Now must we to her window,
And give some evening music to her ear.
Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona
The answering machine was blinking as we walked in the house.
“Hey, E-lizzy-beth,” said Zandy. “Sorry I couldn’t come over.” Her words slowed down. “I’d really, really love to see you tonight, but . . .”
Really, really. I froze when I heard the words and waited for her to say when.
Tonight. Followed by but. Perfectly clear.
Zandy’s voice grew brisk again. “Meet me at 12:30 tomorrow after my tennis lesson? Talk to you soon.”
My parents were still bustling around the room. They’d heard the message at the same time I did, but they didn’t have a clue what Zandy had just asked me to do. It looked like our emergency plan was going to work.
I turned my pillow over in frustration. I could not let myself fall asleep. I rolled over on my back and stared up at the ceiling, fighting to keep my eyelids from closing. Then a sliver of light shone through a gap in the doorway, and I looked up to see my door opening slowly.
“Still awake?” My mom sat down on the bed. “I thought you might be missing Zandy.”
I sat up and poked a hand out of the covers. She stroked it softly with her fingertips.
“Big day,” she said.
“Mmmm,” I agreed. I felt so peaceful, like I was a little kid again.
“You looked like you were having fun onstage tonight.”
“Mmmm.” If I didn’t watch it, I’d fall asleep after all.
“I’m happy to hear that. I worry about how much fun you miss.”
“I don’t miss anything,” I said sleepily.
“You missed Amanda’s birthday party last week.”
Well, of course I did. “I had rehearsal,” I said, but Mom went on like she didn’t hear me.
“You missed Kim’s party last month.”
“It sounds like a disease,” Mom said. “And the results are the same. You’re missing so many things other kids get to do. You had to drop swim team last summer.”
“I got a really good part.”
She pulled the comforter up over my arms and patted it in place before she reached over and stroked my cheek. Her hand lay there softly as she asked, “Do you think you spend too much time at the theater?”
I actually felt my mouth fall open in surprise. What a question for my own mother to ask. I was five years old when I saw my first play. I haven’t wanted to be anywhere but in a theater ever since.
It wasn’t easy for me to get into acting, not like Zandy. It took more than a year of tryouts until I finally got cast in Alice in Wonderland. I think Zandy was as happy as I was when I got my first part, even though I had no lines. I was just one of the playing cards, but I learned a lot as the Eight of Hearts. By the end of the play, I had become a theater kid, one of the family. How could my mother think I spent too much time at the theater?
“There’s no place else I want to be,” I said firmly and shivered, despite the warmth of the comforter.
I waited thirty minutes after my mother left my room before I climbed out the window. The nice thing about living in a one-story house is that climbing out the window’s about as hard as climbing out of a bathtub. In two minutes I had grabbed my bike from beside the house and was on my way. It’s only a ten-minute ride to Zandy’s, but in the dark it’s hard to see the road, so I was glad there was a full moon.
I wore my bike helmet, because I didn’t want to give anyone a reason to stop me, and heavy denim jeans, because Zandy’s room is on the second floor.
She was looking for me as I rode up.
She threw down a pair of leather gloves, and I put them on before I climbed up the rose trellis beneath her window. I only got stuck on the thorns twice. The gloves and my jeans kept me from getting seriously scratched. I’ve only done this once before. Zandy’s never tried it.
“What happened?” I said as I climbed over the windowsill.
“Shh,” she whispered and pointed at the wall next to her bed.
The first time I snuck over, Zandy’s mom heard us talking and came to investigate. Fortunately their house has hardwood floors and we heard her footsteps creaking down the hall toward us. I was under the bed long before she reached us, but Zandy panicked and her mom opened the door to see her standing next to the bed by her nightstand.
“I was just talking to Beth,” Zandy had said. Her voice sounded like she was confessing to robbing a bank.
Her mom had looked past her to the phone on the nightstand and said, “I’ll have to take your phone away if you don’t stop calling so late at night. You could wake Beth’s parents.”
And that was that.
But we didn’t want to risk another close call, so we figured out how to talk without making any noise.
It was time to try it. We got into position before we said anything else. Zandy lay in bed under the covers, and I sat on the floor next to her head so we could whisper right into each other’s ear—and I could roll under the bed if we heard any footsteps approaching.
This time Zandy spoke first. “Sorry I couldn’t sleep over. My dad called.”
“Is anything wrong?” Zandy and I slept at each other’s house so often, I knew her dad’s phone schedule as well as she did: 8:00 a.m. on the first Saturday of every month. Since he works in Saudi Arabia, there’s a huge time difference. I’d never known him to call her at night.
“He’s coming to visit next week.”
I reached up and grabbed her hand and started shaking it like she’d just won a boxing match. “Awesome! When?”
“He gets in Sunday.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah.” Zandy dropped my hand and turned onto her back.
The moonlight made the room so bright I could see her fingers moving as she started twirling a lock of hair. I sat there, watching, as the twirling became faster and faster.
“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?” I finally asked.
“Two years and five months.”
The mattress shook as Zandy rolled over. “I wish I had your parents,” she whispered fiercely.
“They’re not perfect.”
“They don’t hate each other. They love you. If you’re a Child-Of-Divorce it’s different.” Zandy was talking like it was funny, but I knew she was deadly serious. “Half the time your parents care more about hurting each other than about what’s important to you. You never know if they love you or just want to use you as another way to get even with each other.”
