You in Five Acts(11)

“He is definitely coming,” she said. “I talked him into it. There was a lot of down time while Ethan, you know . . . orated. Most of the other girls were being so embarrassing, getting all up in his face, so I think he appreciated that I was just being normal.” She took the last mask off the wall and gathered them in her arms. “He’s really chill, actually,” she said, shuffling back down the hallway. “Not at all what you’d think.”

“Oh,” I said. “Great.” I’ll admit it bothered me, the fact that Liv had already bonded with Dave. It made it seem like she was gifting him to me, but in a backhanded way, like someone handing you a jelly bean and telling you they didn’t like that flavor, anyway. Liv didn’t really date other actors—her boyfriends were always visual arts majors who did shit like graffiti abstract paintings on found pieces of plywood and hosted pot-brownie bake-offs—but I’d been with her the day we found out Dave was transferring, and she’d lost her damn mind. We’d spent an hour googling him. Something was up.

“You really don’t care if I talk to him?” I asked when Liv finally reappeared, staring down at her phone.

“Huh?” she asked. “Sorry, let me just finish . . .” She typed something quickly and then flashed me a smile. “I think I found a hookup!”

“For you?” I asked. If Liv already had someone lined up for her “party goal,” it made more sense that she would relinquish the chance to get with someone famous enough to have been featured in a Huffington Post slideshow called “Child Stars Who Grew Up Gorgeous!”

“No, for weed,” she said, rolling her eyes and drawing out the word into a singsong. “Jasper can eat a bag of dicks.”

“Did Shakespeare write that?” I asked, and she laughed the way she had always laughed, since first grade, with her little nose wrinkled up like a rabbit.

“Fuck you,” she said, and I started to relax. Whatever she was doing, I decided, it was probably good-hearted. And even if the setup with Dave ended up being horrible and awkward, it was better than competing with her for his attention.

I’d learned over the years that there was no competing with Liv. When she wanted something, she just took it. She didn’t wait around for a starting gun.





Chapter Four


    January 6

127 days left


IN NO TIME, the party had taken on a life of its own. A few dozen people were packed into the living room, draped across the couches, clustered around the alcohol, leaning against every available wall space. Hip-hop blared from the TV, which Liv had hooked up to her laptop, and Eunice, Lolly, and Maple were dancing awkwardly in the space where the coffee table had been, swaying and half-heartedly ass-bumping each other while trying not to spill their drinks. In the kitchen, a bunch of art kids were sitting on the counters, playing some budget version of beer pong where they tried to toss grapes into cups full of malt liquor; the floor was already covered in a sticky film of booze and dirt. And Liv’s room had the door closed, with a towel stuffed in the crack underneath. She’d taped a sheet of paper outside, hand-lettered with the words smoking lounge in Sharpie. The Os had winky faces and cigarettes hanging out of their mouths.

You and Ethan had been the first ones to show up—you took pity on him and brought him back to your house for dinner since he lived so far away and didn’t have time to go home first—but then it had started filling up and Liv had gotten distracted and you’d taken over door duties, hugging the girls and high-fiving the guys, showing them where to dump their coats and pointing them toward the makeshift bar. Since you and Liv were busy being Mr. and Ms. Hospitality for the night, that meant that I, by default, was Ethan’s new best friend. We stood by the pretzels on the kitchen pass-through, talking about his favorite subject.

“She’s just so good,” he said, staring longingly at the hallway that Liv had disappeared down with Dave a few minutes earlier. After all of that cheerleading, she’d barely given me a chance to say hello to him before she’d whisked him away to introduce him to “the people you NEED to know.” Given the fact that Liv hadn’t brought him back yet, it seemed like I didn’t fall into that category. OK, maybe that was unfair—I knew Liv was already drunk, and she always bounced around during parties, trying to talk to everyone—but being flat-out ignored was slowly curdling my pent-up anxiety into anger. I sipped my warm Coke and nodded, more to the song that was playing than anything else.

“She’s got this . . . depth, you know?” Ethan went on. “And real vulnerability. You can’t teach that stuff.” He tipped back his cup and swallowed, wincing. Behind his glasses, his eyes watered.

“Do you even like that?” I asked.

“Gin was Tennessee Williams’s drink,” he coughed.

“And Snoop Dogg’s,” I said. Ethan pretended not to hear me.

“Did she say anything?” he asked. “About the audition?”

“Not really.” I looked across the living room to where you were hanging out with Theo and Dominic, some of the other ballet boys. I tried to send you a telepathic SOS.

“Because we’ve never really worked together as director and actress,” Ethan said. “We’ve just been friends, so this will be like a whole different”—he took another painful-looking sip—“relationship.”