Dreamers Often Lie

  “Portland,” said a deep voice to my right.

  Oh god.

  There was more squeaking and shifting of desks. The class’s attention swung away from me like a spotlight moving to another actor.

  Oh my god.

  “And you’re a senior this year, correct?”

  “Right.”

  The voice. I hadn’t dreamed it.

  But I had recognized it.

  I peeked at him through the curtain of hair. He was staring straight ahead, not looking at me.

  Oh god oh god oh god. I had actually called him Romeo.

  “Welcome to winter in Minnesota,” said Mr. Ellison dryly. “All right, everyone. Take out your books and open to page one fifty-seven . . .”

  I wanted to sink down through the cold tile floor. I wanted to dissolve into tiny blushing bits. Most of all, more than anything, I wanted not to have said what I’d said. Oh my GOD. I narrowed my focus to the cap of the pill bottle. Only 6.75 hours until rehearsal. Forty-two more minutes until I could run away from Rob Whatever-His-Name-Actually-Was and pretend that this had never happened.

  Here’s what else had never happened: He had never picked up my hand and raised it to his lips. Even though I knew exactly what it would feel like if he did. Even if he reached across the aisle right now and—

  Empty stage.

  I left my eyes glued to the bottle cap, listening to the tick of the clock under Mr. Ellison’s drone.

  When the bell finally rang, I jumped up so fast, I almost knocked my desk over. The bottle of pills toppled off the edge and rolled across the floor. I swooped down and grabbed it, my head ringing, before the new kid could pick it up again. Still, his face intruded into my vision, his eyes blue and cool and irritatingly clear.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, in that same familiar voice.

  I didn’t answer.

  I swept the books off my desk, snatched the strap of my bag, and rushed up the aisle. By the time I got to the door, I was running.

  CHAPTER 8

  The auditorium was dark. Wonderfully, warmly, inside-of-your-own-eyelids dark. Mr. Costa had let me leave algebra early so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the noisy crush of passing time. For a few minutes, I had the theater all to myself.

  I hurried down the aisle, grabbing the backs of the nearest seats for balance. The red velvet curtains were open. Work lights glowed softly above the stage, revealing clusters of wire and canvas trees where strings of unplugged fairy lights dangled, glinting, from the branches.

  I dropped my bag in the fourth row and climbed up the stage steps, holding my script in both hands. The boards thumped under my boots. The sound was deep and comforting, like the heartbeat of some huge, peaceful creature. I crossed to center stage. Spreading my arms, I tilted my head back, looking up at the rows and rows of lights, inhaling the scents of paint and makeup and sawdust.

  The pressure in my skull started to fade. I was weightless. My head and ribs and hands dissolved, erasing all the bruises and scars, until I wasn’t there at all anymore. All that was left was an empty shape, something someone else could fill.

  All right. Your first entrance. Oberon and Puck are speaking, and Titania walks on and says . . .

  What? My mind went terrifyingly blank.

  Says what?

  Says . . . “What, jealous Oberon? Fairies, skip hence . . .”

  Yes. That’s it.

  Now just hold on to it. Just—

  “Jaye!” a voice shouted.

  The bell must have rung. Cast and crew members were pouring down the aisles. Still, it took several seconds before I realized that the voice had been speaking to me. Somebody hugged me, and somebody else spun me around. Anders and Hannah and Ayesha all grabbed me at once, and Nikki and Tom were talking—too fast—in my ears, and I was being dragged off to look at the rehearsal photos on somebody’s phone, and I finally glanced up to see Pierce Caplan striding to the foot of the center aisle, his eyes fixed on me.

  He smiled.

  I felt my face smile back.

  “Ensemble assemble!” Mr. Hall’s ringing voice called from the edge of the stage. Everybody who wasn’t already there scurried into place. “We’re making up for lost time, so let’s not waste any. No warm-ups today. We’ll plunge right in.” He clapped his long, pale hands. “Gather around, please!”

  Somebody steered me into the tightening circle.

  “First of all, our Titania is back!” Mr. Hall threw an arm around my shoulders. There were cheers. I felt myself blushing, my stomach full of warm electricity. “We’re going to take it easy on her for a while, so we’ll just start at the top of Act Two and see how far we can get. Ayesha, call for places, please.”

  The stage manager strode toward the wings.

  Mr. Hall turned to me. “If you need a break at any time, just let me know,” he said, in a softer tone. “This is why we have understudies. Don’t push yourself. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “Places!” Ayesha shouted from the wings.

  Giving my shoulder a last pat, Mr. Hall bounded down into the house. The other actors scattered to their spots. I saw Pierce slipping between the narrow black curtains on the far side of the stage. I took my own place at stage left. The ache hovered around me like a clump of fog.

  Now focus. Focus. “What, jealous Oberon? Fairies, skip hence . . .”

  The stage lights shifted from gold to blue. Nikki and a freshman whose name I couldn’t remember skipped onstage and started their scene. The lines cycled through my brain, setting off little flares of recognition.

  I knew this scene. I knew this whole play. I’d been studying it for almost a year, ever since Mr. Hall announced that A Midsummer Night’s Dream would be the spring production. The script in my hand felt comfortable and superfluous, an extra blanket on an already-warm bed.

