Dashiell smiled. “The Drama Club—geeks and freaks welcome.”
“People appreciate me here,” Charles said. “That’s all I want in life. This is the best place for people who are different.”
Kyle looked at them both in amazement. “Wow, I never had any of the problems you guys had.”
“We suspected that,” Charles said drily. “Look at it this way, Kyle, the fact that you’ve never been different—that’s what makes you different. Don’t you see? Now, for that nugget of wisdom, leave a check with my secretary. And resist the temptation to wear your costume home.”
Kyle grinned. “Up, up, and away,” he said, heading for the door.
“Wait!” Dashiell said. All this talk had distracted him from his goal—information gathering about Brianna. More specifically, Brianna’s availability relative to Kyle. If Kyle wasn’t going with her, then the ball was in play, so to speak. “So, Kyle, um, I was wondering what you were doing on Friday night?”
The question hung in the air. Both Kyle and Charles looked at him oddly.
“Dashiell?” Charles said. “Are you asking Kyle on a date?”
“Whaaaat? NO! I mean, no way! I mean, I wasn’t asking for . . . I just meant . . . I wanted to know this info for the sake of someone else . . . a girl!”
“Ohhh,” Kyle said with a smile. “Who wants to know? Reese? Brianna?”
“I’m not supposed to say,” Dashiell said. Actually, Kyle’s response had told him exactly what he needed to know. If Kyle was asking that question about Brianna, then logically, that suggested he wasn’t going out with her.
“Actually, someone else I know would like the same information.” Charles laughed. “I guess we’ve had a few inquiries.”
“Just hanging with my football buds that night.” Kyle shrugged. “Yo, this may be my last chance. They won’t want to know me after they see this costume. No offense, Charles. I am cool with the costume. You did a good job. But I know these dudes.”
“Well, good luck and godspeed,” Dashiell said, quickly backing out of the room.
Mission Possible was under way.
Day by Day
October 1
12
dramakween: i cant beleive ur awake this early on a mondy, rachel. im not humen yet. i didn’t sleep last nigt.
YaLeBiRd: party girl.
dramakween: lol. no, homeework. ap world is a bithc. so’s calc. im tierd
YaLeBiRd: ur speling sux. how’d u make it thru?
dramakween: fear and whatever else I can find, lets talk about good news.
dramakween: like 2nd week of reheaarsal. it was sooooo good. like a birth. we nailed the openng scene.
dramakween: ha, that IS a birth sene. the disiples hearing the call, coming together from diff walks of life.
dramakween: then harrisn baptiszing kyle in teh big public fountan. kyle singing god save the people. kyle becoming the leader and teacher. god, when he sings “prepare ye,” you wanto just hop on the stage. u know hes really smart, rach. and funny.
YaLeBiRd: have you slept w him yet? :/
dramakween: no comment.
YaLeBiRd: . . . . . . . . . . .
dramakween: no.
YaLeBiRd: damn.
dramakween: mmmm
YaLeBiRd: how are the problem children?
dramakween: everyone’s beter. harrison is so mgnetic on stage! lori & corbn are frinds cuz he make her laugh by doing fake opera voices. jamil, lynette, becky, & aisha are singing & dancing great.
dramakween: we almost got rid of ethan, but casey rembered his “smith and smythe” stand-up act with corbin.
dramakween: she put thm in a cornner & had them do improv. they playd two drunkerds trying to seduce a curtain . . .
dramakween: a surfer dude robing a bank, etc. ect. i almost peed, I lauged so hard. so ethan’s out of the doghous and we’re puting teh improvs in the show.
YaLeBiRd: coolio. & dashiell? my main man?
dramakween: weird. hes ben promisng 2 giv me this note, 4 like ever? finaly did it on Firday. i thoght it was like a poem or luv note. he just wnts me to look at the new comupter cue sheet.
YaLeBiRd: uh-huh, yeah, I believe that.
YaLeBiRd: hey, you still bummed abut not acting?
dramakween: a little. but not realy. dam im so tired. my fingers r made of wwood. i wish u were here.
