Elizabeth didn’t seem thrilled about the arrangement either, but Mom was adamant that she wouldn’t have Elizabeth wandering around town on her own.
“You can walk to Saints Philip and James over on North Charles. It’s only a mile,” she said. “And you can stop at the 7-Eleven and pick up milk on your way home.”
“Baby cow juice,” I muttered, even though I knew Mom hated it when Dad said that. She said it was disgusting and rude to those who preferred to drink “milk as nature intended it, not as vegans invented it.”
“You don’t have to stay for the service if you don’t want to,” Mom reminded me, under her breath, while she packed lunch for her and Josh, and I waited for Elizabeth to come downstairs. “Go sit in the sculpture garden while she’s at Mass, or the Daily Grind. Just make sure she gets there and back in one piece.”
Elizabeth came into the kitchen then, wearing her church clothes: khaki slacks, loafers, a black cardigan over a silky blue top. I looked down at my ripped jeans and sweatshirt, then ran back upstairs and changed into leggings, a skirt, and a button-down denim shirt. It had patches sewn all over it but at least it was clean. Then I swiped a brush through my hair and fished out a pair of black flats from under my bed. They were too small. I ditched them and grabbed my boots.
It was a nice day for a walk, although even 11:00 (“late Mass”) was too early for anything on a Sunday morning, in my opinion. We walked down 34th Street to Keswick, then turned left on 33rd and cut across the Johns Hopkins undergrad campus to North Charles Street.
“Cadie,” said Elizabeth tentatively, as if she still wasn’t sure about using my nickname.
“Yeah?”
“I’m just—I’m curious about something, but I don’t want to be rude.” She paused.
“Okay …” I prompted. “Shoot.”
“Well, I know you’re not religious at all. I mean, you said you’re more Quaker than anything. But do you still observe any Jewish customs?”
I sighed. “I never had a bat mitzvah or anything, if that’s what you mean. We don’t go to synagogue or Hebrew school. My mom’s family moved from Spain to DC when she was nine and she never felt like she fit in with the kids in their new synagogue community. After her bat mitzvah, she finally refused to do any more religious stuff at all.”
It was so weird to think of Mom rebelling against her parents. My mind wandered briefly, trying to picture Mom as a teenager.
“So … what about Ross’s family?”
“Well, Dad grew up in New York with Communist parents, Grandma Ruth and Grandpa Morris, who thought religion was ‘the opiate of the masses.’ So he had no problem with raising us nonreligious.” I wondered if this was awkward for Elizabeth, hearing about grandparents she’d never met—people she’d never known existed. “Mom’s parents didn’t like it and there used to be a big argument every year about whether they could take us to High Holy Day services at their synagogue in DC, but now they live in Florida, and they’re too far away to do anything about it.”
We’d finally reached the church. Saints Philip and James was a big marble cathedral just south of the Baltimore Museum of Art. We climbed the steps and I hesitated outside the door.
“I probably shouldn’t stay,” I said. “I was thinking about waiting for you over at the Daily Grind.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” Elizabeth said. “I can meet you there when Mass is over.”
I still didn’t turn away, though. I was curious about Mass. I’d never been to one before. And it seemed that lots of Johns Hopkins students went to services here. Lots of male Hopkins students. Cute ones.
“It’s fine if you want to stay,” Elizabeth said. “You don’t have to be baptized or confirmed or anything to go to Mass. No one checks your Catholic ID card.”
“You have a Catholic ID card?”
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows and did not deign to answer. I gave her points for sarcasm.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t know any of the prayers, or what to do, or—”
“It’s no big deal. I’ll show you how to follow along with the readings, and you can just stand up and sit down when everyone else does.” She grinned at me. “I guess you could say it’s really not that different from Meeting.”
She was totally wrong about that.
