Gossip traveled fast at Idlewild. By Wednesday morning, the whole school knew. I overheard people talking about it in the hallway.
“… going before StuDisc today.”
“Is it true she turned herself in?”
They didn’t seem to notice me as I passed, and I realized the fake blog had essentially been bumped from the headlines. I wondered if that was part of Fay’s motivation. I kind of hoped not, so I could stay uncomplicatedly mad at her.
At one point I passed Theo and Christopher on the stairs. I ignored them. They ignored me. For the rest of my time at Idlewild, we would act like we didn’t know each other.
I dragged myself through the day. Sixth period Chorus ended and the underclassgirls cleared out, leaving me and Bottom and Ms. Spider alone in the Meetinghouse Loft. It was time, theoretically, for Senior Musical Theater Seminar.
For a minute or two, the three of us just sat there in miserable silence—Ms. Spider on the piano bench, me and Bottom on opposite ends of the semicircle of black plastic chairs. In Fay’s absence the rehearsal room felt huge, cavernous. At the same time, it looked newly dinky and shabby to me. It was hard to believe how happy it used to make me just to walk into it.
The bell rang. Seventh period had officially started.
“I don’t feel much like singing.” Ms. Spider was rocking slightly, like a sad haunted rocking horse, on the piano bench. Her body seemed tiny and fragile, and her face looked really old. “I don’t suppose you do either.”
Bottom and I shook our heads.
“We probably can’t continue this class,” she said. “But you two should still get credit for it. I’ll see to that. We’ll call it an independent study project.”
Bottom and I mumbled our thanks.
Ms. Spider sighed. “I just don’t understand,” she said. “She had so much potential.” She rose to her feet, or tried to. Her face tightened with pain. Her knees must have really been bothering her. For the first time ever, I thought of offering to help her up—but by the time I had the thought, it was too late. She shuffled slowly out of the rehearsal room.
Then it was just me and Bottom. To fill the silence, I asked, “When’s the movie audition?”
“Friday afternoon,” he said. “But I’m trying not to think about it.” His voice was mostly back to normal. For the millionth time, I marveled at what a gorgeous voice it was—so rich and resonant and deep.
“I’m sure you’ll do great,” I said.
He shook his head. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“When’s the StuDisc hearing?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
“Activity Period,” he said. “So, in about forty-five minutes.”
I slid my butt across my chair and onto the one to my left, closer to him. “What’s it like being on StuDisc? Holding people’s fate in your hands.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” He slid, too, onto the chair to his right. Now there were only two chairs between us. “It’s boring,” he said. “Mostly we just deal with lates. Lates and absences. If there are no new cases, we spend the meetings rewriting the student handbook. We’ve been rewriting the student handbook sentence by sentence for about a year now.”
I was genuinely amazed at how boring that sounded. “I’m sorry we got you elected,” I said. “I didn’t know we’d be inflicting that on you.”
I expected him to wave this off and say, Oh, it’s no trouble. Instead he said, “Well, you did, and here we are.” He sat up straighter, correcting his posture, which had almost slumped for a second. “That’s all to say,” he said, “I’ve never dealt with a major disciplinary infraction before now.”
“So you’ve never had to expel someone,” I said.
“Well, StuDisc doesn’t do the expelling. We make a recommendation to Trudy, and …” He rolled his eyes like the sentence was too boring to finish. “But everyone’s expecting us to recommend expulsion, yes.”
I scooched once more, so there was only one chair between me and him. “Will you?”
Bottom looked me right in the eye. “Do you think I should?”
His eyes were so big and dark. They sparkled in the sunlight coming through the window. I had the funny thought that I loved his eyes, just like I loved his voice. I loved him. Not in the same way I loved Fay. But I wanted to know him better. I wanted to be his friend.
I wondered what my time at Idlewild would have been like if I hadn’t spent it all in Fay’s shadow. Maybe I’d have been close with Bottom. (I wouldn’t still think of him as Bottom, that’s for sure. He would be Peter to me.) Maybe, instead of the Invert Society, I could have done something legit with the Gay-Straight Alliance. I could have taken Christopher under my wing. We could have been two gay kids looking out for each other. The two of us—or more of us, even, who knows?—could have gone together to gay youth group meetings in the city. I might have found a girlfriend.
“I think she wants to be expelled,” I said. “She’s not going to college anyway. She didn’t get in anywhere.”
His eyes widened. “She didn’t get in anywhere? How is that possible? She’s so smart.”
“She’s not that smart,” I said. “She just uses a lot of big words and her parents are rich.”
