“It’s hot in here,” grumbled my mom from the seat to my left. I was sitting between her and my dad, with my aunt and uncle next to him. I should have sat next to them instead. “How much longer until the show starts?” Mom asked for the second time since we’d got here.
“Soon,” I said, peeking at my phone. The play was supposed to start ten minutes ago. I wasn’t overly worried; it was opening night, after all, and Ms. Wright had told everyone that delays were to be expected. Still, I was getting anxious.
“Patience is a virtue, my dear,” said my dad.
“Well then I’m not a virtuous person,” Mom retorted. “And I’m thirsty. Where are the concessions? Elliott, be a dear and go get me something to drink.”
“Sure thing,” I said, grateful to have a reason to get up.
The turnout was good, better than I had expected or hoped it would be. Kyle and Mark were here, greedily shoveling fistfuls of popcorn into their mouths. Liam had shown up—alone, thank goodness. Nicole was in the back helping Lucas set up his camcorder. But there was one person I knew beyond a doubt would not be in attendance tonight. And she was the person I wanted to be here the most.
As I advanced up the row, I bumped shoulders with Christian. “I certainly hope this lives up to the hype,” he remarked.
“You and me both,” I said without stopping. Jerk.
The line to the concessions stand was ridiculously long. I glanced at my phone again. It was twenty after, and the curtain still hadn’t risen. I was starting to get worried.
Someone bumped into me, and I looked up. “Sorry,” said a boy who looked like he could be either my age or a little bit younger. He had shaggy blonde hair and looked like he should have a surfboard with him. He reminded me of someone, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on who it was. It was almost like I’d seen him before.
“No worries,” I told him, still trying to figure out why he seemed so familiar. He didn’t go to our school; I’d recognize him if he did. He couldn’t live in my neighborhood. “This is weird, but have we met before?”
He laughed. “I’m from California. This is my first time on Arizonan soil. Just visiting with my sister, who I’ve somehow escaped from. She’s a real task master, y’know?”
“Sister, huh?”
“Yeah, you probably know her. Darcy—”
“Fitzwilliam,” I finished, feeling like the life was flushing out of my body. That’s where I recognized him. The picture on Darcy’s dresser.
The boy clapped. “That’s the one! And speak of the Devil.”
He looked over my shoulder, and I turned around to see her coming toward us. She ground to a halt when she saw me.
“Sup, sis,” said the boy, oblivious to the tension between us. “Look who I met. It’s . . . what’s-his-name.”
Darcy cautiously approached us. I didn’t know what to do with myself. My mind was racing. My stomach was tight. I didn’t know whether I was happy to see her or not, or if that even mattered. What was worse, I didn’t know what she thought of me now
“Elliott, this is my brother, George,” she said cordially. “He’s visiting for break. George, this is Elliott.”
The boy shook my hand enthusiastically. “Wait, you’re Elliott?” He glanced at his sister with a finger pointed at me. “As in the Elliott you won’t shut up about?” He laughed, and turned back to me. “Dude, you should hear some of the stuff she says about you.”
“No, he shouldn’t,” Darcy growled, turning deep red even in the dim lights of the auditorium.
George smacked his forehead and cracked up. “Yes, I think he should. The ‘scholarly skateboarder’? With the ‘cute eyes’ and ‘the amazing—’”
“Why don’t you go make sure our seats haven’t been stolen?” Darcy said, cutting him off and shoving him toward the auditorium. When he was gone she turned back to me. She kept looking away as she spoke. “It looks like your blog really paid off. There are a lot of people here.”
I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at her either, so I said, “Thanks. I just hope they all didn’t show up for nothing.”
“I’m sure everything will be fine,” she said, looking off in the direction her brother had left. “So, how have you . . . been?”
I tugged at my wristband, suddenly extremely uncomfortable. “Just busy. How about you?”
“Same.”
I remembered her letter. I wasn’t sure if I should acknowledge it, at least to let her know that I’d read it. I had no idea how to even broach the subject. So I said nothing, and the two of us just stood there, twiddling our thumbs, neither wanting to confront the elephant in the room.
“Your brother seems nice,” I said at last.
