The first Friday in October marked the end of the first term, and the beginning of the week-long fall recess. I was looking forward to doing one thing: nothing.
By nothing, I really meant skating, going to work, and attending the few rehearsals Ms. Wright had insisted on scheduling. I had purposefully avoided making plans with Jake; this was going to be the first extended break since he’d met Bridget, and I fully anticipated the two of them spending every waking moment together.
Walking to the bus stop that morning, it occurred to me that this would be the first time Jake and I wouldn’t spend the bulk of our break hanging out. It was weird, but Jake was a changed person now. His whole demeanor was different. He seemed happier. So it was all the more jarring when I saw the look on his face when I got to the bus stop. As quiet as Jake was, he was even more so when he was upset. He was the type to let something simmer inside him rather than reach out for help or a listening ear. It was a change that only those closest to him noticed. So naturally I realized something was dreadfully, awfully wrong with him the moment I saw him. He was standing perfectly still, staring off at nothing with his backpack drooping over one shoulder.
He may as well have been bawling.
“What happened?” I demanded, a string of scenarios already running through my head, each one worse than the last.
“Nothing,” he said in a hollow voice.
“Do you remember when King Edward died?”
King Edward was the turtle Jake had adopted when we were six, the one who he’d kept for only four days before it died. He’d gone a full week without speaking a word to anyone after that.
“Why?” he asked.
“You look worse now than you did then.”
He swallowed, then slowly reached into his pocket and handed me his phone without looking at it. “Messages.”
I put in the password—Bridget’s name, of course—and navigated to the text inbox. Her last three messages were pulled up, so I read them from earliest to most recent.
What are we gonna do for winter break? I think now’d be the perfect time to make that trip to the Grand Canyon we’ve been talking about. XoXo.
So the Grand Canyon is like nine hours away. Can you say romantic road trip? Don’t forget your boots and blankets. XoXo.
Going back home for the break. I think we shouldn’t be seeing each other anymore.
I read and reread the messages, growing more and more confused each time. Where on earth did this come from? I started to apologize, but I couldn’t come up with the right combination of words to say.
“Have you talked to her?” I finally asked.
“I tried to call,” Jake answered gloomily. “Calvin picked up. He said she wouldn’t be in class today.”
I frowned. This didn’t sound like something Bridget would do, at least not out of her own initiative.
“I don’t understand,” Jake said, and I couldn’t be sure whether he was talking to me or just aloud. “I thought . . . I don’t understand.”
“I do,” I said, my voice hard as flint. I knew why it didn’t make any sense, why there had been no warning signs, and why she had done it.
Ending the relationship wasn’t Bridget’s doing. It couldn’t have been. She was happy with Jake. It was obvious. So who wasn’t happy with their being together?
My first guess was Darcy. She was mean. She was manipulative. I believed she could do something like this. She’d messed things up for Gabby and her boyfriend, who’s to say she hadn’t done it again?
But I wasn’t entirely convinced it was her. What motive did she have? And if she were going to break them up, she would have done it sooner. Besides, to be honest, it didn’t seem like Darcy cared that much. And that left only one other option.
“It’s Calvin’s fault,” I said resolutely.
Jake frowned at me. “Why would Calvin do something like that?”
“Jake, have you not noticed what a tool Calvin is?”
He gave me a look that said no, he hadn’t noticed.
“He’s probably jealous,” I said, growing angrier by the second. He couldn’t have Darcy, so he didn’t want to see his sister happy. It sounded exactly like something Calvin would do.
“I don’t know, Elliott . . .” said Jake. “Maybe she wasn’t happy.”
I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Jake, don’t be dumb. Bridget was nothing but happy with you. I’m telling you, her brother said something to her. And I’m sure she’ll realize how wrong he was once the two of you have a chance to talk face-to-face. You’ll see.”
Jake sighed, and I could tell he was unsure. “I hope so . . .”
* * *
“Superman versus the Incredible Hulk. Who would win?” Lucas waited while the rest of us deliberated. We were gathered around our usual table in the cafeteria. Lucas was stretched out across half of one bench. Jake was sitting silently next to me. Kyle was to his left struggling to wrap spaghetti noodles around his fork. Liam was directly across from me, hunched over his phone, dangling off of the little bit of seat room Lucas left for him.
