Dreamers Often Lie (23 page)

“Yeah.”
The auditorium. The fresh paint smell. The colored lights splitting the shadows of the trees.
I bit the inside of my cheek. “Would you tell everybody I miss them? And tell Mr. Hall that I’m really, really sorry.”

“You don’t need to do that. Everybody understands.” He gave a little shrug. “You’ve been acting weird because of your head, and—”

“No. I knew what I was doing.”
Most of the time.
“I made everybody worry, and I did things that hurt the show, and that hurt all of you . . .”

“Stop. It’s just as much my fault as yours. I’m supposed to be looking out for you, and instead . . .” He gestured at the white room. “
This.
”

“Pierce . . . you don’t have to look out for me.”

“Yes, I do.” He finally looked straight at me. “I promised I would.”

“Just because my mom asked—”

“No. Not that.” Pierce’s voice got lower. “Your dad asked me to.”

I felt a coolness on my skin, like someone had thrown open a window. “He did?” I glanced across the room at the closed blinds. Shakespeare sat in his usual chair below the windows, watching me. Watching us. “When?”

“Not too long before it happened. When he was”—he paused, looking flustered—“at our house.”

“He asked you to watch out for me?”

“He was worried about you. He said you were failing a bunch of classes, and getting in trouble at school, and some of your friends were using drugs and were really messed up . . .” Pierce ran his fingers through his glinting hair. “He wasn’t around you very much anymore. And he said you didn’t listen to him anyway. He knew I’d see you at school, so I’d know if you were getting into anything serious. And I should try to stop it.”

The chill was making it hard to breathe. “So . . . is
that
why you actually did the show? Why you’ve been talking to me again? Because you were watching me for him?”

“No.” Pierce looked genuinely surprised. “Jaye—I
like
you. I think I always did. I just wasn’t paying attention.”

“Oh.” I looked down at my hands.

“I know I screwed up. I shouldn’t have hit that kid. I shouldn’t have let my anger take over. But I was just thinking about
him,
and you, and how I would feel if you got into some bad situation . . . And then I got you into a bad situation.”

“No, you didn’t,” I said. “Pierce.”

I put out one hand, palm up, like I’d done with Sadie. Now I had to fight to keep it from shaking.

Pierce looked at my hand for a second. Then he reached out and clasped it. His skin was dry and warm.

“Can I ask you one more thing?” I said. My voice came out just above a whisper. “You already know why I . . .”
Why I lied to you. No—let him think it was the injury. Maybe it
was
the injury.
“Sadie said, when you found me, I was by myself.” I took a deep breath. “Is that right?”

“Yeah.” Pierce nodded firmly. “You were lying there in the dark, in the snow. I don’t know how long you’d already been there when I found you.”

“So Rob wasn’t—” It was out now. I had to know. “Rob Mason wasn’t there?”

Pierce stared straight into my eyes. I almost flinched. “No,” he said. “I didn’t see him.”

“Oh.”
Don’t cry. Oh my god, you moron, don’t cry.
I lifted my chin. “Thank you. Thanks for actually being there.”

We were quiet. Even Shakespeare kept perfectly still, his dark blue eyes fixed on us.

I was that hollow thing again. Empty. Cold from the
inside out. Even the warmth of Pierce’s hand, wrapped tight around mine, couldn’t warm me up.

Eventually, I saw Pierce’s eyes flick to the clock. “Damn. It’s already after seven. I was supposed to be home by now.” He got up, dropping my hand. “I can come back tomorrow, though.”

“Okay,” I said. “Good. Tomorrow.”

“Oh. Before I forget.” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a folded square of notebook paper. He put it in my palm.

“What is it?”

“Get-well notes Nikki and Tom wrote at rehearsal. They knew you wouldn’t have your phone, so . . .”

“Oh.” I set the note next to the vase of roses. I gave him another smile. “Thanks for passing notes for us.”

“Thank
you
for making me feel like I’m in third grade again.” Pierce started to smile back. It was like a crack opening in a perfectly painted wall. “It probably says, ‘Do you like me? Circle YES or NO.’”

Now I felt myself smile for real. “Probably.”

What had I thought was so frightening about him? What had I actually seen?

He was
here,
this gorgeous, golden boy, bringing me roses, trying to make my life better. Actually here.

Juliet’s nurse appeared at the end of the bed. “He’s a lovely gentleman.” She patted Pierce’s arm, beaming at me. “I think you are happy in this second match . . .”

Pierce took a first step toward the door. Then he stopped, whirling back toward me. “I’m just going to say this,” he said, speaking fast. “I know you’re probably going to need some time. And maybe I screwed up too much already. But when you feel like yourself again, I’ll be here. Because I don’t give up, and I don’t lose. Not when I care about what I’m trying to win.”

“Okay,” I whispered at last, because it was literally the only thing I could think of to say.

He shot me that heart-tripping half smile.

The door clicked shut behind him.

My sister didn’t come back right away. Maybe she and Pierce were talking; maybe she was checking in with Mom. Poor Sadie. Poor Mom. Stupid me.

I stared up at the ceiling.

Suddenly, I was exhausted.