The priest stood up in a little pulpit that was sort of attached to the wall, like a gravy boat on the side of a big ship. I couldn’t stop staring at all the gold leaf on the walls, the greenish marble columns, the stained glass, the polished brass of the enormous pipe organ. Most of the service went over my head; it was in English, not in Latin, but the echo in that enormous marble space blurred the priest’s words like melted butter. It was a complex choreography, with standing and sitting and kneeling and sitting again. There was calling and responding in an order that I didn’t understand, and the responses sounded like slight variations on the same one or two phrases. At the end of the whole thing, everyone turned and shook hands with the people around them and said, “Peace be with you.” That part was all right with me, but I felt like a bit of an imposter saying it.
Then everyone lined up in the aisles and began a slow procession to the front for Communion. I stood uncertainly next to Elizabeth.
“You don’t have to go up with me,” she whispered, “but if you do, just cross your arms over your chest, and he’ll give you a blessing instead of the Host.”
I wasn’t sure if I wanted a blessing, but it seemed rude to exit the line at that point, so I waited my turn and then stood in front of the priest with my arms folded across my chest. He bowed his head and made the sign of the cross over me, and mumbled some words. Then I turned and saw Elizabeth beckoning to me, and we went back to our pew.
I thought that was the end, but there were more prayers, and then finally the whole thing was over.
“So what did he think when I went up there with my arms folded?” I asked, as we walked out the door. “Do other people do that sometimes?”
“Oh, only if you haven’t taken your first Communion yet, or if you’re not Catholic, or if you’re … indisposed to receive Communion.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, just, you know. If you’ve committed a mortal sin.”
“A mortal sin?” I repeated. “What the hell kind of sin is that?”
Elizabeth looked around quickly, and I wondered if swearing on the steps of the church might itself be a mortal sin.
She said, “Like if you’re, you know, living with someone you’re not married to, or if you’ve had, um, impure thoughts.”
“Elizabeth!”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said quickly. “The priest wasn’t judging you, I promise.”
“Well, couldn’t I have worn a sign or something? Like, an ‘I’m not Catholic’ sign? So he’d know I’m not a mortal sinner? Not that wearing an ‘I’m not Catholic’ sign is a great idea, in fact it’s super offensive, but—”
“It’s really not a big deal,” she interrupted. “You’re also not supposed to take Communion if you’ve forgotten to fast since the night before. So it’s not just, you know. Sexual stuff.”
“Great,” I grumbled.
“Well, you don’t have to come back next week, I know the way now. I won’t get lost.”
“There were some parts I liked,” I admitted. “I liked some of the stuff he was saying about pacifism during the speech.”
“The homily?”
“Is that what it’s called? The part where he talked about our responsibilities to our neighbors.”
“Yeah, that was the homily. It’s different every week. This priest was a lot more liberal than our priest back in Ohio.”
“I didn’t know there was such a thing as a liberal priest.”
“Oh, lots of Catholics are Democrats.”
“Well, right,” I said, pretending I knew that.
“And the new pope is practically a Communist.”
I snuck a peek to make sure she was joking, and saw that she was grinning at me again. Elizabeth seemed to be in a much better mood today. She seemed—lighter somehow, as if she’d set down a hefty backpack she’d been carrying.
“You seem happier,” I said, without thinking.
Her smile fell, and she shrugged. “I felt closer to Mom this morning, during Mass, than I have—in a long time.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m really sorry. About your mom.”
“Thanks.”
We walked in silence for a few moments.
“I’m sure this is really, really hard for you,” I tried again. “Coming here, living with a whole family you’ve never known. It’s hard for all of us. But I’m sure it’s way harder for you, with …” I trailed off, not wanting to say “with your mom dying.”
“I didn’t think I’d get along with Ross at all,” Elizabeth said, catching me by surprise. “I was sure I’d hate him, actually. Because my mom never talked about him when I was little. I knew that she’d gotten pregnant and left without telling him, but I always thought that he’d come looking for us, that he’d find us someday. I know now that he didn’t know I existed, but … that was hard for me to understand when I was younger.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
“And those days in the hospital, with my mom—at the end—that was pretty horrible. Talking to Ross on the phone for the first time during all that—I hated it. I didn’t want to talk to him. I wanted to hate him. But then we talked a lot more, while we were cleaning out the apartment, on the train coming down here, and—it was like we’d always known each other. And just hadn’t seen each other in a long, long time. I don’t know.” She looked at me, and I was shocked to see tears rolling down her face. Her voice wasn’t wobbly at all. “It’s like he really is my long-lost dad. And somehow that makes it a little bit easier that Mom is—” But there her voice broke, and she didn’t finish her sentence.
