My Invented Life (22 page)

Mom laughs.

I slap a new bumper sticker onto the DykeByke that reads 90%
HETEROSEXUAL
, 10%
LESBIAN
. I printed others with every split imaginable. I plan to leave them around campus for anyone to use as they wish.

At the pharmacy I bury a packet of condoms under a bottle of bath oil and a loofah pad in my basket. Unfortunately, the cashier remembers me from years ago when she worked as a librarian. Her lips go mighty thin as she rings me up. Zip-Stop Jenny gives me a different strange look when I empty her rack of Juicy Fruit gum. “It’s for a joke,” I say.

I
n homeroom Mr. Beltz
puts everyone to sleep with his unique brand of hypnosis, the Drone?. Except for us theater geeks. We are wound so tight we would spin like tops if we were set free. I shift in my chair for the zillionth time. Andie’s bright orange eyeliner stands out against her pale skin, and her black pigtails have new yellow tips. My zebra nail polish fails to measure up. When will I ever learn? She lifts her notebook to half cover her face and whispers to me.

Her:
You promised to do anything I asked.

Though I can barely hear her, the message comes through loud and clear. What now?

Me (raising a textbook to hide my lips):
Uh-oh.

Her:
I’m calling in your promise.

Me:
And . . . ?

Her:
I’ll tell you tonight.

As long as she’s my friend, I’ll never be safe.

Her:
Coming to lunch?

The lunch minute at the Barn before opening night is a theater-geek freak-out fest of major proportions. I hate to miss it.

Me:
I can’t.

Mr. Beltz drops an atlas onto his desk from such a height that the whack-noise startles me into silence. He is looking right at me. “I have an announcement,” he says.

He can’t flunk me out of homeroom, but he can send me to detention.

“I’m so sorry for talking, Mr. Beltz. It was very rude of me. I’ll try to do better,” I blurt out in a futile attempt to save myself.

He laughs aloud—an unfamiliar occurrence—and the sound that comes out of his mouth is more girlish giggle than guyish guffaw. I like him better already. The next thing he says, though, astounds me.

“I have an announcement,” he repeats. “Our very own Rosella Peterson will star in
As You Like It
tonight at seven thirty
P.M
. You can buy tickets for the performance at the main office. I already bought mine. For both Friday and Saturday night. I’m looking forward to it, Roz. Break a leg.”

“I will,” I say. “Uh . . . I don’t mean I’ll break a leg, of course. I mean thank you. See you tonight. Well, I might not see you exactly. You’ll see me, though,” I say. Who can blame me for blathering? It’s the shock.

“ . . . Sprain an ankle . . . omigod . . . my boobs can’t breathe in this . . . your eyelashes are coming unglued . . . this gel is useless . . . he said what? . . . I’d rather do it in the backseat
than . . . ” I love the chaos backstage on opening night. Twenty minutes till curtain, and I’m walk-on ready. I hide behind a backdrop near where my parents are seated in the front row. Mr. Beltz takes a seat next to them and starts a conversation. Judging from their happy faces, it appears he isn’t informing them about my propensity to communicate overmuch in class.

After scanning the audience for Felicia (I see neither claw nor fang of her), I return to the backstage zone. Eyeliner Andie and Jonathan are AWOL, and the level of panic rises by the minute. Carmen—a cell phone attached to her ear like a giant silver tick—stands at the edge of the Mosh Pit calling every number she knows, which includes half of Yolo Bluffs. I tug at her sleeve to get her attention.

“They’ll be here,” I say.

Eva beckons me to a quiet spot. “Give me audience, good madam,” she says.

“Is this about Operation Seduce Carmen?” I ask.

“Shut up. I P-Tommed her window last night, but she didn’t wake up. And she’s preoccupied at the moment, so I haven’t gotten to talk to her. Where’s the bouquet?”

“Behind the speaker.”

“Thanks, Slim,” she says. She straightens the sleeve of my dress and untangles a strand of my long wig hair. “I’ll answer another one of your questions from the other day now.”

“Which one?”

“About Andie. I kissed her once last year . . . as an experiment. It didn’t work out. For her, either.” She has a teasing glint in her eye. “So who are you setting your sights on at the cast party tonight? Andie? Nico? Bryan? All three?”

“I’m not that greedy.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Hermaphrodite,” I say. “What about you?”

