Don't Touch (6 page)

Dad is totally capable of trading an old, banged-up life for a shiny, new one.

I curl up on my bed and place the phone on the nightstand. It would make him happy if I called. It might even be nice to talk to him, to remember that he's still alive and out there in the world, that he hasn't been sucked into some dark abyss.

Outside, crickets, cicadas, and frogs sing in chorus. A train whistle sounds.

Dad used to read to me before bed when I was little, and if we heard the whistle, Dad would say, “A train's coming to bring you good dreams.”

Tonight the whistle just sounds lonely. I don't think I'm going to be falling asleep anytime soon.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

The academy's halls shake with bodies swinging one another around by the arm, bodies colliding and losing their balance so I have to dodge, press myself to the wall. Mouths kiss, limbs crush.

One couple shuffles down the hall, the guy's arms wrapped around the girl from behind so they can barely move. A dancer does a pirouette into two of her friends, slides down their legs, and grabs at their ankles. They drag her, pretending not to notice, for maybe ten feet. Other kids fake trip over her legs or use her butt as a pommel horse. One guy lies down flat on top of her until she shakes him off.

Artists.
They want to touch everything.

A tremor that starts in my stomach makes my legs go shaky, my hands ten times worse, so I clasp them together, close my eyes, force my face to reflect a calm I don't feel.

There is plenty of space, lots of space, between my skin and theirs.

I win the most-clothes contest, with jeans and long sleeves that cover the tops of my gloves. It makes sense everyone's nearly naked—it's still sweltering outside—and compared to my old school the dress code is . . . lax. One flock of girls has cleared out the center of the hall to stage a hip-hop dance. They wear nothing but tank tops and booty shorts, no shoes even, so maybe they have dance class first? Or maybe that's just the academy.

If the actors dress like this, I'm in trouble.

I squeeze against the lockers to pass them, some kind of campy superhero with my gloves on, scaling a wall.

At the far hall where the juniors and seniors have lockers, not everyone's dressed for the heat. The seniors are dressed for a Renaissance Faire. The girls mostly have on long skirts, but they're showing extra cleavage to make up for it. Posters every few feet say,
SENIORS RULE THE FALL! LIFE'S A CARNIVALE!
and
FAIRE OR NOT, WE'VE REACHED THE TOP!

I slip through the mass of bodies, trying to find my locker without getting sucked in. I realize I'm scanning the crowd for Peter's face, but I'm not sure whether seeing him would be good or bad.

One tall senior girl blocks my path, corset-squashed boobs uncomfortably close to my face. “Who leaked the theme?” she says, grabbing my hand. The shock of the touch rattles me before I remember I have armor.

“No,” I say, pulling my gloved hand out of her grip. “I—no one leaked. I just wear these.”

She breaks into a relieved laugh. “Dang it! Am I paranoid or what? All right, well, good morrow to ye!”

The idea of me wearing gloves, just because, doesn't faze her. She turns away but keeps talking, “Wait, what does ‘morrow' mean? Morning or tomorrow? I'm not going to make any sense all day!” If I didn't know better, I'd think she was drunk.

Mandy's squeal—“Finally! Where were you?”—makes me turn. She's waiting by my locker. Drew slouches beside her, going over his schedule.

“I was afraid Boob-a-licious was going to suffocate you in her cleavage,” she says.

“Thank God!” I say. “I was starting to get dizzy.”

“I thought I'd missed you. Don't go into lunch without me. We'll go together so you can sit by me.”

Drew finally looks up and says, “Mandy, she's not an infant.”

“It's not
your
first day,” Mandy says.

“Thank you, thank you,” I tell Mandy, opening my locker. If the halls are any indication, lunch will be anarchy.

Drew's eyes skate over me like he's not aware, or at least not concerned, that I can see him looking. “Still with the gloves?” he says, his eyes crinkled with humor or scorn, I can't tell. Mandy promised not to tell that the gloves are a new thing, but Drew sure didn't.

“I can't believe you're actually here,” Mandy says. “My academy friends are great, but it's not the same as that person who's known you forever, you know?”

Drew makes a show of clearing his throat.

