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I stop chewing. Did I just do the fricking thing again?
Toby, thinking I said that deliberately, grins and suppresses a laugh. “That was a good one!” He wags his fork at me. “Clever! Ha! Wow, you really took Ms. Joy’s advice to heart.”
My plastic knife snaps in half upon attempting to cut another bite. I glower at the crummy meat. Toby offers to share his knife. When I take it, my fingers graze his, and in an instant, I feel light again. I even cut my meat calmer now while Toby smiles on, his lively gaze on my slightly-less-boorish-than-before actions.
“See you at rehearsal!” he tells me before departing the lunch room after the bell rings. And I watch him go, feeling excited about something I can’t quite put my finger on. I’m thinking about it all fifth period when I should be focusing on the computer and whatever graphics skill we’re learning from Mr. Hewitt today. My distracted thoughts carry on through sixth period Algebra II as well, my leg bouncing impatiently in place under the desk. When the bell releases me to my seventh period study hall with an old lady named Mrs. Shannon who squints whenever she talks, I can barely focus on my sketching as I count down the minutes until I’m freed for rehearsal and get to see Toby again.
Then: ding, ding.
Today’s rehearsal gets us on our feet on the stage, the table cleared away. Ms. Joy sits in the front row with Tamika at her side, and after a few placeholder set pieces are arranged on the stage to represent various furniture, as well as spike tape on the ground to indicate a wall, a café window, and a door, we’re set loose. Ms. Joy has a bit of a laidback approach compared to what I’d gotten used to in New York, allowing us to simply “feel the space” with each scene. Toby, who is a complete nervous wreck, seems to gravitate toward the furniture as he delivers his lines, using them like little protective crutches, always leaning on them. The scenes move by slowly and awkwardly, and it’s obvious by the third scene that we are all stiff and terrible actors who should just quit, pack up, and go home right now if we know better.
Especially when we get to scene four. “Kingsley, I … I …” Toby looks down at his script for the line, then returns his eyes to mine. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Then don’t,” I reply as Kingsley. “Danny, your eyes say it all.”
Toby swallows hard. He stares at me, wide-eyed, his face pale. This next part, he clearly can’t do. He is paralyzed. He swallows again with such force, I suspect even the back row can hear it.
Ms. Joy, seeming to sense the problem, rises from her chair. “It’s fine, boys. We can just … gloss over this part for now if you don’t feel comfortable enough yet.”
I stare down Toby. This is, of course, the first kiss in the script. It’s Danny who makes the move on me. Regretfully, not vice versa.
Toby looks like he might literally piss himself. “I just …” He glances out at the audience. There are at least twenty expectant faces out there, all of them desperate for this moment, all of them hungry to witness history on the Spruce High stage. “It’s just …”
“The stage lights,” offers Ms. Joy helpfully. “Yes. They’re quite blinding. Stupidly blinding. And hot. KILL THE LIGHTS!” she calls out over her back, and someone in the lighting booth obliges, at once turning off the stage lights. Now, we’re only lit by whatever dim, wimpy lighting spills onstage from the house. “Better?”
I smirk. She knows damned well it wasn’t the lights. Toby is scared out of his mind. He can’t bring himself to kiss me in front of this room full of gossipy, thirsty theatre students. Another stretch of silence passes, during which Toby turns back to me. In his eyes, I see a cry for help. We’re two souls clinging to each other, with a cliff surrounding us on all sides. If one of us lets go, we both fall.
Oh, the things I’ll apparently do for Toby … “Ms. Joy,” I call out to her from the stage, with my eyes still glued on the terrified Toby. “I think it’s … me who’s not comfortable yet. Maybe we can come back to this part later on. Y’know, when I’m feeling a little more fricking comfortable.”
Everyone in the room laughs. Ms. Joy included.
But not Toby. He doesn’t laugh at all. His scared eyes are glued to mine, but I wouldn’t say he looks happy or relieved. Something else is happening in his face. Is he …
Is he disappointed?
“Very well,” announces Ms. Joy when she recovers. “Carry on from the next line, after the kiss. Go, go. We’re already running overtime, and if I don’t get home by six, John may starve for not knowing how to work a goddamned microwave, Lord help us. Carry on, next line, please. Go, go, go.”
