Understudy

Hot Boy turns around, a carpenter’s pencil sticking out of his mouth. He takes the square from his pocket and hands it to me. “Thanks,” I say. He glances over at my project and then back at me, and I’m pretty sure his eyes graze over my entire body in a split second, but it feels like it takes an hour.

“Crown molding?” He says it like he’s confused. Like we’re in a shoe factory instead of wood shop.

I give an awkward shrug. “I want my room to look like a French boudoir.”

He nods and this smirk spreads across his lips as he looks at the molding and then back at me, as if suddenly understanding my entire personality.

There’s something in his smile that makes me want to rip off my shirt and throw myself into his arms, declaring my soul as his love slave, like some lunatic in an Axe body wash commercial. He holds out his hand. “I’m Derek.”

A tiny voice in the back of my subconscious starts squealing, “I get to touch his hand! I get to touch his hand!” and I try not to burst into giggles as I reach out and place my hand into his. “I’m Wren.”

“We’ll be using the miter saw,” Mr. Harrison says, jarring me back to reality. Derek raises an eyebrow and nods to the right, signaling that I had better get back to work. I take a place next to Mr. Harrison at the work bench. Taped to it is a drawing of my L-shaped bedroom, with most of the wall lines checked off. “You only have three pieces to cut, and then I’ll give you some tips for installation.”

“Cool,” I say, tearing my eyes away from Derek, who is still smiling at me by the way. I take the piece of molding in front of us and line it up under the saw. “This is an eighty degree corner,” Mr. Harrison says, pointing to my closet on the sketched floor plan of my bedroom. “So what are you going to set the miter saw to?”

“Eighty,” I say, reaching for the dial.

“Forty,” Derek says.

Mr. Harrison claps his hands together. “Damn kid’s only been in my class for one day and he’s already retained more than you have in three years, kiddo.”

My room smells like sawdust. I fall back on my bed, letting the hammer crash on the floor and admire my handiwork. It’s two in the morning and my room officially has crown molding. I’ll have to paint it tomorrow because every muscle in my arm is too tired to do anything else for the next twelve hours.

Still high from the rush of carpentry, I won’t be able to fall asleep any time soon. My TV is tuned to my favorite reality show about triplet heiresses who live in New York City, but I’m not paying attention to it. Two major things are on my mind, both of them equally important and drastically different. One—Aunt Barlow might not give me the lead role, and two—Derek.

I’m trying not to sweat the lead role thing. Sure, she sounded convinced that I was too… voluptuous… for the role of Gretchen, but that’s just my aunt’s personality. She once gave me a sob story about how she and my mom spent all morning on black Friday trying to secure me the toy of the year for Christmas but couldn’t find it. Then on Christmas day, I had two of them under the tree. She likes screwing with me.

I’ll get the part.

It’s really unusual for a guy to occupy so much of my brain space after just one day of knowing him. I take pride in my budding self-respect and the fact that I don’t turn into a sappy girly girl who bats my eyes at every cute g

uy who looks my way. So why is this new guy, with his silky brown hair and his light blue eyes, and—ugh, those muscles—popping into my imagination every three seconds?

He’s obviously a new student, which means he hasn’t been squeezed into a clique yet. He wasn’t dressed like a jock, which is a good thing because jocks never like me. But he also wasn’t dressed like an artist or a skateboarder, the two types of guys who are always attracted to me.

It’s amazing how a pair of dark wash boot cut jeans, Converse and a plain black T-shirt can say a million things about a guy. His personality, style and hygiene. Everything, but what he thinks about me.

The next morning I eat my Honey Nut Cheerios like there’s not a huge elephant in the room. Mom’s making Dad’s lunch since he works on weekends now at the fire station. Aunt Barlow sits across from me at the kitchen table, spreading strawberry jam on her toast. She hasn’t said a word about the auditions and neither have I.

Aunt Barlow lives in the apartment above our garage and it doesn’t have that great of a kitchen so she’s always over here for meals. She’s sitting in the same chair she sat in while she wrote the script for LOVE & SUICIDE last summer. Did she think of me at all when she wrote the lead character? She’s right though, I didn’t care about her play until a few weeks ago. I’ve tried to stay far away from acting. Mom put me two commercials when I was a toddler, but as soon as I was old enough to throw a fit over something I didn’t want to do, the acting gigs dried up. I don’t know why Mom thought that I’d want to act anyway, when she’s spent my entire seventeen years complaining that acting supposedly ruined her life. She was in a sitcom in the early nineties that lasted three seasons before being cut. Mom and Dad moved back to Texas shortly before I was born and Mom never acted again.

She always says acting ruined her life, but I think what she wants to say is that I ruined it.

I decide to bring up the auditions in a passive aggressive way. “Hey Mom, I auditioned for Aunt Barlow’s play yesterday.”

Mom slices a sandwich in half and slides it into a reusable fabric wrap. “Oh yeah?” she says. “I thought you didn’t want to be an actress.”

Aunt Barlow glances up at me for half a nano second. I seize my opportunity. “I don’t want to be in movies, no. But I’d hate to miss out on being in a school play. It’s something everyone should do once, you know?”

Mom nods, although I know she doesn’t agree. She puts Dad’s lunch kit on the counter by the back door. “I’m sure you’ll be great,” she says. “Let’s hope Sophie finds a part for you.”

“No worries,” my aunt says as she fills in an answer on the newspaper’s crossword puzzle. “Wren has a part.”

I raise my eyebrows. She continues, “An important part.”

My whole body relaxes. Mom smiles and nods to herself. I knew I had nothing to worry about. Monday at school will be like that one Christmas morning all over again.

Aunt Barlow announces to our first period class that the cast list will be posted on the wall outside of her classroom by the end of the school day. I go out of my way after each class in hopes that I’ll find the list up on the wall. But of course, in true dramatic fashion, she makes us wait until after last period.