The Truth About Fragile Things Page 9

  “No.” I shook my head and gathered together my trash. “I’m rooting for her. Phil and I helped her rehearse.”

  Schatz gave a doubtful “hmph” and brought her fist down. “Well, it’s going to upset all the upper classmen who think they don’t have a part because she does. And I have some I know will do alright. Charlotte is an unknown.” Like always, Schatz seemed to realize she had confided too much in me. I knew she would never discuss casting with another student.

  “Mums the word,” she reminded me.

  “Silence is golden.”

  Secrecy was our private pact. The bell rang and I gave her one last glance, realizing for the first time that if I ever wanted to tell her the whole truth, the whole horrible truth, she would be safe. The door opened and two other juniors walked in.

  Another day, another lunch.

  In the crowded hallway after the last bell Charlotte’s small, cool hand wrapped around my wrist as I sidestepped a group of soccer players to get to the main staircase. “Is it listed?” she asked me through clenched teeth.

  “I don’t know. Probably.”

  She let go of me and slowed down, forcing me to pull ahead. “You look first.”

  “I thought you didn’t want a part, Charlotte.”

  “Who said I do?” she asked.

  I could see the paper taped to the front of the door when we got to the first floor. The list of names was painfully small in comparison to the large gathering of thespians around it. A few people murmured their congratulations to me before I could read anything, so the last few steps to the door were just to see which part I got. My classmates spread apart and let me find my name: Megan Riddick &ndash Belinda. And just below my name: Charlotte Exby &ndash Belinda understudy.

  Charlotte couldn’t see over my shoulder so when I turned around her face was still pinched with anxiety. “You’re my understudy,” I told her.

  “Really?” She pushed her way around me, ran her fingertip down the page until it pressed against her name. “I’m an understudy?”

  “And Phillip is Frederick,” I said, looking over the entire cast with a few nods of approval and a mental wrinkle of my nose for the names that gave me doubt.

  “What does an understudy do, exactly?”

  “Wish for Megan to get a horrible disease.” Phillip’s low voice hissed against the back of our necks. “Congratulations, Charlotte,” he told her in a normal tone when we turned around. “And to you, too, my dear wife,” he gave me an imaginary toast, showing off his ridiculously good British accent. “Alicia is Taylor’s understudy,” he added under his breath. “Might need to buy her an ice cream.”

  I groaned. Maybe if Schatz knew more about the real dramas of high school she would be less inclined to put together self-destructing casts. “She will poison her,” I predicted.

  “Without a doubt,” Phil agreed. “And now we get to see Taylor flaunt a bad accent and a lingerie costume for Zirman for a couple months.”

  “Good grief. Then I don’t know who to feel most sorry for: us, or Braden, or Alicia.”

  Charlotte caught sight of Taylor’s smug smile across the hall. “Definitely Alicia.”

  “Let’s leave before she needs comfort.” Phil nudged me forward and we managed to slip out undetected by sticking close to the brick hall.

  Charlotte followed us to my car. “Really, what does an understudy do?”

  “You come to all the rehearsals, learn all the lines, practice everything, and then do nothing,” Phillip told her. “Unless Megan is incapacitated.”

  “It’s a good thing,” I reassured her in a gentler tone. “You get all the experience without all the pressure. It really is an honor for a freshman. And who knows, maybe I’ll break my foot or something.”

  She asked about the rehearsal schedule and took it like a champ when we broke it to her that after the first two weeks of intense reading and memorization, she would be staying after school for two to three hours every day for an additional five weeks. I expected her to quit before she started, but it didn’t bother her at all. In her next sentence I knew why. “That’s less time with Doctor Dave.”

  My heart slipped down a rung to my next rib. “So it didn’t work at all? The surprise party didn’t help you feel any better about him?”

  She shot me a cold look. “That was never why I did it.”

  “I know,” I agreed. I was just hoping…”

  “You don’t need to spend your hope on me.”