YaLeBiRd: you wish kt were there ☺
dramakween: . . . sigh . . . true dat.
Dashiell carefully lit each candle. Vanilla/jasmine, for Fantasies. Cedar/spruce/rosemary, for Love. Moroccan rose/chamomile, for Positive Energy. Awesome.
Pit check.
He sniffed his armpits. Sweet. As well they should be. He had deodorized them in the morning, then again after gym, and just before this study period. Still, you never knew for sure. There were rules of self-preservation, hardwired from the dawn of time. You can’t blink when you hammer your own nail. You can’t sneeze with your eyes open. You can’t smell your own bad breath. Maybe smelling your own BO was part of that, too.
He pulled a bottle of Old Spice from his desk drawer. He had already put some behind his ears, but a little under each pit wouldn’t hurt. Dab, dab. Voilà.
Okay, three minutes to go.
Dashiell flicked on his iPod docking system—Jeff Buckley, “Hallelujah,” soft and low!—and shut the lights. The projection room went dark, save for the dancing shadows on the walls made by the candlelight against the audiovisual equipment.
Perfect.
It was crucial not to let this seem too calculated. Oh, just listening to my playlist. Picked up the candles during lunch and wanted to try them. Just a way to make the projection room feel like my bedroom.
No. Not bedroom!
Like my own personal space.
He sat by his console screen and reviewed the social flowchart—every scenario that could possibly happen this evening neatly laid out on pathways, with alternate strategies for each. When he was satisfied he had it memorized, he exited the document, leaving only the lighting-cue spreadsheet on screen. He would appear to be busy—he was always busy—and when the door opened, he would swivel casually on his wheeled office chair. Oh, we had a meeting? I almost forgot. . . .
The knock on the door nearly made him jump. “Come in!” he squeaked.
The door opened, letting in a column of harsh fluorescent light. “Dashiell?” a familiar voice called out.
“Oh, we had a—?” He swiveled toward the door a bit too fast. His size 14EE New Balance 991s caught a dangling ethernet cable It was attached to a router, which slid inexorably to the edge of the table.
Dashiell lurched forward. His chair reacted with an equal and opposite force, rolling backward and throwing him to the floor.
“Ahhhhh!” He reached out desperately. The router plopped firmly into the palm of his right hand—just as Brianna entered the room.
“What the—?” she said.
“Alas, poor Netgear,” Dashiell said meekly, lifting the router to eye level. “I knew him, Brianna.”
Brianna stared at him in utter bafflement.
“Hamlet,” Dashiell explained.
“Um, Dashiell?” she said, her eyes now taking in the whole room. “What a piece of work is this?”
What a piece of work. That was another saying from Hamlet. This was Brianna’s game. He should have anticipated it. Three seconds into the meeting, and already two things that were not on the flowchart. “All the world’s a stage?” he offered.
Brianna burst out laughing. “This room appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.”
Ouch. “Don’t you like the scents?”
“The candles are nice, but I think someone spilled aftershave on the floor.” Brianna sat in the vinyl cushioned chair, whose surface Dashiell had carefully repaired with duct tape. She leaned forward. “Dashiell? Are you wearing hair gel?”
“A little. And it’s Dash.” Dashiell smiled and opened a file cabinet dra
wer, where he had stored a wooden cutting board that contained a chunk of Kraft Cracker Barrel circled impeccably with Ritz crackers. “Would you like some? I have some Vitamin Water in here, too.”
Brianna gave him a funny look. “Sure. And then we’ll talk about the problems with password protection for the lighting cues?”
“What?” Dashiell said. Knife. He had forgotten a knife! How was he going to cut the cheese?
“Wasn’t that the reason for this meeting?” Brianna asked.
“Oh. Right . . . ” Dashiell pulled open the pencil drawer of his desk and rummaged around until he found a plastic knife. It still had a little caked residue from last Tuesday’s banana-walnut muffin on it, so he wiped it clean with the corner of his shirt. Cutting Brianna and himself each a generous hunk of cheddar, he put them on Ritz crackers and handed her the bigger one. “Better to talk on a full stomach.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“Vitamin Water? I have Energy and Balance.”
