Look Both Ways(34)

There won’t be any more kisses, and I can’t believe how disappointed I am.

Somehow I manage to finish the song, and the second I take my hands off the keys, we both start talking at once. “You sound awesome,” I say, and it comes out a little too enthusiastic, like I’m trying to mask everything I just thought.

But Zoe doesn’t even notice, because she’s too busy saying, “Brooklyn, that was amazing. You are amazing.”

“Thank you,” I say, and then I have to concentrate all my energy on not turning bright red.

“Seriously, why didn’t you tell me you could play like that?”

“I don’t know; it never came up. It’s not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal. You know not everyone can whip out some random musical from memory and play it perfectly the first time, right?” Her eyes bore into me, piercing and bright, like she’s really seeing me for the very first time.

I shrug. “It’s kind of like having a good sense of direction or a good ear for languages,” I say. But now I feel like maybe my musical ability is kind of a big deal. Why didn’t anyone at home ever tell me I was great at this? I’ve been playing the piano since I was six, and I’ve always felt like it was a cop-out. The bench was my place to hide. I’ve never even considered that it could be a place to shine.

“Can you play other shows, too?”

I laugh. “Yeah, of course. I know tons of them.”

“Do you know A Chorus Line? Phantom? Merrily We Roll Along? The Secret Garden?”

“Sure,” I say. “I can probably do stuff from all of those.” I wonder if Zoe’s imagining long nights locked up with me in this tiny room, singing her heart out while I play. Even if she doesn’t want to kiss me again, I want to be indispensable to her in a way nobody else is. I send that image to the universe to help things along.



Zoe shakes her head in wonder. “Man, I can’t believe you had this hidden talent the whole time I’ve known you. Makes me wonder what else you can do…”

Her voice is edged with the slightest hint of a tease, and I can’t tell anymore if we’re still talking about the piano. Maybe she wasn’t trying to tell me anything with that Birdie song after all. The lyrics could be a coincidence; it’s not like she wrote them. I wish I could ask her how she feels, but I’m not sure how to do that without sounding ridiculous. Hey, straight roommate with a boyfriend, remember that time you put your mouth on my mouth? Can you explain the subtext of that to me, please?

I should probably forget about the whole thing. Zoe and I are friends, and that should be enough for me. It was enough forty-eight hours ago. But now that she’s standing six inches from me, flushed and glowing and looking at me like I’m something rare and exciting, it doesn’t quite feel like enough anymore.

“Do you mind if we do it again?” Zoe asks, and for a second I think she’s reading my mind. But when I look at her in alarm, she’s holding up the music in her hand.

“Of course,” I say. “We can do it as many times as you want.”





We’ve been at Allerdale almost three weeks now, and I’ve settled into the routine. Drag myself out of bed at eight every morning. Slog through nine hours of boring manual labor with the lighting crew. Gulp down some food in the noisy dining hall. Sit backstage with a headset on and watch Midsummer for the billionth time. Drag myself back to my room. Lather, rinse, repeat. But the only part of the day that actually matters is from ten-thirty on, when I get to see Zoe. Sometimes we sprawl on blankets on the lawn with the other apprentices or watch movies in other people’s rooms, and I know I should enjoy being part of the group. This is exactly the kind of bonding my family has been raving about my whole life. But I’m always relieved when everyone splits up at the end of the night and my roommate and I get to spend a little time alone. Life at Allerdale is starting to feel like one of those nature photographs where one antelope is in focus and the entire background is a blurry wash. Everyone else here is the grass and the trees and the sky. Zoe is my antelope.



We still don’t talk about the kiss. I initiate games of Love or Hate and try to trick Zoe into saying something revealing, but she never does, and I’m too scared to ask her about it outright. When we’re with our other friends, I compulsively dissect the way she interacts with them. Does she touch me more or less than she touches everyone else? When she loops her arm through mine, is it laden with meaning? Does she smile at Kenji and Livvy the same way she smiles at me? Most of the time, there’s no difference in how she treats me, and every few days, I decide our moment in the Dewald common room was a fluke, and I vow to stop thinking about it. Maybe I’ve blown it out of proportion. Maybe I didn’t even like it as much as I remember.

But every time I give up, Zoe turns to face me in the dark in those quiet moments before sleep and tells me something incredibly personal, and I start to wonder all over again if I’m special to her somehow. After she falls asleep, I stare at the ceiling and repeat her stories to myself so I won’t forget a single detail—the day she lost her virginity, the way she held her grandmother’s hand the night she died, the moment she realized she wanted to be an actor. She wouldn’t entrust such important memories to just anyone, right?

I spend my days collecting stories to tell Zoe in return. The humiliating things that happen during my crew calls don’t bother me nearly so much once I craft them into narratives that will make her laugh, even the way Douchebands keeps wiggling his eyebrows at me and talking about how he’s hungry for doughnuts. When we spend our third Se?or Hidalgo rehearsal learning basic sleight of hand so we can pull objects out of each other’s ears, I’m able to laugh it off and concentrate on how I’ll present it to her. After rehearsal, Russell catches me and asks if I want to play the piano for a while, but I tell him I have plans and head back to the room. I don’t want to forget any of my good lines before Zoe has heard them.