  “Wait,” Phillip broke in. “Before you end the celebration with your charming attitude, Charlotte, I have to point out you are both overlooking the fact that we get Friday the 10th off school and there is no rehearsal.”

  I glared at him for interrupting us with that pointless bit of news. “And?”

  “And…” he pulled the word over his lips, made it hang in the air. “If either of you paid any attention to scientific matters of our days you would know fate loves us.”

  “You lost me and I don’t care,” I snapped.

  Phillip pulled out a piece of paper. Before I could read it he told us, “There is a meteor shower on the 10th between one and three in the morning.”

  “Are you serious?” Charlotte asked, and pried the paper out of his hand, scanning it. “On the same day we’re off school?”

  “Kismet.” Phillip winked at me. “So I figured we could knock out three things on the list.”

  “Meteor shower’s one,” I said. “What are the others?”

  “Sleeping under the stars,” he held up two fingers and then a third. “Backpacking. Of course,” his voice curled suggestively, “we could do four if we go skinny dipping, too.”

  “He’s not gonna drop that one, is he?” I asked Charlotte in a dry aside.

  “I guess I need to go jump in the lake tonight just so he’ll shut up,” she said.

  “I did not write the list. Far be it from me to deny a man his last wishes.” Phillip put his hand over his heart.

  “I so wish my dad had said ‘cross dress with a tiara and sing sixteen candles to the entire student body’ so you could have tackled that one for us,” Charlotte responded.

  I laughed. “Good try, but he would love every minute of that.”

  Phillip shrugged in agreement and got into his car. “You will both love me when I am protecting you from bears in two weeks.”

  “Bears? Where are there bears in the suburbs?” Charlotte asked as Phil backed out of his parking space.

  “That’s the best part. We’re not doing it here. We’re making it count. I’m taking you both into the heart of the Ozarks for a campout,” he called out his window while his car reversed so close to Charlotte I had to pull her back a step.

  “I am almost certain he’s kidding,” I answered as he waved and pulled away. “Almost.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Phillip’s wishful plan for the meteor shower turned out to be surprisingly detailed for a boy who gave his entire report on Of Mice and Men after watching a two minute parody of it on YouTube. The worst part is that he got a B+ because he acted “touched” and said Steinway “changed” him.

  He printed up a map with four scribbled stars marking our starting point and every place we would go. “Tom Sauk Mountain is the highest point in Missouri. In our area we can’t get any closer to the sky than camping there,” he told us as we sat outside on Phillip’s front lawn, our scripts resting after an hour of reading through our parts. His mother had a talent for baking and we each had a hot slice of bread slathered in homemade preserves. He might have been able to talk me into climbing Everest if he kept feeding me like that.

  “Since we’ll be right in the heart of the Ozarks I am taking you both to Elephant Rocks and Johnson Shut-Ins. We’ll go hiking there. The worst part is that the river is too low. I researched and it’s just not enough to do any rafting. We could canoe a few parts of it but there is nothing close to whitewater unless it floods like it did twenty years ago.” His finger followed the reckless squiggles on the map
. When he finished he looked up as I licked a blackberry seed off my thumb.

  “I am actually impressed,” I admitted. “But it won’t work. My parents won’t let me go alone with you, Phillip. They’ll want to come.”

  “What?” Charlotte shrieked. “No parents. It doesn’t count if there are parents. Then it’s just a freaking field trip.”

  “I don’t see how that changes it.”

  “It changes everything. You stay home. Phillip and I will go,” she finished.

  “Whoa there, Nellie.” I squinted, trying to keep my face passive. “There is no way you are driving six hours with a boy two years older than you to camp under the stars. There is nothing on the list about killing your mother and that’s what you’d have to do to get that little plan to work.”

  “Is she seriously three hundred years old?” Charlotte asked Phillip. She turned her incredulous eyes on me. “Then I won’t tell her, Megan.”

  I took another bite of my bread, stalling for time. I finished swallowing and said, “I will.”

  Charlotte’s mouth dropped open and just when I felt superior because she was glowering in rage and I was calmly enjoying my next bite, she hit my hand and sent my food flying into the dry grass.