“I’m okay.”
As Dashiell scarfed down his snack, he noticed she was just holding hers with a strangely reluctant expression. Duh. A napkin. He reached into the drawer and pulled out a stack of napkins he had hoarded from the deli. The top one had some kind of stain on it, so he threw it out and gave her the next one. Then he made sure to carefully swallow before he spoke. “So, the show is going pretty well, huh? That Kyle is an awesome singer.”
“Very talented,” Brianna said.
“Popular, too. He’s going out with his football cronies on Friday, I hear.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m busy. Friday’s unfortunately a homework night.”
Okay. Her story jibed with Kyle’s. Just double-checking. That was the response he expected. The branch of the flow-chart he had outlined in gold. Now for the payoff pitch. He would angle for the next Friday, October 11.
Despite himself, Dashiell began to shake. “W-well, I was w-wondering—”
“Actually, I hope he doesn’t have a date with his buds a week from Friday,” Brianna interrupted, “because that means he couldn’t come to my party on that night. Which everyone is invited to.”
“P-party?” Dashiell said. “Friday? The eleventh?”
“Oops, study hall’s almost half over. Got to go.” Brianna rose from the chair, smiling. “You’ll be there, won’t you? Or did you have other plans?”
“No!” Dashiell nearly shouted. “I mean, I’ll check. If I don’t, I’ll come.”
Kyle groaned. “He didn’t.”
“He did,” Brianna replied, putting a dollar into the juice machine. As the bill buzzed into the slot, she looked behind her. The crowd in the cafeteria was sparse, most of the kids sitting over by the window. Mr. Mansfield, the eighth-period study hall teacher, looked at her sternly and put his fingers to his lips. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” Brianna whispered to Kyle. “You have to keep absolutely quiet about it. He is the sweetest guy.”
“He tried to seduce you with cheddar cheese and Ritz crackers?” Kyle said. “I should have a talk with him.”
“About what?”
“I’d use Brie.”
“Shhhh,” said Mr. Mansfield.
Brianna grabbed her Snapple from the chute, took Kyle by the arm, and dragged him into the hallway. “I adore Dashiell. He’s smart and kind and the loyalest friend. I just had to tell someone. And you were in the hallway. I thought I could trust you. If you mention a word of it to those Cro-Magnons you play football with—”
“Don’t worry,” Kyle said with a smile. “I’m not the kind of guy who gets off on dissing others. Dash is safe. Seriously, I was just like him when I was in middle school.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“Okay, not as smart, but I didn’t have a clue about girls. I took Emily Fenwick to the diner but forgot to bring money. So I asked her to pay. She came up with two dollars and forty-one cents. I sat there, like, duh. Somehow Harrison’s dad figured this out and felt sorry for us. He let us have two grilled cheese sandwiches and two waters without paying. I felt like crap eating that grilled cheese. I didn’t say a word to Emily. We practically ran out after the last bite. That weekend I saw Niko, the waiter, in town, and he thanked me for the tip—only I hadn’t left one! It turns out Mr. Michaels slipped a few bills onto our table to cover us.”
Brianna laughed. “Did you ever pay back Mr. Michaels?”
“I tried. He’d always point to the calculator and say, ‘Eenterest, I chhhaff to charge eenterest!’ Then he’d burst out laughing and never do anything about it.”
This didn’t surprise Brianna one bit. Even in middle school, Kyle had been getting away with murder. “Well, at least Dashiell was more thoughtful than that. He bought the food and the candles in advance. Except one of the candles smelled like Old Spice. Or maybe that was him.”
“So what did you do?” Kyle asked. “Did you tell him off?”
“I thanked him. I told him the projection room looked cool. I think he wanted to ask me out for Friday after next, so I invited him to the party, which was a convenient way to get out of that. Then I told him the truth—it was study period and I had to do homework. He was very sweet. He smiled and opened the door for me.”
“But you lied,” Kyle said. “You’re not doing homework.”
