Dreamers Often Lie (9 page)

Other things tried to barge their way in, but I kept my mind locked on the stage. Just because I was asleep didn’t mean I could stop being Titania. The fairies sang their lullaby and pittered off into the distance. I kept still, conscious of my breathing, conscious of every little twitch of my face.

The stage lights were warm, glowing red-gold through my eyelids. The velveteen grass tickled the back of my neck.
What would a fairy queen dream about? Fairy dances. Flowers. Charms. Her Oberon.
I turned my head
slowly, drowsily, like someone stirring in her sleep—and even though I hadn’t opened my eyes, I could see the night-dark hospital room around me, the narrow bed with its plastic railings, the tubes threading out of my arm. I could see him, sitting in the chair beside me. His black hair. His blue eyes. Listening. Waiting.

E
veryone onstage for notes!” Mr. Hall’s voice called.

The platform rolled backward as Nikki plopped down beside me.

“Nice work,” she whispered, leaning back against the crinkly daisies.

“Really?” I sat up. The house lights blinked on, turning the fairy forest back into the auditorium. “Was I okay?”

“You were great. As always.”

“Not at first. At first, I was crazy, quoting-the-wrong-play girl.”

“Yeah, quoting another Shakespearean play. How unimpressive.” Nikki smacked my arm. “You know what? After two weeks in the hospital with a concussion, you’re allowed to mess up once
.
Just once, though. Any more and you’re fired.”

“Fairies—quiet please,” Mr. Hall’s voice cut us off. “During the lullaby, we need two full circles around the platform,
then
reverse, then exit. Titania, you can take your time falling asleep. Listen and watch for a while, if
you’d like. And Hermia, remember, when you wake up, you don’t realize Lysander is already gone, so make sure not to turn in his direction . . .”

I scanned the stage while Mr. Hall went on. There was no sign of the new kid. He’d probably snuck out early. He wasn’t here because he wanted to be, anyway. Why would he wait around?

But he
had
actually been here.

He had been.

I was pretty sure.

“That’s it for tonight, everyone!” Mr. Hall shouted, throwing both hands in the air. “Get some rest, and we’ll see you all tomorrow!”

Nikki pulled me to my feet. “Can you come out for coffee with me and Tom?”

“Yes. You
have
to.” Tom skidded across the stage toward us. “We have three weeks to catch up on.”

“I’m not allowed. No coffee. No fun. No
out.
”

“Just say rehearsal ran late,” Tom suggested. “That’s what I always do.”

“I can’t. If I get caught, my mom will pull me out of the show. And then she’ll strangle me with her super-strong yoga arms.”

“Boo.” Nikki tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Well, we can at least drive you home. Grab your stuff.”

“I’m going to drive her,” said another voice.

I whirled around.

Pierce Caplan stood over my right shoulder.

“You are?” I said stupidly.

Pierce smiled in a way that made my rib cage buzz. “Yeah. It’s all arranged.”

“Really?” Nikki’s eyes snapped from Pierce’s face to mine. “Because your sister thinks
I’m
bringing you home.”

“I talked to Sadie in chemistry,” said Pierce, still looking at me instead of Nikki. “I’m taking her.” His hand brushed my back. A chain of sparks trailed up my spine. “So. Are you ready to go?”

It would have been more comfortable to tumble into Nikki’s rusty old car between her and Tom, breathing the coconut air freshener and spilled coffee and the residue of Nikki’s hidden cigarettes. The prospect of riding with Pierce—being alone with him, away from everyone else—was like standing at the top of a snowy hill. Excitement and fear swept through me in freefall.
Pierce Caplan.

“Um . . . yeah. I’m ready.” I gave Tom and Nikki a quick wave. “Thanks anyway, guys. Talk to you later.”

“Okay.” Nikki took a step backward. Her face was hard to read. “See you later.”

Pierce guided me past her, down the stage steps, up the aisle. I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to know if Nikki and Tom were still watching us with those strange looks on their faces.

Pierce led the way through the school doors and across
the parking lot. Daylight had already drained from the sky. Just a few streaks of indigo seeped up from the horizon.