Instead, she pulled something out of her pocket. Two somethings. A pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
My mouth must’ve dropped open, because she glanced at me quickly, then looked away. “I don’t care what you think about me,” she said, lighting up. “I kind of picked it up when everything was happening. I’ll quit. Soon.” She took a deep drag, then blew out a long stream of smoke. “But if you could please not tell …”
“Yeah,” I said, still stunned. “Yeah, of course.”
We sat on the curb outside the 7-Eleven while she smoked and stared off into the distance. I didn’t ask her for a cigarette and she didn’t offer one. Not that I wanted one, anyway. I mean, I’d never smoked before. But Elizabeth, a smoker? That was the last thing I would’ve ever suspected about her.
“Cadie,” she said finally, “thanks for coming with me. You don’t have to come back next week. I mean it. But thanks for coming today. This would’ve been—really hard to do alone.”
“I have to come back next week,” I said. “I have to explain to the priest that I am not a mortal sinner. Thanks to your incomplete, incompetent instructions.”
She laughed a little and stubbed out the cigarette on the pavement, then fished in her pocket for a handkerchief. She had an actual handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and then we went home. I didn’t realize till we walked in the door that we’d forgotten to buy the milk.
Monday after school was our first Much Ado read-through.
“Gather round, people, and our revels shall begin!” Robin announced.
We sat cross-legged on the stage, as usual. There were twelve of us, plus Robin, as well as Micayla and Heron Lang, who were doing costumes and set design. Two guys wearing all black skulked near the back of the theater until Robin yelled, “Techies! That means you, too!” and they reluctantly emerged from the shadows.
“Now, people, tonight and tomorrow night’s read-throughs will be the only rehearsals we’ll have where we’re all gathered together like this. Until tech week, of course. After tomorrow night, we’ll rehearse scene by scene, and you only have to show up for scenes you’re in.” He handed out a thick schedule packet. “Let me amend that. Please show up fifteen minutes before your scene is scheduled. If you show up at the time you’re scheduled, you’re late.”
We did five minutes of centering, then five minutes of stretches and vocal warm-ups. Which meant yodeling, humming, reciting vowels, and saying things like “The big black bug bit the big black bear” with as much enunciation as possible.
“Micayla, Heron, Troy, Davis—you’ll meet with Peg now to get started on concepts. I’ll have a separate meeting with you on Wednesday.”
Peg, the art teacher, waved from the front row of seats, where she’d been listening to our vocal warm-ups with a smile. She had a shock of canary-yellow hair that stood straight out from her head, like duck fluff, and full-color tattoo sleeves on both arms. Peg was awesome.
The tech and design crew jumped off the stage and went into the classroom to work. Meanwhile, Robin was handing out scripts. I slipped my pocket Much Ado into my backpack, hoping no one had noticed that I’d brought it along. I thought we’d have to bring our own copies. Robin noticed, though, and nodded at me. “Great edition, Acadia. Definitely read the introduction; it’ll help you understand the background of the play.” A warm little light sparked in my chest. Even if I hadn’t actually read the introduction yet, at least I was doing something right.
Then we started in on the reading.
It was a halting, stumbling read-through. People forgot what characters they were playing, missed lines, mispronounced words all over the place. None of the jokes were funny. None of the verse flowed like music, the way it had on stage at the theater in DC.
And yet. Some of the lines sounded like more than just words on a page, written four hundred years ago. Not everyone’s lines. Mostly Zephyr’s. He was sitting across the circle from me, hunched in his leather jacket, but I was hyperaware of every word he spoke. It was as if everyone else was reading from the dictionary but Zephyr was just talking. He made his lines sound casual, as if he wasn’t waiting for a cue but actually listening to what the person was saying to him, and coming up with a response on the spot—only his response happened to be in Shakespearean English. I couldn’t figure out how he was doing it; if anything, it was something he wasn’t doing that everyone else was. Trying too hard, maybe?
