Bad Romance

It’s at about this point that I realize this is the conversation she and I have been having about you for the past few months. Nat, cheating, glances in Gideon’s direction. She smiles at me.

  “No?”

  I am going to kill her. Because there’s only one word I’m allowed to say:

  “Yes,” I growl.

  I grab her after, on our way to a clowning workshop.

  “Dude, not cool,” I say.

  “What?” She is the picture of innocence.

  “Look, I know you don’t want me to be with Gavin—”

  She stops me in the middle of the sidewalk and puts her hands on my shoulders.

  “I love you. Let’s not talk about this. Let’s have the time of our lives.”

  I glare at her for a moment, a hand on my hip. I’d been so angry, but why? Because my best friend is watching out for me? Because she’s teasing me about a cute boy?

  Finally, I nod. “Okay. Challenge accepted.”

  For the first time in my life I feel totally free. My parents are hundreds of miles away (in a whole other state!) and it’s just me and my friends having, as Nat said, the time of our lives.

  We drink way too much coffee, filling our cups with loads of sugar and cream. We pop in and out of cute stores that sell all the theatre stuff you could ever want. We talk about method acting and read each other our favorite Shakespeare quotes from books in the bookstores. Our time is our own for the most part and we spend it helping Lys and Jessie fall in love and eating good food and laughing a lot.

  You call me more than usual and I let myself ignore the calls, even though I know you’ll be pissed. It feels good to just do what I want.

  “This is what college is going to feel like,” Jessie says, her hand in Lys’s. “I mean, think about it: no parents, studying theatre, hanging out with new people.”

  We talk about where we’ve all applied—acceptance and rejection letters will be coming in next month.

  “So how do you go to school for directing? Is it the same as acting?” Jessie asks me.

  I nod. “I’ll be in acting classes and stuff, but I’ll take whatever directing classes there are, too. I’m gonna try to get some assistant-directing gigs and then—fingers crossed—I’ll study in France. There’s this school in Paris named after its founder, Jacques Lecoq—”

  Lys bursts out laughing. “Le COCK? Shut the fuck up—that is not his name.”

  “I swear to God!”

  Jessie and Lys collapse into a pile of giggles.

  “Ladies, compose yourselves,” Gideon says as he walks up to us.

  We’re all sitting outside one of the town’s many theaters, waiting to go inside. He looks really good with an anime T-shirt under a long-sleeved button-down.

  Nat shakes her head. She’s trying not to smile at the word cock and I love her for it.

  “Fools,” she mutters.

  Gideon glances at me. “Do I even want to know what’s so funny?”

  “LE COCK!” Lys screeches in overly accented French.

  I roll my eyes. “Ignore them.”

  My phone rings—you. I’d let the last two of your calls go to voicemail, so I really need to take it.

  “Be right back,” I say, hurrying over to a bench a few feet away.

  “Hey, baby,” I say, answering.

  “Hey.” Your voice is gruff, but I can tell you’re trying to hold your annoyance in. “Having fun?”

  “Yes! There’s so much to do here. We took this improv class and—”

  “I miss you so much,” you whisper.

  “I miss you, too.” But I realize I’m lying. I don’t miss you at all.

  “Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

  “It’s just really busy here and—”

  “Grace!” Natalie calls, waving her hands back and forth.

  “Hey, I gotta go,” I say. “The house is open and everyone’s going inside.”

  “Fine.”

  “Baby, don’t be like that,” I say. “Please. I’m having such a good time—”

  “All right, enjoy the show.” And you hang up.

  I shove my phone into my pocket and take a deep breath. Paris, Lecoq—it’s a pipe dream. You freak out with me a few hours from you—there’s no way you’d let me go abroad. Let. As if I need your permission. But I do, Gav, don’t I?

  Someone coughs quietly behind me. I look up and Gideon’s standing there, the setting sun outlining him in gold.

  “I’ve been sent by Nat and Lys to escort you into the theater,” he says, holding out an arm.

  I grin as I take it. “Why, thank you.”

  “The boyfriend?” he says, nodding toward the phone.

