Look Both Ways (13 page)

The timeline for the first show of the season is unbelievably short, and tech rehearsals for
Midsummer
start at the end of our second week at Allerdale. I’m excited that I’ll finally get to be in the same room as Zoe twelve hours a day, but the performers and the run crew barely get to interact at all. I have only three jobs during the show—carry a chair onstage during a blackout, remove it during another blackout, plug in a set of twinkly LEDs on one of the moving set pieces—but I keep missing my cues because I’m too busy watching Zoe. It’s impossible to take my eyes off her as she leaps and spins and climbs the set, which is made of giant, architectural-looking flowers. Her costume is a long-sleeved unitard, but the lighting makes it look like she’s practically naked, decorated only with strategic swoops and swirls of glitter. Her hair is down, wound with tinsel and flowers. It doesn’t seem possible that this otherworldly creature is the same girl who sat on the floor of our room with me and talked about sex and George Clooney.

Opening night is a huge success. The music and choreography are beautiful, the actors do a phenomenal job, and even though I’m standing in the wings with a headset on, it’s easy to get swept up in the magic. When the curtain comes down at the end, everyone behind it squeals and jumps up and down, and despite the fact that I had practically nothing to do with the show, I feel that joyful, relieved swelling in my chest that a good performance always brings on. Zoe and Livvy and a bunch of the other fairies crush into a group hug, and I stand in the dark and watch them glitter.

The moment the curtain call is over, the whole cast rushes the wings and stampedes downstairs to the dressing rooms, chattering and laughing with high-pitched, adrenaline-spiked intensity. Livvy and Kenji and Todd high-five me as they zoom by, and even Pandora spares me a tiny, closed-mouthed smile. I position myself so Zoe will run into me before she hits the stairs, and my heart beats a little faster when I see her approaching. For a second I wish I’d gotten her flowers, but maybe that would’ve been weird.

“Hey,” I call when she’s within earshot. “You were really great. Congratulations.”

“Thank you!” Zoe throws her arms around me, and I can feel how warm she is underneath her unitard. When she lets go after only a second and moves toward the stairs again, disappointment floods through me. We’ve barely gotten to connect lately, and I want more of her than this.

“Do you feel like it went well?” I ask, to keep her from leaving. “It looked fantastic.”

“Yeah, it felt good!” She’s looking back and forth between me and the rest of the fairies, like she doesn’t want to be rude but also doesn’t want to lose track of them.

“Go ahead,” I say, even though it sucks, because I don’t want to be the weight that ties her down when she obviously wishes she were somewhere else.

“Okay. I’m gonna go change. I’ll see you at the cast party?”

I had assumed the cast party was an exclusive thing for people who were actually in the cast. “Am I invited?” I ask.

Zoe looks at me like I’m crazy. “Um, obviously! You worked on the show.”

I’m about to say I hardly did anything, but then I remember I’m supposed to be trying to disparage myself less often. Plus, I really want to go. “Yeah, sure, I’ll see you there,” I say.

“Great! Common room of Dewald.” Zoe blows me a kiss and runs off. Even in the dim blue lights of backstage, she sparkles.

My friends will probably take a while to make their way over to the party, and I don’t want to show up alone, so I go back to my dorm to change out of my black run-crew clothes. Even after I’m ready to go, I wait fifteen minutes to make sure I won’t be the first one to arrive. It starts to rain as I leave Ramsey, and I jog toward the party as quickly as I can, hoping my hair won’t be frizzy by the time I get there.

The Dewald common room is huge, and it’s decorated with the same giant, stylized flowers as the set; there must’ve been some left over. Russell waves to me from across the room, and I’m heading toward him when a girl I don’t know bounces up to me and extends a red plastic cup. “Midsummer cocktail?” she asks. She doesn’t seem to care who I am or whether I belong here.

“Sure, thanks,” I say. I’ve never really had any alcohol besides wine, but I guess tonight is a good night to start, so I take a sip. The drink tastes like pineapple mixed with nail polish remover, and I have to struggle not to cough. Hopefully I’ll get used to it.