Brianna elbowed him. “I have still have seven minutes left. I do take study hall seriously, you know. And so should you. Rehearsals kill your homework time. Oh, don’t you forget: cast party on Friday, the eleventh. My house. Be there.”
“Yes’m,” Kyle said. “Hey, if I sit with you and study right now, will your brains rub off on me?”
“That is a disgusting image.”
They walked back into the cafeteria and took seats at a table, opposite each other. Brianna briskly opened her math textbook and notebook, both of which she’d bookmarked to the right page. She ignored Kyle as best as she could. As it was, she had enough homework to keep her going till two A.M.Again.
Her cell phone v brated in her pack, and she glanced down at the screen. It was Harrison. She would pick up the call later.
“Hey, Brianna?” Kyle whispered.
“Hmm?”
“You gave Dash respect. I like that. You were good to him.”
Brianna smiled. “I’m a good respect giver.”
“Yeah, to me, too,” Kyle said.
Now she had to look up. “What did I do?”
“Nothing.” Kyle shrugged. “No, something. You forced me to audition. Well, that’s not respect, really. But you, like, noticed my singing. And you didn’t say it sucked dead yaks. Like most of the football dudes in the locker room.”
“You sing in the locker room?”
“Sometimes. Until they squirt me with Gatorade. Well, they don’t do that anymore because I’m never in the locker room—which is kind of a problem, being that this was the season I was supposed to break four records. And maybe help us get into the championship for the first time in thirty years. Everybody’s pissed—especially the coach. But hey, now I get to be like a star. So, you know . . . um, thanks.”
That was the nicest thing anyone had said to her in days. “That’s sweet, Kyle . . . . ”
He leaned closer. “Hey. I wanted to ask you—”
“Shhhhhh!” said Mr. Mansfield.
Kyle pulled back and began digging in his backpack for his homework books. Brianna wasn’t sure, but his face looked as heated as hers felt.
13
“HEY, CASEY.”
“Brianna? It’s really late. What time is it? Are you okay?”
“Sorry. Were you sleeping?”
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean, it’s okay, don’t worry. What’s up?”
“He said he wanted to ask me something. In study hall. Mr. Mansfield shut him up, and then he kind of forgot about it.”
“Who?”
“I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Brianna, you’re not making any sense. Who wanted to ask you what?”
“K
yle.”
“Kyle?”
“I think he likes me.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Um, well, that’s great! I mean, isn’t it?”
“I wish I knew what he wanted to say.”
“Wow, Brianna, this doesn’t sound like you.”
“I know, I know. Can you believe it? I can’t believe it. It’s only a guy. I’m sorry, Casey. Welcome to my secret life as a cheesy soap opera. What time is it?”
“Almost three o’clock.”
“I’m wired. Too much homework. I have to get some sleep. Casey?”
“What?”
“It’s going to be okay, right?”
“Brianna? Um, wow, yeah. Sure. Definitely. Oh God, I get insomnia, too, and it’s like the world is going to end. But then the next day you feel fine. And don’t worry about Kyle, okay? He’s probably drooling over you in his dreams, as we speak.”
“Thanks. Sorry about this, Case.”
“No, it’s okay. That’s what friends are for.”
“Uh-oh . . . ”
“What?”
“I hear a song coming on . . . ”
“You are crazy.”
“No. Yes. Maybe. Night, Casey.”
“Night, Brianna.”
14
From:
To:
Subject: Re: is benny deaf?
October 5, 5:48 P.M.
yo petey, dont be so mad at benny hes cool. i saw you guys through the window so I know what you’re talking about. look, you gotta really yell to the qb when ur in the clear like CLEEEEER!!! benny will really hear that ee sound, you know? anyway i’ll be joining u guys soon coz i really suck at this. i thought it was cool but this week was bad. i tried to sing this important song that happens during the crusifiction (sp?) scene, yes i know it sounds stupid, but i can’t get it and don’t tell me u can help me with that voice like a cross between a frog and a walrus. hey, its my funerel. i’m gonna work on my car. thatll make me feel better. come help. bring a new alternater ha ha ha.