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  “You don’t sound so good, Mustardseed,” I say, once I’m far enough away that they can’t overhear me. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, the usual,” Becky says. Spite draws out the last word and hones it to a sharp point. “I’m reconsidering your offer to come by in a couple hours. What’re you up to tonight, exactly? I didn’t figure you for a drinking man.”

  “Just hanging at the park with Robby and Justin. Celebrating, I guess.”

  “Yeah? Celebrating what?”

  “It’s nothing, just this magazine thing.”

  “What magazine thing?”

  I take a deep breath. I have to tread carefully here.

  “I got this thing published in a magazine,” I say.

  “Really? That’s great, Tyler. That’s awesome. Congrats, man.”

  I hate it—hate it—when she calls me “man” like that. Something about the word or her delivery seems to cement my place in her world. That of Good Buddy. BFF. Like she’s just another guy.

  Still. She’s happy for me. As happy as Becky is capable of being, anyway.

  After being bullied into it by her drama friends, Sydney ended up auditioning for Mockingbird, but she didn’t get the part she wanted. She got no part at all, in fact.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her at lunch the day the cast was announced.

  “Thanks, but it’s not a big deal. I’ve got a tournament on opening night anyway.”

  “You’ll probably take State,” I said.

  “Yeah?” Syd asked, eyeing me curiously, as if my encouraging her was a bad thing. “Why’s that?”

  “You’re smart,” I said. “And you don’t get nervous in front of people. You think fast. It’s a great fit.”

  Sydney smiled and gave me a kiss.

  Secretly I was relieved about Syd not being in the play. Because Becky did get cast. Scout Finch. Pretty much the female lead.

  Which, honestly, I didn’t understand. Even after her bouncy performance last year in Midsummer, I was having trouble reconciling the quiet girl who ate lunch by herself with the energetic performer I’d seen onstage. In my stories, my Becky character typically became a world-renowned actress. And now at least—at last—since I was on the tech crew for the show, I’d get a chance to watch her more closely, see how she was around other people. Maybe make sure she wasn’t actually dating someone from the drama department.

  The first day of rehearsal scared me to death. I’d been elected to run the light board, and everyone involved in the show, from the director, Mrs. Goldie, to the makeup crew kids and technicians—or “techies”—like me had to be there for the first read-through.

  I’d be in an after-school activity with Becky Webb. Exposed to a side of her I’d never gotten to see before. And vice versa. I just hoped I didn’t say or do something galactically stupid when she was around.

  Turned out I didn’t have to say much of anything besides my name at the first rehearsal. We met in Mrs. Goldie’s classroom, where she’d moved all the desks into a big circle. She made everyone say their name and role or backstage position. So I said, “Tyler Darcy, lights,” and that was it.

  Someone had to nudge Becky when it was her turn. She was studying her script so seriously she was biting her lower lip. Gotta say—it was kind of sexy.

  “What? Oh. Becky Webb, I’m playing Scout.”

  “Everyone knows Becca,” some girl said, not quietly, and nearly everyone laughed. Becky didn’t. She just went back to her script.

  That maybe should’ve been a clue. But let’s see: Male? Check. Teenager? Check. In love? Check. Yep, those clues were destined to rocket straight over my head.

  It was the first time I discovered she called herself Becky rather than Rebecca. I didn’t understand why someone would then call her Becca, but didn’t quite want to ask in public. So that’s what she goes by, I thought. A new facet to ponder. Becky. Becky. It felt like a spotlight had been shined on her, revealing something new and wonderful.

  It sort of made up for the fact that she hadn’t seemed to notice that I was there. I mean, we’d seen each other at the meeting … in the hallway every day … but at that first rehearsal, she just kept her face buried in her script.

  I’d read To Kill a Mockingbird before, for an English class, and the play stuck to the book’s story pretty closely. I guess I liked it. I mean, it was a great book and all. But mostly I kept my script up in front of my face just high enough to somewhat conceal my spying on Becky. The Neapolitan chick and a couple of other girls Syd had talked to at the Massengill meeting seemed to keep an eye on me, but when I looked at them, they just looked away. I got dizzy trying to balance my spying on Becky with not getting caught doing it by Syd’s friends.