My friends are sitting in a circle on the floor with a bunch of other apprentices and non-equity people, and Zoe scoots toward Livvy to make room for me. Both of them are wearing tank tops and shorts, but they haven’t bothered to remove their fairy makeup: lavender lipstick, glitter dusted across their cheekbones, feathery false eyelashes, and so much metallic eye shadow that I’m surprised they can blink. Zoe looks like a burlesque dancer who’s ready to get on the subway after her show. Livvy looks like a little girl who raided her older sister’s makeup drawer.

Zoe smiles. “Oh good, you already have a drink. We’re playing Never Have I Ever.”

I’m not a huge fan of games like this—I’ve never done any of the crazy things people come up with, and I’m not eager to seem boring in front of my new friends. But it would look much weirder if I refused to play, so I say, “Ooh, fun.” These kinds of situations generate the stories that will get retold for the rest of the summer, and even if I can’t really be part of it, I still want to be around to see it.

“Never have I ever smoked pot in my house while my parents were home,” Kenji announces.

Three of the other guys and a non-eq girl with a choppy haircut drink, and everyone else laughs. “You drink if you’ve done the thing, right?” I whisper to Zoe.

She nods. “Haven’t you played this before?”

“I have,” I say. “Just checking.” After the doughnut incident, I figure it’s always safest to make sure of the rules. I want to take a sip of my drink so I’ll have something to do with my hands, but then it would look like I was reacting to the pot question, so I spin the cup around and around on the floor in front of me instead.

It’s Pandora’s turn now, and she makes a big show of choosing her topic. “Let’s seeee,” she says. “Never have I ever had sex in a bathtub full of ice cubes.”

Unsurprisingly, nobody drinks. Pandora looks around, gives a sly smile, and then raises her cup to her lips. Of
course
she would be that person who picks something weirdly specific in order to showcase how adventurous she is. Zoe rolls her eyes, and I know she’s thinking the same thing.

“I’m sorry, you’ve had sex in a bathtub full of
ice cubes
?” says the next guy in line, a non-eq with a face so round, it’s almost a perfect circle.

Pandora shrugs like it’s no big deal. “It was hot.”

“Hot like sexy or hot like too warm?”

“Both,” she says. The guy nods slowly, and I can tell he’s thinking about doughnuts. He clears his throat.

“Never have I ever had a crush on someone at this festival,” he says, then immediately drinks. Pandora flushes with pleasure but keeps her own cup on the ground. The choppy-haired non-eq drinks, and so do Kenji and Todd, who share a sweet little kiss afterward. Russell drinks, and then he glances around the room, like he’s checking to make sure no one saw him. I assume he’s thinking about Olivier. It must suck when you have to see someone every day but you can’t express how you really feel about them.

There’s a sudden clap of thunder so loud that I feel it all the way to my core, and everyone squeals. The rain is coming down hard now, and the girl who played Helena in
Midsummer
starts closing the common room windows so the water won’t blow in and wreck the decorations. I wish she’d leave them open. We rarely get summer storms like this in the city, and I love the raw power of them, the way they make you feel edgy and dangerous even if you’re actually safe and dry.

It’s my turn now, so I say, “Never have I ever cheated on my significant other.”

One of the non-eq girls half raises her cup, then lowers it, then raises it again. “Does it count if your significant other knew about it and said it was okay?” she asks.

“That’s not cheating,” Zoe says. “That’s an open relationship. Totally different.”

“Oh, actually, wait,” the non-eq says, and then she drinks anyway, and everyone laughs.

Another flash of lightning bathes us all in blue-white for a split second. The thunder is almost simultaneous, and this time the common room lights flicker and die. Everyone goes “Oooooh!” at the same time, and then we’re all laughing and talking over each other much louder than usual, like our noise will chase away the dark. Cell phone screens blink to life everywhere and float around like a swarm of giant, rectangular fireflies.

It seems like our game is over; there’s no point in playing Never Have I Ever if you can’t see who’s drinking. But then the choppy-haired non-eq digs an LED flashlight keychain out of her bag and tosses it into the center of the circle. It’s not superbright, but when we scoot in a little closer, it’s enough to see each other. Zoe’s knee is pressing against my thigh, and I think about moving away to give her more space, but I don’t.

“Whose turn is it?” Kenji asks.

“Mine,” Zoe say. “Never have I ever kissed a girl.”

