My Life After Now

37

Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat




Elyse St. James.

It all made so much sense.

She’d been there on the balcony yesterday after I’d run out of the light booth, and I’d stupidly paid her no attention. But now that I thought about it, she’d looked utterly freaked.

And then she’d been so spacy all throughout rehearsal. Maybe this was why. She must have somehow overheard my conversation with Max and Courtney and then went running to the principal.

She had crossed a major line, and she was not going to get away with it.

I stormed into the women’s dressing room. “Ladies, could you leave me and Elyse alone for a minute, please?” I announced through gritted teeth.

The girls began to protest, but when they caught a glimpse of my face, they quickly backed out of the room. I didn’t dare tear my eyes away from Elyse’s petrified expression in order to glance in the mirror, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was actual smoke steaming from my ears. I was furious.

I locked the dressing room door and blocked it with my body, so there was no chance for her to escape.

“Why did you do it?” I demanded, my hands balled up into fists and hanging heavily at my sides.

“I…I d-don’t know what you’re t-talking about,” she stammered. Her stage makeup was thick, and there was a line of black eyeliner on only one of her eyes. She looked like an unfinished puppet.

“Oh, cut the crap, Elyse. We both know that you know exactly what I’m talking about. Why would you do that?”

She avoided my gaze. “I don’t know,” she mumbled.

There it was! An admission of guilt.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure you do know,” I countered. “Going to the administration about another student’s private business isn’t something you just do for kicks. So please, enlighten me.”

No response.

“Elyse!”

She didn’t even look up. I obviously wasn’t getting through to her. I raked my hands through the roots of my hair, forced myself to lower my voice a notch, and tried a different tactic. “Look, I think we owe it to each other to at least be honest with one another.” Total BS, of course, but if it worked…

Silence.

ARRGGH!!

“Okay, how about this,” I said, grasping at straws. “Whatever is said in this room over the next few minutes goes in the vault and will never be spoken of again by either of us.”

Still nothing.

I couldn’t handle this. I felt like I was trying to elicit emotion from a brick wall. I knew it was pointless to keep trying, but I simply could not leave this room without answers. I needed to know why she was so intent on ruining my life. I would never do what she did, not even to my worst enemy.

“Please,” I begged, mortified when my voice cracked. “Please, Elyse. Just help me understand.” I was so tired of all of this garbage. This moment, right here and now, was the perfect metaphorical representation of everything I’d been through this school year: me, locked in a tiny room, going slowly insane as I fruitlessly fought and screamed and begged and pleaded for an explanation, for some small lump of truth that would shed some light on why. I slid down the door to the floor and rested my cheek on my knees.

The second hand on the wall clock ticked rhythmically.

At long last, Elyse spoke. “I did it because I’m scared.”

I lifted my head up. “Scared about what?”

“Ty had sex with you, and then he had sex with me,” she said simply, leaving me to deduce the rest.

I rubbed my eyes and the little gold spots appeared and then scattered, making my vision, and the meaning behind Elyse’s words, clearer. “So you’re worried about—”

“Do I have it now too?” she finished, her voice shaking.

Was that what this was all about? “No, of course you don’t have it. Ty and I used protection.”

“But what if the condom didn’t work?”

“It did.”

“But what if it didn’t?” she said again indignantly.

“It didn’t break if that’s what you’re asking.”

“But what if it didn’t work for another reason?”

I was beginning to get annoyed, but I tried not to let it show. “Condoms do work. That’s why everyone always says to have ‘safe sex.’ If they didn’t work, they wouldn’t be considered safe, would they?”

She thought about that for a moment. “Well, what about kissing?”

“What about it?”

“What if you gave it to him that way?”

I pressed my lips together, befuddled. “You do know you can’t spread it by kissing, right?”

“I mean, yes, I’ve heard that, but how am I supposed to know what to believe?” she said.

“Elyse,” I said calmly. “Trust me. You have nothing to worry about. I swear.”

She looked me directly in the eyes for the first time then. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” I paused as she exhaled in relief. “So that’s why you told Mr. Fisher? Because you were scared you got it?”

“Yeah.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“But it was the only thing I could think to do. I wanted revenge.”

That still didn’t make any sense. “What did you think he was going to do? Give me detention?”

She shrugged weakly. “I thought maybe he would tell the school board and they’d kick you out of school or something.”

“But…Elyse, if you thought you had it too, then wouldn’t they have done the same thing to you?”

“Well, I never said it was a thought-out plan.”

I almost laughed, but the gravity of the moment pressed down on me again. “Did you tell anyone else?” I asked.

Elyse shook her head. “Ty and I aren’t speaking, and my parents would kill me if they found out I was having sex,” she admitted.

“What about your friends?”

Her shoulders slumped down a little. “I haven’t really gotten to know many people here. Everyone’s already in their little cliques and no one ever seems to want to talk to me.”

I took a second to reinforce my resolve. There was no way I was going to let her make me feel bad for her. “You know, you don’t really make it easy for people to like you. You’re pretty…intense. Since we’re being honest.”

She just shrugged. “I don’t know how else to be.”

Wait a second—how had this conversation drifted to her problems? “How did you find out about me, anyway?” I asked, resolute to get this discussion back on track.

“I knew something weird was going on because you and Courtney and Max were being all secretive. When I saw you go into the light booth, I followed you up there. I was curious.”

There’s a difference between being curious and being nosy, I thought. But I kept my mouth shut.

She continued. “I sweet-talked one of the techies into lending me his headset. The microphone was on in the booth, so I could hear everything you said.”

I mentally slapped myself in the forehead. How could I have been so stupid?

We fell back into silence then, both lost in our own thoughts.

I took my time looking around the cluttered dressing room, at the bizarre and eclectic collection of costumes and props and show posters from years past. An old Macbeth head, impaled on a stick and outfitted with an Annie wig, hung from the ceiling. I shook my head. My life was too weird.

Finally I nodded toward the clock. The dress rehearsal was due to start in a few minutes, and the entire female half of the cast had been banished from the dressing room. “I guess we should get going.”

Elyse nodded and stood up. “Right. The show must go on.”

“Don’t forget to do your other eye,” I reminded her.

She looked in the mirror. “Oh yeah. Thanks.”

I watched as she resumed her makeup application. Part of me was actually glad that we’d had this conversation, if only to prove that Elyse was human after all. A downright irritating human maybe, but also a marginally less vile, somewhat more relatable one. “Elyse?”

“Yeah?”

“Please don’t tell anyone what you know. Especially Ty.” If he learned the truth, he would be furious—and rightfully so. He didn’t have any reason to keep my secret after what I’d done. It wouldn’t be long before the entire drama club knew, and soon after that, the whole school.

Elyse turned from the mirror and gave me a closed-lipped smile. “I guess you’re just going to have to trust me,” she said.

I took a deep breath and nodded. What other choice did I have?