I tried to remember the last time I’d been alone with Pierce—not counting the two awkward minutes in the greenroom before auditions, or the way he’d surprised me, puffy and unwashed, in my bedroom. It had been years, I knew that much. We’d started to veer apart in middle school, me turning toward plays and him toward sports. Still, every now and then on summer weekends, he’d call and we’d swim together in his family’s pool, splashing each other with diving toys, having breath-holding contests under the crystal green water. Or we’d take our bikes and explore new parts of the neighborhood, chasing each other through the alleyways. Dad was always so pleased when he heard I’d spent the day with Pierce. He didn’t like my new theater friends. He called Tom and Nikki the Spice Girls. Sad Spice and Scary Spice. I had to beg him not to do it to their faces.

Now Pierce was guiding me toward a glossy black BMW. I didn’t recognize the car, which made me realize again how big the gap had grown. Once, I could have cataloged every T-shirt in Pierce’s drawers. Now something as huge as his car was totally unfamiliar to me.

“Nice car,” I said lamely.

“It’s my dad’s old one.” Pierce stopped. A stricken look crossed his face. “I mean, it’s not—”

“No. I know.”

The words hung between us in a puff of frozen breath. We both knew what had happened to his dad’s
old
car.

Then the breath dissipated, and the words were gone, and we headed to the BMW’s opposite sides.

Pierce unlocked the doors. I slid into the passenger seat. The instant I’d buckled the seat belt, a nervous, vibrating sensation nestled into the top of my chest. It beat harder as Pierce started the engine.

We shot out of the parking lot.

I pressed back against the leather seat. My fingers locked around the armrest on the door. That unfinished sentence had tainted everything. I didn’t want to be in this black BMW, this slightly newer version of the car that I’d seen, crumpled and bloodstained and surrounded by broken glass in our dark garage. My panicked face stared back at me from the side mirror.

Calm. Cool. Elizabeth Taylor. Marlene Dietrich.

Pierce paused at a stop sign, then streaked forward again. The icy road tugged at the tires. I felt the car skid slightly as we rounded a corner.

He finally broke the silence. “So . . . overall, how was your first day back?”

I swallowed.
Cool. Steady.
“It was okay. I wish I hadn’t screwed up in rehearsal, which was totally humiliating. But other than that . . . it was all right.” I swallowed again. My tongue was like paper. “How was your day?”

“Not bad.”

The BMW squealed around another corner. I gripped the armrest tighter. Days of slumping around like a slug might have messed up my internal speedometer, but I was pretty sure we were going too fast for these streets. Uncomfortably fast.

Another realization hit me. Maybe Pierce was only driving me home as a favor. Maybe he couldn’t wait to get this over with. To get me out of his front seat and zoom off to whatever it was he actually wanted to do these days, with whoever he actually wanted to see. Maybe Sadie had even
asked
him to drive me home, thinking his car would be safer than Nikki’s rusty old Beetle. God, how embarrassing. How utterly pathetic.

We hit a divot in the pavement. My skull thumped back against the headrest. I heard myself suck a breath through my teeth.

Pierce’s jaw tightened.

Of course. He was probably annoyed at having to chauffeur some ex-friend around. Some weird, awkward, injured ex-friend who couldn’t even make ten minutes of conversation. The scene I’d screwed up had been
his
scene too. He had plenty of reasons to be irritated.

Before I could decide for sure, Pierce wrenched the wheel to the right, throwing me backward. The BMW skidded to the edge of the road and crunched to a stop.

The pounding in my chest turned from a mallet into a sledgehammer.

My father had done this once. In the exact same way, in almost the exact same place. Just over two years ago.

We’d been halfway between the school and our house. Dad had been silent ever since we left the counselor’s office, his fingers clenching and unclenching the wheel, and I’d sunk so low in my seat that my chin rested on my sternum.

Dad had let out a loud breath through his nose. Then, so abruptly it almost made me sit up straight, he veered to one side, nearly planting the front tires in a snowdrift. He jammed the car into park.

He’d whipped toward me, one hand grabbing my headrest. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” His voice was a barely smothered yell. “Late for class
eleven times
this semester? Participation grades slipping in every subject? And now, in-school suspension for skipping class?”

I’d stared at the hole in the knee of my purple jeans.

