The Pretty One(31)

“Good part?” he asks.

“It’s just for the senior playwright independent study. Not a big deal at all,” I say as if I couldn’t care less. “Lucy’s trying out, too.”

“What did you think of Drew’s play?” Lucy asks me. As she knows, I read it the minute I got home from school.

“I think it’s…” I stop myself. What I want to say is that I think it should get a Tony and an Oscar and the Nobel Prize. But instead I say, “Okay.”

“Yeah,” Lucy says, reaching for the block of Parmesan cheese and the grater. “There’s definitely some problems, but I’m hoping he’ll be amenable to making some changes.”

I get it. She will make the changes when she gets the part. “The other day you said you thought it was amazing,” I point out.

“Did I? I guess it’s pretty good, for a rough. But there are some definite problems. Like the fact that the characters don’t have names. What’s with that? It’s so confusing.”

“I wasn’t confused.” There are two characters. One is referred to as “Guy.” The other “Girl.” Simple.

“These senior productions typically become a real partnership between the writer and the actor,” she says authoritatively, ignoring me.

“That’s interesting,” Mom interjects cheerfully.

“I love the story though, don’t you?” Lucy says to me, as she begins grating the Parmesan cheese. “There’s kind of an ominous undertone. The heroine is definitely a little unhinged—the way she tries to seduce him into staying with her and stuff.”

“She seduces him?” my mom asks.

“There’s sex in this play?” my dad practically exclaims.

“No,” I say to my parents. “It doesn’t say that they had sex. It just says that they hooked up or, well, got together. And I don’t think she’s crazy.”

“Got together?” Lucy says. “You don’t think that means they had sex? They totally did.”

Lucy has a point, which makes me think about Drew. I know he’s a writer and this is fiction and all, but does the fact that he’s writing about people having sex mean that he’s actually had sex? Read: Did he sleep with Lindsey?

“For two,” Lucy continues, “if she’s not crazy, why is she sitting in the park by herself at night talking about vampires?”

“Vampires?” Mom asks.

“She’s upset,” I say to Lucy. “And I think that it’s sad, not crazy. She thinks she knows him but she doesn’t. She’s in love with the, well, idea of him.”

“Idea of him,” Lucy grunts, ramming the cheese over the grater.

“There’s vampires?” Dad asks.

“No,” I say to him. “The play takes place at night when there’s a full moon. The character of the girl makes a comment about how she’s always heard that weird things happen on a full moon. And I think she only says that because she’s trying to be wacky just because she thinks that will make her more interesting or something. She really likes this guy.”

“She’s nuts,” Lucy says, grating even more ferociously.

“Lucy!” Mom says, motioning toward her plate.

Lucy stops grating as she looks down at the mountain of cheese on her plate.

“I think that’s enough,” Mom says. “Since when do you even like Parmesan cheese?”

“I want to hear more about how you’re doing in school, Megan,” Dad says.

“Well,” I say, pausing to chew, “my teachers are a little concerned. I think they’re afraid Jan wasn’t up to snuff.” Jan was my tutor last year. She looked like a smarty, but I think she took one too many whiffs from the glue bottle.

“Are you sure you want to try out for a play?” Mom asks.

“Maybe you should just focus on your studies for a while.”

Uh-oh. This is a potential complication I didn’t expect. “I can handle it,” I say quickly.

“Mom’s right,” Lucy says. “You don’t want to overwork yourself. You want to be able to have some fun this year, too.”

I give Lucy a look that signals her to mind her own business.

“Yeah,” Dad says. “I bet you’re going to have quite the social life now that you’re—”

“Better,” Mom says, interrupting him.

“So is everyone fawning over you now?” Dad asks. “I bet you and Lucy are the prettiest girls in the school!”

Before my accident, I would’ve loved my dad to say something like that (even though I would’ve known it wasn’t true). But now it just makes me want to chomp on my nail. It’s as if he’s all excited and giving me credit for something that has nothing to do with who I really am. And it’s a reminder of how he felt about me when I was ugly.

“A lot of guys are interested in her,” Lucy announces.

“Really?” both Mom and Dad say at the same time.

“Guys?” I say to Lucy.

“George Longwell, one of the most popular seniors. He’s a music major.”

“Whoopee,” I say sarcastically. “One guy: a music major who sings in a barbershop quartet.”