“No! I love kissing you, Zoe. And I really tried to be okay with doing other stuff, but it makes me really uncomfortable, and I feel like if it’s this hard, it’s probably not right.”
Zoe rakes her fingers through her hair. “I can’t believe this is happening again. You’re exactly like Carina. I put myself out there, and I let myself fall for you, and then I find out you’re using me like some experiment you can throw out when it doesn’t go the way you planned! I’m not here for you to toy with while you figure out who you are or whatever! I was actually invested in this, and you should’ve told me you weren’t, so I didn’t make a complete ass of myself!”
“Zoe, I didn’t know! How was I supposed to know I didn’t like something when I’d never done it?”
“You let me throw myself at you! When I think about the stuff I said to you…God, you fucking straight girls trying to find yourselves. I’m never going to learn, am I?”
Zoe picks up her messenger bag and starts cramming things into it—pajama pants, toiletries, a book. Her face is red and splotchy, and I want to wrap her up in my arms and tell her to calm down, that I’ll make it all okay. But I can’t be her solution right now, because I’m the problem.
“What are you doing?” I ask from the safe little island of my bed.
“I’m going out.” She tries to shove a bottle of shampoo into the bag. It’s too big to fit, but she leaves it poking precariously out the top.
“Where?”
“I don’t know, Brooklyn, okay? Somewhere you’re not. I want to be by myself.”
“Okay,” I say. “I’m really sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am.” She slings the bag over her shoulder, and the bottle of shampoo falls to the ground, but she doesn’t bother to pick it up before she storms out. It’s still rolling around on the floor, trying to find its equilibrium, long after she’s gone.
I lie awake most of the night, crying and waiting for the sound of Zoe’s key in the door, but she doesn’t come home. When my alarm goes off at seven, I feel like I’ve had about thirty minutes of sleep, and even after a shower, my eyes look red and puffy. I know I have to pull myself together; we’re moving into the theater today and attempting a stumble-through of act one with the orchestra. Under normal circumstances, I’d be super-excited about seeing all our hard work up on its feet. But last night’s conversation has colored everything, and all I feel is sadness and desperation and dread. It’s like I’ve finally made it to the top of a mountain, only to find that the beautiful view I was promised is shrouded in thick, gray fog.
I’m psyching myself up to walk over to the theater and face Zoe when my phone rings and my mom’s picture pops up on the screen. I’ve been dodging her calls for days, but right now I really need to talk to someone who loves me, so I answer.
“I finally got you!” my mom says. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all week!”
“I’m here,” I say. My voice comes out flat.
“Sweetheart, what’s wrong? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. I’m just really, really exhausted.”
My mom makes a sympathetic noise. “Third rotation is so hard. It’s okay, Brookie. Things will calm down a little after opening night. Tell me about this new show they’re cobbling together. Is it any good? The email Bob sent said they’re combining Macbeth and Birdie into one thing, but I can’t imagine how that’s even possible.”
Here I was, thinking my parents wouldn’t find out about the new show unless I told them myself. I’ve been a complete idiot; of course the Allerdale administration would notify all ticket-holders about the change in the programming. At least my mom doesn’t seem to know what my role in the new show is, and there’s still plenty of time to put my fake-illness plan into action later this week.
“It’s kind of like a mash-up,” I say. “We left most of the Macbeth text intact, but we’re inserting songs from Birdie with all the words rewritten so they’re about the witches’ prophecies or about murdering Duncan or whatever.”
My mom laughs. “That sounds dreadful. I’m so sorry your very first Allerdale show turned out to be such a disaster. But I know you’ll be flexible and make the best of it.”
“I think it’s kind of clever, actually,” I say. “Uncle Harrison will probably like it.”
“Probably, but we all know he has questionable taste at best. I swear, some of the stuff he produces at that festival of his. Why would anyone put that much effort into something that’s essentially a bunch of jokes?”