Oh, God, I still loved him. Despite everything, despite his pregnant wife, despite the fact that in a few weeks I might leave and never see him again, I still loved him with everything I was. Even the pain was all mixed up with love inside me.
For the first time, I didn’t want to use Tommy to make Peter jealous. And I didn’t think I could use Tommy to make me feel better, either, even though he had grown on me over the last months. He was sweet and simple, trying to plan these high school trips for us, always talking about going to the U and how much I would like it there. In his eyes, the future was all mapped out. I always knew what he was thinking and what he would say next, and he loved everything about me. He reminded me of a dog again, one that kept following me around and wagging its tail no matter what I did. But you can’t have a relationship with a dog.
“Well, you’re not working after the rehearsal tonight, right?” Tommy asked, still hopeful. “Come to Derek’s and you’ll see how awesome the cabin is going to be.”
“I don’t know how late it’s going to go.”
He looked so disappointed that I couldn’t help adding, “You can come see me tomorrow on opening night.”
He groaned. “Boring.”
“You’ll love it. There’s witches and sword fights and severed heads. Blood everywhere.” I was being totally honest. Tommy seriously loved horror movies.
“Are you the innocent, screaming girl?” He laughed, completely forgetting he’d run lines with me only a few weeks ago.
“No.” I patted his hand and moved it off my waist. “I make the blood run.”
After school I put on my costume, which was just a simple white sheath. I thought it looked too Greek, but Christy Sorenson was in charge of costumes and she didn’t want to hear it. They’d made them in Family and Consumer Science and had to sew four sets each, one for each performance and an extra for the dress rehearsal, because we were basically going to ruin them each night. After Macbeth murdered the king, he and I put our crowns on, but then before every scene we had to drizzle more and more red corn syrup on our shoulders, like the witches were making the crowns bleed. That was Peter’s idea. He told us, back when we were deciding set design and interpretation, that you had to make Shakespeare visual. Most people couldn’t follow iambic pentameter very well, but everyone knew what a knife meant when you pulled it out. So the whole play was heavy on stage direction and gestures. There was a lot of sword waving, which the guys loved. Obviously.
Portia gathered everyone together in front of the stage after we dressed and then physically hauled Peter over by the elbow. She shoved him next to me, completely exasperated.
“Um, okay everyone.” He looked around at all our faces except mine. I hoped I wasn’t as flushed as I felt with him standing so close.
“Hold hands, everybody,” Portia directed from Peter’s other side, grabbing her neighbors’ hands. “We have to form the power circle.”
Everyone thinned out into a big circle and connected up, until Peter and I were the last ones apart. He slipped my hand into his before it became awkward and held it gingerly.
“You’ve all worked so hard,” he began slowly, clearing his throat. “Look at this set,” he said. Everyone turned and admired it.
“It’s on par with anything I’ve seen at the smaller professional theaters in the cities. Great construction, guys. And the costumes. Christy, they’re exactly how I imagined them. Clean lines, timeless. Beautiful job. The lights and sound are all a go, mainly because Portia’s been riding the crew like Peter Jackson. Thanks, Porsche.”
I started. I couldn’t help it, hearing him use my name for Portia like that. It rolled so easily off his tongue as he warmed up to the speech, and I remembered the times I’d rambled on about my best friend to him, all the things he knew about her that he had no right to know. How she craved drama. How she hid shirtless pictures of Ryan Gosling in her nightstand. How she hated that her parents made her speak Hmong during Sunday dinners. How she wanted so badly to fit in and stand out at the same time.
No one else seemed to notice his slip. Everyone laughed and grinned at Portia, who beamed.
Peter continued, using his full-on teacher voice now. “This isn’t a happy play, but it’s an important one. Here we see Shakespeare looking deep into one man’s soul after he murders his king. He’s not an evil man. Evil is simple. It’s a child’s explanation for why people do bad things. The truth is always more complicated and worth pursuing. Shakespeare pursued the truth in this play. Of course, he threw in the witches and the bloodbaths to boost ratings”—everyone laughed except me—“but at its heart, this is a psychological study. Why would a man commit a terrible crime, something he knew was wrong even before he did it?”
My palm started to sweat. Gradually, so slowly that I didn’t even notice it at first, his hold on my hand grew tighter.
“Ambition,” Portia answered.
“The witches told him he’d be king,” added Emily, who played the Second Witch.