Darcy laughed quietly. “Yeah, well . . .” I could tell that she was about to say something snarky, but she stopped, smiled maternally, and said, “He is, actually.”
If what she’d written in her letter was true, he was also the one Gabby had cheated on. I wondered how long it had taken him to get over it, to get back to the way he’d been before, or if he’d ever done so. I wondered if he’d ever felt about Gabby the way I felt about Darcy.
The sound of a harp came from the auditorium. The play was finally starting. “Better get back,” I said, even though I didn’t want to move.
“I’ll . . . see you around . . . maybe,” said Darcy, who wasn’t moving either. I nodded, and we stood there staring at each other until she broke away and hurried into the auditorium. I waited a few seconds before following the same way. On stage, the curtain had drawn, the stage lights flashed, and the chorus began.
“Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene . . .”
* * *
“In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.” Jake’s words were inflicted with such pain, such raw sadness, that there was no doubt in my mind as to who he was thinking about as he said them, even after he’d told me he was over her, and even though he was pretending to be talking about Juliet.
“I aimed so near when I supposed you loved,” said Benvolio.
Jake took a rueful step away from him. “A right good marksman! And she’s fair I love.”
“A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.”
Jake sighed and shook his head. “Well, in that hit you miss. She’ll not be hit with Cupid’s arrow.” He looked up and stared at nothing, but I knew he was imagining Bridget as he spoke. His eyes were glossed over, like he might actually cry. “She hath Dian’s wit. And, in strong proof of chastity well-armed from love’s weak childish bow, she lives uncharmed . . .”
I tried to discreetly look around and find where Darcy was sitting, but I couldn’t see far enough in the dark. I turned back to the stage to watch as Benvolio laid a hand on Jake’s shoulder and said, “Forget to think of her.”
Jake looked like he was actually about to cry. “O,” he proclaimed. “Teach me how I should forget to think!”
It was then that I knew beyond a doubt that Jake was not over Bridget, and it would be a very long time before he was. I swallowed the anger and the sadness that bubbled up inside me.
* * *
“My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late!” Juliet took center stage, sweeping her hands wide in grief. Watching her I had to admit, she was good. That method acting really paid off. “Prodigious birth of love it is to me, that I must love a loathed man.”
When the curtains fell at the end of Act One and the audience rose in applause, I felt a surge of relief. They’d done it. And the audience seemed to have loved it. So far. There was still a whole second half to get through. But now I was convinced that everything would work out alright.
* * *
I was coming out of the restroom when I found Darcy again, and my heart did a flip in my chest. Before I could debate whether or not to walk past and pretend I hadn’t seen her, she saw me.
“The play is excellent so far,” she said. “Jake is the perfect Romeo, he’s really good.”
Something was different about her expression. It was absolutely devoid of derision. There wasn’t an ounce of sarcasm in her voice. She sounded sincere. It made me even more ashamed of the way I’d told her off.
“To be or not to be? That is the question!” Lucas yelled as he led the charge that included Nicole, Mark, Kyle, and Liam bulldozing their way to me. His timing left something to be desired. The circle they formed was slightly wider than it would have been had Darcy not been there, and everyone suddenly forgot how to speak with her around. Somehow, our standing there not saying anything was even more awkward than what usually happened when my friends and Darcy shared the same space.
I remember what she’d said about them. Idiots, she’d called them. Thinking back on how they acted whenever she was around, I had to admit I could understand how she might come to that conclusion.
“Hello, Lucas,” said Darcy politely. “And Nicole.”
Whoa.
She cleared her throat. “And Kyle, and Liam, and . . . Mark? How are you all doing?”
Quadruple whoa.
The guys must’ve been as flabbergasted as I was that she had actually acknowledged them—by name, no less—because it took a few seconds and a lot of back and forth did-I-hear-her-right glances before anyone mumbled a response.
But the weirdness was far from over, because Darcy focused on Liam, who was the only one who hadn’t greeted her or said anything at all since coming over, and asked, “Is everything alright, Liam?”
All eyes turned to him. “Girl problems,” he groaned.
Darcy looked very confused. “You have a girl—I mean, who’s your girlfriend?”
“Her name’s Gabby. You probably wouldn’t know her; she goes to Meryton.”
