All We Could Have Been Read online

  “It’s high school drama. She way oversells legacy,” someone whispers from behind me.

  I kind of envy Rory. Yes, the mysterious person behind me is right. It doesn’t mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but at the same time I wish I had Rory’s passion for anything.

  After a lecture that’s way too long and ends up draining the entire cast and crew of any potential enthusiasm for the first run-through of the show tonight, we start rehearsal. After some script adjustments for time, I now have three lines—all in regular everyday English, so I sound ridiculous. I had to veto calling Romeo a badass. I’m no Shakespeare fangirl, but come on.

  By the time the dinner break comes, I’ve mostly forgotten about the Ryan thing. Until we all stop and I head backstage to return the candlestick I am inexplicably responsible for bringing to Lady Capulet during the party scene.

  “I don’t get you,” Chloe says to me. Lauren is in the prop closet behind her, but the sounds of people fighting with the set onstage and guys yelling out sub orders prevent her from hearing Chloe.

  “How do you mean?” I ask, clutching the candlestick and praying that Lauren quickly finds what she needs. I can’t see her, because the black curtain over the door covers the inside of the closet. I can only see her feet while she rummages for something.

  “You just show up and you think you own people,” Chloe says.

  “I really don’t think that.”

  “Ryan and I have a history, and you can’t just come in here and take it.”

  You know how you can be sitting outside in the middle of a summer afternoon and a colony of ants can run over your toes and feet while you’re dreaming of being somewhere else? How you don’t even notice every little brush of ant feet? But then all of a sudden it’s one ant too many? And you realize the ants have surrounded you?

  That’s how it is with people. You try everything you can. You don’t hear things. You let them go. They run over your toes and tickle your feet with their words, but there are bigger things to hold your attention. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter. You promise yourself to make this year work, that you can last 162 days. And then, during the first week of November, some girl named Chloe, with no real defining characteristics as far as I can tell, just says the wrong thing. And suddenly you realize all your happy delusions are individual ants and the entire ground below your feet is a swarm of blackness.

  “I didn’t try to take anything from you,” I say.

  “You better watch yourself. You’re not special, Lexi Lawlor. And it won’t take much to let everyone know just how not special you are.”

  She leaves, and I don’t let the thoughts crowd me. Not yet. I put the candlestick away, say hi to Lauren, head to the bathroom, and smile at the sophomore girls who are playing random Montague girls in the fight scene. It’s not until I get to the cafeteria and see Ryan, not until he leads me outside to the football field and bleachers, that I run through everything I’ve ever said to Chloe. I replay all the conversations she might have heard. At no point did I reveal anything about myself. My aunt was extremely careful when she filled out the enrollment paperwork, especially after what happened last year. There’s nothing Chloe has on me. I don’t use social media anymore. There’s no phone call or text she can dig up. Nothing about me hints that somewhere inside of me is another girl, with a whole lifetime of secrets that do nothing but hurt people.

  Yet she made me feel like she knew. She looked at me like she knew something was wrong with me.

  “I got you a coffee,” Ryan says, handing it to me when we get to the bleachers. The cup keeps my hands warm.

  The moon is big tonight. It’s so cold outside now that it’s November, but it doesn’t stop us from sitting at the top of the bleachers and looking out over the moon-soaked field.

  “So we’re together?” I ask once we’re both sitting.

  He won’t look at me. I put my coffee down and reach over and take his hand, the freezing cold of it sizzling against the coffee-baked warmth of mine.

  “I didn’t think you’d care,” he says. “I figured you were single and it wouldn’t matter if I went along with it.”

  “That’s kind of harsh. Yeah, it’s true, but that doesn’t make a girl feel good.”

  “I know. I just…” He stops talking. The wind picks up and shakes the bleachers. In my chest, I feel winter pushing back against the last strains of autumn.

  “You could have asked me,” I say.

  “Asked you what?” Ryan continues to stare straight ahead of him, steam coming from his words as he speaks into the night.

  “Whatever it was. To date you?”

  “It’s not like that. I just didn’t deny it when they asked. I don’t…”

  I drink more of my coffee. “So I guess you’re not interested in actually being with me.”

  He sighs and looks down, taking his hand away and running his fingers along his knees. “It’s not you. It’s me. Really. That’s not a line. It really is me, I promise.”

  “Why lie about it?” I ask. “And why me? Or at least why not tell me first?”

  He finally turns to me, sparkling eyes spilling his sorrow onto the metal bench below us. “I like you,” he says. “A lot. And I figured if anyone would be someone I could maybe talk myself into feeling that way for, it would be you.”

  “You don’t need to be with someone. Who cares if you’re single?”

  He shakes his head. “There’s always Chloe, and everyone keeps asking why. They want to know what happened.” He breathes in and stares up at the moon. I can feel his desperation. Wishing he could go there and leave all this behind. “We were together last year. But she wanted … well, a boyfriend.”

  “And you wanted?”

  “I don’t want anything. That’s just it. But that’s not okay, for some reason.”

  I nod and look back at the field. I love the stillness of it. I love the way the night and the cold make this place, usually so full of energy, a husk of what it’s meant to be. But Ryan and I fill it. Right now, we reach out into the space and make it something new.