Most of the cast was also in my drama class. Sam Shotwell was Don John, the villain—I tried not to make eye contact with him or stare when he was reading, but he definitely caught me looking at him once and grinned, which turned the thermostat on my face up to about a zillion degrees. Rina Crane was a good choice for Dogberry, the main comic relief character, because Shakespearean fools had to be so over-the-top; still, I thought she was overacting most of her lines. A sophomore named Tori Lopez was playing Claudio, the other main male character besides Benedick, and Priya Pashari was Hero, Beatrice’s cousin and Claudio’s love interest.
When Kieri Cantor complained about getting cast as Leonato, Hero’s father, Robin told us that back in Shakespeare’s day there was lots of gender-bending on stage, since only men were allowed to be actors. “I like to even the scores now when I can,” he said. “Kieri, you and Tori and Rina will be our banner bearers.” Besides, we all knew that there was a shortage of guys in the drama department.
“Good work, people,” Robin announced after the second act. “We’ll pick up with Act Three tomorrow night.”
I met Micayla outside the Shed and we went out to her car, a beat-up Ford station wagon that she’d spray-painted with wild loops of color. “As long as it fits all my canvases in the back,” she said, “I don’t give a rat’s ass if it is a granny car.” Half-finished paintings were also stacked in the back seat.
Heron Lang, the other costumer and set designer, came with us.
“Mind if I drop off Heron, too?” asked Micayla. “She’s just around the corner from you, in Remington.”
“Not at all. Want shotgun?” I said to Heron.
“Nah,” she said, “I’ll snuggle with the artwork in the back.” She winked at me.
I didn’t know Heron very well, but I really liked her. She spoke up in Meeting a lot, usually about current events or something political. She was the president of the Social Justice Club, which I’d joined for a few months last year. Her hair had been purple then, but this year it was back to its natural black and cut super short, pixie style. She had industrial bars through her ears, a pierced eyebrow, a nose ring, and a stud just below her bottom lip. It wasn’t overwhelming, though. Her face looked right that way. She was wearing a plaid flannel shirt and cargo pants tucked into work boots spattered with paint and, oddly, what looked like dried egg yolk. I loved that Micayla and her friends seemed to be constantly covered in art supplies, as if they could never stop making art long enough to clean up properly.
Just as we were about to pull out of the parking lot, someone came running toward the car.
“Cadie, wait up!” It was Elizabeth. I rolled down my window. “I’m sorry,” she panted (I thought, Smoker!). “I had debate team and then I had to talk to the guidance counselor—about having my records sent over from my old school—some paperwork got lost in the shuffle somewhere—and Melissa said I could get a ride with you after rehearsal—hi, I’m Elizabeth”—this to Micayla—“would you mind taking me home?”
“Hop in, honey,” said Micayla.
“Micayla, Heron, this is my—this is Elizabeth,” I said. “She’s new here. She’s, um, my sister.”
Micayla already knew the story, of course, but Elizabeth didn’t know that, and I didn’t want her to think I’d been talking about her. Heron looked confused, but she didn’t ask any questions, thank the gods. She only said, “Welcome to Fern Grove,” and scooted over to make room for Elizabeth on the seat next to her. “Sorry,” she added, “there’s not much room back here.”
“So,” Micayla said, pulling out of the parking lot, “I saw Zephyr got the lead. He’s really talented—he’s been in the school play every year. Bit of a loner, though. Odd duck.”
“He is really good,” I said, and then for some reason, I wanted to change the subject. “You’ve done sets and costumes before, right?”
She nodded. “Past two years. And what about you, Liz?” she called into the back seat. “You into any extracurriculars besides, what was it, debate team?”
“She doesn’t like being called Liz,” I whispered, but Elizabeth heard me and said, “Oh, that’s fine, whatever. And no, so far, I’m just on debate. I did that plus math club and track at my old school, though.”