  “Yeah. He kinda hung up on me.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Not his finest hour.”

  Gideon reaches into his messenger bag and produces a pack of Red Vines. “Word on the street is that you love these things.”

  “I do!”

  He hands them over and I happily start munching. If this were a play I was directing, I’d have the two actors walk upstage as the lights dim. Just before they enter the theater they stop and gaze into each other’s eyes as a spotlight slowly warms over them.

  Then: blackout.

  * * *

  TWELFTH NIGHT BEGINS with a shipwreck.

  Viola finds herself washed ashore on an unknown land with nothing but the tattered clothes on her back. Behind her: a vast ocean. Beyond that, the life she left behind. She thinks everyone else on the ship must have perished because she’s alone on this deserted beach. The land, she will soon discover, is called Ilyria.

  I want to go there. I want to be like Viola—weather the storm, then start over, using nothing but my wits and charm to see me through to my happy ending.

  Destiny is hard at work in Ilyria. Cosmic love and mistaken identity and strange serendipities. In Ilyria, nothing is what it seems, yet despite this confusion, it is a land of wonders. This production has turned Shakespeare’s island into a lush Turkish outpost, with jewel-toned pillows piled on the floors, low tables, hookah pipes, and stained-glass lamps that cast ruby-colored shadows over the stage. The actors all wear flowing costumes—harem pants and elaborately embroidered corsets. My mind is spinning with ideas for our own production and part of me can’t wait to get home and get back to work.

  As I sit watching the Oregon Shakespeare Company perform, my mind wanders not to you but to Gideon, who’s sitting next to me. Whose knee is slightly touching my own after he shifts in his seat. I feel a little like Viola does at the beginning of the play—storm-tossed and wary, trying to find her footing in a complicated world. And, also like Viola, I can feel something hopeless and fragile and terrifying bloom in my chest—a feeling I’m not supposed to have because I’m not allowed to have it, not while I’m with you.

  “If it be so, as ’tis,” Viola says, “Poor lady, she were better love a dream.”

  Viola is in love with Count Orsino, but she can’t tell him because she’s posing as a boy. She’s essentially his manservant and Count Orsino is decidedly straight, which means her chances of him falling in love with her are slim to none. Viola can’t come out and tell Orsino who she really is because being a woman alone in a world where that’s not the norm could be potentially dangerous. Scene after scene I watch as Viola struggles in vain to hide her feelings, forced to help the count woo Olivia, a woman he thinks he loves but who has actually fallen in love with Viola (Olivia thinks Viola is a dude named Cesario—it’s like this whole complicated thing: mistaken identity, star-crossed love, the whole shebang).

  Gideon leans over to me, his lips close to my ear, his hot breath trailing down my neck.

  “Even though we know the ending, I’m like, Oh my god, if they don’t get together … This is killing me,” he says.

  Me too, I think. But I know he’s only talking about the play. I turn my head slightly and our lips are so close—

  “Me too.”

  Our eyes lock and the soft darkness
makes me bold. I don’t look away. I should, this is wrong, but in his eyes I see a spark, an intensity that wasn’t there before I boarded the bus to Oregon and sat next to him, planning a trip around the world.

  “Oh time,” Viola is saying onstage, “thou must untangle this, not I. It is too hard a knot for me to untie.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Gideon is teaching me about God.

  And Björk.

  For the past few weeks, he’s been getting me into the crazy music and poetry he digs, bringing me books and giving me playlists every few days. I write him long letters and he writes me back. Turns out, we both like to keep it old-school with pens and paper instead of impersonal emails. I love touching the lined notebook paper and knowing he’s touched it, too. I like tracing the grooves he runs into the paper with his pen.

  I’d forgotten how much fun it is to have a guy friend. I like seeing the world through his eyes: to Gideon, the universe is a messy delight. He’s interested in deep stuff: the Big Questions, like why are we here and what are we supposed to do with our lives? I realize I suddenly want to know the answers to those things—or at least be asking the questions. I like what Gideon shakes up in me. In his universe, there is no judgment, no rules that take you away from yourself. He’s fucking Yoda, is who he is. He’s making me hungry for my future, for all the things I’ve dreamed of.

