Zach nods. “My parents can barely afford to keep the store open. And here’s eight hundred dollars rotting on my table and I can’t evenuseit. And I’m back to smoking a fucking pack a day.”
He sits on the bed, his back to me. And even though I’m pissed off at him and hurt at the things he said, I see the tension in his slumped shoulders. His frustration as he bends over, elbows on his knees.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“I have to sell it,” he says, mostly to himself now. “I shouldn’t have accepted it in the first place. IknewI shouldn’t, but I couldn’t say no.”
“Zach,” I sigh, and put my chin against his bare back. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”
We stay like that for several minutes, and then Zach says, half twisting so I can see his face, “Sorry for being an asshole. Youarea prodigy.” A hint of his signature smile appears, but it doesn’t quite fill his face. “But I shouldn’t have said any of the other stuff. I’m just jealous you’re talented.”
He turns around fully and kisses me.
I say, “I’m just jealous you’re hot.”
He bites my lower lip. “You donotneed to be jealous about that. Trust me.”
BEFORE
November
Meridian High is putting on a Thanksgiving production that Zach has been coaxed into videotaping for the drama department, so I have seen even less of him the past two weeks.
Katy has informed me that Lindsay is in it.
“If there’s any justice in the world,” I say as we are getting ready to attend opening night, “she’s playing the turkey.”
Katy snort-laughs. “She certainly has the chin for it.”
“What? She’s tiny!” I exclaim, laughing even though I feel guilty. But I want Katy to know I appreciate her loyalty. Soon after finding out that Lindsay had been texting Zach, Katy promptly dropped her, explaining that best friends come before the-yo-ter friends. She broke into a rant about how Lindsay’s blatant pursuit of Zach exemplified one of the major problems in show business: actors relinquishing their human characteristics in favor of more cowlike-slash-female-dog behaviors. Since they have many mutual friends, Katy is still keeping tabs on Lindsay, and she updates me on her activities from time to time.
“Oh, honey,” she says now in a posh British accent. “As a victim of Big Belly on Tiny People myself, I can’t deny that skinny people with double chins do exist.”
“She doesnothave a double chin,” I say, because it is true. Katy just laughs.
Zach and I haven’t talked too much about Lindsay since the day after Halloween, except for me asking a couple of times if she was still texting him and him saying no, that he’d told her to respect his decision. With how little we see each other lately, everything feels a bit harder between us than it used to, and bringing her up would only add to that.
I glance at my phone several times before the lights go down. I texted Zach my seat number and asked about meeting him afterward, but he hasn’t responded.
Sadly, it turns out Lindsay is not playing the turkey. We don’t even get the satisfaction of seeing her in an ill-fitting Pilgrim costume. Her character is a refugee from an unnamed European principality who transfers to an American school in time for Thanksgiving and must traverse the high school social hierarchy while learning about deeply held traditions and the legacy of our forefathers.
“Deep shit for a Thursday night,” Katy whispers, forcing me to break into an uncontrollable fit of giggles.
I spend the whole intermission scanning the auditorium for Zach. Just afterward, I finally find him way at the back, up in the viewing balcony, working the camera. He’s wearing an orange T-shirt and large headphones. We wave at him from our seats below, but I don’t think he sees us. He’s concentrating hard, his attention never leaving the stage.
I keep glancing back, glancing up, not expecting him to see me since I’m just a spot, just another seat in the sold-out auditorium. But I watch the careful way he works, the stillness of his body as he goes entire minutes without moving once.
I look back at the stage, at Lindsay’s riveting monologue, then back at him. Then back at the stage again. I can see his shoulders rising slightly with each intake of breath, falling when he exhales.
It’s only when Katy nudges me that I realize what I’m doing.
I’m mirroring his movements, tilting left when he does, inching forward, moving back.
But minutes after Katy flicks my arm, I go back to doing it again.
Inching forward, watching the stage, watching him watchher.
And for the whole last act, I can’t breathe.
