The Truth About Fragile Things (14 page)

“Does that upset you?” Schatz turned her direct gaze to me, using me as a test study for how the other students would react. Unfortunately, we both knew I never reacted like other students.

“No.” I shook my head and gathered together my trash. “I’m rooting for her. Phil and I helped her rehearse.”

Schatz gave a doubtful “hmph” and brought her fist down. “Well, it’s going to upset all the upper classmen who think they don’t have a part because she does. And I have some I know will do alright. Charlotte is an unknown.” Like always, Schatz seemed to realize she had confided too much in me. I knew she would never discuss casting with another student.

“Mums the word,” she reminded me.

“Silence is golden.”

Secrecy was our private pact. The bell rang and I gave her one last glance, realizing for the first time that if I ever wanted to tell her the whole truth, the whole horrible truth, she would be safe. The door opened and two other juniors walked in.

Another day, another lunch.

In the crowded hallway after the last bell Charlotte’s small, cool hand wrapped around my wrist as I sidestepped a group of soccer players to get to the main staircase. “Is it listed?” she asked me through clenched teeth.

“I don’t know. Probably.”

She let go of me and slowed down, forcing me to pull ahead. “You look first.”

“I thought you didn’t want a part, Charlotte.”

“Who said I do?” she asked.

I could see the paper taped to the front of the door when we got to the first floor. The list of names was painfully small in comparison to the large gathering of thespians around it. A few people murmured their congratulations to me before I could read anything, so the last few steps to the door were just to see which part I got. My classmates spread apart and let me find my name: Megan Riddick &ndash Belinda. And just below my name: Charlotte Exby &ndash Belinda understudy.

Charlotte couldn’t see over my shoulder so when I turned around her face was still pinched with anxiety. “You’re my understudy,” I told her.

“Really?” She pushed her way around me, ran her fingertip down the page until it pressed against her name. “I’m an understudy?”

“And Phillip is Frederick,” I said, looking over the entire cast with a few nods of approval and a mental wrinkle of my nose for the names that gave me doubt.

“What does an understudy do, exactly?”

“Wish for Megan to get a horrible disease.” Phillip’s low voice hissed against the back of our necks. “Congratulations, Charlotte,” he told her in a normal tone when we turned around. “And to you, too, my dear wife,” he gave me an imaginary toast, showing off his ridiculously good British accent. “Alicia is Taylor’s understudy,” he added under his breath. “Might need to buy her an ice cream.”

I groaned. Maybe if Schatz knew more about the real dramas of high school she would be less inclined to put together self-destructing casts. “She will poison her,” I predicted.

“Without a doubt,” Phil agreed. “And now we get to see Taylor flaunt a bad accent and a lingerie costume for Zirman for a couple months.”

“Good grief. Then I don’t know who to feel most sorry for: us, or Braden, or Alicia.”

Charlotte caught sight of Taylor’s smug smile across the hall. “Definitely Alicia.”

“Let’s leave before she needs comfort.” Phil nudged me forward and we managed to slip out undetected by sticking close to the brick hall.

Charlotte followed us to my car. “Really, what does an understudy do?”

“You come to all the rehearsals, learn all the lines, practice everything, and then do nothing,” Phillip told her. “Unless Megan is incapacitated.”

“It’s a good thing,” I reassured her in a gentler tone. “You get all the experience without all the pressure. It really is an honor for a freshman. And who knows, maybe I’ll break my foot or something.”

She asked about the rehearsal schedule and took it like a champ when we broke it to her that after the first two weeks of intense reading and memorization, she would be staying after school for two to three hours every day for an additional five weeks. I expected her to quit before she started, but it didn’t bother her at all. In her next sentence I knew why. “That’s less time with Doctor Dave.”

My heart slipped down a rung to my next rib. “So it didn’t work at all? The surprise party didn’t help you feel any better about him?”

She shot me a cold look. “That was never why I did it.”

“I know,” I agreed. I was just hoping…”

“You don’t need to spend your hope on me.”

“Wait,” Phillip broke in. “Before you end the celebration with your charming attitude, Charlotte, I have to point out you are both overlooking the fact that we get Friday the 10th off school and there is no rehearsal.”

I glared at him for interrupting us with that pointless bit of news. “And?”

“And…” he pulled the word over his lips, made it hang in the air. “If either of you paid any attention to scientific matters of our days you would know fate loves us.”

“You lost me and I don’t care,” I snapped.

Phillip pulled out a piece of paper. Before I could read it he told us, “There is a meteor shower on the 10th between one and three in the morning.”

