Whitney ran up right then looking amazing in her gown, her hair in huge curls. David stared at her like Chelsea didn’t exist. “Are you ready? What happened to your beard? We need to fix that.”
But Chelsea was watching David, and his interest in her seemed to be fading like the flowers he’d brought as he looked Whitney up and down. She’d had a crush on him for so long. He was so smart, so funny, so good looking, the kind of golden boy who was popular because he was involved in everything, knew everyone. And she was losing him. For whatever reason, seeing her in costume had killed that spark in his eyes, and he was now looking at Whitney like maybe he’d picked the wrong girl.
“See you in the lobby, after?” Chelsea asked, a hand on his arm.
He looked up, flinched away when he saw her face again. “Yeah, maybe.” But he didn’t smile, and he didn’t say anything else as he walked away.
“So that’s going well?” Whitney asked once he’d left the room.
“It was.” Chelsea turned back to the mirror. Her eyes were turning red and her stubble was a smear of brown. She didn’t care about that; she just wanted to fix things with David, wanted him to light up when he saw her and give her compliments and do that sweet, old-fashioned thing where he offered her his arm and made her feel safe and cared for. She’d never felt this way about another boy, and she liked that he was waiting to kiss her, that he cared about doing things right.
So what if he didn’t care about theater? If he didn’t really get something as special and incredible as Phantom of the Opera? People could have different interests. As long as he loved her, she would be free to do her own thing, just as he could do his. It’s not like she was over the moon about Academic Bowl and basketball.
“Chelsea?”
Whitney held up a baby wipe, but Chelsea felt frantic, trapped, like she was being held back. She tossed her wig aside and picked up the limp bouquet of tulips.
“I’m sorry,” she said, unable to meet Whitney’s eyes. “I feel sick. Think I’m going to throw up. Gotta go.”
She grabbed the baby wipe and her backpack and ran for the door. In the lobby, she darted into the bathroom and cleaned off all the stubble and most of the pancake until only her eyes were left, the heavy liner and mascara making her blue irises pop. She took out her tight bun and all the pins holding back her hair, fluffing it and running a little water through it until the honeyed waves came back. She sloughed off the vampire cape and hung it on the hook on the door and put on her regular clothes from her backpack, hip-hugger jeans and a tight-fitting tee. And then she went out into the lobby to find David, clutching his tulips to her chest and praying that she hadn’t lost him.
No, there he was, talking to his Academic Bowl buddies. She touched his elbow, and when he turned and saw her, he lit up. “Now, that’s more like it,” he said, sliding an arm around her waist and tucking her protectively and possessively against him, right in front of his friends. “You guys know Chelsea, right?”
She and Whitney were supposed to go on any second, but she waited outside with David. She didn’t want to know if Whitney was going to muscle through without her or maybe sing one of Christine’s solos instead, didn’t want to watch Whitney onstage and know she’d betrayed her best friend and missed out on something she’d been waiting months for, nor did she want to watch the stage stay black a little too long as the crew figured out how to skip ahead to the next act because Whitney had given up. She hid during intermission and only slipped into a seat in the back when David was going on.
There he was in his regular clothes with a white bedsheet belted over it and the little gold tiara on his head. With no makeup, his face was washed-out white. He raised his hand stiffly and recited the lines perfectly, but his heart wasn’t in it. It was almost like he thought he was in on a joke, and Chelsea wondered if this is what he’d felt like when he saw her in her Phantom makeup, like it just didn’t make any sense. But she wasn’t about to let him know that she was disappointed in his performance, didn’t want to make him feel self-conscious or weird. When he was done, she clapped, and afterward, she gave him one of her tulips, and he leaned in and pecked her lightly on the lips, and she knew she had made the right decision.
Whitney found out, of course—theater kids talk. And she chewed Chelsea out in B hall and called her every name in the book, including coward and slut, although Chelsea didn’t know which one hurt worse because neither felt true. Deep down, Chelsea knew she deserved it, that she’d been a shitty friend and that Whitney deserved better. But she had David, so it didn’t sting as much. That night after the talent show, instead of going to the cast party, he drove her home and pressed her against his car with a hand on either side and kissed her until her lips stung, his stubble scraping her jaw nearly raw.
Looking back to that night, she should’ve known then what he was.
Should’ve seen how he belittled her interests, was disgusted by the things she loved, ignored her friend except as a sexual object, welcomed her sacrifice as if it were his due.
But she didn’t see any of that at the time. She only knew that when he looked at her, something inside her longed to feel his arm tighten around her waist, pulling her close, making her feel small and safe. She didn’t know she was cozying up to a monster.
Hurray for hindsight.
Since then, she’s tried to find Whitney via every route the internet has offered. Friendster and then Myspace and then LiveJournal and then Facebook, but Whitney has never turned up—that, or she has Chelsea blocked everywhere she goes. A few times a year, whenever she thinks about it, Chelsea writes up an ad for the Tampa Craigslist Missed Connections, pouring her heart out to the Whitney she used to know, offering her sincerest apologies. She’s gotten plenty of garbage in response, but she’s never found Whitney, and this feeling lives like a splinter in her heart.
“You done with that?” The woman in the turban is standing over her, hand out for the application. It looks pretty pathetic. Only two of the three job spots are filled, the first with her high school job at the movie theater and the second, embarrassingly, with homemaker, a job of the past eighteen years.
“I guess so.” Chelsea stands to hand the application over, and the woman takes it and saunters back to her desk.
Chelsea sits down in her chair and looks around the room, dreading the fact that there’s no way on earth anyone would offer a job to someone with her qualifications—and her disease. Most of the people are staring at their phones, infinitely scrolling in their own little worlds, but the surfer guy who passed her on his way in meets her eyes, and his jaw drops open.
“Holy shit,” he murmurs.
Chelsea looks behind her, out the window, terrified she’s going to see George in his red hat, followed by the police, or maybe even David with his baseball bat, but there’s no one there.
“It’s her,” the guy says, pointing at the TV.