Darcy’s face went rigid, and I wished Liam hadn’t mentioned her. “Oh, I know her,” she said coldly. “And I’m sorry you have the misfortune of dating her. If I might offer a word of advice; be careful with her.”
“Oh, it’s too late for that,” said Kyle. “He’s in way too deep now.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Liam groaned. “She has in her possession . . . a picture . . .”
We all exchanged glances.
“What kind of picture?” asked Mark.
Liam swallowed hard. He was practically glistening with sweat. “A picture of . . . something personal . . . something . . . private.”
There were three seconds of awkward silence as one by one it dawned on each of us exactly what sort of private picture Liam was talking about.
“You’re kidding, right?” blurted Nicole, a little bit too loudly.
“That’s why you’re always broke?” asked Lucas.
Liam didn’t say anything. But then, he didn’t have to. Kyle’s face was a blend of shame and sympathy. Lucas was just shaking his head. I was preoccupied trying to scrub that mental imagery from my mind. I was afraid to look at Darcy, afraid to see either the disgust that was no doubt written all over her face or her satisfaction at having been right about at least some of my friends. But when I glanced at her by pretending to check the time on the clock on the wall behind her, I saw neither disgust nor satisfaction on her face. Instead she looked angry. No, not angry, furious. Like she was going to rip somebody’s ears off.
“She’s blackmailing you?” she asked in a voice that could melt steel.
Liam looked like a mouse facing down a lioness. All he could do was manage a squeaky little, “Um, yeah?”
Darcy bit her lip then muttered a very long string of what were mostly four letter words. Then she whipped around and stomped away with her hands balled into tight fists at her side, leaving everyone else in the group flabbergasted in her wake. Mark was the first to finally break the silence that had settled over us.
“I don’t get it. What’s so bad about a picture? What’d you send her, Liam?”
Nicole patted his shoulder. “The less you know, little guy, the better.”
“I’d rather know what all that was about,” said Lucas, gesturing in the direction Darcy had left in. He looked at me, and I frowned.
“How should I know what that was?” It wasn’t like Darcy and I were friends. It wasn’t like she could still feel anything for me after how badly I’d screwed up. It wasn’t like things could ever go back to whatever they were before.
Was it?
* * *
“Oh, my love, my wife! Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.” Jake caressed Juliet’s perfectly still face with tears brimming in his eyes. Real tears, however he had managed that. “Thou art not conquered. Beauty’s ensign yet is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, and death’s pale flag is not advanced there.”
I glanced out across the auditorium. Every pair of eyes in the building was fixed irrevocably on Jake as he held Juliet in his arms, running his fingers through her hair.
“Eyes, look your last,” he whispered, and more than a few people mouthed the words as he spoke them. “Arms, take your last embrace. And, lips, O you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death.” When he kissed her, I heard someone from the audience sob. He took out the vial of “poison” and popped off the cap. I couldn’t believe how well Jake was doing. He was a true actor.
He swallowed the water in the vial and tossed it aside. “O true apothecary, thy drugs are quick. Thus,” he staggered back, clutching his chest, “I die.”
Jake keeled over, and with one last longing look at Juliet, he collapsed. I could hear people outright crying in the audience now.
Soon it was Juliet’s turn. “O happy dagger,” she said, holding up the knife in her shaky hands and angling it at her chest. “This is thy sheath. There rust and let me die.” She jabbed herself with the toy blade with more force than I thought she should have, convulsed once, and then she too fell over, her body perfectly aligned with Jake’s on the ground. Again I had to admit, she was good.
* * *
“A glooming peace this morning with it brings. The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things. Some shall be pardoned, and some punished. For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
The theater roared as everyone in the auditorium rose in applause as the cast gathered for their encore. I was beaming. They’d done it. They’d pulled it off, and it had been brilliant. I couldn’t have been more proud of each and every one of them.
I looked around at the audience, and at last I found her. Darcy was in the middle row of the middle section, clapping with everyone else. Standing to her right was her brother, and to her left . . . was Bridget. My head jerked toward Jake, but if he had seen her, there was no indication on his face that he had. The heavy curtain slowly began to close in front of the cast and crew, and I looked back at Darcy, and didn’t take my eyes off of her until the lights came back on.