Dad’s jaw rippled under his skin. This always made me shiver. “How do you think this makes me look? When it’s my job to motivate students? To make them into winners? And here’s my own daughter throwing every opportunity away, moping around, turning herself into a loser like she’s doing it on purpose?” The veins in his forehead had risen. I could practically hear them pulsing. “So, would you just explain to me, please,
what the hell you think you’re doing?
”

“I told your sister I’d drive you straight home.” Pierce’s voice seemed to be coming from behind a black velvet
curtain. “But I figure I’m not breaking my word if we just sit here for a minute. I mean, it’s not like I’m driving you anywhere
other
than home.”

“Oh,” I managed. “Yeah.”

“The drive isn’t long enough to really talk. You know?” Pierce angled toward me. He didn’t have to unbuckle his seat belt, because he hadn’t buckled it in the first place.

“Oh,” I said again. The black curtain was disintegrating, taking the residue of my father’s voice with it.

Pierce cleared his throat. “I have to tell you: When I said I was doing the play because of you . . . it’s not just because you made it look like a good time.”

I scrambled for an answer. “Really?”
Good one.

“With what happened . . . you know . . . to your dad . . .”

My spine went rigid.
No. No. No.

“I knew you probably hated me,” Pierce went on. “I knew you maybe even blamed me. At least a little.”

Why?
I wanted to say.
Because your dad’s still alive and mine’s not? Because my dad spent his last minutes with you instead of with us?
But I just swallowed one more time and said, “You weren’t driving.”

“But I was there.” Pierce stared through the windshield. I scraped my gaze along his profile like I was honing it. Perfect nose. Strong chin. Dimples that were visible even when he wasn’t smiling. The ache pounded harder. “What happened—” Pierce went on “—you know—losing him . . .”

I gritted my teeth.
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

“It was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. And then, as the months went by, it was like . . . I started to realize I’d lost
you,
too. I mean, I understood it—why you wouldn’t want to see me or talk to me anymore. But for me, really, that turned out to be even worse.”

The thing in my chest thrashed.
I wasn’t the one who pulled away,
I wanted to scream.

Suddenly Pierce turned to face me straight on. “I’ve missed you, Stuart,” he said softly.

I slid my papery tongue over my lips. “I missed you too.”

He grabbed my hand. His skin was warm and dry in spite of the cold. I found myself cataloging all the ways it was different from the hand that had held mine in the red-lit stairwell. This hand felt smoother. Warmer. Golden.

“When I heard what had happened to you—that you’d been in an accident, and you were in the hospital, and it was serious—that’s when I told myself that I wasn’t going to waste any more time.” Pierce gave me a little smile. “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s like the universe was telling me, ‘Hey! Here’s this thing you lost once, and now you almost lost it again for good, so you’d better wake up and see how much you care about it. Maybe try to get it back, if you still can.’”

The words falling out of Pierce’s lips couldn’t quite make their way into my brain. I almost said,
That’s nice,
because he had stopped talking, and I couldn’t figure out
what else to say. I just held perfectly still as he wrapped my hand in both of his.

He ran his thumbs over my knuckles. “Maybe that was the point of all of this. Like, these things had to happen to push us apart and bring us back together. And now it means more. Because we both know what we’ve missed.”

He looked so earnest—so almost-joyful—saying this. Like he’d just won some fantastic prize and was waiting for me to congratulate him.

“So,” he went on, giving me the half smile that made one of his dimples flicker, “what do you think?”

“What do I think?”

“I mean, I know we can’t go anywhere right now, but how about when you’re better?”

“When I’m better . . . What?”

“Do you want to hang out? Go to a movie, or out for dinner, or something?”

“Oh,” I said, for the eight hundredth time that day. “Sure.”

Pierce was still smiling, but now his eyebrows pulled together. “‘Sure,’” he repeated, in my dreamy tone.

“Yes,” I said, more loudly.
“Sure.”

Pierce gave me one more bemused look. Then he turned back toward the windshield, clicked the turn signal, and edged back out into traffic.

The moment we bumped into my driveway, I threw open
the passenger door. The car hadn’t even stopped moving. If I could get away from Pierce fast enough, I might be able to make it indoors without falling apart. I lunged out of the BMW, dragging my bag clumsily after me, and bolted toward the front door.