Understudy

“Her boyfriend has forbidden her from doing the make out scene with Jeremy. Well, not Jeremy but that guy who plays Jeremy. I can’t remember his name.”

“Ricky,” I say.

Derek shoots a finger gun at me. “Yeah, Ricky.”

I pull off the sticky note and start folding it into a paper crane—anything to distract me from staring at Derek. Because when I see him and the little things he does, I go crazy. Like how he runs his tongue along the bottom of his teeth while he’s thinking about something, or the way his biceps bulge in exactly the right places as he tucks his hands behind his head with his elbows in the air. It’s like everything he does is sexy to me. And I can’t think like that, because his sexy mannerisms aren’t for me to enjoy. That girl who texted him—Lexie with a heart—flashes in my mind. She gets to hug him and hold him and laugh at his stupid jokes, not me.

“Unfortunately for Gwen’s boyfriend, I think Ricky is pretty psyched to make out with her.” He shudders. “I don’t know why, the girl looks sticky.”

“Rude personal observations aside,” I say, finishing my paper crane with a bend of its beak, “What are we supposed to do about it?”

“You’re the director. I am but a lowly stagehand.”

“You’re my only ally,” I say. “And you’re better than a stagehand. You’re the Top Stagehand. That’s like being Assistant Director. I need your help.” And it’s truer than he knows. Especially since Margot moved away to Jordan-Land and my aunt refuses to speak a word to me about the play.

“Can I have that?” He points to the pale yellow crane I just finished folding. I hold it back out of his reach. “Only if you help me figure out what to do.”

“Easy,” he says, holding out his hand. “I already have the perfect plan for that.”

I place the paper crane in his palm, keeping my fingers away from his skin. I know from experience that a single touch from Derek will send chills up my arms, and I so don’t need that right now.

“Here’s what we do.” Derek leans forward like he’s a coach telling me a football play. “You dress like Gwen and I’ll dress like Ricky. And right before the make out scene, we’ll switch places with the real Gretchen and Jeremy.” He claps his hands together. “Bam. We make out, and then switch back. Problem solved.”

“Shut up, Derek.” I shove him with my elbow. I take the way his voice said the words we make out and save them in my mind to be played over and over again for a later day. “I’m being serious here. We need to alter the script or something so that they just church kiss.”

“Church kiss?”

“Yeah you know. Like a sweet peck on the cheek.”

“So you want to turn the make out scene—the total climax of the play—into a churchy peck on the cheek?”

My shoulders fall and my hands slide between my knees as I slump over and stare into my lap. “You’re right. We can’t cut that scene.”

The futon squeaks as Derek slides closer to me. “The play is one month away and that’s years in teenage dating time. Gwen’s asshole boyfriend will probably be long gone by then.”

“We can’t count on that.” I take a deep breath, trying to pull my brain out of the million directions it’s headed, reel it in and force it to follow one thought path: solving the play problem. Not thinking about how Derek just got closer to me, not remembering how he joked that we should make out, not thinking about how I might have forgotten to put deodorant under my left armpit and I can’t lift it up for the rest of the day.

“We need to focus,” I say, both to my brain and to Derek. “Unlike the dilemma with the speakers in the back of the stage, this is a serious problem.” I look over at Derek to make sure he’s listening and notice that not only is he looking directly at me, his arm is now draped across my part of the futon, almost begging me to lean back into it.

“I agree,” he says, his eyes going wide for a second as he looks at me through slits of hair across his forehead. “Have her grab his face and pull him to her all passionately.” Derek reaches his hands out, miming what he’s saying. Our eyes meet, and he takes my face in his hands. “Like this.”

A chill that’s both scalding hot and freezing cold zips down my spine at his touch. His thumbs rest on my cheek as his fingers curl around the sides of my neck. I stay right where I am, afraid to move under his hands because if I do, he might stop touching me. He swallows and it’s loud in the silence. His bottom lip curls under his teeth. “And then they can just smoosh their lips together like they’re kissing. But they won’t have to open their mouths or anything so it’s not really a kiss.”

I raise an eyebrow. “That sounds stupid.” Derek moves his hands away from my face and I have to resist the urge to reach up and touch the skin where his hands had just been.

“It would work.”

I cross my arms. “You are the worst problem solver ever. I’m demoting you back to Lowly Stagehand.”

A smile spreads across his lips and his eyes seem to be watching something insanely entertaining. Something far away that he can see straight through my head. He can’t possibly be looking at me with such an amazed expression on his face. “What?” I ask tentatively.

He tucks his hair behind his ears and leans forward like he’s about to tell me a secret. “Tell me if this is convincing.” His hands are back on my cheeks and before I realize what’s happening, he presses his lips onto mine. No, smooshes them onto mine. My hands dig into the sides of my jeans and my heart races. But a

fter three seconds, I realize we aren’t really doing anything. He’s just sitting across from me, his hands on my face and his lips smooshed rather unsexily on my own lips. I guess from far away this would appear to be a passionate kiss, but from my view, it’s nothing more than being really awkward with a guy I barely know. A criminal with a girlfriend, no less.

I can’t help but smile under Derek’s lips. He pulls away from the kiss, but keeps his hands on me and lets his forehead rest on mine. We look at each other but his eyes are so close they form into one Cyclops eye. “What’s so funny?” he whispers.

“That was weird.”