  “You did not.” I picked it up but my jam was peppered with dirt. “You act like a ten-year-old sometimes, Charlotte. No one in their right mind would let you go alone with Phillip. You’re a pretty freshman girl and he’s a junior. Junior boys only have one thing on their minds.”

  “He’s our friend,” she shot back. “And he’s sitting right here. Where do you get off saying—

  “In all fairness,” Phil interrupted, “I do only have one thing on my mind.”

  Charlotte plowed on. “I told you when we started this that we do it my way or you don’t do it at all. No parents. I’m going. Phillip is going. If you don’t think we should be alone then you better come. No one else. Those are the only options.”

  “And I took it for granted that we wouldn’t break the law. You’re a minor. We all are. Even if I wanted to—and I actually do,” I pictured for a moment the utter stillness of the autumn stars, following their burning tails with our fingers as we lay on the ground and I knew our motives were innocent. “Our parents won’t let us.”

  “I’ll think of something,” she promised.

  “Phillip?” I asked, looking for help. “You’re an Eagle Scout. That’s the only reason you know any of this granola stuff. You’re not allowed to lie to your mother, are you?”

  He shook his head, his grin warning me not to look for any support from him. “I’m not lying. I’m telling my parents I’m going backpacking on Tom Sauk Mountain to see a meteor shower.”

  “And you’re telling them you’ll have two girls with you?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t think it will come up.”

  I groaned. I flipped through several options involving sleeping over at Alicia’s to pretend academic trips to a crazy one that required Schatz to know and cover for me. I threw them all away before they fermented in my head for more three seconds. “There is nothing I can say to my parents to make this work. Literally nothing.” I gave Phillip and Charlotte a stony stare, daring them to solve the dilemma. “Anyone? Anyone?”

  Phillip handed me his half-eaten slice in reconciliation. “You are going to have to act your butt off.”

  “You’re going without a tent?” Lauren nibbled off the edge of her potato chip. “You are just putting some beef jerky in a backpack and sleeping on the ground without a tent? With Phillip?”

  It sounded worse the longer she talked. “We’ll have sleeping bags. Won’t we?” I pulled out my copy of Bryon’s list, pouring over it like a constitution. “It doesn’t say anything about no sleeping bags.”

  “What if something crawls into it?” Lauren’s face shone with a disturbing joy. “What if it rains? What if it’s thirty degrees outside? Or what if it is cold and raining and therefore something crawls in with you to keep warm?”

  “This really couldn’t get any better for you, could it?”

  “I can’t imagine how.” The crunch of the chips between her teeth sounded like laughter.

  “You are a terrible, horrible, inexcusable sister. And you are going to make up for it by helping me with Mom and Dad.”

  “Sure,” she agreed too brightly. I arched my eyebrow suspiciously and she continued. “Just take me with you. We can convince them we’re going to have a fun sisters’ weekend. We’ll even tell them we want to try camping. If we do it together we can pull it off.”

  I brushed the wispy baby hairs off my forehead and calibrated my voice to make sure I kept her on my side. “That’s a good idea. And you know I’d love to have you laughing at me the entire time, but this is one of those weird things I have to do alone. I’d be self-conscious if you were there.”

  She argued, throwing in a couple threats and an extra guilt, but I held firm. “Lauren, if you’re there I’ll be thinking of you. I’ll be worried about you getting hurt. I’ll be worried what you think of me when I try to be…outdoorsy.”

  “You are going to try to be outdoorsy?” She nailed me with disbelieving eyes.

  “I actually am. I’m going to be all…natural and…wild.”

  “Wild?” The word fell to the floor, bounced to a halt when it hit my leather shoes.

  “See? You’re making me feel stupid already. I have to do this alone. But I need your help. Please.”

  “Has Phillip ever kissed you?” she whipped the question out, hoping to catch me off balance.

  “Only in his very disgusting dreams,” I promised without hesitation. “This trip has nothing to do with him.”

  “Fine,” she growled reluctantly. “What’s the story?”