  Gideon and I are just friends. I swear.

  Except.

  In those few minutes before I drift off to sleep, I don’t think about you—I think about him.

  This is a problem.

  “You’re sort of my guru now,” I say, handing him back the collection of Rumi poetry he lent me.

  Gideon laughs as he puts the battered book into his messenger bag—I wonder how many times he’s read it. “Man, I’m gonna have to get some guru clothes, then.”

  “Nah,” I say, pulling a little at his shirt because it’s an excuse to touch him, “this is perfect.”

  His eyes fall to mine and we do that thing we’ve started to do—look, look, look until I break away, flustered and scared and so alive I can barely stand it.

  Today he’s wearing a shirt that looks like an old GameBoy screen—Tetris, the one where you have to get all the bricks to match up as they come down the screen, faster and faster. My friendship with Gideon feels like that game: like those bricks in Tetris, we’re trying to fit together as quickly as possible. Quick, before you find out about us and then Game Over.

  You’re joy, Rumi says about God. We’re all the different kinds of laughing.

  You’ll be given love, Björk sings out, sweetly innocent: you just have to trust it.

  I don’t know what you’d call the thing Gideon gives me every day, but it makes me happy.

  Until I think about you and then I feel sick to my stomach because I am the worst girlfriend ever. It’s taken me weeks to admit this to myself, but I’m emotionally cheating on you.

  “So you liked them?” he asks. “The poems?”

  “I loved them,” I say. Gush. And here I go again. I forget all about you. “Rumi is so … happy.”

  “Right?”

  Gideon and his parents are what you’d call spiritual but not religious. I haven’t been to his house, but I can imagine incense burning next to a statue of Buddha, which sits against a wall with a cross on it. There’s probably a yoga mat on the floor and, I don’t know, Indian Hindu songs playing in the background.

  “I love how he doesn’t discriminate,” I say. “Like, you get the impression that, for him, God doesn’t have all these rules and boundaries and stuff. You can be a Muslim like him or a Christian like Nat or nothing specific like you and me … whatever. It’s all good.”

  We drift over to a corner of the drama room, as is our habit these days. A little away from everyone else, but in public.

  “Yeah, like, come one, come all,” he says as he sits down and rummages through his brown paper lunch bag. “I’m really into this idea of universal salvation. I mean, he doesn’t use those words, but you get the impression that everyone’s going to heaven.”

  “Right. Like, why would God make all these people and then send most of them to hell?” I say. I remember once I saw a street-corner preacher describing the horrors of hell and it’s stuck with me ever since—wailing and gnashing of teeth. Scary stuff.

  “Dude, you guys are so freaking weird,” Lys says as she plops down onto the carpet beside us.

  “Says the girl wearing a neon-green dress with kittens on it,” I say.

  Lys laughs. “All right, touché.”

  I want to be alone with Gideon, but I’m glad she’s here: I need a chaperone or else Peter will tell you I’m eating lunch alone with Gideon.

  Gideon pops a chip into his mouth, then hands me the bag. “Have you ever thought, dear Alyssa, that we’re the normal ones?”

  She looks from him to me. “No,” she says, deadpan. “I have never thought that.”

  We talk about our production of Twelfth Night, which opens next week.

  “So what do you say, Ms. Director?” Gideon asks. “Are we in good shape for opening night?”

  “You guys are in awesome shape,” I say. I mean it. Everything is coming together at the last minute, which always happens in the theatre. It’s like clockwork. How? I don’t know. It’s like Geoffrey Rush’s character says in Shakespeare in Love: It’s a mystery!

  I love directing. I love watching actors do their thing, then trying to figure out how they can do it better. The best part is when I’m right or when we come to a whole new idea together. We brainstorm magic.

  “It must be nice,” Lys says, “not having to memorize lines and shit.”

  “Dude, it’s the best,” I say. “I used to get so nervous onstage. Just doing scenes in class freaks me out.”