  I spent the next two weeks after school getting a crash course on the lighting system in our auditorium from the stringy guy, Nick. He was cool, though. Pretty laid-back. I had trouble concentrating sometimes, because from the booth—the upstairs room at the back of the auditorium, where I’d control all the lights—I had a clear view all the way down to the stage, where Becky was more often than not.

  It wasn’t until after Nick moved away that I spoke to Becky for the second time in my life.

  I was on a ladder onstage, struggling with a wrench to attach a lighting instrument to a black steel pipe, when I heard her voice.

  “Hey.”

  I damn near fell off the ladder. Becky slid slowly across the stage, which was bare except for some colored tape on the floor showing where the set was going to be built.

  We were alone.

  “Hey,” I said back, trying to sound casual. Like hell I wasn’t an actor!

  “So you’re the new Nick,” she said, letting her black backpack slip off her shoulder to the ground. She sat down right in the middle of the stage next to it, watching me.

  I cleared my throat. “Um, yeah. I guess so. I don’t have a cool hat, though. Or a vest.”

  She nodded in mock seriousness. “I think they issue them on opening night.”

  I laughed, probably too loud, and Becky smiled. She looked tired, as if the impression she gave of serenity was actually just exhaustion.

  I climbed down from the ladder and forced myself to walk over to her. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, feel it thump in my toes. I wondered if Sydney could hear it all the way in the debate room, where she was at that moment preparing a case or an argument or whatever against the death penalty.

  “So, I guess technically we haven’t really met,” I said to Becky, stopping about five feet away. “I’m Tyler Darcy.”

  “Mistah Dahcie,” Becky said with a British accent.

  I nodded helplessly. A lot of girls have seen and adore all those Pride and Prejudice movies, with various hot guys playing Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. And of course in the movies they all have these silly accents.

  Although when Becky said it, it felt a little different.

  “I’m Becky,” she added.

  “Becky. Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “So, wait, is it Becca or Becky?” I asked, because I’d continued to hear other drama students refer to her as Becca.

  “Becky,” she said. I thought, at the time, I saw anger flash in her eyes when she said it. I didn’t dare ask why.

  “Becky. Got it. Cool.” I cleared my throat again. “I saw you in Midsummer last year,” I added. “You were great.”

  Becky covered her mouth, as if she wasn’t allowed to smile. “Thanks,” she said. “It was fun.”

  “This is a big part,” I went on, trying not to let myself babble. “Scout, I mean.”

  She shrugged but kept the shy little smile on. “I guess.”

  At which point I hit a complete and total brick wall. I had absolutely nothing else to say. Nothing that wouldn’t have sent her screaming from the auditorium, anyway. I tried leafing through all the make-believe scripts I’d been working on since that first day of freshman year in the cafeteria, before remembering they’d self-deleted from my head when Becky f
irst talked to me in the hall a month or so ago. I had nothing to fall back on.

  “So, you’re still dating Syd,” Becky said.

  I knew this made me a dick, but I could feel my face fall as I said, “Yeah … I guess.”

  Becky turned her head a bit, so her chin rested near her shoulder. Her eyelids were at half-mast. “You guess, huh?”

  Was it that this gesture was universally sexy, or that any move she made was sexy to me? Couldn’t tell ya.

  “… I guess,” I said.

  And she laughed.

  I’d never heard her laugh before. Okay, I’d barely heard her speak before, at least “out of character.” Invisible fingers tickled up my vertebrae and pulled me straight up, shoulders back, head afloat.

  “Well, your secret’s safe with me,” Becky said.

  “She’s really nice,” I said, knowing I sounded like a total dork. I would add that to my list right under “splendid abdominals.”

  “Most people are, when you finally see them,” Becky replied.

  It took a second for me to pick up on the fact that she was quoting from the play. Before I could form a response, she dug into her bag, pulled out her script, flipped it open, and started reading.