“The Hulk,” said Kyle, right before he gave up the fight and started plucking up noodles with his fingers.
“Are you crazy?” I asked.
“The Hulk gets stronger the angrier he is,” said Kyle.
“But Superman’s invincible,” said Lucas.
“Not really,” I argued.
“Wait, which versions are we talking about here?” asked Kyle. “Golden age?”
“Silver age?” piped Liam. The first words he’d said all lunch.
“What about the movie versions?” added Kyle.
“Either way,” I said, “all Supes has to do is throw the Hulk into the sun. That’d be the end of it. Right, Jake?”
Jake just shrugged. I groaned.
Darcy, Bridget, and Calvin hadn’t shown up at school, which was probably for the best. If I saw Calvin’s smug face I was sure I wouldn’t be able to resist giving him the Andrew treatment. But since he was gone, I’d been trying all day to channel my frustrations into a more positive conduit: cheering Jake up.
It was no easy task. No one pulled off dejected like Jake. But since he wasn’t the liveliest person around, no one else even noticed he was upset.
Mark came over and joined us, which was weird given that he almost always ate with the rest of the band geeks. He cracked open his old-fashioned tin lunchbox—decorated with Snoopy and the Peanuts gang—and slid onto the bench to my right.
“Hey, guys,” he said.
Everyone except Jake greeted him.
“How about Batman versus Captain America?” asked Lucas.
“Batman,” I said at once.
Kyle tossed me a look as if I’d slapped him. “Captain America’s a super soldier. There’s nothing super about Batman; he’d get creamed!”
“I think the real question is,” said Mark as he removed a bag of trail mix from his lunchbox, “would they fight each other in the first place? They stand for the same ideals; I can’t imagine what they’d ever have to fight about.”
Everyone at the table groaned. “You don’t get to sit with us anymore,” said Lucas.
I caught Jake glancing wistfully at Bridget’s empty table.
“You know, dude,” said Kyle, “It’s okay if just once you brought your girlfriend with you when you came around. We don’t bite.”
“Much,” said Lucas. They laughed and gave each other fist bumps.
“I think Mark has a point,” I blurted, hoping to steer the conversation away from Bridget.
“But really though,” said Lucas, ignoring me, “Have you two . . . done the deed?”
Jake looked between Lucas and Kyle like he had no idea what Lucas was talking about. “What deed?”
“Batman knows way more martial arts than Captain America does,” I said desperately.
Lucas waved his hands. “The dirty deed. You know, the—”
“Bedroom gymnastics,” said Kyle.
Jake shook his head. “No, no, and no.”
“But Captain America does have a vibranium shield,” I said, but at this point no one was listening to me.
“C’mon,” Kyle pleaded. “You can tell us. Bros before—”
I shot him a hard glance. “Don’t finish that sentence.”
Kyle threw his hands up. “The one guy who’s capable of getting any and he doesn’t even take advantage of it!”
Jake ran a hand through his hair, and I could tell he was getting angry. “Bridget isn’t just a girl to me,” he said indignantly. “She’s a person. She’s got likes and dislikes, goals, dreams, fears—”
“A nice butt,” said Kyle.
“Girls aren’t just body parts to ogle,” Jake snapped. For a second I thought he might attack Kyle. He had more self-control than I did, because I reached over and punched him in the arm.
“Nice going, doofus.”
“Besides, who says he’s the only guy who’s got a chance with a girl?” asked Liam when things had cooled off.
We all looked at each other and cracked up.
“Laugh all you want,” Liam said indignantly. “It won’t be funny when I’m spending my evenings with a babe and you all are stuck with each other for company.”
“Which babe would that be? The imaginary one?” said Lucas.
“Hey, whatever happened with Denise?” Kyle asked.
“Denise doesn’t exactly play for our team, if you catch my meaning.”
For once, I was grateful to Liam for providing a change of subject. I glanced over at Jake, hoping he’d look a little better.
If anything, he looked worse.
* * *
When I got to the theater after school, Ms. Wright was at the door, dividing people as they came in.
“Benvolio!” she shouted to a brown haired kid that entered with me. “Join the rest of your family, the Montagues!” She flourished her arm toward the left side of the stage, where a small group was gathered.