  You can do this.

  My cue. I strode out onto the stage, the fairy entourage behind me. My mind bolted to that last walk down the hospital hall, the singing fairies tagging after me. I jerked it back.

  Pierce waited at his mark. A beam of silver light made his profile glint like metal. He watched me step closer, wearing Oberon’s regal smirk. “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.”

  I inhaled. Air and words combusted inside me. I felt filled with light. “What, jealous Oberon?” My voice was stronger than it had been in weeks. Stronger than I actually was. “Fairies, skip hence. I have forsworn his bed and company.”

  Pierce grabbed my wrist. “Tarry, rash wanton. Am I not thy lord?”

  I whirled back to him. “Then I must be thy lady. But I know when thou hast stolen away from fairyland . . .” I blazed through the rest of that speech, a long, winding one about storms and seasons, the light inside of me big and bright enough to fill the room.

  It was so good to be here. It was so good to be someone new.

  “Do you amend it then; it lies in you.” Pierce cupped my cheek with his left hand.

  I met his eyes. He looked straight back into mine. This was as close as the fairy king would ever come to an apology.

  Pierce’s voice grew softer. “Why should Titania cross her Oberon?”

  For a second, I felt Titania’s hesitation. The easiness of giving in. Taking him as he was.

  I took a breath. But before I could get out the next line, in the distance, over Pierce’s shoulder, a dark figure stepped out of the wings.

  It glided into the pool of stage light.

  Dark tights. High forehead. Heavy-lidded blue eyes.

  Shakespeare sauntered closer to us, his hands clasped behind his back.

  Please, no. Not right now. Please please please.

  For a long, heavy beat, I couldn’t tell if time had stopped inside of me or outside of me. If I was really standing there, center stage, while Pierce touched my
cheek and the entire cast and crew waited for my next line. If this was happening at all.

  Maybe I would blink, and Shakespeare would be gone. Maybe I was asleep. Maybe I was still lying in that stiff white hospital bed, or in that red-flecked hole in the snow.

  Shakespeare tilted his head. He looked at me with something that wasn’t quite amusement. “O,” he murmured, “what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!”

  I felt the fog envelop me. It seeped through my skin, snuffing out the light. The ache started to pound again.

  The silence around us was building. My cue. My line.

  “And I . . .” I whispered, “most deject and wretched, now see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh . . .”

  Shakespeare’s lips moved with mine. “. . . Woe is me,” we breathed together. “To have seen what I have seen, see what I see.”

  I shut my eyes. “Wait.”

  Pierce’s hand drifted away from my face.

  “Wait.” I could feel the solid boards under my boots, hear the steady buzz of the lights above me. “That’s not Titania.”

  “No,” said Mr. Hall’s voice, from somewhere that seemed very far away. “It’s Ophelia.”

  I opened my eyes.

  The other actors had frozen in their places, staring at me.

  Mr. Hall stood at the lip of the stage. “Have you been studying Hamlet, Jaye?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I . . . No.”

  Pierce had backed away. When I glanced at him, his eyes flicked from my face to the floor. Maybe trying to save me some embarrassment. Maybe embarrassed for me.

  “I mean, I’ve read it, but . . .” Pain throbbed behind my right eye. “I’m sorry. I think—”

  Mr. Hall cut in before I could finish. “Why don’t you take a break for the rest of the scene?”

  This wasn’t really a question.

  Murmurs broke out around us as Mr. Hall ushered me down the steps. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Should I be calling the nurse? Or your mother?”

  “None of the above. I’m okay, really.” Behind us, the whispers grew louder. “I just felt a little dizzy,” I said in my stage voice, loud enough to be overheard. “It must have been the heat of the lights or something.”

  Mr. Hall folded his arms across his chest. “Are you absolutely sure?”

  Behind him, I could see Pierce staring down at us. “Yes,” I said. “I’m absolutely sure.”

  “If you feel any worse, let me know immediately.” Mr. Hall waited until I’d lowered myself into a seat before whirling back toward the stage. “Michaela, you’ll be taking over for now. Let’s pick it up from Titania’s entrance.”

  Michaela Dorfmann skipped out of the wings, not even bothering to hide her smile.

  I sank down into the seat cushion. The fake velvet scraped the back of my neck. Around me, the auditorium grew hazy, an arrangement of clouds that might abruptly blow away.

  The seat to my right gave a creak.

  Shakespeare settled into the next chair. He gazed straight ahead, neatening the lace on his cuffs.

  “Go away,” I whispered.

  He ignored me.

  For a moment, we stared at the stage together, me grimacing, Shakespeare smiling slightly. Pierce and Michaela were playing out Oberon and Titania’s argument. The fog inside my head swirled. Only Shakespeare’s face lanced clearly through it.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” I breathed through my teeth, as softly as I could. “You’re ruining my life.”

  Shakespeare put on a sorrowful voice. “Alas, how is it with you, that you do bend your eye on vacancy, and with the incorporal air do hold discourse?”

