Salvation (12 page)

But Beth had been too consumed with disguising her own automatic desire to defend him to pay much heed. She knew Ni’s sarcasm came from a history of defending
her
after spending hours, in the eighth-grade girls’ bathroom, watching Beth cry her eyes out over Salva’s failure to notice her. Which was why Beth had failed to tell her best friend about the study sessions. For five and a half months.

I should have been up front from the very beginning.

There was so much about Salva that Beth wanted to discuss.

His mother for one. He
never
spoke about her.

In fact, he rarely talked about anyone in his family, though Beth remembered he had an older brother who had picked him up every day from elementary school. And she knew Salva also had three sisters, the eldest of whom, Lucia, had graduated from Liberty two years ago. And about whom, when asked if he saw her often, he’d replied, “Too often.”

As for his younger sisters, he claimed they drove him batty, but Beth could tell he cared about them because he had bailed on her only twice this winter—once to see their music concert and once to pick up Talia when she had been sick.

He didn’t talk about his father either, but in the essay for Yale, in which the applicant had had to select a hero, he had chosen “
Papá
,” whom Salva seemed to think had built the entire world with his own hands, then schmoozed God into taking the credit.
La familia
obviously meant a lot.

Though perhaps not as much as friendship. Beth had made the error—once—during a study session, of deriding Pepe Real for a brainless comment the guy had made in cit/gov. And Salva had unloaded on her fifty reasons why his best friend was awesome. The whole bond-between-guys-who-could-throw-a-ball escaped her. But she got that her study partner was defending his best friend.

Like Ni had been this morning.

And Ni had been right about Salva losing his cool. Beth had never seen him rail about anything as passionately as he had
during the last few minutes. Or—she glanced up at the clock—the past half hour. “Umm…I hate to mention it,” she said, “but sign-ups are tomorrow. We have to choose a Shakespeare scene or…risk dire consequences from the Mercenary.”

Their teacher had spent the morning’s lit class stressing the significance of the word
deadline
. “You
will
submit your scene on time,” she had declared, “or someone else will have the right to it. You
will
submit your first choice for the location of your performance, or there will be no way to make arrangements. You
will
submit the time of that performance, or you will not go on my schedule. And if you are not on
my
schedule, even if you have the most impressive project in Liberty High history, you will
still
fail.”

Salva looked up at Beth with shadowed eyes, but he must have remembered the lecture. He shoved his hands in his pockets and strode past her toward the stage—which she had covered, literally, with copies of every Shakespeare play she’d ever seen or read. Twenty-eight plays. Perhaps too many. But they were really all excellent. And she’d been
trying
to be organized.

He vaulted into the center of the books, then turned in a slow circle, something like a smile creeping onto his face.

“Of course,” she said, “if there’s a play you’d rather use that’s not up there—”

That was definitely a smile. “No offense,” he replied, picking up a copy of
Coriolanus
and turning it upside down, “but I think we should do something famous.”

Well, he was entitled to an opinion.

“I mean,” he added, “we’re being graded on the reaction of our audience. And if we do something no one’s ever heard of”—his thumb ran through the upside down pages of the play—“they’re not gonna get it.”

He had a point. She scrambled onto the stage and started picking through the plethora of books. “Okay, well, there’s
Hamlet
and
The Taming of the Shrew
and
Henry V
, and—”

“I think we should do
Romeo and Juliet
.”

Henry
tumbled from her grasp.

“Cuz, you know,” he continued, “it’s the only play the freshmen have read.”

Her hands were shaking. This couldn’t be happening. Could it? She’d been
dreaming
about having the chance to act out the role of Juliet opposite Salva Resendez since freshman lit, when they’d both been chosen to read the balcony scene aloud in class—something she was certain he’d forgotten.

She avoided his gaze, staring instead into the folds of the green curtain gathered at the corner of the stage. “Who…who did you want to be?”

“I don’t think we should be secondary characters.”

She dropped the rest of the books, letting herself believe, for an instant, that this was real.

“But I’m not doing one of those dorky balcony scenes,” he said.

So much for the dream.

“Plus,” Salva added, “Romeo is a major pain in the butt for the whole first half of the play. He mopes through the beginning,
then falls all over himself for a girl without even
thinking
about the consequences.”

Because thought has so much to do with falling in love.

Beth blinked—hard. And had a desperate urge to hide behind the curtain. “So that would leave—”

“The death scene,” Salva said.

She wrapped her arms around her chest and gripped her elbows. Did he realize what was in the death scene? “I…I suppose we could try—”

“No.” He stopped her. “We aren’t going to
try
it. We’re making a decision and making it work. Right?”

“Um…”
Oh my God.
“Right.”

“Good, because I have the perfect plan for the venue.” He started picking up books.

This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t—

“We had a dare, remember?”

Which meant?
She met his gaze at last.

He smoothed his hair and tucked in his shirt. “We’re performing in the center of the cafeteria,” he said. “At lunchtime. In front of everyone.”

The kiss was an issue. Though Salva didn’t think it was such a huge one that it merited Beth’s pacing the stage at 6:46
A.M.
the day of their second rehearsal. The school handbook was pretty clear in its language about “No physical acts of affection on school grounds.”

“We could just cut it,” he said, leaning back to stare at the
tissue-paper-covered stage lights. The line was his, after all. He’d had three million to master in the two days since they’d chosen the scene, in his view much more of an issue.
She’d
set the deadline, an unforeseen consequence of choosing a drama club member as his partner.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She swatted him with her script. “You’ve already learned it.”

He quoted at light speed: “‘O you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death.’”