Someone’s hand lifted the sheet, smoothing it over me. I was sure I’d been asleep, and Mom or Sadie had come back. But when I lifted my eyelids partway, there was Shakespeare, gently tucking me in.

“Get some sleep,” he murmured. “Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care . . .”

My eyelids slid down again.

I thought I heard him say “Good night, Drama Queen,” very quietly, before they sealed themselves shut.

I
woke up on a tray.

Or maybe I had already been awake.

Maybe I just opened my eyes on a tray, and realized where I was for the first time.

The rest of the room was bare. Panes of glass ran along one wall, revealing a bank of screens and keyboards. A youngish man with white clothes and spiky blond hair stood above me, blocking the fluorescent light. I glanced down at my own body. Blue cotton robe. Matching socks.

“You know the drill,” the technician was saying. “Just keep as still as you can. Breathe normally. You won’t feel anything. But just in case . . .” He put a squishy gray bulb in my right hand. “This is the panic button, remember? If you need to, you can squeeze it, and I’ll have you out in three seconds. Got it?”

“Got it,” I answered.

I stared at the ceiling beyond his head, its square beige tiles arranged in perfect rows. It felt good to focus on something real. Ceilings were real. Squares were real.

“Remember that the machine makes some loud noises,” the technician went on. “You’ll hear some thumping or knocking sounds. It’s all perfectly normal.”

“Thumping,” my mouth repeated, for some reason. I held back a giggle.

Beneath me, the tray started to buzz. I slid backward into the machine like something on a checkout counter.

The beige room dwindled into a shrinking gap above my toes. I could see the technician standing there, watching me disappear into the machine. His hair had turned a paler shade of blond. His white clothes were black. Hamlet raised one hand in a jaunty little wave before we both slid out of each other’s sight.

The inside of the machine was one curving, pearly wall, like the interior of a seashell. It came uncomfortably close to my face. I couldn’t have sat up if I’d tried. I probably couldn’t even have turned over. This thought made my chest tighten. Immediately, my neck began to itch.

Don’t scratch it,
I told my arm. But my arm was too heavy to move anyway. Everything was too heavy. My fingers. My thighs. Even my hair. I could feel my spine sinking, as if the tray was made of snow.

I drifted downward, away from the sunlight or spotlight or whatever light it was that kept trying to peel back my eyelids. I sank through velvet curtains, through black-painted floorboards, down to someplace cool and dim.

There everything stopped.

The bed went still.

I took a slow, chilly breath.

There was something strange in the air. Something rotten.

I opened my eyes. Only more darkness.

Where had I been a minute ago? That smell made me sure that I’d been somewhere else. I couldn’t have ignored that smell. I couldn’t have forgotten it.

Very carefully, I sat up.

The darkness began to thin. In the distance, I could see a steady yellow light. It glimmered on the surfaces around me. Mossy stone floor. Stone walls. A low, curving ceiling. Pillars jutted up here and there, like a few teeth inside a sealed stone mouth.

The platform beneath me was made of stone too. I scooted to its edge and dropped down to the floor. My clothes had changed again. Now I was wearing a long, dark dress, one I thought I’d thrown away two years ago.

The air was damp and cool. Subterranean. Stone platforms, stone floor, little nooks and shelves carved into the walls.

Of course, I realized. This was the Capulet vault. The end of
Romeo and Juliet.

It all made sense somehow. Sort of. At least that’s what I told myself.

I headed toward the light. The smell grew stronger. Rancid sweetness filled my throat, my nose, my mouth,
until finally I had to cup a hand over my face to keep from gagging.

Vinegar. Rot. Burned coffee. And something else. A thick, perfumey scent, like too many different flowers crammed into too small a space.

I knew that smell.

The voices dribbled around me, murmuring. Whispering. The air was getting thicker. I stepped into the pool of lamplight, and there it was.

It was positioned neatly between the silk-shaded lights. Two little tables with framed photos and bouquets of fresh flowers and big bowls of sickly-sweet potpourri stood at either end.

A coffin.

A gleaming, red-brown, satin-lined coffin.

Its lid was open. Even though I wasn’t near enough to see over the edge, I knew what was inside.

I glanced around.

The room was crowded. Friends from marathons and camping trips, employees, all the runners he’d coached over the past ten years, kids from my school with their parents, hundreds of people I’d never even met. I saw the cousins and Uncle Paul in one corner, gathered around Sadie, whose fists were full of soggy tissues.

The Caplans were there too, of course. The three of them were dressed in tailored black suits, looking grieved
and beautiful. Patrick’s face still wore a few bandages over the deepest cuts. So many employees and friends and high-schoolers were gathered around them, you’d have thought
they
were the family. After kissing Mom and paying their respects, they’d kept their distance from her for the rest of the night.

Most people had.

I found her just where I knew she’d be, in her seat on that stiff floral couch.

I hadn’t misremembered it: She looked like someone staring into another world. Her face was bloodless. Her hands were turned up, open, in her lap, like she was pleading for something. When people spoke to her, she stared straight through them. She usually didn’t answer.

I turned my back.

