Lies You Never Told Me(12)

“Speak briefly. Can you like of Paris’ love?” says Laura.

“I’ll like to look, if l-l-liking looking . . . no, I mean looking liking . . . I mean . . .” I trail off. “Sorry,” I finish lamely.

“How did she get this role again?” It’s a stage whisper, meant to be overheard. I don’t recognize the voice. It doesn’t matter; my gaze drops down to my shoes.

“She got the role because she’s good, Kendall.” Brynn spins to squint out at the audience. “And it’s just a read-through, so why don’t you chill?”

The room goes deadly quiet. I can feel all those eyes raking over my body, peering from the darkness. Just last week, I was eager to be seen; I was ready to step into the spotlight. Now it occurs to me that there’s a flip side to that attention. Now I realize that there are people waiting—hoping—for me to fail.

“Why don’t we call it a day?” Mr. Hunter stands up, glancing around at everyone. “We’ve done a lot of good work today, guys. This is all part of the process.” His eyes fall on the little cluster of girls where Kendall Avery is sitting. “And I expect everyone here to be supportive along the way.”

“Don’t let them get to you,” Brynn whispers as everyone gathers their stuff to go. “Kendall’s hated me since I stole a lead right out of her grasping little hands in sixth grade.” She smirks. “She told me a Filipina couldn’t be Orphan Annie. She was so mad when the casting list went up.”

I stare down at the script. It shakes in my hand.

“This was a mistake,” I say softly. I look up at her. “You should’ve gotten this role. Everyone knows it.”

“Well, everyone except Kendall,” she jokes. “Kendall thinks Kendall should’ve gotten it.” She gets a look at my expression and softens again. “Oh, come on, Elyse, you know that’s not true. Everyone fucks up their first read-through. Especially with Shakespeare. It’s hard.”

“You didn’t,” I point out.

She throws her hands out wide. “Yeah, because I’ve got, like, thirty lines. You just choked because you got stuck in your head. After you’ve done it about a hundred thousand times, you’re going to be amazing.” She puts her hands on my shoulders. “Come over Saturday. We’ll do the usual.”

I finally smile a little. “The usual” means ordering pizza, sharing a beer stolen from her dad’s stash, and running lines all night. Except usually I’m the one helping her learn her parts.

Suddenly those eyes in the audience, leering, waiting for me to mess up, don’t matter as much.

“You’d do that for me?” I ask.

She frowns. “Uh, obviously,” she says. “I kind of owe you for the last, like, year and a half of doing it for me.”

I can’t help it; I throw my arms around her neck.

“You don’t give me any credit at all, do you?” Her voice is muffled against my shoulder. But she hugs me back.

She’s right. I’m acting insecure. Brynn’s looked out for me from the moment we met, when she stumbled on me crying in the girls’ room our first week of freshman year. It was a bad day. My mom’s most recent boyfriend had left the night before, giving Mom a black eye as a parting gift. I didn’t know anyone at East Multnomah; we’d moved that summer, and all my junior high friends were on the other side of town. My clothes were all stained and old, my jeans too short, my sweater pilling, and at lunch a junior boy had snapped my bra so hard the strap broke. I’d gone to the bathroom to fix it, but instead, I’d just collapsed over the sink, tears pouring down my cheeks. In came this girl in a pink sequined skirt and a T-shirt with a giant sloth face printed in the middle, like a fairy godmother in a Wes Anderson movie, and instead of ignoring me like three other girls had done, she gave me a hug before she even asked my name.

And that was it. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but suddenly I was sharing half of her peanut butter sandwich at lunch, and following her to drama club after school, and spending my weekends at her house singing along to musical soundtracks and eating dinner with her family. She was the one who made me audition for my first role; she was the one who coached me on speaking to the back of the room.

So why am I treating her like she’s waiting for me to fail?

“Thanks,” I whisper.

That’s when I hear Mr. Hunter’s voice behind me.

“Elyse, can I speak to you for a moment?” he asks.

My stomach dips again. I turn around to face him, expecting disappointment in his eyes. He looks serious. No dimple today. I swallow hard, my throat tight.

Brynn glances at him, then back at me. “Text me later?”

“Yeah, okay.” I watch her go, my skin bristling with panic. I can hear Mr. Hunter’s voice in my head, crystal clear, telling me his casting was obviously a huge mistake, that I’m not the actress he thought I’d be. I’m so busy letting him harangue me in my head I almost don’t hear him when he speaks in real life.

“Are you okay?” He sits down on the edge of the stage.

“Um, yeah.” I roll up my script in both hands and tap it idly against my leg. “Sorry about today, Mr. Hunter. I’ll do better tomorrow.”

“Of course you will. And there’s no need to apologize.” He leans back against his palms and looks up into the lights. “What you’re doing is brave. It’s hard to stand up in front of all of your peers and risk making a mistake. It makes you vulnerable. Which, for the record, is partly why I gave you the role.”