Heron whistled. “Underachiever, huh?”
Elizabeth laughed a little, sounding embarrassed.
“Anyway,” I said, “are you guys going to the Fall Ball? Raven and I just bought our dresses this weekend.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Micayla. “Troy asked if I wanted to go as friends. He’s kind of meh, but it’s fine with me as long as he doesn’t expect me to dance with him the whole time.”
“Micayla!” I said.
“Well, it’s the truth,” she said. “I was planning to ask Davis, but he’s already going with Rina.”
“Are you serious?” I asked. “Is everyone in drama dating each other?”
“Oh, totally,” said Heron. “It’s incestuous. Wait and see.”
I thought about Sam Shotwell, his grin when he caught me watching him during the reading. What was wrong with me, anyway? You’re going out with Farhan! I scolded myself in my head, and then immediately: Am I going out with Farhan? Was a date to a dance the same as “going out” with someone?
“Boys. Don’t pay ’em much attention,” Micayla was saying, as we pulled up at my house, “and they’ll come after you in flocks. Guarantee it.”
“Thanks for the wisdom,” I said, and Elizabeth added, “And thanks for the ride!”
I’d almost forgotten she was still in the back seat, she’d been so quiet.
Mom had saved leftovers for us—it was after 8:00, and they’d already eaten dinner.
“Uh. What is this, exactly?” Elizabeth asked, looking at the bowls of food.
“Quinoa casserole,” I said. “It’s a Greenfield special. Try it. It’s better than it looks.”
I took my dinner up to my room—our room—and worked on highlighting my lines in the script while I ate.
Elizabeth joined me a few minutes later, curling up beneath the covers with a book. Probably the Bible.
Or maybe not. Maybe Elizabeth was really into, like, nerdy sci-fi. Or trashy romance novels. What did I actually even know about her?
Part of me wanted to ask what she was reading, but another part of me was wary. It had been easier to resent her for taking over my room, my dad, my life, when I thought of her as Little Miss Perfect Catholic Schoolgirl. Now I wasn’t sure if that’s who she was, or if the real Elizabeth was Pulls-Out-a-Pack-of-Smokes-after-Mass Girl. Or some weird combination of those personas that I totally did not understand.
I racked my brain for a safe topic of conversation.
“So,” I said, “are you going to the Fall Ball?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Elizabeth said, without looking up from her book.
“Why not?” I said before I could stop myself. “Everyone goes—it’ll be fun. You don’t have to take a date, really, it’s pretty casual.”
“Do you have a date?”
“Um … yeah, actually.” I felt myself blushing.
“Who?”
“Oh, you probably haven’t met him yet. His name is Farhan. We’re just friends.”
“People don’t blush that much about their friends,” she said, smirking at me.
I couldn’t help grinning. “So, are you going or not?”
“Oh, like I said, I don’t know. I’ve never actually been to a dance before.”
“You what?”
“Yeah, we didn’t have dances at St. Joseph. Not a very Catholic school thing. They thought we’d all start, like, heavy petting or something.”
“No way. All schools have dances. And, um, ‘heavy petting’? What even is that?”
We both laughed.
“Well, maybe we had dances,” she admitted. “But I was never really interested.”
“Liar!” I said, triumphantly. “I knew it. You should go with me and Farhan and Raven and Max. We’ll find you a date.” Why was I trying so hard to get her to go to the dance? But now that I’d started, I couldn’t exactly take it back. “So, do you have anything to wear?”
“Well—I guess it’d be a good idea to go and meet some people.” She went to the closet and pulled out a sleeveless blue dress, held it up against her body, and looked in the mirror. “Would this work?”
I shrugged. It was a little boring, but if it suited her, fine. And the color did go nicely with her eyes. “Raven can probably lend you something if you want,” I told her. “I think you’re about the same size. You’d be swimming in my clothes.”
“No, this is fine.” She was staring at herself in the mirror. “I was supposed to wear it for my mom’s …” But she didn’t finish the sentence, and when I waited, she just shook her head. “Never mind.”