  Phillip told me to act my butt off, but Lauren took home the Oscar. As we picked our way through cranberry pecan salad at dinner her hand came down on the dinner table with a small slam, making us all turn.

  “I totally forgot. Mom, we get extra credit in my science class if we take a trip to the Omaha zoo to see the new bug display. And I have an 89%. It would put me back up to an A.” She pulled a lettuce leaf off her fork with her teeth and opened her big eyes in a silent plea. “And we have a Friday off school in two weeks and I thought we could all go.”

  My father chewed thoughtfully, but didn’t look like he was seriously considering it. “When did it drop to a B?” he wondered, but Lauren ignored him.

  “And I can’t register for the honor’s field trip to St. Louis this summer if I don’t have all “A’s,” Lauren pushed. “Please. It’ll be fun. Please.”

  I tried to look supportive and noncommittal at the same time, while concealing my admiration for her natural ability to pull off a complete lie. I chewed on a cranberry and wondered if my blue sweater had really gotten a hole from the washer.

  “That might work,” my mom said. “It’d be nice to take a weekend off. We could do the river walk, Megan.”

  I smiled sadly, thinking of what I’d miss. If you take a square of cardboard downtown you can stop at the massive, metal ramps and ride down the slides. It is just far enough away from home I can let loose. And there is always the nostalgia. We did those slides every year when I was little. Now that we’re older we follow it up with a dinner downtown at a French restaurant where we eat things like duck and rabbit and raw meat just to prove who’s bravest.

  “I would love to, but Schatz called a special rehearsal all day that Friday. We’re not really where we should be.”

  “Skip it,” Lauren said, her clear eyes still and unreadable.

  I gazed back at her, hoping she got my clue to quit while we were ahead. “Wish I could, but I can’t. I have to help Charlotte with her blocking. But you three should go. I can hold down the fort. I could even spend the night with Alicia and do something fun.”

  “How is Charlotte doing?” My mom asked, setting down her fork as her expression clouded. “Are you two working well together?”

  “She’s
fine. I think she’s getting used to me.”

  My mother muttered something so low I caught only the mood, but not the words. She still struggled with the fact the past had slipped back into our lives.

  “I don’t want to leave you alone,” Dad said. “Could we go this weekend?”

  “No!” Lauren yelled, dropping her calm façade. My parents looked to her, waiting for an explanation. Her eyes spun around the table, blank.

  “That boy?” I teased. “You already agreed to help him with his homework, right?”

  She lowered her eyelashes in embarrassment. “You promised you wouldn’t tell.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “Mom, Dad, if you twist my arm and threatened me with poisoned frogs I will not tell you who we are talking about. So don’t ask.” I patted Lauren’s hand in a mock apology and returned the subject to the real problem. “Seriously, take her on the 10th. She’s been wanting some time alone with both of you anyway. I will be fine. It will be nice to have the house to myself.”

  “You’ve been wanting some time alone with us?” Mom’s voice melted into the soft pitches she uses for anything emotional. “I didn’t know that.”

  Lauren shrugged in a beautiful imitation of adolescent embarrassment. “It might be nice.”

  My father exchanged a look with my mother and I knew we were golden.

  Lauren was going to eat out three times a day and see the meanest gorilla in captivity and I was going to try to keep dangerous creatures out of our sleeping bags. Phillip being one of them. The gorilla sounded better with every passing minute.

  CHAPTER 16

  Phillip wanted to know how I managed my parents, but for revenge I refused to tell him and concentrated on one thing at school—the play. It was trickier than usual, putting myself aside and diving into the character. During our first stage rehearsal a foreign sensation seeped under my skin, hiding behind the usual thrum of nerves and excitement. It was something more than the exhilaration of letting go. It was something new I couldn’t label until I saw Charlotte’s upturned face track me across the stage. I pulled out of my head and borrowed her eyes. I saw the lights fold over my shoulders like a cape. They always make someone look something like a hero. I carried with me not just the burden of my part, but the impossible weight of her constant assessment.