Like It Never Happened (17 page)

I shook my head, meaning it was fine. Or that he shouldn't have. It occurred to me to be scared. I could end up on the evening news: “Teenage Starlet Abducted Post-Rehearsal: Chopped to Bits in Station Wagon.” But I wasn't actually scared of Mr. McFadden at all. And I didn't particularly care if the rain stopped soon.

I did wonder what my parents would think, if they could see me right at this moment. Given that I was almost always exactly where they thought, it was somewhat thrilling to be in the least likely place.

“Tell me something,” he said suddenly.

I waited for the question.

“Just tell me anything,” he clarified. “Anything you want.”

I got the feeling that my choice would either impress or sorely disappoint him. Still, I said the first thing that came to mind. “My sister is about to marry Jeffrey Cline.”

“Who is Jeffrey Cline?” he asked, emotionless.

“Winner of three West Coast tours.”

Mr. McFadden shifted in his seat and blinked at me. Apparently not all men spoke all sports fluently.

“Golf,” I explained.

“Interesting,” he said, like it wasn't at all.

I tried again. “She ran away from home after high school and this is practically the first time she's been back.”

“How old is she now?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Huh.” He gnawed at his thumbnail. His fingers were stained with ink. “What's her name?”

“Mary.” I was driving our conversation into a wall, but I couldn't think of what to say. The rain persisted, pounding against the roof of the car.

“Mary Rivers,” he echoed with faint interest. Then his eyebrows leaped toward his hairline. “Mary Rivers! I actually remember her!”

“What?” I kind of choked. “My sister was your—how
old
are you?” Panic tightened in my chest.

“No!” He looked equally horrified. “She wasn't my student. I'm only twenty-seven! We went to high school together, at Cleveland.”

Cleveland High was the public school in our district. My parents had decided against sending me there, probably on account of how Mary turned out.

“I thought you were from Spokane,” was the first thing I thought to say. I could not, no matter how hard I tried, think of Mary and Mr. McFadden as peers. It wasn't that they seemed like wildly different ages or anything. More that I wasn't convinced they inhabited the same world.

“Why would you think that?” He turned up his hands, bewildered. I drew a blank. Why had I thought that?

“How do you know it's the same Mary Rivers?” I challenged.

Squinting, he leaned toward me. “You are, without a doubt, Mary Rivers's little sister.”

I crossed my arms and looked straight ahead, at the water cascading down the windshield. It was like Mary had pushed me out of the car and stolen Mr. McFadden's attention.

“Were you friends with her?” In spite of my jealousy, if that's what it was, I was curious.

“Not really. But I remember, the one time she auditioned for a school play, she got the lead. She played Hermia in
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
I was the duke of Athens.”

“Oh my god.” The realization was sudden and swift, made me feel both sick and elated. “Oh my god!” I started laughing. Tears threatened to slide down my cheeks. “Holy shit!”

“What?” he asked, offended. “What's wrong with the duke of Athens?”

I shook my head, gasping for breath.

“Tell me!” With tense hands, he strangled the air between us.

“I was in that play!” I managed to confess.

He frowned deeply before yielding to nervous laughter. “No you weren't. You would have been . . . five, six?”

“My parents volunteered me to be a fairy.”

“Oh,” he moaned, pressing himself against the window, looking nothing like my director. “Oh, that's so weird.” He appeared physically pained.

I released a final, faded giggle. I tried to remember him as the duke of Athens, but I couldn't. My memories of
A Midsummer Night's Dream
included the warm, adoring presence of the crowd and my turquoise fairy costume. I had fallen in love, completely in love, with the stage that night.

I wanted to run out into the rain and tell somebody that I had once acted beside Mr. McFadden. It was the kind of revelation that wouldn't feel real until at least one other person acknowledged it. But as I considered this, I realized I couldn't tell my friends. Our director's attention had always threatened to drive a wedge between me and the four of them. I had never wanted him to like me best. But now, maybe I did.