I found a spot in a corner to wait for Jake to arrive. I just hoped he showed up.
“Nurse!” cried Ms. Wright as a small girl with big glasses came in. “With Juliet and the Capulets!”
I didn’t have long to wait.
“Romeo! With the Montagues!” cried Ms. Wright.
I jerked my head up from my notepad to catch Jake as he swept into the room with a wide smile on his face. A few people cheered him on, and he graciously waved, greeting people and shaking hands as he made his way to the stage.
I wondered, briefly, if he had taken up drugs between now and the last time I’d seen him.
More people were arriving, and Ms. Wright was at the door, shouting, “Friar John, over there with the Chorus and the Apothecary!” I snuck up to the edge of the stage and whistled at Jake until I caught his attention.
“Hey . . . Jake?”
“Exciting, isn’t it?”
“Sure, but—”
“Want to meet the rest of the cast?” He started waving at the other members of his group, who were huddled in a chattering cluster upstage. “Lady Montague, my ‘mother’; Abram, the family servant; Balthazar, my personal servant; and Montague, my ‘father’ and family patriarch.”
I tried to act like I cared who they were, but at the moment I was more concerned with his mental well-being. Maybe he’d snapped. This could be the beginning of a psychotic break. How could someone go from looking like the world was ending to being happy-go-lucky again in the space of half an hour?
I looked out across the stage at the kids on the other side, whom I assumed were the Capulets. Their group was slightly larger, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves much more than our clan. All of them, that is, except one, a tall girl with long hair and a severe expression. For half a second I thought it was Darcy, but it couldn’t have been, because Darcy’s hair was slightly shorter and layered. I frowned. Since when did I notice girls’ hair like that?
“I take it that’s Juliet?” I asked, mostly to distract myself from that train of thought.
Jake enthusiasm dimmed slightly. “The angry one? Yeah, that’s her. Well, she’s not angry, she just takes her acting very seriously.”
I laughed. “How can you tell?”
“She tried to kiss me earlier,” Jake answered, sounding both embarrassed and put off. “Full on the lips, too. She’s definitely method.”
“Not to burst your bubble, but won’t the two of you be doing a lot of that?”
“Yes, but there’s a time and a place for it, and in the middle of the hallway right after fifth period is not one of them.”
Ms. Wright called everyone to attention, and I scurried back to my corner, whispering, “Good luck,” to Jake and the others before they dove into their first read-through—which, Ms. Wright explained, was exactly what it sounded like: they were just reading through the play.
“Remember, folks, just read the words,” she told them from the stool she had perched on in the middle of the stage. “Don’t worry about the meaning behind them. The important thing for now is to start getting those lines memorized verbatim.”
I jotted down notes while the cast practiced under Ms. Wright’s watchful eye. She listened with her own script in one hand, her other hand resting on her hip, a pencil dangling from her lip and another behind her ear. Every now and again she would stop them to correct pronunciation. They ran through act one half a dozen times before rehearsal was over. Jake, again, delivered in a fluent, natural voice, and Juliet deferred to her script a grand total of two times. She very much looked and sounded like she belonged in the fourteenth century. It was impressive.
And creepy.
Every so often I would catch her staring at Jake as if he was her long lost lover. He was right; she was definitely method. But deep down I hoped that she grew on him. She was pretty and obviously a good actress, so they had that in common. The fact that she was the literal Juliet to his Romeo couldn’t hurt, either.
“Alright, great work people,” said Ms. Wright, sounding more like a coach than a teacher. “Keep it up, and remember, practice, practice, practice! Keep that diction. Enunciate those words. As I always tell my students, if the mouth don’t move, we don’t get the mood!”
I waited for Jake, who had stayed behind to ask Ms. Wright a few questions. As we left, I asked him, “So, how do you feel about the play so far? Excited, overwhelmed, nervous?”
“I’m actually really looking forward to being a part of this,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it. “I think this play is just what I needed.”
I was sorely tempted to ask him what the heck was going on. He was in denial; he had to be. No way he’d forgotten Bridget that quickly. He had to be faking this. He still needed someone to keep an eye on him. But for now, I let him alone. Denial was the first step anyway, I heard. Sooner or later he’d break down, and when he did, I’d be there to help put him back together again.