I nod, trying not to let on how stupid happy she just made me.

A bell rings, and Mandy says, “We'd better get going. I'll see you at lunch, and in acting, of course.”

With people streaming toward class in both directions, the hall seems to narrow and press. Mine and Mandy's schedules are entirely different except for our block of theater at the end of the day.

Drew takes my schedule. “We both have English first,” he says. “Here, I'll walk you.”

“Oh, you don't have to.”

“I do, kind of, since we're both walking in the same direction.”

He rests his elbow on my shoulder, which tugs at my hair, making my head tilt toward him. I want to wash the touch away, but it isn't skin touching skin. I can't let this get worse or I'll have to start wearing a hood.

Let it go, let it go.

“You're shaking,” Drew says, dropping his arm. “Are you that freaked out?”

“I get nervous,” I say. “I'll be okay.”

“Everyone here is some kind of freak,” Drew says. “You'll fit right in.”

“Um, thanks?”

“I'm serious,” says Drew. “Mandy's in love with you, so you must have something going for you.”

“We haven't been friends for a long time.” I can't believe I'm confiding in Drew.

“That's not how she talks about you,” he says. “She talks like you're her long-lost twin who got kidnapped by pirates and finally she's found you again.”

“Really?”

“And truly.”

At the top of a staircase, Drew gestures toward our classroom door like a true southern gentleman. As I pass, he says, “Watch out for Mandy's feelings, okay? She's missed you.”

There's a hint of warning in his fixed jaw, but then he looks away. I wonder what Mandy's told Drew about me, whether she's missed me the way he makes it sound. I'm at a loss for words, but I nod, slip past him, and find an open seat toward the back. He sits beside me but keeps his eyes forward.

At the end of class, Drew smiles like we're old friends. “You've got chemistry next? Mr. Kiernan. He can be fun. I'll point you in the right direction.”

He walks me to the nearest staircase. “Take a right at the foot of the stairs, and straight on till morning.”

“Hey, that's . . .”

“
Peter Pan
.” He smiles at my surprise. “Saw the musical in eighth grade. Changed my life.”

“
Peter PAN
changed your life?”

“In middle school, I was such a jock. When I told my buds I was applying to BAA, they lost it and asked if I was gay, but I said, ‘You know where there are a ton of straight girls fighting over a limited supply of straight dudes? Theater.'”

“And that worked?”

“No, they kept being total dicks.” He winks. “More fun for me.”

As he turns and walks away, it hits me: I might just have made friends with Drew.

Acting class hasn't started, but this is my first acting challenge—to act like I'm comfortable entering the lunchroom at Mandy's side, sitting with her friends. And the gloves are just for fun. I'm the kind of girl born to quirkiness, who spreads whimsy like the common cold.

Like Livia. She's first to the table, having brought her own lunch, a plastic container of earthy orange paste and a bag of what look like giant bronze grapes.

Livia's dressed all in green—always, according to Mandy—and it brings out the warmth of her dark skin. The black girls at my old school mostly stayed together—a lot of Birmingham is still weirdly divided by race—but looking around the dining hall, it's cool how everybody's mixed in together. Livia wears her hair in big swirly loops like an avatar from one of Jordan's video games. Little-girl green barrettes frame her face.

“Hi, Mandy,” she says, and then locks on to me. “I know who you are.”

Does acting work on other actors? I'm about to find out.

“You must be the one who wears green,” I say. “Livia, right? I'm—”

“No, don't tell me.” She holds her fingertips to her temples like she's going to pluck my name out of the air.

“This is Caddie,” Mandy says, interrupting Livia's trance.

“Caddie,” Livia says as if I'm not so much a person as a concept. “Okay, here's the impression I get . . .”

“No, Livia,” Mandy says. “It's stressy enough being new.”

“It's a good one,” Livia says. “I like her, first impression.” She's about to reveal the mystery of me to me. “You want to fit in, do the right thing. It can make people uncomfortable,” she says, “but I find it refreshing.”

So, I come off as desperate, which she finds refreshing—like wet wipes, or cucumber salad. Being friends with Mandy means making friends with this hippy-dippy girl who's annoyingly . . . perceptive.