The rain let up enough that we could see the car parked in front of us. Mr. McFadden reached for the ignition, but didn't turn the key right away. “Do you remember me at all?” he asked.

I shook my head and watched the tension leave his shoulders. “Good. I would hate for you to have a mental image of me at seventeen.”

“Mary might have pictures,” I teased.

He dismissed the possibility. “Not of me, she doesn't.”

Once I had lifted my butt and, again, convinced the car I wasn't there, we drove back to Hawthorne. Instead of telling him my address, I waited to see if he remembered. The break in the rain felt temporary; wind still raged against the side of the car. We passed a lot of houses with Jack-o'-lanterns flickering hopefully in the front windows, but trick-or-treaters were few and far between, and they all looked devastated.

Mr. McFadden was calmer now. “I remember your sister was the kind of person who made you feel like it was okay to be exactly who you were.” He swallowed, turned toward me. “Is she still like that?”

My sister, I thought, was the kind of person who would abandon her girlfriend in New York City and marry a man instead. My sister wasn't particularly honest about her own identity; the answer to Mr. McFadden's question had to be no.

But I had this strange urge to preserve his memory of her. I could imagine Mary and Nadine in our family's old Volkswagen, winding up Mount Scott Road, bravely choosing each other. Everything between them had been over for years, but I was still somehow rooting for them.

I said, “Yeah. Pretty much.” Like by saying so, I could give them another chance.

And my director nodded, satisfied.

For once, the lights were on inside my house and I was glad. Staying home alone so often was starting to make me paranoid.

With the engine idling, Mr. McFadden turned to face me. “When you're a teacher,” he said quickly, before he could change his mind, “everyone warns you that one day you will have a student whose future you can see so clearly. And that you will feel jealous, knowing they will accomplish what you didn't.”

I stared at him. I had never expected anything like this to happen.

“I'm not jealous of you,” he said bluntly, as if stating a fact. “But I am really looking forward to seeing your name in lights.”

The car smelled of manufactured pine. His bottom lip was cracked in one corner and his hair, I suddenly realized, was unlike anyone else's hair. It grew in all directions and when he ran his fingers through it—which he did now—it changed shape, like beach grass rearranged by the wind.

I had thought that falling in love was a decision. Like first you noticed a boy was cute and smart and had good taste in movies. He kissed you and it occurred to you to love him. If a certain amount of time passed and nothing went wrong, then congratulations: love.

But apparently that was not how it worked at all. Apparently love happened accidentally, and without warning, and at the exact moment you were supposed to get out of the car.

“W
hy are you putting a bottle of tequila in your purse?”

Startled, I slammed the doors to the liquor cabinet. Mary was pointing at me with her car key, amused. My cheeks flushed with guilt. She still knew nothing about the box beneath my bed.

“School was canceled,” I said, like that explained anything. Mary looked out the window and back at me. The storm was over and the streets were bone dry.

“Power outage. Nobody east of Thirty-second has electricity.” I zipped the bottle into my bag. As long as Mary kept quiet, my parents would never notice. Tequila was not exactly their drink of choice.

She blocked the doorway, deliberating. Sisters were overrated. Simple things, like robbing the liquor cabinet, became so complicated.

“Does Charlie live east of Thirty-second?” Her upper lip curled.

“Yes.” I shouldered past her.

“Hey.” Mary grabbed my purse strap. “Be smart, okay?”

I looked into her eyes, green with sparks of yellow. I wanted to say Nadine's name out loud, just to watch those sparks burst into flames. Mary was wearing leggings and pearl earrings, on her way downtown to find a wedding dress. Maybe, if she had retained a shred of her younger self, I could have explained my reasoning.

Which was that even though I wanted things I couldn't have, I had a couple of things worth saving. Such as the play and maybe the best-looking boyfriend in the state of Oregon. My plan was to surprise Charlie at ten in the morning with an apologetic bottle of tequila. I hoped it was the kind of thing Liane would never do.

“Smart?” I asked, like it was a foreign concept.

