top, Emily!” Mary claps again and this time I make more suggestions, opening up the possibility of doing something every night of the week. He watches me with a smile in the corner of his mouth, as if he’s stretching this out intentionally because he’s enjoying my performance.

  “Wow,” he finally says. “It all sounds great, but I can’t. I’m busy this weekend.”

  “What about next weekend?” I know the goal Mary is trying to get us to. He’s meant to say no not only to these invitations but to future ones as well.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I could do next weekend.”

  Mary claps for us to stop again. This isn’t going right. We’re smiling too much and enjoying ourselves. Instead of stopping the scene, Chad leans over and whispers in my ear, “I might be able to go out next weekend.”

  I can’t help myself. I laugh even though I see Lucas in the corner with his arms folded over his chest, looking on disapprovingly. I wish he were a friend so I could explain what this feels like. We can’t act out this scenario because we like each other! I’ve never flirted like this before!

  We try it a few more times until finally Mary gets tired of it. “Chad, tell Emily you aren’t interested in having a relationship with her at all. That if she asks you out next week, the answer will be the same.”

  He turns and fixes his blue eyes on mine. “If you ask me out next week, my answer will be the same,” he says.

  After class is over, Chad walks out beside me. “That was fun,” he whispers. “I should get your number just in case I change my mind about One Direction.” I can’t stop smiling at how easy this seems. Usually a conversation like this requires a long dissection with Richard afterward to determine if any flirting was actually taking place. Now there’s no question. What’s harder to tell is if he’s really asking for my number. Then I can’t believe it—he digs in his pocket and pulls out his phone. “I have to run and meet someone from school, but I can walk and type at the same time.”

  I’m so surprised by his ease that I don’t say anything right away.

  “It’s good for volunteers to have each other’s numbers. This way if I need a ride or something I’ll call you. Or you can call me.”

  “Sure,” I say, remembering too late that I’m the one who needs a ride tonight. My mom needed the car and dropped me off earlier.

  I tell him my number, which he types in one-handed. When we get near the front door, he turns around and walks backward, grinning the way he did when we were doing our improv. “If you ask me again, my answer will be the same,” he says, laughing and shaking his head. “God, I was bad at that.”

  A moment later he’s gone and I turn to see Lucas sitting by himself i
n the lobby. Apparently he didn’t drive himself either. I sit down a few seats away from him. I assume we’ll sit here in silence, which we’ve done plenty of times before, but Lucas surprises me. After a minute, he says, “What do you think about this class?”

  I have a feeling I know what he wants me to say. These people dating? No, thanks. Suddenly I can’t help myself. It’s like flirting with Chad has given me enough self-confidence to say what I really think. “I like it. Mary isn’t telling anyone that they shouldn’t think about dating. She’s saying there are rules to doing it the right way and you probably shouldn’t bother setting your sights on Justin Bieber.” Maybe I’m saying too much. Maybe his point is only, I don’t want to picture these folks on dates or touching each other. I’ve seen enough of that.

  “It didn’t freak you out a little today?” he says.

  I’m not sure what he means. To me it was like the class the week before except for Chad joining it. Then I remember something else. After break, Annabel and Ken, the only established couple in the class, announced that they’d broken up over the weekend. “Would you like to talk about that with the group, Annabel, or is it private between you and Ken?” Mary had asked.

  Annabel thought for a minute, then turned to Ken, who looked miserable. “It was about having sex, so I guess it’s private.”

  “That’s probably right,” Mary said. “Good decision, Annabel.”

  The subject got dropped, but that must be what Lucas is thinking about now. “I mean, I’m sorry, but should those two be talking about having sex?”

  I don’t know if he’s thinking about Belinda when he says this. We’ve never mentioned her name with each other. “Well. It sounded like they talked about it and they didn’t agree on what they wanted so they broke up.”

  “Yeah, but should any of us be sitting around talking about sex?”

  I’m surprised at Lucas saying “us” like we’re part of the same group. Lucas and I are both seventeen. Of my friends, only Barry and Weilin have had sex (with each other, after a year and a half of dating) but I’m part of the nerd brigade. I’ve always assumed everyone in Lucas’s crowd has done it plenty.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “We have that class at school, Real World Issues. People talk about it there, right?” I’ve never taken Real World Issues. I only know about it because all my friends make fun of the end-of-semester project where everyone carries an egg around for a week so they’ll understand the constant demand of having a baby. The teacher marks the egg so you can’t switch it or hard-boil it. You also go down a full letter grade on the final if you’re ever caught at school or around town without it. Students are encouraged to respectfully police one another, which means, for a full week, everyone walks around saying, “May I see your egg?” Even if you aren’t enrolled in the class, it’s a funny thing to say. Or, “How’s your egg, mine’s a little fussy.” Richard thinks these jokes are so funny he makes them for weeks after the project is over even though no one in our crowd has ever taken the class. None of us has room in our schedule for a blow-off like Real World Issues. We’re all trying to get through our AP credits.

  Lucas is—well, the type to take Real World Issues. It’s just a guess, but it turns out I’m right. “We didn’t talk about sex that much,” he says. “I mean, a little, but not like this.”

  I thought the whole class was about sex. The teacher, Ms. Simon, is wildly popular. “Doesn’t everyone love Ms. Simon because she talks about sex a lot?”