The photos on the end tables glinted with gentle electric light. There was the shot of Dad on the finish line of the New York Marathon, the same one that hung on our hallway wall. There was a picture of the whole family when Sadie and I were small, me in a baby carrier on Mom’s chest, Sadie a toddler in Dad’s backpack, everyone but me beaming, the edge of a bluff revealing soft green hills, row after row, behind us. And there was the most recent picture of Dad, taken on their fall camping trip, when they’d left me at home: Dad and Sadie and Mom, their heads close together, smiling into the camera.

I’d been in my first professional play that fall—or at least, the first where I’d had a non-chorus role. I had two actual lines and a hundred-dollar stipend. I felt rich and very adult.

The play was
Peter Pan,
at the Blue Moon Theater. I was one of the Lost Boys.

Dad hadn’t come to the show. He hadn’t seen my very last performance.

I’d cried when the police brought the news to the house, but I didn’t cry at the funeral home. I felt like I’d been sealed in plaster; like my entire body had been coated in something hard and cold that kept everything inside. I didn’t have to think about my face, my expression, whether it was right or wrong or real enough.

I remembered that gleaming brown coffin perfectly. But I hadn’t ever looked at what was inside it. It would have been wrong to see him lying so still.

This was my chance. I could take just one step closer, look inside, see that all of this was real.

But I turned away again instead.

I wound through the crowd of people, around a corner, to a small purple sofa. I sat down and put my face in my hands. My head was pounding almost hard enough to crack the plaster. I wished I were somewhere else. I thought of the lights at the Blue Moon Theater, the twinkling lights behind the blue scrim that made a magical nighttime sky,
the way the lights shifted and grew warmer and brighter as the set changed from London to Neverland. I wanted to be there.

Someone sat down on the sofa beside me.

I felt an unfriendly flash. Why couldn’t they sit somewhere else? I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want anybody’s sympathy. I kept my face down, my hands hiding my eyes.

The cushions shifted again.

A voice said, “Hey, Drama Queen.”

My head whipped up.

Shakespeare sat beside me.

“Don’t call me that,” I said through my teeth.

“All right. How about
Juliet
instead?”

“My name’s Jaye.”

“I know your name.” He tipped his head to one side, smiling slightly. “I’m just having fun with you.”

“I’m not having fun.”

“I know,” he said, more softly. “I know.”

Ahead of us, I could see the gate that led up to the crypt stairs. Moonlight coated the stone steps. From above, just loud enough to cut through the murmur, there was the clash of metal.

“What’s going on up there?” I asked him.

Shakespeare looked surprised. “You know how the play ends,” he said. “Romeo and Paris fight. Paris falls.”

“And then Romeo comes down here and thinks Juliet’s really dead, so he kills himself, and then she wakes up and sees that he’s dead, so she kills herself too. Everybody’s dead. The end.”

“Right.”

“Right.” I snorted. “
Why?
Because somebody’s just a few minutes too early, or too late, or because somebody missed a message by leaving at exactly the wrong time?”

“Because they all make choices. They act the way they have to act.”

“But you could have
changed
it.” I turned toward him. His blue eyes were steady. I could almost see myself reflected in them. “It didn’t have to turn out that way. You could have written a different ending. Let them make the right choices for once.”

“But that wouldn’t be the truth.” Shakespeare’s voice sounded different than usual. Lower. A little softer. A little rougher. “Do you know how hard it is to just sit back and watch, when you already know what’s coming? You created them. You care about them. You know they’ll make mistakes. You know that they’ll get hurt. The world will hurt them, they’ll hurt themselves. There’s nothing you can do. That’s just the way the story goes.”

“I’m going to change it.”

I stood up and strode across the stone floor to the gate. It was locked, its heavy bars bolted in place.

“Romeo!” I called up the steps. “Paris! Stop fighting! She’s not actually dead!”

Shakespeare hadn’t moved. He watched me from the purple couch, his face calm. “They can’t hear you.”

I ignored him. “Hey!” I yelled. “Anybody! I’m down here!”

My voice rang up the staircase. The clanking from above got louder. Now there was another sound beneath it—a deep rumbling, like something huge and heavy beginning to collapse.

“Juliet . . .” Shakespeare said softly. “This is just how the story goes.”

“Stop!” I was screaming now. “Stop! I’m awake!” I wrenched at the bars. “
I’m awake!
”

Behind me, a massive stone slipped from the ceiling and smashed against the floor. Two more stones fell against one of the pillars, which cracked, tumbling to the floor in an explosion of shards. The ceiling sagged inward. I pressed myself against the gate, shielding my face with both arms. Mortar and black dirt rained down. More stones fell, their crashes echoing. The light flickered out.

And then there was a new light.

Brighter. Paler. Everywhere at once.

A silhouette flickered over me. Behind its spiky head, I could see tubes of white light against a beige ceiling. Rows and rows of perfect square tiles.

I sucked in a breath. My heart still pounded like it had nearly been crushed. My head throbbed.

“All finished,” said the technician. “Are you doing all right?”

I smoothed my face. Vivien Leigh in
A Streetcar Named Desire.
Katharine Hepburn stepping onto the set at the end of
Stage Door.
“Yeah,” I said.
Don’t let them know what you see.
“I’m fine.”