Mandy rolls her eyes and digs into her “South of the Border Salad,” which is actually nacho chips slathered with processed cheese and salty ground beef. “Livia's on a ‘living on impulse' kick.”

“You try to shut off all your filters,” Livia explains. “When an idea comes to mind, you speak it. When the impulse comes to take action, you take it. It's harder than it sounds.”

“No,” I say, “that sounds hard, impossible even—”

Before the words fully leave my mouth, Livia has placed one of her grape things in her spoon and launched it across the dining hall directly into the back of a guy standing in line. He's got heavy eyebrows and a distinct lack of lips. The skin where his lips should be curls back from his braces as if simply closing his mouth might hurt, making his teeth look even bigger than they already are.

“That's Oscar,” Mandy says.

“Wait, was he in—?”

She nods. He played Lance Dalton's son in
Monkey Boy.
If there's a kid who gets to do that in all of Alabama, it only makes sense that he's Mandy's friend.

Oscar looks around until he finds Livia waving, then gives her a mock-threatening fist pump, mouthing the words, “I'm coming for you.”

“Sometimes, impulses can get you in trouble,” Livia says, but she looks thrilled.
I'm
thrilled to be sitting across from the girl who just pegged a weird fruit at a guy who played the son of a giant movie star.

“What are you eating?” Mandy asks, pointing to the battle grapes.

“Scuppernongs,” Livia says. “They grow in my backyard. Here.”

I decline, but Mandy says, “Don't be a wuss.”

Livia scrapes the mushy insides from the skins with her teeth. I cut mine in half with a fork and knife first so I won't have to take off my gloves. The jelly inside is sweet and tangy, but the seeds are bitter.

Even Livia's food is out-quirking me. Livia hasn't said a word about my gloves.

The rest of the group takes seats one by one. Hank is handsome, and also a bit sly. With a slick pompadour, he's old-timey movie-star classic. “We've heard so much about you,” he says, holding his hand out for mine. When I reach out to shake, he bends down and kisses my knuckles. I feel pressure and a warm breath through the gloves, but that's okay.

“Classy,” he says of the gloves as he lets me go. “And what have you heard about me? Did Mandy warn you how deadly handsome I am?”

He
is
handsome, and it might be deadly, except that he makes my gaydar go bleep.

Instead of waiting for an answer, he launches into a blow-by-blow of his attempt to get Nadia to consider producing
Avenue Q,
a Broadway musical where puppets in New York City sing about racism and have puppet sex. “She says it's too raunchy. I mean, puppets! It's not like anybody's going to get turned on by that!”

“I don't know,” says Drew, shoving his tray between Mandy's and mine and hovering behind us, “I always had a thing for Miss Piggy.” He pinches Mandy.

“Tell me you're not comparing me to a pig!”

My fork digs so hard into a corn chip, it breaks through and cracks against my plate. Mandy gets enough harassment from her mom about her weight. She doesn't need it from her boyfriend.

Mandy pouts at Drew and he laughs. “Because you're both bossy! That's all I meant!” he says, crouching down beside her and trying for a hug. She shoves at the top of his head. “And violent.”

“Bite me,” Mandy says.

He does, on the meat of her shoulder, with a lot of growling from him and squealing from her until she holds a milk carton over his head. It rattles me, seeing them play like that, and it's not just the touching. My oldest and probably best friend in spite of the time lapse trades saliva on a regular basis with this person who looks like a man. Drew has a five o'clock shadow, and it's only eleven.

Instead of sitting in one of the empty seats, my new buddy Drew swings a chair around from the table behind us to place between Mandy and me. It doesn't quite fit, so he grabs the back of my chair and scoots it—and me—over to make room.

“Rude,” Mandy says, but it's clear that she thinks he's adorable.

Before I can fully settle into my new spot, hands clamp down on my shoulders.

I shriek, which makes everyone laugh.

It's Lance Dalton, Jr. He's made it through the line and put his tray on the table behind us in order to have his hands free to maul me. He's not touching skin, but it still makes my breath rasp. “God, you scared me.”