  “Not at all. Mostly she talks about other stuff. She did this thing where you could anonymously suggest a topic to discuss. You have to say something compassionate but also honest. Like if the topic is cutting yourself, you have to say, ‘It makes me feel scared for someone who’s doing that, but it also makes me think it’s a cry for help.’”

  This is the longest I’ve ever heard Lucas talk. I can’t help feeling surprised. Mostly that he’s used the word “compassionate” in a sentence.

  “I think we should do stuff like that in this class.”

  “Talk to these people about cutting themselves?”

  He rolls his eyes. “Talk about something besides relationships and sex.”

  “We do,” I start to say, and then it occurs to me: the only other regular topic for discussion besides relationships is hygiene, which always has the implied motivator of a date behind it. “Before you go on a date, what are three things you want to make sure you’ve done?” was a 500-point Jeopardy! question today. The choices were a) take a shower, b) put on deodorant, c) brush your teeth, d) all of the above. Lucas has a good point. In this class, these rituals aren’t done for dental health or personal comfort. They’re done for dates.

  “It’s like the message is, if you’re not in a relationship, you’d better start working harder to get in one. But maybe some of these people don’t want to date.”

  This whole conversation surprises me. I know for a fact that Lucas has a girlfriend. He’s been dating Debbie Warren since sophomore year, when I first noticed her sitting on his lap at lunch. I registered it the way I register all the relationships in the popular crowd, usually with the same thought: Oh, okay. That makes sense. As far as I know, they’re still going out. She sits next to him at the popular table. The only french fries she eats are off his plate. Generally that’s how you know who’s dating who in that crowd.

  “The class is half-titled ‘Relationships.’ That’s the reason everyone signed up, right?”

  I think about one of the main points Mary made during our training session: that adults with developmental disabilities have happier lives if they’re able to express their sexuality in healthy ways. “We encourage people to meet with us privately if they’re ready for a detailed discussion of sex, so you don’t have to worry about that part in class. But the point is, we don’t discourage them from thinking about sex. In fact, that’s sort of the point.”

  I remind Lucas of what Mary said. “These people are adults. If they want to have sex, they shouldn’t be told they can’t.”

  “No, I get that. I’m fine with that part. I just think there’s other kinds of relationships, right? Like friendships, maybe? Why don’t we ever talk about those?” As he says this, he looks around the lobby. “If you ask me, those can be even more complicated.”

  I have to admit, this is the first time I’ve heard someone admit that being part of the football/cheerleader crowd isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. It shouldn’t surprise me, I know, but this year—where football players walk like gods down our hallways surrounded by angels in identical short skirts—it does.

  BELINDA

  MY MOM SAYS IT’S good I was born now not a long time ago because back then they didn’t know what to do with people like me. I think she means people who believe in romance and love, because I do. I believe somebody will fall in love with me someday and ask me to marry him. Getting married means one person goes to live at the other person’s house. It also means you share everything including food. Even if it’s your special treats, like Skittles or candied ginger, you give him half. That’s called showing love.

  He also has to give you half of his things, too. You share them. That’s also love.

  It doesn’t mean you never fight. Sometimes people in love do fight because they love each other so much and have strong opinions. It’s fine to have opinions as long as you don’t cry when other people have different opinions. Then you have to yoga breathe, in through your nose, and count to ten to calm your body.

  This is what I do when I am sad or frustrated at school.

  I used to get frustrated a lot in school, especially when I kept trying out for plays and Mr. Bergman said he was sorry but I couldn’t be in one. Then I got frustrated and mad and had to yoga breathe a lot because I am a very good actress and I would like to be in a play.

  I’ve been in twelve plays if you count Children’s Story Theater as eight separate short plays which I do. I was in eight stories, sometimes with a big part, sometimes with a smal
ler one, like a townsperson or a duck. I started acting when I was ten and acted every year until I was sixteen and the Children’s Story Theater director said I was too old to be in their plays. Her name was Linda and she said she wished she could keep me on because I was so good but that wasn’t fair to the younger kids who wanted to play the parts I usually got like Red Riding Hood and Bremen Town Musician Number One.

  During my time with Children’s Story Theater, I could memorize lines and act better than most of the other children. I could also speak loud enough that everyone could hear me. Sometimes I repeated other people’s lines if I knew someone’s grandma was sitting in the back and hadn’t heard them. I can also follow stage directions, which a lot of kids can’t. They think upstage means toward the audience, which it doesn’t.

  I also helped with props and costume changes. I lined shoes up and kept the props table backstage tidy. I like standing backstage where you have to be quiet or people in the audience will hear you. I like when people whisper, “Break a leg,” which means good luck in the theater, not “I hope you break your leg.”

  Even though I am a good actress, it’s been five years since I’ve acted in any plays.

  In ninth grade I tried out for a play but Mr. Bergman, the director, said I couldn’t be in it because there wasn’t an aide who could stay after school with me for the rehearsals. Nan came in to school and told them I didn’t need an aide. She told them I did very well in theater and I had been in four plays before. He said he was sorry but he still couldn’t do it.

  He couldn’t do it again the next year and the year after that and every year that I’ve been in this school. This year when I went to audition, he asked me why I kept auditioning and I told him, “Because I’m a good actress. I’ve been in twelve shows.”

  He said, “I wish we could use you. I really do, but the school won’t let me. Someone has to be responsible for you and we don’t have the staff.”