“Your mom loves you.” I knew that.
“Partly,” said Zandy. “Partly she hates my dad.”
I stared at the moonlit shadows cast by the big tree outside her window. The wind must have picked up. The branches were swaying on the wall.
I couldn’t imagine not seeing my dad every day—not hearing him call me Scooter.
“What are you and your dad going to do when he gets here?” I asked.
“Oh, Beth, I don’t know,” she whispered. “I only saw him once or twice a year before he moved to Saudi Arabia and we never had anything to talk about then. I never know what to say to him when he calls.”
She started to twirl her hair again.
“Cinderella!’s still running next week,” I said. “Take him to see you as the Fairy Godmother. He’ll be so impressed by your singing, that’s all he’ll want to talk about.”
The twirling stopped. “Would that be okay? We wouldn’t really be spending the time together. He’d just be watching me.”
“Your mom just watches. My parents just watch. It’s what parents do.”
“That would be so perfect,” Zandy said. Even though she was still whispering, I could hear the excitement in her voice. And then she added in the most despairing tone, “What if it’s sold out for next week?”
“Tell Mrs. Mac. She’ll get him in somehow, even if he has to usher.”
Zandy giggled softly. “It could work,” she said. “But what if . . .” She answered her own question. “Even if the theater is going to close, it won’t happen by next week.”
“Yeah.” This time I was the one sounding sad.
“What did Mrs. Mac tell you?”
I squirmed uncomfortably on the floor. “Nothing.”
“You did go see her, right?”
“Yes.” Thank goodness I could at least say that. “But her door was closed.”
“Closed?”
We both sat in silence for a long moment.
“Wow,” said Zandy. She reached down and squeezed my shoulder. “We’ll both go see Mrs. Mac tomorrow and ask her what’s going on.” She started counting off her morning on her fingers. “Eight o’clock, Dad. Nine-thirty, vocal lesson. Eleven o’clock, tennis. Can you meet me at twelve-thirty in the lobby?”
“Sure.”
I could feel the tension drain out of my body. Zandy had taken charge. She was so good at getting things done. She’d talk to Mrs. Mac and find out what was making everyone so jumpy.
But something she’d said . . .
“Eight o’clock, Dad?” I asked.
“My father didn’t know his schedule so he’s going to phone again in the morning.” Zandy said. “I’ll ask him to go to Cinderella! then.”
She rolled over on her back once more and the twirling began again, but this time slower, more peacefully.
When you’re sitting in the dark and you can’t see who you’re talking to, you can say things you’d never say otherwise.
“My mother said I spend too much time at the theater.” My voice broke slightly.
There was a long silence as the twirling grew faster. Finally she let out a sigh. “I don’t know what you’d do if it closed.”
“You’d miss it as much as I would.”
“I’ve got my voice lessons. I could still sing at recitals and stuff.” Zandy leaned over the edge of the bed. “Have you told your parents you want to be an actor when you grow up?”
No, I’d never said that.
Ever.
Except to myself and to the photograph of Juliet hanging on the wall of the lobby.
I started to once. In third grade, Mrs. Warren asked the whole class what we wanted to be when we grew up. I knew I wanted to be an actor, but I’d never even gotten a callback. So I searched my brain frantically. What other jobs were there?
“Maybe an archeologist,” I said. “Or a lawyer, like my dad.”
A friend of my mother’s was volunteering in my classroom that day. As soon as she got home, she called my mom to tell her about the “charming” thing I’d said in class.
No one ever mentioned archeology to me. But boy, did I hear about becoming a lawyer. My dad beamed at me all through dinner that night. I couldn’t tell him I only said I wanted to be a lawyer so no one would laugh at me. I figured he’d forget about it in a few weeks. Not my dad.
I know he thinks his work is exciting, but when he talks about it, it sounds like he’s always working with really unhappy people. I don’t want to do that all my life. But if I told him the truth, he’d be hurt and disappointed. So I’ve never said anything.
How could Zandy ask me if I’d told my parents?
“I’ve got to go.”
I started to get up but Zandy reached out a hand and pushed me back down. “No one at the theater ever talks about becoming an actor because it’s so hard to make it,” she whispered. “I know we’re supposed to be doing theater just for fun. But we all know there are a few kids who could go on and become professionals. Like Emily Chang.”
I nodded and leaned back against the wall. Emily was not only a good actress—she was a triple threat: she sang and danced, too.
“You know people are starting to talk about you,” Zandy continued.
Even with a full moon, there wasn’t enough light in the room for Zandy to see how deeply I was blushing.
“Your parents can’t help you if they don’t know what you want.” Zandy sounded worried.
“They’re not that thrilled about me acting right now. If I told them I wanted to become a professional, they’d go ballistic.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. I could feel the bed move with total conviction. “If they knew you really wanted it, they’d help you.”
I was smiling when I climbed out of Zandy’s window. She always made me feel better.
That smile would have lasted all the way home if I’d remembered to put the leather gloves back on. When I reached for the first bar of the trellis, I grabbed the rose vine growing behind it, hard, and pushed a thorn deep into my thumb. I couldn’t cry out, but the pain was so sharp, my thumb throbbed all the way home.