  “I get it,” I say. “It’s easier to have what people think is a normal reason. So I’m your normal.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry, though. I wasn’t trying to complicate things for you. I just didn’t want to listen to it anymore. I guess I should’ve asked you all along.”

  “Ask me now,” I tell him.

  He faces me and holds my hands, both of his shielding both of mine from the cold. “L, will you be my normal?”

  “If you’ll be mine.”

  “You don’t need me. You’re already fine the way you are.”

  I laugh. “Oh man. You have no idea.”

  “Tell me?” he asks.

  “That’s okay. I’ll save that for the unlucky guy I eventually real-date.” I pause and realize that, while it’s unlikely, fake-dating Ryan could get back to Marcus. Although I guess I’m so buried in fake me that fake-dating while yearning for a real guy is probably apropos.

  “Can I ask you something?” He nods. “Do you just not like Chloe, and it’s too much work to explain … or do you like guys or something?”

  “I don’t really like people.”

  “I don’t like them much, either, but I mean—”

  “No, I mean, that’s what I mean. I’m not interested. At all. I don’t want any kind of relationship like that. I don’t feel any of that. And I’m totally okay with it, you know?” he says. “But for some reason it’s a big fucking deal to everyone else. It’s completely unacceptable to not be interested.”

  “Oh. So you dated Chloe because you thought…”

  “Yeah, I figured I’d come around. I figured I was slow to warm up to people or something. And she was … aggressive, let’s just say. I thought it would be good for me.”

  “But instead—”

  “Instead I basically led her on, and—I don’t know. I’m an asshole, but she’s not exactly nice about it.”

  I think
of her threatening me by the prop room. “No, she really isn’t.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” Ryan says. “I don’t want to use girls or to lie. I just kind of wanted to be allowed to be me.”

  “Yeah. I get that. Believe me, I get that.”

  Ryan stands up and grabs my coffee so I can lift myself up from the bench. It’s so cold I feel like my ass has frozen in place.

  “I’m really glad you transferred here, L.”

  “I’m glad you like Green Arrow,” I say.

  “You really should check it out.” He starts rambling about some guy named Oliver Queen and vigilantes, and I tune out as we walk back into the school, my coffee as cold as the air around us now. As we come around the corner and head toward the cafeteria, where all the drama kids are, I reach out and take Ryan’s hand.

  “Listen, if I teach you only one thing in exchange, let it be this: When you want to shed everything you are and live inside a fiction of yourself, you need to breathe it every second of every day.”

  “You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” he says.

  I cut off the questions in his eyes, kissing him quickly on the cheek as the cafeteria door opens and some of the other people from drama come out into the hall.

  Heath probably wouldn’t approve of the way I’m digging myself further into a lie, but there’s something comforting about the reality Ryan and I can shape for each other. We can create a place where we’re both safe from the truth neither of us is ready to confront just yet.

  Chapter Sixteen

  On opening night, moments before I walk onstage, I still don’t know whether I can do this. But then, I do. And I get it. I get everything Lauren said.

  Moments earlier the nausea roiled in my belly, and my tongue filled my mouth, swollen somehow and choking me from speaking. And then there was my cue. A word and one step forward.

  The curtain slides open, and a whole universe exists inside a moment.

  The gasp between breaths is overwhelming. The hard wood of the floor reverberates under my feet as I move through to my mark. The lights burn, but it’s a painful dazzling as I look up and meet them. Halos appear—echoes of the light as I blink. Carefully. Slowly. I can’t blink too quickly or the makeup will smudge. All that work. Hours of perfect planning.

  Behind the lights, in these seconds, is a shadow world. People and ideas and events and all the fears and anxiety I have disappear behind the sharp white.

  I am …

  I am Desdemona, and I ache to be heard. To be believed.

  I am Lavinia, with my words stolen from me.

  I am Eliza Doolittle, and I fall for words all over again.

  I am Elaine, and Lauren asks me a question, but she’s not Lauren, and both of us exist as someone else. I am everyone and no one and I breathe and live in these gasps between breathing. The shadow people see me, but only what I give them. I am wrapped in words and beats and motions and blocking.

  And I am finally free.

  The audience exhales in a collective sound, and the moment passes. I blink again, and the lights don’t hurt as much, and now the shadow world is Hawthorne with her script shaking in her hand as she stands backstage. It’s Eric flirting with two freshman girls in my peripheral vision, and I can’t help but wonder if they’re even in drama. It’s Chloe watching me and shaking her head, and it’s me again, handing Lauren the candlestick, and a moment turns to minutes before I’m back behind the curtain again.

  “That was awesome,” I tell Ryan later, once Mercutio is dead and we’re sitting in the back of the auditorium, watching the rest of the play with the audience.

  And then … as quickly as the moment filled my life, it’s suddenly Saturday—and we’re hours from it all being over.

  There’s a weird feeling among us. Sadness, yes, but also relief. Joy. There’s a quiet satisfaction in knowing you did something well and it will forever be a part of you.

