Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac(37)

“Is there somebody else?” Will asked. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his pants.

“Nope,” I said. “I’m not planning on it either.”

He said he didn’t believe me.

“Well, you can believe what you want. But I’ve got enough on my plate without a boy.” Then I told Will I needed to study, which was true.

I’d finally gotten him to the front door when he spun around and said, “You know how I call you ‘Chief’?”

I nodded.

“Didn’t you ever wonder what you call me?”

“Uh, ‘Will’?”

“No, what you used to call me.”

I hadn’t.

“Coach. You know, short for co-chief. You could call me that again if you wanted to, Chief. If it ever should happen to just pop into your head.”

“Coach,” I said. Despite the fact that he couldn’t have been less athletic, the nickname suited him well. A good nickname tells you something about the person it belongs to, and it was so with this one. In all he did, Will was fiercely loyal, a good motivator, intelligent, passionate, and thoughtful. He was everything a coach ought to be. “It’s a good name for you,” I said. “I wish I’d thought to ask you about it before.”

“There are all sorts of things I could tell you,” he said, “if you ever wanted to know them.”

The play opened the second weekend in November. Each of the cast members was allotted four tickets. I gave one to Will and two to Dad, who gave one to Rosa Rivera. I thought about giving my last ticket to Mom, but my part wasn’t all that big for her to bother driving in from the city. Plus, I didn’t have enough tickets for Nigel and their kid anyway.

The show ran for only two nights, so in a way it wasn’t all that different from yearbook—a lot of effort for not much product. But, well, I think it was a good play. That must count for something. Will, his mother, Dad, and Rosa Rivera came on the second night, and everyone told me it was a good play, and that I was good in it. I was really only in a couple of scenes. To commemorate the occasion, Will made me a new mix CD, Songs for Acting Like You’re at Your Therapist When You’re Really Just Acting (“Hilarious,” I said), which he gave me after the show was over; I hadn’t finished listening to his last mix yet. Dad said how he liked the video installation part that James had done. The footage had looked pretty amazing projected—you would never have known that we shot it at a park in Rye. James had treated the footage so that it looked like an old silent movie. All black-and-white and faded and flickery.

The cast party was at Alice’s house. Or behind Alice’s house by her pool. It being November, the pool was covered over with a green vinyl tarp.

Yvette hugged and congratulated me. In return, I told her how amazing the costumes had looked. “Have you seen James?” she asked.

“Why?”

“I didn’t get a chance to tell him how beautiful his images were. Best part of the play. Don’t tell Alice,” she whispered.

I swore that I wouldn’t.

I hadn’t encountered James since that day at the park. He didn’t need to go to actor rehearsals, and at the few rehearsals he did attend, he was occupied with technical matters. Truthfully, I had been too busy to care. Besides, I was past expecting that anything might happen between us.

Alice came up to me next. “Where’s your cocktail, cookie?” This was the drama crowd—while there was no beer, there was plenty of harder stuff.

“I’m abstaining,” I said.

“Do you have a problem with drinking?” Alice asked me.

“Yes. I have no tolerance to an embarrassing degree.” No one really wants to hear about your medical problems at a party.

Alice laughed. “Sounds like it’d be fun to get you liquored up, cookie.”

I just shook my head.

Alice kissed me on both cheeks and told me she was so proud of me. And then the guy who had played Guildenstern called her. “Who do you think is cuter? Rosencrantz or Guildenstern?” Alice asked. “I simply can’t decide who I prefer.”

“What about Yvette?” I asked her.

“Yvette, Yvette, sweet Yvette.” Alice sighed heavily. We both turned to watch Yvette, who was laughing with another girl in the play. “We are in high school, and that means I don’t have to marry anybody.”

My curfew was midnight, and I was about to get a ride home with the doomed Yvette, who like most doomed people seemed to have no clue, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, Hamlet,” James said.

“You’re late,” I replied.

He shrugged. “I didn’t think I was going to come.” He took a cigarette out of his jacket and lit it.

“Aren’t you gonna offer me one?” I asked.

“I would, but I didn’t think you smoked.”

“Still, it’s nice to be asked. Courtesy, you know?”

“Truthfully”—James inhaled deeply, and his gray eyes were lit by the flame from his cigarette—“truthfully I don’t want to be the guy who ruins your pretty pink lungs.”

It sounded an awful lot like flirting. I’d been down that road with James before, and it never led anywhere.

I said that I had to go home. He offered to drive me, but I told him that Yvette was driving me. “In case I don’t see you again,” I said, “I just wanted to say that I thought the installation was beautiful.”