Understudy

“Then I can’t think of a reason why you’d need to talk to me.”

I knock louder hoping it annoys her enough to open the door. It doesn’t. “I need help with the play,” I yell through the door. “I need your help.”

“My help?” I don’t need to see her to picture the condescending look on her face. “Why don’t you ask someone more qualified to help you. Like your math teacher? Or your English teacher. Or, you know, anyone who is qualified to write a recommendation letter for you.”

“Aunt Barlow, don’t do this,” I plead with her. A minute goes by with no reply.

I lean against the wall, desperate and broken. “Would you please just tell me what to do when an actor quits?”

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that answer,” she growls, yanking open the door to face me for the first time since she quit work that day.

I shrink back from her unforgiving glare. “What do you mean?” I ask.

She talks slowly, painfully childish. “If a cast member quits, you must replace them. Do you know what replace means? It means find someone new.”

She gives me the world’s most condescending eye roll and slams the door in my face.

My stomach twists into knots as I dry my palms against my back pockets. The stage has never felt so small. Ricky stands across from me, perfectly reciting his lines for act two.

When it’s my turn to talk, I fumble over my words. Ricky sighs and folds his arms across his chest. This is the fourth time we’ve rehearsed this scene today, but it’s not the fourth time I’ve forgotten my lines.

I just pretend to.

“Sorry,” I say with a small smile as I take my script off the floor. “You know what, I should probably read over these lines by myself and everyone else can keep rehearsing.”

Ricky runs a hand through his hair. “It’s just a kiss, Wren.”

“Yeah, Wren,” a voice says from the back of the auditorium. “It’s just a kiss. What’s the big deal?” I look up to see Derek striding into the room, the door closing slowly behind him.

My cheeks burn and my chest explodes in a bundle of nerves. Why is he here? Why is he strolling into rehearsal fifteen minutes late, acting like everything is normal and like he never got arrested and we never had that fight? How can he just wear that smirk like he invented it?

I let out the breath I’d been holding. Why should I care what he thinks? He’s the one who lied to me about having a girlfriend. He’s the one who kissed me and made himself a cheater. I don’t have a boyfriend. I can kiss whomever I want.

I turn on my heel toward Ricky, dropping my script to the ground. “You gotta break the rules sometime,” I say, throwing what little acting ability I have into Mary’s line. I don’t have to act much to say my next line, especially when Derek is listening. “Tell me if that girlfriend of yours is really worth it.”

My hands slide up Ricky’s chest and grab his collar. I take a step forward and lean in, bringing his body close to mine. His breath smells like cheap cafeteria cheeseburger. I part my lips and press them to his. The real acting here is in what everyone doesn’t see: the fact that I’m kissing Ricky with fake passion and not puking up my lunch like I want to do.

Ricky kisses me back much like Derek did that day. His hands slide around my lower back and draw me closer, until my boobs squish against his chest. Every part of this makes me want to squirm, but Derek is watching so I hold it back. I kiss Ricky with all the intensity I can manage, trying not to thinking about how I’ve now kissed three guys in a row who will never be my boyfriend.

It’s not being slutty if you’re acting, right?

Someone whistles from the side of the stage, breaking my mental concentration on the fake kiss. I step away from Ricky, bending down to pick up my script to avoid the wave of awkwardness that bounces off him when our

eyes meet. The whole cast is watching us now, some of the guys whistling and cat calling, but I only care about one person.

I glance toward the front of the stage. Derek is gone. Hopefully he saw enough of the kiss to get my point across. I’m not even sure what my point is, but I hope Derek got it anyhow.

My three pages of lines are over quicker than I want them to be, and before I know it my character of Mary has been rebuked by Jeremy’s character and sulks offstage, letting out a loud fake sob.

“You’ll have to cry better than that, you know,” Gwen says as I slip behind the side curtains off left stage. “Jeremy just shot her down, after all they’ve been through,” she continues, the sincerity in her face as genuine as if we are talking about actual people.

“Does it even matter?” I ask, shoving my script in my back pocket as I prepare to help Greg with the set construction. “Your character ends up with Jeremy in the end, so who cares what Mary thinks.”

Gwen rolls her eyes and flourishes her hand in the air. “And that is why you will never be an actress.”

I roll my eyes and move to the back of the side stage to survey the set equipment. The dining room furniture is too big, which I don’t want to think about right now. All the back drops have been painted and set on wheels, Jeremy’s room has been decorated thanks to all the guys in the cast pitching in random things from their own bedrooms, and the classroom set is fully furnished thanks to borrowing stuff from our school.

This leaves only about a million more things to do.