In Harmony

“Yeah…see you,” I said.

“See you,” Angie echoed and dragged me outside. “I am so confused. Justin?”

The early-spring afternoon was brassy and cold, bringing me around.

“Well…sure. Why not?” I said, fighting for my equilibrium. “Now there’s nothing for Tessa to blab about. Right? And…when Justin shows up at my house, my dad is going to hump his leg, he’ll be so happy. I won’t have to worry about him pulling me out of the play. Yeah. Perfect cover.”

Angie looked doubtful. “I guess, but for a second there it looked like you got railroaded—”

I stopped walking. “I did not,” I said, too loud. “I get to say. I can go to the dance with whomever I want.”

Except Isaac.

I fought for calm. Isaac flat-out told me he was done with high school. If I wanted my normal, I’d have to go and take it. Just like he said.

“Okay, okay,” Angie said. “But Willow—”

“We’ll just go as friends. All of us. Together. You and Nash, and Joc and Caroline, right? We’ll all go together, okay? Please?”

Angie’s brows came together. “Yeah, sure,” she said slowly. “If that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want. Yes, of course it is.”

To be normal. That’s what I want. That’s all I’ll ever want.

“Willow, dear,” Martin called from the stage. “Come up here?”

Rehearsal hadn’t started yet. The cast milled in the audience, chatting in low voices. Isaac stood onstage with Martin. As I took the steps to join them, my eyes took in Isaac’s tall body, slender yet packed with lean muscle. He stood with arms crossed over his chest, his long legs in jeans and scuffed black boots. His biceps strained at the sleeves of a white T-shirt.

Why do I notice these things about him? Why can’t I stop looking?

“I was just chatting with Isaac about your outing on Saturday,” Martin said. “Not too torturous, I presume?”

“I survived,” I said and ventured a small smile for Isaac.

He returned a faint, disinterested nod but his gray-green eyes were

intense as they looked me up and down. His lips—always pressed together—parted slightly. Then he abruptly tore his gaze from me. “Yeah, it was good,” he said. “Really good.”

“Really good?” Martin said, his eyebrows raised in comical disbelief. “You hear that, folks? On this day in history, Isaac Pearce found something to be really good.”

“Knock it off, Marty.”

Martin winked at me. “I have a good feeling about this.” Louder, he said, “Let’s run your dialogue for Act Three, Scene Two.”

Thanks to afternoons in the library with my script and a Spark Notes translation, the play was no longer blocks of vague poetry. I was familiar now with every Act. The scene Martin wanted to run was a play-within-a-play—Hamlet’s scheme to have a troop of actors reenact his father’s murder. During the performance, Hamlet tortures Ophelia with bawdy jokes and sarcasm.

Two rows of chairs were set, facing stage left and cheated out so they weren’t in profile to the audience. The King and Queen were to sit in the front row. I sat behind, beside an empty chair. Isaac waited offstage for his cue.

I was off-book for this scene, as was Isaac. Dialogue committed to memory, it was the first time we’d be acting without the buffer of scripts in our hands and I didn’t know what to do with mine.

“From your entrance, Hamlet,” Martin said. He’d slouched into his usual pose—one arm across his middle, the other elbow resting on it, fingers over his mouth.

Isaac slipped out of the shadows of backstage. Eyes wide and with a loose, jangly smile he never wore in real life.

Martin cued him with Gertrude’s line, “Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.”

Isaac’s manic gaze fell on me and softened. “No, good mother. Here's metal more attractive.”