Understudy

The first person I see is Margot, who is standing on the right of the stage, her cell phone lowered, her eyes glaring straight at me. I’m not sure what kind of wrath Margot will unleash on me when she gets me alone, but I am sure of one thing: I am so into Derek Hayes.

Margot catches a ride home with me after rehearsal. I guess there is something that can take her away from spending time with Ricky—yelling at me.

“I’m serious, Wren.” Margot’s eyebrows lift to epic proportions as she aims her death glare right at me. “What the hell was that?”

My hands rest on the steering wheel of Mom’s Corolla. I brake for a red light and casually glance over at her. “What are you talking about?” I ask, although I know exactly what, and who, she’s talking about. “I can’t help it that Principal Walsh made me director. Trust me, I didn’t want the job.”

“I don’t care about that. I care about your little lovey-mushy-goo-goo eyes at Derek!”

“Wha?” I lift the corner of my mouth and make my best ignorant expression. “You’re imagining things.”

She crosses her arms from the passenger seat of the car and shakes her head. “I know what I saw. You’re taking your stupid crush too far. He’s going to get you in trouble… or killed or something.”

“Margot, I know you’re just looking out for me,” I begin in a grateful voice. She nods all matter-of-factly like I’m an idiot for not figuring out her good intentions earlier. I want to explain to her how he’s not a bad guy and there’s nothing to worry about, but the words don’t come out. There’s no way I can tell her I know all these things about Derek without revealing how much time I’ve spent with him. She wouldn’t believe me anyhow.

“Damn right I’m looking out for you,” she snaps as I pull into her driveway. “He is hot, I’ll give him that, but he’s a freaking psycho. You’re better than that.”

My phone rings from the cup holder in the center console and I yank it out the second I see Derek’s name flash across the screen. Margot didn’t see it, luckily, but she gives me a weird look. “Who is that?”

“My mom,” I burst out without thinking, swiping my finger across the screen to answer the call. “Hello?”

“So I was thinking about the bedroom furniture situation,” Derek says by way of a hello.

“What furnitur

e situation?” I ask, glancing over at Margot as she gathers her purse off the floorboard and puts it in her lap. We’re at her house now, I don’t know why she isn’t leaving the freaking car.

“For Jeremy’s bedroom. I think I’ve got the perfect answer. Can you meet up with me Saturday?”

“Sure,” I say, noticing Margot watching my every move with an expression on her face that isn’t exactly trustworthy. “I gotta go, Mom.”

“Uh… okay,” Derek says with a laugh. “I’ll let you get back to whatever it is you’re doing.”

I might spend a little more time than usual in front of my makeup mirror on Saturday morning. I also might have agonized a little too long over what outfit to wear before deciding on jeans and a shirt. Dressing up for a day of scouting the town for props doesn’t exactly send the message that I’m not interested in Derek. If anything, all the time we’ve been spending together lately just makes us really good friends. Good friends who get along well and make a great team for the play.

But if my makeup happens to be applied professionally and meticulously, that’s not my problem, now is it?

I climb in Derek’s car and tell him to step on it because the last thing I need is for Mom to walk outside and say hello. Seeing as how she was drinking coffee in her pajamas, the chances of that are highly unlikely but one can never be too careful when trying to avoid parental embarrassment.

He hands me a coffee from Joe’s Diner and a bag of donut holes. “Since we have such a shitty budget for props, there’s no way we can get an entire bedroom set.” I look over at him as he talks, trying not to think about how cute he is when he’s driving. His tongue runs across his lip before he speaks. “I drive past this place on the way home every that sells antique furniture.”

I interrupt him by holding up my coffee cup. “We definitely can’t afford antique furniture. We need like… dollar store furniture.”

He wiggles his eyebrow. “What if we don’t pay anything for it?”

“Tell me you’re not suggesting we steal it?”

He takes in a deep breath and stares at the road, clearly annoyed with me. “No, Wren. I’m not going to obtain the furniture by illegal means.”

He slows the car and turns into a gravel driveway. The antique furniture store is an antique itself; an old barn that’s been turned into a store. Derek reaches over and grabs a donut hole from the bag in my lap. “I spoke with the owner. She said we could borrow whatever we needed. For free.”

My eyes light up at the mention of the word free. “You are awesome.”

Derek doesn’t seem as amused. “If I’m so awesome, maybe you could not jump to the worst conclusion next time I suggest something?”

Derek and I sit on the couch with a ginormous bowl of popcorn to celebrate a successful day of prop scavenging. Derek had insisted on pouring half a cup of melted butter on top of the popcorn, and as a result my fingers look like they’re coated in lacquer with the stuff they use on the gym floor. I lick my index finger, then my middle fingers before diving back in for another handful.

“You know when you lick your fingers like that and then get more popcorn, it’s the same thing as if you’d licked all the popcorn,” Derek says.