  “Shut up.” I whipped to face him. His blue eyes were dark and calm. His mouth still wore that little smile. “You’re not incorporeal. You’re too corporeal. And I am not crazy. I know what’s real and what isn’t.”

  “Yes,” said a supportive voice from my left. “When the wind is southerly, we know a hawk from a handsaw.”

  Hamlet had taken the seat on my other side.

  I cupped my hands over my eyes. “Oh my god.”

  “You remember.” Hamlet nudged my arm insistently. “You knew him. Didn’t you?”

  He kept on nudging until I dropped my hands. I was staring straight into the empty eye sockets of that stupid broken skull.

  “He says, ‘Remember me,’” Hamlet whispered, holding the skull closer. “‘Remember—’”

  “All right,” I growled under my breath. “I don’t know whether you’re still here because of the injury, or whatever cocktail of painkillers and mood-balancers they gave me, or just my own messed-up brain, but I’m not going to let you do this to me. I’m not doing this to myself.”

  Shakespeare gazed at me for a long moment.

  “Was your father dear to you?” he asked at last, his voice very soft. “Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart?”

  I shot to my feet. My head thundered. My lungs burned against the fence of my ribs.

  I caught myself just in time to keep from screaming at an empty theater seat, then raced to the end of the row, across the aisle, toward the stage door in the corner. Its hinges were silent, and I slipped through it into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 9

  The door thumped shut behind me.

  Across the threshold, a short flight of stairs angled up toward the backstage door, its steps lit by the red haze of two exit signs.

  I sat down in the middle of the flight and I buried my face in my arms. The ache in my head was too big for my skull. If I didn’t keep completely still, it would shatter.

  Was your father dear to you? The words echoed with the pulse in my head. Was your father dear to you? Was your father dear to you?

  How did he know just how to destroy me?

  I pressed my thumbs into my temples.

  Of course he knew. He was inside my head. He knew everything I knew.

  He knew that when somebody dies, everybody else bands together and re-creates them. They take out the flaws, erase the bad stories, crunch the memories that don’t match into tight, dark corners. In a few days—a few hours, sometimes—all that’s left is the perfect version, and no one can ever mention the flawed, mixed-up, real version again. That’s the rule.

  I pushed harder.

  The problem is, if you can’t talk about it anymore, how do you even know if that version was real in the first place? Maybe everyone else’s version—the wonderful, kind, funny, flawless version—is the truth. Maybe you were the only one who couldn’t see it. Maybe you were the only one who didn’t get to see it. Because either everyone is lying, or you, all by yourself, are wrong.

  I was running out of air.

  Empty stage. I counted my breaths. In and out. One, two. Three, four. The darkness inside my arms grew quieter.

  No one else knew. No one needed to know. If I was only a painting of a sorrow, I was a really good one.

  Empty stage. Empty—

  Somewhere nearby, a deep voice said, “M?”

  My head shot up.

  It was too dim to see clearly, but the glow of the exit signs outlined the shape in front of me. Maybe it was its height, or its tangled hair. Or maybe it was just its voice, which still immediately made me think Romeo—and then made me want to shut myself in my locker and hide for the rest of junior year. Whatever it was, I knew that the person standing there was the new kid from anatomy class.

  “What?” I croaked. And I actually croaked. Like a phlegmy frog.

  He held out a package. “M?” he repeated. “Would you like one?”

  I cleared my throat. “You mean M&M?”

  “Well, I was only offering one. An M. Singular. But if you want more, go ahead.”

  He was still extending the package. K
eeping one eye on his outline, I reached inside. The crinkled paper edges felt real. The little round chocolates in my hand felt real. I squinted down at my palm. In the ruddy light, all of them looked black.

  “They’re just M&M’S,” said the voice. “I haven’t laced the bag with anything insidious, I swear.”

  “No. I didn’t think you were going to roofie me with a bag of chocolates.” I just thought you were a hallucinated Shakespearean character. And now I’d brought date-rape drugs into the conversation. Hopefully the darkness and the red light would hide my burning face. “I’m just trying to see what colors they are.”

  His silhouette nodded. “I have a specific M&M-eating order myself. That’s why I can never get them at movie theaters.”

  “Too dark,” I agreed. Just talk. You can do this. Just talk, like a normal person. “What’s your order?”

  “Red first, green last.”

  “Ah. I’m brown first, green last.”

  He nodded again. “Everybody saves green for last.”

  “This one tastes brown. But I suppose all chocolate tastes brown in the dark.”

  He gave a little laugh—more of a breath, really, but I assumed it was a laugh.

  The sound made my skin flush again. What was wrong with me?

  We were quiet for a second. I realized my hands were shaking. I clenched them together. The chocolate shell of the candy splintered and melted on my tongue.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  That voice. I could hardly believe I hadn’t created it with my mind, making it exactly what I wanted to hear. But he was standing there, waiting. Listening.

  “No,” I said. “Actually, it feels like my skull’s going to explode. Which might be an improvement, because then at least the aching would be over.” I stopped. Way too late. “But please don’t tell anyone I said that.”

  “I won’t.”

  “The headache’s not even the real problem.” Why was I telling him this? Because he couldn’t see my face anyway? Because even the fake memory of him beside me in the snow made me want to keep him here?