Our gaze broke against the sound of Mom stomping down the stairs, all perfume and anxiety. She was shouting, “Mary, honey, did I wear these slacks the last time we saw Darlene?”

Apparently, the hunt for Mary's wedding dress was a group activity. Mary's index finger orbited her ear—our old sign of solidarity against our parents. Then she pointed at my bulging bag and whispered a flurry of instructions. “Pace yourself. Drink water. Stay with Charlie, don't end up alone with anyone you don't trust.”

Our mother appeared, looking imploringly from her perfectly pressed pants to her firstborn daughter.

Mary assumed I trusted Charlie.

With a winter coat pulled over pink pajamas, Mrs. Almeida stood in her front yard, righting cherubs blown over in the storm. I lifted a hand in greeting and she frowned at my bag like she knew exactly what it held. All down the street pumpkins smiled toothlessly, or with their faces half collapsed and smeared across porch steps.

According to the local news, most of southeast had lost power around seven last night. Meaning Mr. McFadden and I had nearly been trapped backstage, alone together in total darkness. As I walked to Charlie's I imagined it happening that way: my director taking my hand and leading me to lighted safety. I gripped my own hand, pretending the pressure came from his. When that started to feel stupid I allowed my fantasy to slip back into darkness—to things that could happen only if I knew the lights would stay out forever. My heart pounded as I imagined his fingers crawling up my ribs. It was such an impossible scenario.

Charlie was home alone, thank god. He answered the door wearing jeans, wool socks, and a frayed cardigan. His house was shockingly cold.

At
first
he
stared
at
me
blankly,
his
mind
still
entrenched in the homework scattered across the kitchen table. I unzipped my bag and wordlessly produced the bottle of tequila. I watched the corners of his eyelids crinkle. He was beautiful, even if I was half in love with someone else.

“You never fail to amaze me, Rivers.”

I melted.

He took the bottle from my hands. He worked on the cork until it slid out with a pop. Charlie led me to the living room and we sat on a sagging suede couch with space between us, passing the bottle back and forth. A vacuum cleaner lay overturned in the center of the room, like a murder victim. The coffee table was littered with warped magazines and remote controls and a wet sponge. I had been to Charlie's house a few times before. Normally his little brothers were noisy. Normally we would shut ourselves into his bedroom, but his mother would push on the door every time she passed through the hall.

At first, I just barely let the alcohol sting my lips. But when nothing bad happened, I swallowed more and more. Maybe the tequila didn't have to be an apology. Maybe the tequila could negotiate a deal between Charlie and me. Somehow I would end up naked, beneath him, and fine.

“Tell me something,” I said.

“What?” He rubbed his socked foot against my leg.

“Just anything. Something I don't already know.”

Charlie's forehead creased. “You have to ask me a question first.”

“Just pretend I asked whatever question you would most like to answer.”

I thought this was a pretty good offer, but Charlie looked annoyed. Throwing back his head, he took an impressive swig. “No,” he refused. “I hate that kind of game.”

Which was a complete lie. Or maybe the truth was that Charlie liked and hated everything equally. He reserved the right to change his personality at a moment's notice.

Across the room, a shelf held a row of photo albums, spines labeled by year. I rose from the couch abruptly—very aware of my skirt stretched across my hips, my sweater slipping from one shoulder: the things that would make him forgive me. I chose an album, as if at random. But sinking into the couch, closer to Charlie this time, I knew exactly what I was looking for. According to Liane, they'd been ten when they kissed for practice. I wanted to see what they had looked like.

After pages of baseball games, barbecues, and birthday parties, I finally found a picture. I recognized the setting as Liane's backyard. At ten she was taller than him, tight curls cropped close to her face. Charlie's lips were Popsicle red and bleeding into his chin. They had lazy summer smiles.

Obviously, they were just kids. I had no right to be jealous. But I would have given anything to erase those ties between them—for Liane to be my friend, and Charlie my boyfriend. Both of them mine and not each other's.

Looking up, I searched Charlie's face for some sign of nostalgia. But he wasn't even looking at the picture; he was staring at my neck, at the place where my sweater exposed my collarbone.

