What's Mine and Yours(83)

The play was an alternate universe where they put on costumes and spoke funny words, and the drama was about whether Claudio would live or die, whether he’d marry Juliet, whether the duke would win Isabella, and Angelo would finally get what he deserved. It was peaceful, mostly, except for the rehearsal when Shawn confronted Beckett, whose father owned the print shop where the concerned parents had made their posters. Beckett had lurched at Shawn, waved a finger in his face and shouted, Free speech! I’ve got free speech, don’t I? Shawn had warned him to calm down, his own fists clenched at his sides, until Mr. Riley stepped between them, called everyone to sit in a circle.

He said the play was meant to be a refuge, for everybody; the rehearsals were a safe space. And if they all did their jobs, they might be able to spark a conversation and provide a service to their community through the arts. It was corny and went on for too long, but no one nodded their heads along more vehemently than Noelle and Adira, who sat together, their hands clasped. Noelle had joined Concerned Students for Justice and invited Gee to come. When he had asked what they were planning, Noelle said nobody knew yet; it was mostly a place to talk. He steered clear, but Noelle kept asking. Whenever he said no, she said, Why won’t you come? What’s wrong? and he knew she was fishing for an answer about what had happened that day in the hall. Just thinking of it, the terrible headline Ewing Street, made him feel as if the room were being swallowed up, a dark film slowly washing over his eyes.

Noelle found him in the hall one day, between classes, and told him to meet her in the auditorium a half hour before rehearsal. “I’m not asking as your friend,” she said. “I’m asking as your stage manager.” Then she clomped away in her boots, her ponytail swinging behind her.

When he arrived, she was onstage, kneeling over a long scroll of paper. She was painting prison bars in gray, the gaps between them. She had painted many of the sets mostly by herself, coming early and staying late. She worked as if she believed all the things Mr. Riley said were true and her efforts could make a difference to the school, the parents. She might have been naive, but he couldn’t help but admire her. He didn’t want to stay away.

“You’ve been messing up your lines,” she said. “I want you to run them with me. There aren’t that many, and I know you know them by now.”

“Maybe I don’t.”

Noelle sighed. “You either do or you don’t, Gee. Which one is it?”

Gee shrugged, and Noelle shook her head. It was the first time she had shown she was annoyed with him.

“You want to know something?” she said. “I like you, Gee, but I’m not sure you like me.”

Gee felt his heart thumping in his ears.

“You don’t tell me anything, and I ask you questions, and you shrug, and you mumble, and that isn’t how you’re supposed to act with your friends.”

He deflated at the mention of friendship, although he supposed it was true—they were friends.

She asked what had happened that day in the hall, why he had been so upset, why he hardly spoke a word while they walked back out to the lot to wait for Linette.

“I thought you wanted to run lines,” he said.

“Fine.” Noelle snatched off the hot-pink scarf she had tied around her neck and retied it like a bandanna around her crown. “How about I tell you something first then. Sit down.”

He sat beside her, and she told him about her father and his drugs, how he was there sometimes and sometimes he wasn’t, about the stupid leather jacket he had given her, the house he’d bought and stolen and sold.

“I hate to say it, but I’m pretty sure he’s a bad person. So is my mother. I come from bad people.”

“You say it like you’re proud.”

“I’m not ashamed. I didn’t do any of that stuff.”

“But once they know, people see you different.”

“I don’t care how people see me.”

“Come on,” Gee said.

“I don’t. I really fucking don’t.”

“Well, I’m not you.”

“I wouldn’t want you to be.”

She took his hand and pressed it to her chest, a flat spot at the center, below her throat. It surprised him, filled him with a warm gush of feeling.

“Everybody’s got secrets,” she said. “Everybody. That’s what I love about music, plays. It’s everybody’s worst business all laid out.”

“But you didn’t tell me your business—you told me your parents’.”

Noelle told him about the abortion.

“Why are you looking at me that way? What, do you think I’m bad now, too?”

Gee shook his head. “My mother got pregnant in high school. If she’d had an abortion, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Well, she didn’t.”

“Was it Duke’s?”

“It was mine.”

“So you’re trying to trade or something? A secret for a secret?”

Noelle said nothing, waiting on him. It made him want to tell her everything, as if to tell her here, in the auditorium, might keep the truth safe. He felt that they were somewhere else, far away from the town, as if the auditorium weren’t a part of the school at all. It wasn’t the place where he’d attended that first town hall. He was different here. He said things aloud he never would have said elsewhere, like, Death is a fearful thing and I am so out of love with life that I will sue to be rid of it. He could say these things here; they were bone-deep, real, even if someone else had written the lines.