“I’m not the rebel you are, but I’ll go for what I want.”

“Someone has to fight the fight,” I say.

“And you’re the person for the job.”

“The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly,” I say. Translation? She’s so smart, I wish we were sisters. Oh. That’s right. We are.

She pulls me into a hug, a syrupy Hallmark moment, to be sure. I enjoy it.

“I thank thee for your love to me,” she says, “which thou shalt find I will most kindly requite.”

A screech from the Mosh Pit rudely interrupts our tender exchange. “I’m going to kill you now!” Carmen has Andie by the shoulders.

“Be gentle,” Andie says. “This outfit took me hours to put together.” The tresses on the left side of her fuchsia wig are twice as long as those on the right. Her costume has suffered other alterations, shredded tulle sleeves, a thick black silk choker, thigh-high boots, and a large metal buckle across her skirt. She looks stunning. “Before you say anything, you have to see Jonathan.”

The theater lights blink. Jonathan appears striding toward us in black leather boots accented with chains. A buckle to match Andie’s adorns the lapel of his long trench coat. They make a cute neo-Goth-punk couple.

I’m indignant, of course. “Why were you so secretive?” I say. “We could’ve updated all the costumes. We could’ve renamed the play
Whichever Way You Like It: A Tale of Confused Goth Love
. I own the perfect dress.”

Jonathan wraps his arm around my waist and gives me
a reassuring squeeze that says we’re friends forever. “Sally,” he says.

“What?” I ask.

“What, what?” He flashes me a mischievous smile. “Sally is Sapphire’s real name.”

When the lights go down, Bryan and his servant make their entrance. Silence reigns backstage because every noise except the faintest of whispers carries forward. Eva and I will go on next. I feel myself slip into character, the witty young daughter of the banished king on the brink of falling in love.

In the scrape of props between scenes, I overhear Jonathan ask Carmen, “Is your mom coming?”

“I don’t think so,” Carmen says.

Wax-hearted lockbox!
I invent a new Elizabethan curse on the spot. We’ll pry her open and melt that waxy heart yet. Carmen sees me eavesdropping and waves me onto the stage.

“I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry,” Eva says to me.

In an instant, I become the sad-eyed and wise Rosalind. After some banter, we make our way to the palace to watch Bryan’s wrestling match. He throws down Charles, and I call him over to give him a token of my esteem.

“Gentleman, wear this for me,” I say. But instead of handing him a necklace, I lay two condoms across his palm. Out of their wrappers. Eva’s superior skill keeps her from breaking character. Poor Bryan, though, flushes under his makeup and stumbles over his next line.

Eva and I exit before the end of the scene.

“What was that about?” she mouths.

“What?” I mouth back. And then we’re onstage again.

At intermission Bryan drags me out the side door and pins me against the wall. Think Tom Cruise in
Top Gun
.

“Thanks for the gift,” he says, staring at my mouth. Slowly, slowly he moves in toward me until his lips brush against mine. The kiss feels good. He pulls back for a moment and serenades me. “The horn, the horn, the lusty horn, is not a thing to laugh to scorn.” Or is he serenading his boner?

In the midst of all the buzzing and tingling, I make my final decision. I want to be with someone I love and who loves me. Bryan loves only himself. I shove him away.

“
Dankish puttock
,” I say, in case he doesn’t get my meaning.

“You gave me two condoms in front of a hundred people,” he says.

“I bought them for your girlfriends,” I say. “Those freshman girls you’ve been making out with, Bunny and Bimbo. I believe in safe sex.” Thus ends my obsession with Wenching Boy. I abandon him there, his face a mask of disbelief.

The audience quiets down for the final two acts, a whirlwind of wooing and double-edged exchanges. Carmen pushes BlueDragon onto the stage for the scene where a wild lioness attacks Orlando. BlueDragon barks twice and shakes his fake mane before leaping into the laps of those in the front row—a stylish exit, to be sure. He earns the biggest laugh of the show.

“There you are,” Andie says when I’m offstage watching from the wings. She cups a hand over my ear. “So here’s the deal about your promise. If Nico kisses you, you have to kiss him back.”

“But he’s your boyfriend,” I say rather too loudly. A stage tech stares at me. Hopefully the entire audience didn’t hear.

“That was temporary. I thought that since you only want what you can’t have—”

“You snake.”