“Are you serious?” Charlotte asked, and pried the paper out of his hand, scanning it. “On the same day we’re off school?”

“Kismet.” Phillip winked at me. “So I figured we could knock out three things on the list.”

“Meteor shower’s one,” I said. “What are the others?”

“Sleeping under the stars,” he held up two fingers and then a third. “Backpacking. Of course,” his voice curled suggestively, “we could do four if we go skinny dipping, too.”

“He’s not gonna drop that one, is he?” I asked Charlotte in a dry aside.

“I guess I need to go jump in the lake tonight just so he’ll shut up,” she said.

“I did not write the list. Far be it from me to deny a man his last wishes.” Phillip put his hand over his heart.

“I so wish my dad had said ‘cross dress with a tiara and sing sixteen candles to the entire student body’ so you could have tackled that one for us,” Charlotte responded.

I laughed. “Good try, but he would love every minute of that.”

Phillip shrugged in agreement and got into his car. “You will both love me when I am protecting you from bears in two weeks.”

“Bears? Where are there bears in the suburbs?” Charlotte asked as Phil backed out of his parking space.

“That’s the best part. We’re not doing it here. We’re making it count. I’m taking you both into the heart of the Ozarks for a campout,” he called out his window while his car reversed so close to Charlotte I had to pull her back a step.

“I am almost certain he’s kidding,” I answered as he waved and pulled away. “Almost.”

P
hillip’s wishful plan
for the meteor shower turned out to be surprisingly detailed for a boy who gave his entire report on
Of Mice and Men
after watching a two minute parody of it on YouTube. The worst part is that he got a B+ because he acted “touched” and said Steinway  “changed” him.

He printed up a map with four scribbled stars marking our starting point and every place we would go. “Tom Sauk Mountain is the highest point in Missouri. In our area we can’t get any closer to the sky than camping there,” he told us as we sat outside on Phillip’s front lawn, our scripts resting after an hour of reading through our parts. His mother had a talent for baking and we each had a hot slice of bread slathered in homemade preserves. He might have been able to talk me into climbing Everest if he kept feeding me like that.

“Since we’ll be right in the heart of the Ozarks I am taking you both to Elephant Rocks and Johnson Shut-Ins. We’ll go hiking there. The worst part is that the river is too low. I researched and it’s just not enough to do any rafting. We could canoe a few parts of it but there is nothing close to whitewater unless it floods like it did twenty years ago.” His finger followed the reckless squiggles on the map. When he finished he looked up as I licked a blackberry seed off my thumb.

“I am actually impressed,” I admitted. “But it won’t work. My parents won’t let me go alone with you, Phillip. They’ll want to come.”

“What?” Charlotte shrieked. “No parents. It doesn’t count if there are parents. Then it’s just a freaking field trip.”

“I don’t see how that changes it.”

“It changes everything. You stay home. Phillip and I will go,” she finished.

“Whoa there, Nellie.” I squinted, trying to keep my face passive. “There is no way you are driving six hours with a boy two years older than you to camp under the stars. There is nothing on the list about killing your mother and that’s what you’d have to do to get that little plan to work.”

“Is she seriously three hundred years old?” Charlotte asked Phillip. She turned her incredulous eyes on me. “Then I won’t tell her, Megan.”

I took another bite of my bread, stalling for time. I finished swallowing and said, “I will.”

Charlotte’s mouth dropped open and just when I felt superior because she was glowering in rage and I was calmly enjoying my next bite, she hit my hand and sent my food flying into the dry grass.

“You did not.” I picked it up but my jam was peppered with dirt. “You act like a ten-year-old sometimes, Charlotte. No one in their right mind would let you go alone with Phillip. You’re a pretty freshman girl and he’s a junior. Junior boys only have one thing on their minds.”

“He’s our friend,” she shot back. “And he’s sitting right here. Where do you get off saying—

“In all fairness,” Phil interrupted, “I do only have one thing on my mind.”

Charlotte plowed on. “I told you when we started this that we do it my way or you don’t do it at all. No parents. I’m going. Phillip is going. If you don’t think we should be alone then you better come. No one else. Those are the only options.”

“And I took it for granted that we wouldn’t break the law. You’re a minor. We all are. Even if I wanted to—and I actually do,” I pictured for a moment the utter stillness of the autumn stars, following their burning tails with our fingers as we lay on the ground and I knew our motives were innocent. “Our parents won’t let us.”

“I’ll think of something,” she promised.