It’s sleeting the first day back at school, icy drops that cling to Jasmine’s windshield before melting away. The morning is dim and gray. I don’t like the humidity of summer, but I miss the longer days. I hate going to school when it’s still dark, and if we’ve got rehearsals, I’m usually leaving school when it’s dark too.
We pull up into the golden cone of a parking lot light. Jasmine leaves the car running as she turns to me. Her lip is quivering, and tears have pooled in her eyes.
“Jackson . . .”
I was afraid she was going to ask.
“Can you do the list?”
“Do I have to?”
“Please? What if I run into him?”
“Fine.” I pull it out and read it off as quick as I can.
Jasmine’s spine stiffens and she blinks away her tears. “Thanks. What would I do without you?”
I shrug and stuff the list back into my notebook.
“One more semester to go,” she says.
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “Are you really gonna move to Denver?”
“I think so. I don’t know. Why does everyone expect me to already have things figured out?”
“Sorry,” I mutter. “I’d miss you is all.”
Jasmine gone in Denver. Liam gone in Texas. Bowie joining him a year later, while I’m up in New York or Chicago.
Everyone’s leaving.
“I’d miss you too,” she says.
I tighten my scarf, careful to keep it around my neck and away from my ears, and we head inside. The sleet is just heavy enough to be annoying when it hits me in the face, but not heavy enough to get us a snow day. Not that I didn’t ask Amy like twelve times if she or Dad had gotten the robocall.
As we stomp our shoes on the mats, Jasmine gives me a nod and a “Bye!” and makes a beeline for Ellie. They link arms and head off toward first period, while I take my usual route up to my locker.
Now that swim season is over, there’s no morning practice, so Bowie isn’t there yet. But Liam is.
He smiles when he sees me. His cheeks are even redder than usual, and his nose is pink.
I can’t help smiling back. I missed him.
Even though I just listed off a bunch of made-up faults to soothe my sister’s broken heart. He doesn’t need to know that.
He eyes the shmoodies in my hand with interest, and crap, I only made two. I had gotten used to Jasmine making him her terrible ones. But I can’t leave him hanging, so I hand him mine.
“For me?” he asks, like I’ve just handed him a swimming trophy.
I nod.
He beams, uncapping the bottle to take a sip, and his lips immediately pucker. “Oh. It’s good. Different.”
“Pomegranates. They’re pretty tart.” Dad was supposed to make lavashak out of them, but he got called in for an emergency bypass and never got around to it.
So I broke them down myself—no sense letting them get all dry and hard—then blended (and strained) the arils into juice for shmoodies.
“I like it.” Even one sip has stained Liam’s lips garnet, and my stomach does a flip turn when he smiles, but then he looks past my shoulder. “Hey, Bowie.”
Bowie tromps up, their black knee-high snow boots striking the floor so hard I can feel it.
I hand them their shmoodie, and with my hands free I can shrug out of my scarf and coat. Before I know it, Liam’s tucking in my tag. I shiver, but not from his shmoodie-cold hand.
“Thanks,” I say.
Bowie looks between us, pressing their lips together. But then they shrug and ask Liam, “How was your break?”
I excuse myself. I’ve got to check in with Dr. Lochley.
The crowd in the Theatre Hall is bigger than usual, everyone catching up with each other after break. There’s a maze of bodies and backpacks and a dolly—laden with three giant potted plants, for some reason—between me and Dr. L’s office.
Philip is sitting below the Theatre Board, his legs splayed out, and he acts like he’s going to trip me as I pass. Asshole.
The board is still full of flyers for Christmas shows: The Nutcracker at the Kauffman Center; A Christmas Carol at the Rep; Nuncrackers at Just Off Broadway. Plus photos from JCS and printouts of reviews from the local news. But soon this will all come down, to be replaced with info on the spring show.
Except Dr. L still hasn’t announced what it is.
She’s at her desk with her phone cradled against her ear, working her way through a paper plate full of tater tots. The remains of several ketchup packets litter the desk; she rips another one open and squeezes it out as she listens.
I point toward myself and then the door, silently asking if I should leave, but she gestures for me to stay. The couch is fuller than usual: It looks like every script from the shelves in the props closet has been dumped on the floral print cushions.
Dr. L nods along with whoever’s on the other end of the phone. She shakes the crumbs off her hand and grabs a pen from the Wicked mug she keeps on the corner of her desk, jots a few notes on the back of a napkin. She glances up at me and rolls her eyes.
“Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Got it.”
She hangs up and leans back, then grabs on to her desk as the chair nearly topples over. Once she’s righted herself, she picks up another tater tot and squeezes a zigzag of ketchup onto it.
“Jackson. How was your break?”
“Okay. You?”
“Good, good.” She pops the tater tot into her mouth, steeples her fingers, and studies me. “What do you think about Shakespeare?”
“Shakespeare?”
She nods.
“Well, I know some people think he was fake, or didn’t write his own plays, but I think he did.”
Dr. Lochley laughs. “That’s a start. How many of his plays have you read?”
“Just Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar,” I admit. “For ELA.”
“None of his comedies?”
I shake my head.
“Ah. Well, we were going to do Cat on a Hot Tin Roof—we’ve got the perfect seniors for it—but we can’t anymore.”
“Why?”
Her nose wrinkles, and her lips curl a little bit. “Mrs. Bashir heard from the licensing company for JCS. Apparently someone complained about us taking too many ‘liberties’ with our production. The school got fined.”
The Toxic Andrew Lloyd Weber Fandom has gone too far this time. Though I suppose it could’ve been the Toxic Jesus Fandom.
Dr. Lochley finishes her last tater tot, then dramatically sweeps her empty ketchup packets into the trash.
“The fine ate up a good chunk of our spring budget. So we have to do something in the public domain. Something we can pull off with stock sets and costumes.” She shakes her head. “And Mrs. Bashir has emphasized that something more ‘traditional’ might help somethingsomething.”
“So what are we doing?”
“I’m narrowing it down. But don’t worry. You’ll know as soon as I do. I’ll need your help to get everything ready for auditions.”
“You can count on me.”
“I know I can.” She stands. “What would I do without you?”
As I round the corner of her office, I bump right into Cam. His phone clatters to the floor, facedown.
“Sorry! Is it okay?”
“It’s fine. Try paying attention, Jackthon.”
“Cam!” Dr. L calls, and I wonder if she heard what he said. If she’s going to tell him off. But she just says, “You have a couple minutes to talk about college?”
Cam gives me a quick sneer and shoulders me out of the way.
I shake my head. I can’t worry about him right now.