  I didn’t know if that meant we were done or what. It didn’t matter, though, because I heard the backstage doors opening and voices spilling in from the back hallway. I suddenly didn’t want to be caught talking to her, like we were doing something wrong. Which we weren’t, of course. But I couldn’t shake the feeling.

  “Got any pot, Mistah Dahcie?” Becky asked, without looking up from her script.

  I remember reacting physically to the question. Like I’d been jolted by the current from one of the lighting instruments. Which, it would turn out, was an omen of things to come.

  “Uh … no,” I said.

  “Eh,” Becky said. “Bummer. See you around?”

  “Y-yeah,” I stuttered. “I—I’ll be around.”

  The rest of the cast slowly filtered into the stage space. I expected all of them to stop and stare at us, but no one did. No one except maybe Neapolitan. I still didn’t know her real name. She darted quick glances at Becky, then me, before waving. At me.

  “See ya,” I said to Becky, semi-waving back at the neon ice-cream cone.

  Becky said nothing, her forehead wrinkled in concentration.

  I walked quickly through the auditorium seats to the booth, forgetting to finish plugging in the lighting instrument I’d been working on.

  Got any pot? What the hell was up with that?

  I watched the rehearsal from the relative privacy of the booth, struggling with Becky’s question. I was not then and am not now exactly stupid when it comes to, shall we say, illicit substances. But Becky wasn’t supposed to use them. Or even know about them. My Becky, my story Becky, was above that kind of thing. There wasn’t room in my head for this revelation.

  So by the time rehearsal had ended for the day, I’d managed to force it out of my head. Maybe, I told myself, she was testing me. Maybe she doesn’t want to date anyone who gets high.

  That had to be it.

  “What about you?” I ask Becky, kicking at the base of a light pole. “What’s going on? You said you still want me to come over?”

  Try not to sound too desperate there, cowboy.

  Becky sighs softly. “It would … no, I don’t know.”

  “I can,” I say, because by this point, I’m positive I’m okay to drive. Getting my keys back from Robby, though, even if he is a bit woozy, will be a challenge. And I haven’t replied to Syd’s text.

  “I … I can’t,” Becky says.

  Her voice catches on the last word, like she’s about to lose it. The thought of her actually crying doesn’t feel quite as sexy as I’d dreamed. It just hurts.

  “What is it, Becky?” I say. “What’s wrong, what happened?”

  “I don’t know how much more I can take, Ty,” she says. And though she’s not crying, she’s definitely holding it back.

  “How much more what?”

  I almost add “sweetheart,” but bite it back just in time. Then I get scared, thinking her “more” is us.

  “My fucking asshole parents.”

  Half of me gets righteously pissed then, ready to drive there right now and swing a tire iron at the Webbs’ kneecaps for making her feel this way. The other half of me—I’m ashamed to say—is just relieved it’s not me she’s upset at.

  Play rehearsals lasted eight weeks. I found reasons to be at every rehearsal, even though I wasn’t required to be. I still had a lot to learn about the job, I explained to Sydney. I had to meet with the stage manager, Robin. I had to meet with Mrs. Goldie about the lighting design. I had to match the color temperatures of the lighting instrument filters to the paint color of the set, do a light hang and focus, go through a paper tech with Robin …

  I said all these things to Sydney, throwing around as many of the theatrical terms I’d picked up as possible to make it all sound legit. Some of it was. Most wasn’t.

  And I was pretty sure she knew it.

  “I don’t remember Nick doing all that when he was running lights,” Sydney said in week six.

  “I couldn’t say if he did or not, but he also knew his business, and I don’t,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” Sydney said. Shaking her head, she leaned over and kissed me. “You go do whatever it is you have to do, Tyler. I’ll be here.”

  We left it at that.

  As for Becky, we’d say hi to each other every day at rehearsal. Sometimes, during a break, we’d hang out together in the auditorium seats and talk about the show. She really was good up there, no exaggeration. Maybe it was that the rest of the cast was unremarkable, but whatever. I thought she was brilliant, and I told her so.

