Look Both Ways(23)

“Good,” she says. “Now say, ‘I deserve to be here.’?”

I turn all the way around and look at her. “Are you seriously making me do affirmations?”

Zoe spins me back toward the mirror. “Say it!” she orders.

It seems easier to get this over with than to argue. “Fine,” I say. “I deserve to be here.” It comes out sounding incredibly sarcastic.

“That is officially the least affirming thing I’ve ever heard in my life. You have to mean it!”

“But what if I don’t mean it?”

“Brooklyn, that’s the entire point of affirmations. If you say it enough times, you start to mean it.” She points to the mirror. “Again.”



“I deserve to be here.” I try to sound more confident this time.

“Louder!”

“I deserve to be here!”

“Scream it! Let the whole dorm know!”

“I deserve to be here!” I shout at the top of my lungs, and then I burst out laughing, and so does Zoe.

“Good!” she says. “Now say, ‘I am talented!’?”

“I am talented!” I scream.

“I am beautiful!” Zoe yells.

“I am beautiful!” I repeat, but now all I can do is wonder if Zoe really thinks I’m beautiful. “Your turn,” I say, because I need her to stop looking at me for a minute.

“Okay.” She moves to stand beside me and squares her shoulders. “I can act over the Barney song!” she shouts. “I get to play Kim on the main stage! I got into f*cking Juilliard!”

“I can hang a Source Four!” I shout.

“I have a fantastic ass!” Zoe screams, and then we’re both laughing so hard, it’s difficult to breathe. It’s the kind of laughter that’s almost painful, where you feel like your body is barely holding itself together, but the pain is so good, you don’t want it to stop. My legs start to buckle, and I clutch at Zoe’s shoulder to keep me upright, but she’s equally weak-kneed, and we melt toward the floor together in slow motion. That makes everything even funnier, and I start hiccupping. Zoe’s face is bright pink and wet with tears.

Jessa opens our door without knocking. “What the hell is going on with you people?”



“We are amazing!” I shout at her at the same time that Zoe screams, “We’re hot, talented bitches!”

Jessa shakes her head. “Y’all belong in the loony bin.”

She withdraws and shuts the door, and even though I feel weird for thinking it, I’m glad she’s gone. I want this moment with Zoe to myself. My roommate buries her face in my shoulder as she struggles to calm down, and her hair drapes over us both like a curtain. When I glance up at the mirror, I like how our reflections look, all messy and sprawled and tangled together.

When she can speak again, Zoe says, “That was awesome. We should do that every day.”

“We’d get thrown out of the dorm.”

“But we’d feel so good about ourselves!” She giggles and wipes her damp cheeks. “Admit it, you feel a little better now, right?”

“I do, yeah.” I don’t tell her that the reason I feel better is because she sees me as this bright, shiny, better version of myself, not because I actually believe I deserve to be here.

Zoe sits back up. “Seriously, though, being in bad shows is part of the business. Those are your actor battle scars, you know? They’re the stories you’ll pull out at dinner parties forever. It sucks now, but it’ll be hilarious later.”

She’s right; my entire family has war stories like this, and they’re always laughing about them at Family Nights. The whole point of coming here was to be like them, and at least in this way, I finally will be.

“What’s the worst show you’ve ever been in?” I ask.



Zoe settles into a more comfortable position on the floor. “Probably this student-written musical in tenth grade. The girl who wrote it was in love with our acting teacher, and the whole show was basically about him secretly being into her, too. I played her, and my then-boyfriend played the acting teacher, and then we broke up in the middle of the rehearsal process. And the actual acting teacher was the director, so it was basically this giant hurricane of awkward.”

“Oh God,” I say. “That might be even worse than Se?or Hidalgo.”

“Fortunately, my friend Brian was in it with me. I wouldn’t have made it through without him.”

“I’ve got an ally, too,” I say. “Do you know Russell, that supertall guy from scenic? He’s doing our set, and he’s really cool. We talked a little bit after rehearsal.”

“Oooh.” Zoe sits up straighter. “No, I don’t know him. Is he cute?”

I picture Russell’s warm brown eyes and curls and strong arms. “Yeah, really cute. But also gay.”

“Damn. Are you sure? I thought Carlos was gay when I first met him, and…um…he is definitely not.” Her face turns a little pinker, and even though I’m the only other person here, I suddenly feel excluded from the conversation.

“I’m pretty sure about Russell. He knows about hair products, and he’s totally into that guy who’s doing the set for Midsummer. Olivier something?”