“I wish I was more like her.” I covered Liane's face with my index finger.

“You're prettier than Liane.” His words were slightly slurred.

He had seen her naked, I realized. He had never seen me naked. I wondered how he could know for sure.

“That's not what I meant.”

Charlie tried again. “You're a better actress.”

I shut the album and leaned back into the couch, which smelled like a dog, even though there was no dog. I searched for words to explain what Liane had that I didn't.

“She's so calm.” I was instantly unsure if I had said this out loud.

“She's heartless.”

“No,” I giggled. “Just unflappable.”

“That too.”

Charlie leaned into me and our kisses were wet and loose. I tried things I hadn't before. I bit down on his lower lip. I moved my hands down his back, inside his jeans, to the front where things squirmed on their own. The more I did to him, the less he did to me. I hadn't noticed that pattern until now.

“Do you think she's mad at me?” Thoughts were rolling around my brain haphazardly.

“Why would she be mad at you?” Charlie spoke into my open mouth.

“I stole you.”

“I ain't nobody's property,” he joked, Marlon Brando style.

For a while, we lingered in an unlikely state of excellence: the right amount of alcohol, the right amount of kissing, the right amount of sinking between couch cushions. Daylight barely bled through the window, and it was like our hands belonged to people who knew what they were doing.

In the kitchen, a cat was shaking a bird to death. “What the?” I sat up, shocked and panting.

“We have a cuckoo clock,” explained Charlie.

The clock proceeded to screech twelve times for noon, which was excessive and also hilarious. All of the excellence dissolved in my laughter. I struggled to catch my breath.

“Do you want some water?” asked Charlie, mildly annoyed.

I nodded. He disappeared and I listened to the water rushing through the pipes. When Charlie came back, the weather on his face had changed completely. I wondered if he could reverse my drunkenness too.

He thrust the glass into my hand. “I meant to ask you something.”

I looked up at him.

“We waited for you after rehearsal last night. Why did you stay so long?”

I drained the glass, and then I had to speak. “I was talking to Mr. McFadden. He liked our scene.”

Charlie sat with his elbows digging into his knees. “Then how come he only talked to you?”

My brain was cluttered with cobwebs, and I wanted to say “pass,” like in school. I shrugged instead.

“Director's pet,” Charlie sneered. And officially he was joking, but really he wasn't. I could tell by the way he angled his knees away from mine. “He goes so far out of his way to be nice to the girls, it's ridiculous.”

“What?” My pulse raced.

“Well, it would look bad if he favored the guys.” Charlie was pulling at a thread on his sweater, like his words mattered less that way.

I thought I understood him, but I hoped I was wrong. “Why would it look bad?”

His head fell back against the couch. He spoke to the ceiling. “Because he's a faggot.”

I wanted to leap for the light switch, like you do at the end of a scary movie. But the power was out. “What the hell,” I mumbled. It was awful, the way everything ached behind my eyes.

“Don't be naïve, Rebecca.”

“I just don't think you should call me that.”

Charlie blinked.

“I mean, call
him
that. Or call anybody that!”

Charlie shrugged. “It's just a word.”

“To you.” I stood up. The room tilted like a carnival ride. I was so much drunker than I wanted to be. “He yells at Tess and Liane just as much.”

“Because they're not such great actors.”

“And you are?”

“I'm as good as you.” He sucked in so much air, I waited for his next line. “Maybe better.” Charlie sat with his arms crossed, legs splayed: untouchable as always.

“You actually think”—I was crying, unfortunately—“that Mr. McFadden criticizes you because he's
attracted
to you?”

Charlie shrugged. “Some people are, you know.”

“Oh my god!” I could hear myself screaming. It sounded somehow louder than all of the lines I had ever screamed onstage. I could feel our argument, hazy from the beginning, morphing into something else: something about sex, something about the fact that Charlie always had to win. He would never forgive me for being the better actor, but I was. Mr. McFadden had told me so.