  “You’re just saying that,” she said one afternoon.

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “You really are incredible.”

  Becky reached over and messed up my hair. It was the first time we’d made physical contact, and it sent lightning through my body.

  “Thanks. You’re sweet,” she said.

  It wasn’t “I love you, let’s get together,” but it came pretty close.

  Speaking of lightning: a week later, I got electrocuted.

  I was testing some lights behind the set to make sure all the lamps worked. This junior kid, Pete, was up in the booth, manning the light board for me. I’d plug in an instrument and yell, “Amp thirteen!” or whatever channel the light was plugged into, and Pete would power up that channel to see if the light came on or not.

  This worked for the first three lights. On the fourth, Pete amped the channel just as I was plugging the instrument in, and a blue-white spark shot from the plug and burrowed into my hand. The voltage scurried up my arm, down my spine, and back up again to my skull. The next thing I knew, I was on my back looking up at the high ceiling, with Pete standing over me, laughing.

  “You okay, Sparky?” he asked.

  I said, “Pity … prissed … pretty …,” and couldn’t say much else as my eyeballs traded places in my skull.

  Pete laughed again and hoisted me to my feet. “Happens sometimes,” he said. “Sorry, man.”

  I nodded weakly, and Pete hauled me to Mrs. Goldie’s office, where I discovered my hair was sticking out about an inch farther from my skull than usual. I crashed on the couch in the office. Ten or fifteen minutes later, I decided all my muscles were responding appropriately to my commands. I went back to work and got a round of applause from the tech crew and calls of “Hey, Sparky!”

  I waved back at them, embarrassed, and checked to see if Becky was paying attention. She was. Grinning, she wriggled her fingers at me from across the stage, and I saw her mouth make the sound “Bzzzt!”

  That kind of made it worthwhile.

  Then opening night arrived. The cast ran around all crazy and nervous. I had butterflies myself, worried I’d somehow manage to screw up pushing the big go button on the light board at t
he correct time, or that the whole damn system would crash right as we started and leave us all in the dark and it would be my fault. The guy in the booth running sound, Ross, promised it wouldn’t happen.

  Even Becky showed signs of stage fright. She was freaking adorable dressed as Scout Finch in overalls and a brown newsboy cap.

  “Good luck,” I said to her as we passed each other in the hallway behind the backstage area.

  A dozen people froze and glared at me. Becky took my hand—oh dear god, thank you—and pulled me close.

  “Bad luck,” she said in a low voice. “Always say ‘Break a leg’ or something. Never say ‘Good luck.’ Okay?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Sorry, I didn’t know.” I could barely get the words out; every nerve ending in my body had migrated to my palm.

  “Now you do, Sparky,” she said. I still thought my new nickname was dumb, a constant reminder of my ineptitude.

  But coming from her, it was great.

  And then, as if her holding my hand wasn’t enough, Becky stood on her tiptoes and kissed my forehead. “That’s for luck,” she whispered. “Break a leg.”

  “Likewise,” I managed to spit out.

  I didn’t have to try very hard to invest her gesture with more than she probably meant. I mean, it was a kiss. No matter how you looked at it, Becky Webb had kissed me. Right?

  This new wrinkle in our relationship—our friendship, to be more precise—panicked me as I made my way to the booth before the play began. I could barely see the light board in front of me through my delirium.

  Happily, the show went off without a hitch, unless you counted Boo Radley missing his first entrance by about ten seconds because he’d fallen asleep in the dressing room. Other than that, it was great. And when Becky came out for the curtain call with the tall kid playing Atticus, the entire house—that is, all the people in the auditorium, which was full to capacity because we only had three performances total—stood and applauded. A standing ovation.

  I sat in the dimly lit booth with Ross, beneath a red glare cast by the colored film we’d put over the lights, leaning back in my chair, grinning. I was so proud of her. And a small spot on my forehead still tingled from her lips.