  Something’s different about this place, I tell myself as I get ready for our final curtain, and it feels true. There’s something special about these people. I feel like I’m not walking forward through a steady tide that keeps trying to knock me off my feet. I can almost breathe here.

  “Can you believe this is it?” Lauren asks. “One more performance?”

  “I’m really happy you talked me into being here.”

  “I’m glad you’re here. Especially … Yeah, well, I’m glad you’re here.”

  She walks away, and I consider following her, but I know she’s running lines in her head. And I know she’s upset because no one has come to see her after the shows. After each performance, we’ve all gone out to the auditorium to meet friends and family. Even my aunt took time off from work to come, but Lauren sat in the cafeteria. Alone. I don’t think anyone’s coming today, either.

  She hasn’t said a word about it, and either everyone knows that’s just how things are, or she doesn’t want anyone asking. I have to respect that, but I wish I could do something. I would never wish that clinging loneliness I recognize on anyone.

  During intermission Ryan joins me in the cafeteria again, but today we don’t leave when everyone else rushes back to the auditorium after fixing their makeup and using the bathroom.

  “Is your aunt here again?” he asks.

  I nod. “I didn’t see her, but she said she was coming. Did your parents come?”

  “No, they came yesterday. My sister has a karate thing today.”

  “You have a sister?” I feel like this is something I should know, real boyfriend or not.

  “Yeah. She’s eight. We don’t have a whole lot in common, and our paths don’t exactly cross most days. But yes, I have an annoying little sister.”

  “What’s her name?”

  Ryan rolls his eyes. “Madison. She’s not the worst, I guess. I mean, she’s irritating, and she’s always messing up my stuff, but she’s not horrible. I probably should have introduced you last night when they were here.”

  We haven’t talked while visiting with our families, and it’s another one of the ways our relationship isn’t real. I wonder what he told his parents. How he explains a girlfriend who sort of forgets he’s there sometimes.

  “But you’re lucky,” he continues. “Even if she’s not the worst, I’d so much prefer being an only child.”

  “I…”

  But there’s nothing I can say. So I don’t.

  “L?” he asks.

  “We should start cleaning this stuff up,” I say, gesturing to the utter destruction we’ve left in our wake around the cafeteria. The sooner we clean up, the sooner we can go home and get ready for Rory’s party.

  “Yeah, okay,” he says, but he didn’t miss it. He’s just kind enough not to push.

  By the time the show ends, the cafeteria and backstage are almost fully clean. When I’m trying to avoid things, I am an exceptionally motivated person. I have everything organized, until the cast filters out from the stage doors, dropping a bunch of props everywhere.

  “I’ve got it,” Ryan says. “And if I don’t see you before you leave, I’ll pick you up tonight? Six thirty?” He leans over to start boxing up the props that were dropped by the doorway.

  “For Rory’s?”

  “Yup. I can’t go to the cast party without my girlfriend.”

  “Get a room,” Eric says, pushing past us.

  “There will be plenty at my party,” Rory says from behind him, and she taps me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you guys have all the privacy you need.”

  Ryan stands up, and the box starts to topple. I wait for everyone to pass, helping him with it. “They really are strangely obsessed with your sex life, aren’t they?” I ask.

  He sighs. “Seriously. Anyway, six thirty?”

  “Perfect. Should I bring a deck of cards? It sounds like we may have a lot of quiet time.”

  He leans close to me, the box of props stabbing me in the chest, and whispers in my ear, “I’m bringing Pictionary
. Don’t get too excited, but it’s gonna be hot.”

  I laugh and kiss him quickly on the cheek, then pack up my stuff and a few more props, trying to avoid Chloe as I go to meet my aunt. I see Lauren, already wearing her coat and heading to the parking lot, and again I consider talking to her. Asking if she needs a ride. But I recognize that kind of need: the need to be alone with your thoughts. Your disappointment.

  Inside the auditorium people are chatting, the conversations competing for the space of sound. The noise grows louder by the minute. I maneuver through families and friends to find my aunt. But when I get close to where she’s waiting, I stop.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, even though I’m not near enough that they can hear me. I hear my voice through the overwhelming noise, and although no one actually notices, it feels like all the spotlights have been turned on me. I feel like the entire world has stopped moving.

  In her hand my mom holds one of the programs we made, turning it into a tube between her fingers. I watch as she taps out some kind of code against the script letters of Romeo’s name. My father sees me first and he waves, but it’s a tired wave.

  I watch them with my aunt. Barely looking alive. I can’t hear the conversation, but I know it’s mundane. It’s filled with nothing but the sagging weight of so many years and so many questions, all of it heavier on them than it was even this past summer. I want to tell them they shouldn’t feel this way—that they haven’t failed. I want to go to them and remind them they’re here: Because there’s still hope. That I got onstage today and for the last two nights.

  I want to remind them that I’m still possible. I want them to believe in me.

  “Lexi?”

  I walk closer and let my dad hold me for a second. I try not to let the other futures hurt. Try not to remember what could have been. How I could have been here, like the others in the cast, hugging them and celebrating. I could be listening to my mother lecture me on effective staging and interpretation of Shakespearean language, but instead we’re all quiet and full of nothing but memories of what we never had.

  “I didn’t know you were coming.”