Everyone but Livvy, Kenji, and I raise our cups. Zoe drinks, and I wonder if her kiss was for a show or a party game or just because she wanted to. I feel bizarrely let down that she hasn’t told me that story yet in one of our late-night conversations.

“Never?” Todd’s saying to Kenji across the circle.

“Babe, why would I kiss girls when I can kiss you?”

“I don’t mean
now.
What about before you came out?”

“I came out when I was ten. You know that.”

“I kissed a girl at a Halloween party last year,” Pandora announces, though nobody asked her. “We were both dressed as sexy Hermione Granger.”

I turn to Zoe, trying to think of a nonchalant way to ask who she kissed, and I find that she’s already looking at me. It’s probably the weird glow of the blue LED light, but her eyes look a little brighter than usual, a little more mischievous. Before I can speak, she reaches out and puts her hand on the back of my neck, her fingers cool and wet from the condensation on her cup. And then, before I can process what’s happening, her mouth is on mine.

I’ve played Spin the Bottle before, and the kisses are always either quick and perfunctory or incredibly showy performances designed to get a reaction out of the group. For a second, I’m positive this is the second kind of kiss; everyone around us starts whistling and screaming the way you do when you’re slightly drunk and everything is way funnier than it should be. Zoe doesn’t seem like the kind to beg for attention, and for a second I feel used and start to pull away. But she holds me in place, and I’m suddenly not sure whether she’s kidding or not. I can’t even figure out whether I
want
her to be kidding.

Zoe finally ends the kiss and opens her eyes. For a few seconds, she hovers a centimeter away from my lips, still so close to me that her false eyelashes brush my cheekbones when she blinks. I inhale the smell of her foundation and her grapefruit shampoo and her vodka-cranberry breath, and even though my heart is racing, there’s nothing in me that wants this moment to end. Across the circle, people are still whooping and hollering, but it feels like there’s a barrier between us and them, like their voices are on the radio or underwater.

“There,” Zoe says in a quiet voice meant only for me. “Now you’ve kissed a girl.” She takes her hand off my neck and sits back up like nothing unusual just happened.

Because I have no idea what else to do, I pick up my cup and drink.

And then the world moves forward, like Zoe’s kissing me isn’t a monumentally big deal. Livvy takes her turn, telling us that she has never hooked up with someone older than thirty, and then the girl on her other side says that she’s never lied during a game of Never Have I Ever. But I’m not paying attention anymore. What did Zoe’s kiss
mean
? Did it mean anything? Would I be disappointed if it turned out to mean nothing? Livvy hasn’t kissed a girl, either, so why didn’t Zoe kiss her? Was she looking for an excuse to kiss me?

I grab my phone, turn on the flashlight, and stand up. “I’ll be right back,” I say.

Zoe touches my ankle, and even that seems to mean something now that it wouldn’t have meant two minutes ago. “You okay?” she asks.

“Yeah, of course.” I hurry toward the bathroom, and she doesn’t follow me.

Once I’ve made sure I’m alone, I set my phone on the metal ledge under the mirror and point the light at the ceiling so it casts a diffuse glow around the room. I’m breathing so fast, I’m starting to feel a little dizzy, and I brace my hands on the sides of a sink and force myself to calm down. I have no idea why I’m so worked up; I have no problem with girls kissing each other. Women kiss in front of me all the time. Theoretically, I believe nobody is totally gay or totally straight. It’s just that I’ve never applied that idea to
myself
before. I’ve never even thought about kissing a girl. I certainly didn’t expect to enjoy it.

Am I taking this whole thing way too seriously? Maybe Zoe’s kiss only seems earth-shattering because it feels amazing to be chosen by someone so important to me. But maybe it wasn’t about me at all; she could be the kind of person who will kiss anyone when she’s a little drunk. In the morning, maybe she won’t even remember that she did it. Or what if it was some sort of joke, something another apprentice dared her to do before I got to the party? I’m not sure I could stand that.

It didn’t feel like a joke, though. It felt like she really wanted to kiss me. And if she wanted to do it again, I’m pretty sure I would let her.

I tell myself there’s no way that’s going to happen. The whole thing was probably a throwaway gesture; everyone here is overly affectionate with each other. Plus, Zoe has a boyfriend, and she’s totally happy with him.

But it happened. I’ll always know it happened, even if it never happens again.