“If you mean I’m clever, I accept the compliment.”

“You don’t want him?”

“I like you both. Like like. Together,” she says sweetly. “Loose now and then a scatter’d smile, and that I’ll live upon.” Translation? Andie invented a category for herself that the famous sexologist Alfred Kinsey never dreamed of. She’s a no-sexual attracted to a couple. “You can invite me on a few of your dates,” she adds.

Near the end of the play, I corner Nico by the Mosh Pit. If he’s going to kiss me tonight, I want to know something first.

“What do you like about me?” I ask him, reverting to my patented nonsubtle approach. A bull in a china shop sounds so old-fashioned. Think a herd of goats in a clothing boutique. His hair hides his eyes as usual. Fortunately, I know the bottom half of his face rather well by now, especially his mouth. I imagine his lips on my lips. He ate fake dog doo, and I ate a banana slug. We’re made for each other.

“You don’t get scared by things,” he says to me. “You go for what you want.”

That sets my heart aflutter. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind. Translation? Through all that hair, Nico has caught a glimpse of the real me. I want him to kiss me this second. Unfortunately, telekinesis is not my strong
suit. We stand close together like trees in the forest until I’m called back onstage.

In the final act, I throw off my manly garb and marry Bryan. The other players are paired off and married, not as expected, but more or less happily. I perform the epilogue and the curtain falls to applause. When the curtain rises again, the minor actors run forward, bow, and move aside to make room for the stars. We hold hands as couples—Bryan and I at the center. Eva and Noah, Nico and Carmen, and Andie and Jonathan stand on either side of us.

The audience keeps up the clap and stomp. We bow a second time. Then Bryan puts his arm around the small of my back, tips me over, and kisses me. The crowd goes wild. When the curtain comes down, Nico charges us, knocking Bryan and me over so we sprawl to the boards. Bryan scrambles to his feet.

“So graceful,” I say.

When the curtain rises Nico is kneeling over me. The audience explodes with surprised laughter. “I am he that is so love shaked,” he says to me in a voice loud enough for all to hear. “I pray you, tell me your remedy.”

“Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,” I reply. Telekinesis may not be my strong suit. Improvisation is. I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him toward me. It turns out that he’s an excellent kisser. The curtain falls and rises a third time, and we’re still kissing. Some things are more important than who buys your underwear.

After the final curtain rises, I thrust a bouquet of yellow roses into Carmen’s arms. Jonathan piles a second bouquet on top of mine, and Andie a third. While she stands buried in flowers, Eva adds a stranger bouquet to the company,
one made with skewers topped with packets of Juicy Fruit. Carmen flushes and hugs her. My parents rush the stage.

“They make a darling couple, don’t they?” Mom says to me. She’s smiling at Eva and Carmen. Dad winks. Am I detecting a startling absence of cluelessness? Love is thicker than water, after all.

When the proud parents finally leave the stage, we geeks troop to the Mosh Pit to decompress. A shout cuts through the celebratory wildness. “What the . . . ?” It sounds like Bryan’s voice, but I can’t see him in the crowd.

The chaos in the Mosh Pit comes to a rubber-burning halt. Someone screams.

“What’s happening?” Carmen shouts.

A small explosion rips through the air. For one sick second, I remember the alien assassin who threatened my life. Then I catch sight of Bryan’s freshman girlfriend holding a strange weapon. She’s pointing it at Bryan. Blue paint drips down his front from his chin to navel. The tabloid headline reads T
WO
-T
IMING
B
ASTARD
G
ETS
H
IS
J
UST
D
ESSERTS
—P
AINT
B
ALL
S
UNDAE
. When I showed Bunny the photos of Bryan kissing Bimbo, I had no idea she would take revenge like this. Honest.

As Shakespeare says (with liberties), “It is not my way to beg, so I will not beg you to love this story. But to the people who care, I charge you to like as much of this story as please you. And for the rest, take it As You Like It.” Translation? Love me for who I am or not at all. I’ll do my best to be worthy.

T
hree amazing things
happened in the weeks following opening night. Nico and I became a couple. We go well together, and I discovered what it’s like to do something without considering my audience. To do something just for me. To be honest, I’m a tad embarrassed to be seen smooching with him in public, but that will pass. In the end you have to pick who you are (there are so many choices!) and go with it.