She groaned—no doubt because of his lack of expression. But he’d get to that later, if he could survive waking up at six
A.M.
three weeks in a row. The scheduling had been a hassle. Beth had insisted, since they had only three weeks to prepare, that they rehearse every day. Which meant he’d had to barter away his Monday and Tuesday evenings so that Char would walk the girls to the morning bus. And that meant he’d spent three hours yesterday at the Laundromat with not only his younger sisters, but also Char’s punky nine-year-old brother.

At least Pepe would be happy.

Unlike Beth. Who had begun the morning by forcing Salva to haul a cafeteria-style table onto the stage. And was now harping on the stupid kiss. “The Mercenary said we should cut with
discretion
,” she argued. “The line is almost at the end of your speech. It’s clearly important.”

He rolled over onto his knees and gave her a salute. “All right, madam director, what do you suggest? I could just recite
it without any action, but that kind of screams idiot-actor-who-doesn’t-know-what-he’s-saying, doesn’t it?”

She started coiling her pencil in her hair. It was kind of cool seeing her in creative freak-out mode. “Last year,” she said, “for the fall drama production, there was a fake kiss behind an umbrella.”

“An umbrella in a crypt? Yeah, that sounds good.”

She stopped pacing. “You’re a great help.” Her sarcasm matched his.

And—well—he kind of deserved it. “Look.” He stood up, then rotated, his hands facing outward. “The real problem with hiding behind a prop is that we’re performing in the center of the cafeteria, so no matter where we try to hide, part of the audience will be able to see.”

She pulled her pencil from her hair. “We could move up along a wall—”

“No.”

“You are so stubborn!”

This from the girl who’d made him haul a table onto the stage. “Okay, so you’re supposed to be dead.” He snapped his fingers and pointed her toward the heavy prop. “Go on, die.”

She arched her eyebrows, then climbed onto the table and lay back across it horizontally. Her head was still up.

“Dead.” He climbed after her in a single movement.

“Actually, I’m not—”

“Sleeping
like
you’re dead.” He knelt above her.

She dropped her neck back. “Look, Salva, can’t you just tell me—”

“Let’s assume I’m not kissing you while you’re talking.”

She shut up.

“Or while I’m still talking,” he added. “That gives us a window of four more lines before I drink the poison.”
Death by poison in the school cafeteria.
There was a sweet congruity to that. “So maybe I’m just announcing my intention to kiss you and don’t try it until after I drink the poison. But then—” He took her shoulders and pulled her close.

She was warm. In his arms.

And smelled like coconut shampoo.

En el nombre de Dios.
He dropped her, then reached blindly for his script, pulled it out of his back pocket, and started leafing through it, even though he knew all his lines by heart. The plan had seemed so logical when he had thought it out: the play, the scene, the characters. The words didn’t bother him. Lines were just lines. And it was just a project. For a grade.

What he hadn’t thought about—what he’d failed to comprehend—was that for the scene to work, he and Beth had to do more than talk.

They had to touch.

“I move close as though I am
going
to kiss you.” He avoided her gaze. “But before I actually follow through, the poison kicks in.” He grabbed his throat and fell backward on the table. “‘Thus with a kiss I die.’”

Logic sucked,
Salva decided, as he stepped into the chaos that was the cafeteria on the day before spring break. Somehow he had survived the three weeks of rehearsals, of listening to his head rather than his body, of telling himself he didn’t
feel
anything. Three weeks of waking up from dreams in which he’d succumbed to the smell of coconut and the touch of untamed red-brown hair.

All so he could confront this: banging trays, flying utensils, shouts across the social divide. And the sick smell of scalded vegetables mixed with that of half-burned fried rice. He picked up a tray.

Then cringed as a fortune cookie crunched beneath his shoe.

At least Beth, who had staked out a table at the center of the room, couldn’t have witnessed the ill-timed step. She’d been panicking all week over the smallest details: the way her hand should fall as she died, how he should pronounce the word
betossed
, how she should throw the goblet—a school milk carton painted black.

Gossip about the best Shakespeare projects had been up and down the hallway all week. He’d seen two performances personally, one in the gym, and one in the middle of an AP calc quiz.
Now there was an idea. How could your audience not love being interrupted from straining their brains for correct functions by Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano?

Though, of course, Salva hadn’t needed their help. He’d been phoning in an A in calc all year. The course didn’t deserve its reputation.

Unlike AP English. Where a full third of his grade was going to depend on what happened
here
in the next five minutes. The Mercenary lurked in the far back corner of the room. She arched her eyebrows in his direction, then tapped a pen on a notepad. His stomach took a dive that had nothing to do with burned rice.

He sought refuge in Beth, who was watching him. She’d dressed for the part, though no one else ever did. Her grandmother’s gauzy white gown practically screamed Juliet. Or imminent disaster.

Beth had been tardy for both of their classes together this morning, then spilled the contents of four loose-leaf notebooks in the hallway. When he’d asked if she was all right, she’d muttered something about Ni having left town early for spring break. Which seemed irrelevant. He suspected his partner had freaked.

We could
not
do this.
We could just accept a lower grade and perform the whole thing somewhere else.

But they really couldn’t. There wasn’t time. They had used up every single possible day of rehearsal. And even if the Mercenary would have
allowed
them to undermine her schedule and move the scene, they couldn’t because they had blocked out the whole thing to work here. It was do or die. Now.

Salva strode forward, dropped the tray on purpose, and gestured for his boys to drum-roll the table. They complied. Any excuse for a drum roll.

He vaulted over the corner of Numero Uno and skidded across the floor for his grand entrance, coming to a sharp halt at Beth’s table.

Every sound in the cafeteria ceased.

She was dead. Her back arched across the table’s surface, her knees crumpled sideways. Dramatic.

“‘Here lies Juliet,’” he said, “‘and her beauty makes this vault a feasting presence full of light. Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr’d.’”

That got the crowd members. They knew now what the scene was going to be.

A rim of heads rose as people stood up at the edges of the room.