  Lys and Gideon start talking about a scene they’re in and I get distracted, playing my silly game with the apple in my hand. I hold on to the stem and turn it around and around, counting off the letters. A, B, C, D, E, F, G. G again. When I was a kid, we’d say this is the person you’re going to end up with. I look over at Gideon. Maybe he was the G way back when I played this game before you and I got together. What if I’ve gotten it all wrong, Gavin? What if we aren’t meant to be?

  G, G, G.

  The drama room door opens and Nat strides in, looking frazzled. Her normally perfectly smooth hair is in a messy bun and there are wrinkles in her dress (she usually irons her dresses every morning before school—she says it gives her a sense of control in a world full of chaos).

  Between midterms and rehearsals, none of us have slept more than four hours a night. I like this energy—it zips through me, kinetic, frenetic, and I latch on and let it take me for a ride. It helps me forget to dread the hours I’ve promised to you this afternoon.

  “Hey, when do you guys find out about your colleges?” Gideon asks.

  “Next month,” Nat says. “Except Grace didn’t apply to the one school she really wants to go to.”

  I shoot her a glare. “It’s too expensive.”

  “That’s a bunch of malarkey,” Nat says.

  Gideon laughs. “Oh man, I need to add that one to my vocab. Takin’ it way back.”

  She sticks her tongue out at him.

  “What she means,” Lys says, giving me the stink eye, “is that’s total and complete bullshit.” She turns to Gideon. “Did you know Grace’s number one school was NYU but she didn’t apply because her psycho boyfriend told her she couldn’t?”

  My face warms as Gideon looks at me. “It’s more complicated than that,” I mumble. “And I object to the word psycho.”

  The bell rings before anyone can give me more shit for not applying to NYU. Gideon and I walk together, since our sixth-period classes are across the hall from each other. He’s uncharacteristically quiet. I know he’s working through something—he’s got that little furrow between his brows. It’s not hard to guess what he’s thinking about. Goddamn Natalie and Alyssa.

 
We get to our classes and I start to move toward mine.

  “Okay. Um. See you later,” I say.

  But Gideon’s not having that. He reaches out and pulls me into a hug. I go stiff, as if you could see us from wherever you are. What if Peter sees and, like, sends you video of it? I’ll be in so much trouble. I try to pull away, but Gideon holds on a little tighter.

  “You might think you have to follow your boyfriend’s rules,” he says, his lips against my hair, “but I don’t have to.”

  I’ve told him all about you—not everything—not about backseats and how you know just where to touch me to make me gasp—but Gideon knows about your rules. He knows because I’ve had to explain why I can’t study at his house, or why I dodge his hugs or can’t talk to him on the phone. I think he’s told me to break up with you approximately five thousand times.

  “You’re gonna get me in trouble,” I mumble against his shirt. But I melt against him.

  We fit perfectly together.

  He’s so tall and skinny. Smells so different from you—instead of the rock-god scent of cigarettes and rare showers, he smells like soap and incense. Clean, full of possibility.

  He tightens his hold on me for a second before letting go.

  “You know what I’m gonna say right now, don’t you?” he asks, pushing up his tortoiseshell glasses as he walks backward toward his class. Somehow he doesn’t knock into anyone—it must be all the meditation he does. He’s a total Zen master.

  “Don’t say it.” But I’m smiling a little because I sort of like to hear it.

  He mouths the words Break up with him, then looks at me for a couple of heartbeats before he turns and heads into his class.

  For the next two periods I don’t think about NYU. I’ve made my peace with that.

  I think about God. About how he/she might be so much bigger than I imagined. How maybe if I thought about God differently, I could think about you differently, too. I could go back to being the real Grace. Before you, I craved city lights and airplanes that went to exotic places. Before you, a reel played through my head constantly, a movie of me doing epic things: studying in NYC, traveling to Africa to help orphans, walking down red carpets, marrying a hot French guy and moving to Paris. But after you, my world has been whittled down to your hands, your lips, the sound of your voice singing songs you’ve written for me.