I had never said that to anyone before. I’d never even thought it.
“You’re mad at her,” said Bottom. “Did you two …?” He trailed off awkwardly.
I felt a squeeze of anger that he was too squeamish to ask directly. “We didn’t break up,” I snapped, “because we were never dating. That blog thing was fake. Theo and—”
He put up a hand to stop me. “It’s none of my business,” he said. “I was just going to say, that makes two of us. Being mad at Fay.”
This distracted me from my anger. Of course, I thought: he blamed the two of us for spreading the rumor that his parents got Wanda fired. “That wasn’t her fault,” I said urgently. “I know that for a fact.”
“I know it wasn’t her idea,” he said. “But that was rather cold comfort, I have to say, when she was hitting me.”
I paused to take this in and recalibrate. It took me a stupidly long moment. This sounds hard to believe now, but I had honestly never considered that Bottom might have resented Fay for that at the time—let alone months later.
“But that was just pretend.” I was trying to convince myself as much as him. “Did she actually hurt you?”
“Not physically. She made contact a few times, but that’s more on Wanda for being untrained in fight choreography. Theo was the one I had to watch out for.” He rubbed his neck, remembering. “He got a real kick out of that prologue, I think.”
He paused, and I wanted to tell him he was right. I wanted to tell him about Theo’s Marble Faun act, and his mom crashing the car, and what I saw up there on the water tower. I was so close to blurting out that Fay was lying, that Theo was the one who called in the bomb threat. I think, if Bottom had let the silence build for one second longer, I would have told him everything. I’ve often wondered how that would have changed things.
But then he went on. “Fay, though—she only did it because Wanda told her to. Of all the times for Fay to do what she was told.” He laughed bitterly. “The whole time I’ve known her, she’s acted like rules were just suggestions and she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do. Which she didn’t! She could get away with murder here. She could have said no to Wanda anytime. I kept thinking she would, eventually.” His hands were clenched on his lap. “Even on opening night. The curtain went up, and part of me still hoped …”
I wanted to comfort him, but I couldn’t think of a single comforting thing to say.
“Sorry,” he said, like he’d just remembered I was there. “I think about this a lot.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea you felt that way.” This, at least, was true. “I thought you and Wanda were cool. I thought she was making you into a movie star.”
“Oh, that.” He unclenched his hands. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate that. If I get cast in the movie, I’ll always feel grateful to Wanda.”
He said it so mechanically, I didn’t believe him. “Really?” I said. “You won’t feel like, I don’t know, like she bought your loyalty?”
“It’s possible to feel two things at once,” he said dryly. “Anyway, she didn’t buy your loyalty, so I was surprised when you sided with her during the Meetinghouse incident.”
“I didn’t side with Wanda!”
He just looked at me.
“I mean,” I said, “I didn’t take sides.” Even then, I could hear how lame that sounded. “It was … complicated.”
“Was it about Yale?” he asked. “Were you jealous I got in? That’s what Lily thinks.”
The question was too uncomfortable even to think about, so I turned it around on him. “Lily sided with Wanda more than anyone,” I said. “Why do you give a shit what she thinks?”
“Because she cares about me,” he said.
I snorted. “Does she actually? Or do you just have a crush on her?”
He looked me hard in the eye. “I could ask you the very same question about Fay.”
I had that coming, I guess.
I stood up and walked over to the window. I pressed my hands against the dusty dove-gray windowsill and looked out at the Peace Garden. I saw the wall mural, with its stick-figure kids holding hands around planet Earth. I saw the bed of ivy where we’d found the can of black spray paint last Thursday night. I half-expected to see it now, gleaming on the ground in the afternoon sun—but of course it was gone, and so were the empty Frappuccino cups Fay and I had littered with, because the whole garden had been cleaned up along with the mural. There were pale green shoots poking out of the dirt, and a couple of crocus buds so vibrantly purple I could see them from all the way up here.
Behind me, Bottom said, “I’d better get ready for the hearing.” I heard him stand up to leave.
I turned around. “Wait.”
He paused in the middle of the room, illuminated in a shaft of sunlight from the window.
“It’s just high school,” I said. “All this”—I waved my hands around—“it feels like a big deal right now, but you’re gonna be a big movie star and never think about any of this again.”
Once again, I expected him to demur modestly—something like Oh, Nell, you think too much of me—but he didn’t. “That’s what keeps me going,” he said, and walked out.
“You won’t even remember this place.” As the door swung shut behind him, I called out, “You’re gonna be like, ‘Idlewild? What the hell was that?’”
The question echoed through the empty rehearsal room.