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I try to read the next line, but I can’t speak. I can’t breathe. I hear a roar of wind in my ears and blink to stop the words from dancing all over the page. After a few moments, I manage to choke out the next sentence, “Say ‘a day’ without the ‘ever,’” before my voice breaks.
Because Rosalind understands. Say a day without the ever. That after the one day comes heartbreak. No wonder she won’t tell him who she truly is.
I feel the hot tears in my eyes and through their veil see the class, silent, gaping at me. I drop my book to the floor and bolt toward the door. I run out into the hallway, past the classrooms, and into the ladies’ room. Crouching in a corner stall, I gulp deep breaths and listen to the hum of the fluorescent lights, trying desperately to push back against this hollowness that threatens to swallow me alive.
I have a full life. How can I be this empty? Because of one guy? Because of one day? But as I hold back my tears, I see the days before Willem. I see myself with Melanie at school, feeling all cocooned and smug, gossiping about girls we didn’t bother to get to know or, later on, on the tour, pantomiming a friendship sputtering on fumes. I see myself with my parents, at the dinner table, Mom with her ever-present calendar, scheduling dance class or SAT prep or some other enrichment activity, leafing through catalogs for a new pair of snow boots, talking at each other but not to each other. I see myself with Evan, after we slept together for the first time and he said something about how this meant we were the closest people to each other, and it had been a sweet thing to say, but it felt like something he’d gotten out of a book. Or maybe it was that I hadn’t felt it because I’d begun to suspect that we’d only gotten together because Melanie had started dating his best friend. When I’d started to cry, Evan had mistaken my tears for joy, which had only made it worse. And, yet, I’d stayed with him.
I have been empty for a long time. Long before Willem entered and exited my life so abruptly.
I’m not sure how long I’m in there before I hear the squeak of the door. Then I see Dee’s pink Ugg knockoffs under the stall.
“You in here?” he asks quietly.
“No.”
“Can I come in?”
I unlock the stall. There’s Dee, holding all my stuff.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell him.
“Sorry? You were stupendous. You got a standing ovation.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you my parents were coming. I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry I bungled everything. I don’t know how to be a friend. I don’t know how to be anything.”
“You know how to be Rosalind,” he says.
“That’s because I’m an expert faker.” I swipe a tear with my hand. “I’m so good at faking I don’t even know when I’m doing it.”
“Oh, honey, have you learned nothing from these plays? Ain’t such a line between faking and being.” He opens his arms, and I step into them. “I’m sorry too,” he says. “I might’ve overreacted a hair. I can be dramatic, in case you haven’t noticed.”
I laugh. “Really?”
Dee holds my coat, and I slip into it. “I don’t like being lied to, but I do appreciate what you tried to say to me. People have never known what to make of me—not in my neighborhood, not at high school, not here—so they’re always trying to figure it out and tell me what I am.”
“Yeah, I know something about that.”
We look at each other for a long minute. A whole lot gets said in that silence. Then Dee asks, “You wanna tell me what all that was about in there?”
And I do. So much it’s squeezing my chest. I’ve been wanting to tell him this, everything about me, for weeks now. I nod.
Dee offers me his arm, and I loop mine through it, and we leave the bathroom as a pair of girls come in, giving us a strange look.
“Well, there was this guy . . .” I begin.
He shakes his head and gently clucks his tongue like a sweetly scolding grandmother. “There always is.”
I take Dee back to my dorm. I serve him a backlog of cookies. And I tell him everything. When I finish, we’ve munched our way through black-and-whites and peanut butter. He wipes the crumbs off his lap and asks me if I ever thought about Romeo and Juliet.
“Not everything tracks back to Shakespeare.”
“Yes it does. Did you ever think what might’ve happened if they weren’t so damn impatient? If maybe Romeo had stopped for a second and gotten a doctor, or waited for Juliet to wake up? Not jumped to conclusions and gone and poisoned himself thinking she was dead when she was just sleeping?”
“I can see you have.” And I can. He’s pretty worked up.
“I’ve seen that movie so many times, and every damn time, it’s like screaming at the girl in the horror movie. Stop. Don’t go in the basement. The killer’s down there. With Romeo and Juliet, I yell, ‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’ But do those fools ever listen to me?” He shakes his head in dismay. “I always imagine what might’ve happened if they’d waited. Juliet would’ve woken up. They’d already be married. They might’ve moved away, far away from the Montagues and the Capulets, gotten themselves a cute castle of their own. Decorated it up nice. Maybe it would’ve been like The Winter’s Tale. By thinking Hermione was dead, Leontes had time to stop acting like a fool and then later he was so happy to find out she was alive. Maybe the Montagues and Capulets would find out later that their beloved kids weren’t dead, and wasn’t it stupid to feud, and everyone would be happy. Maybe it would’ve turned the whole tragedy into a comedy.”
“The Winter’s Tale isn’t a comedy; it’s a problem play.”
