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  After the curtain closed, I waited anxiously for all the audience members to file out of the auditorium. But I had to wait until they were gone before Ross and I could shut everything down and lock up the booth.

  I rushed through the house and made my way backstage, which emptied into the drama department hallway. People were all over the place; the cast included more than twenty students, and everyone’s family and friends were crammed into the hallway, holding flowers, talking, hugging, congratulating. I didn’t see Mom, Dad, or Gabby anywhere yet, but I knew they’d make their way back.

  Eagerly, I scanned the hallway for Becky, and spotted her newsboy hat a few yards away. I figured this was a great time to scam a hug from her. I mean, everyone was hugging everyone back there, so why not?

  I almost called her name, but then figured she wouldn’t be able to hear me over all the noise. I started shoving past people to get to her.

  Becky was making her way to a guy wearing a dark suit and a woman in a black strapless dress. I assumed they were her parents. They wore the clothes well, unlike my dad when he had to dress up for work or business meetings; Dad was a blue-collar guy, and you could just tell his suit wasn’t the best, and that he didn’t know how to move in it. This guy looked like he woke up wearing an Armani. I recognized the woman as the one who’d gotten out of the SUV last year to coax Becky to get in.

  From where I stood, I had sort of a profile view of the couple and of Becky as she moved toward them. I tried to get to her before she got to them. Her father’s hair was jet-black, touched with distinguished gray on the sides. Her mother’s blond hair was wound around the back of her head tightly, reflecting gold beneath the fluorescent lights. Becky and her mom looked a lot alike.

  Wow, I thought. Becky’s got her looks.

  Becky got to them before I could reach her. Damn it, I thought. I didn’t want to interrupt them, at least not right away.

  I was surprised to notice right then that for the money that seemed to ooze from their tanned skin, neither of her parents held flowers. You’d think they could spring for a rose or two. God knows I would have if I’d thought I could get away with it without raising Sydney’s ire. Maybe they didn’t know it was a tradition to give actors flowers. I hadn’t known until Becky told me during one of our rehearsal breaks, just like I hadn’t known to not say “Good luck.”

  “Dad!” Becky said. She was smiling hopefully up at him. She lost about six years wearing her costume, still looking like nine-year-old Scout approaching civic-minded Atticus.

  “Hey!” her dad said. “Where’s the kid who played Atticus? Have you seen his parents?”

  Becky’s smile dropped a little. “Atticus?” she repeated. “Oh. Um … Matthew Quince?”

  Her dad opened the cheap photocopied playbills we’d made earlier in the week. “Right, Matthew,” he said, and scanned the crowd. “Is he back here somewhere?”

  “Um … yeah …,” Becky said. Her smile was gone now.

  “There he is,” Mr. Webb said. “And there’s Don and Lydia. Let’s go.”

  I tried to figure out who the hell Don and Lydia were as Mrs. Webb patted her hair and tossed a smile across her painted lips. Mr. Webb bustled through the crowd with his wife gliding beside him.

  They came up behind Matthew, who was hugging a guy so tall he had to be Matthew’s dad. Mr. Webb put a hand on Matthew’s shoulder.

  “Hey, here’s the star!” Mr. Webb gushed. “You were just incredible, Matthew. Didn’t you think so, Carla?”

  “Oh, he was,” Becky’s mom said, putting a manicured hand on her throat. “Just wonderful!”

  I turned to look at Becky. Her chin dipped, inch by inch, until she was staring at her shoes.

  “Don, good to see you!” Mr. Webb said, pumping Matthew’s dad’s hand. “Lydia, looking great as always …”

  I had no idea what that little exchange was all about, and at that moment, I didn’t care. I could’ve killed them both.

  Becky took a few more steps until she reached a hallway wall, then leaned back against it, still staring down.

  I pushed through a few more people to get to her. “What’s up with all that?” I asked her, shooting a useless glare at her parents. They were still busy gushing over Matthew, who looked uncomfortable and dismayed at the attention.

  “Clients,” Becky whispered.

  “What?”

  “Don and Lydia Quince are Mom and Dad’s clients,” she said to the floor. “That’s why they came tonight.”

  “Your parents?” I said, still totally lost. “You mean they didn’t …”

  I couldn’t make myself finish the sentence. You mean they didn’t come to see you?

  “Becky … god, I’m sorry,” I said.

  Becky didn’t look up. Just nodded distantly.

  “You were awesome,” I told her.

  She made no move. The newsboy cap shaded her eyes. I was tempted to touch her chin, get her to lift her face, but I didn’t. After a moment, Becky raised her head and shrugged.

  “Thanks,” she said carelessly. “Glad you thought so.”

  She sounded casual, unaffected by her parents’ attitude, but I couldn’t believe it.

  “You want to get out of here?” I asked, just as my cell vibrated in my pocket.

  Cursing, I checked the screen. A text from Sydney.

  WE WON FIRST PLACE!!!

  “Crap,” I whispered. I started typing back, and while I was doing that, Becky suddenly launched herself off the wall and tore through the crowd, making a beeline for the classroom serving as the girls’ dressing room.

  “Shit!” I said as I finished my text: Cool good job glad to hear it

  Hands landed on my shoulders from behind me just as I sent the message. “Dude, that was awesome!” Gabby said into my ear.

  I barely got turned around before she wrapped me in a hug. Mom and Dad appeared, waving and smiling, and grouped up on my sister and me so that we were in a standing dog pile.

  “That was tremendous!” my mom said.

  “Great show, Ty, great show,” Dad said.

  “Thanks,” I said, still strangled. They finally let me go but blocked my path.

  “You guys have a great department this year,” Gabby said. “No kidding. I thought it was just going to be like our little shows, but whoever’s running the department now really knows their stuff.”

  “That’s Mrs. Goldie, yeah,” I said, trying not to keep too conspicuous an eye on the dressing rooms. “She’s great. The actors are really good, so … that helps.”

  “Oh, yeah!” Gabby said. “They really tore it up!”

  Mom glanced around at the crowd. “Where is Sydney?” she asked. “I thought she’d be here tonight with you.”

  “Debate tournament,” I said. “It was a qualifier for State. She’ll be back later. They won, though.”

  “Oh, wonderful!” Mom said.

  “Not surprised,” Gabby said.

  Before they could go off on how remarkable my girlfriend was, I said, “I need to start on our lockup, so I’ll see you at the car?”

  “Sure thing,” Dad said, patting his pockets for his keys. He does this twelve times per minute; it’s kind of funny. “We’ll be waiting. Let’s go, everybody.”

  Mom gave me another hug, and Gabby punched me rapid-fire in the ribs. Not hard. Then they shuffled through the crowd and out of the building.

  Since I couldn’t very well go into the actresses’ dressing room to see if Becky was still there, I moved back into the auditorium to start doing our final lockup. It took maybe ten, fifteen minutes, whereas during the last week of rehearsal, it had taken me twenty. I may have been rushing the tiniest bit.

  When I got back to the hallway, the place had cleared out except for a couple of actors lingering with their families.

  I didn’t see Becky’s parents, or Becky, anywhere.

  “Hey, did Becky come out yet?” I asked Ross, who was talking with Mrs. Goldie.

  “Um … couldn’t sa
y, man. Hey, good work tonight, by the way.”

  “Thanks, you too. Listen—”

  “Oh, Tyler!” Mrs. Goldie said, giving me a school-district-approved side-hug. “Ross is right, you were simply marvelous. Nice job!”

  “Uh, thanks, but listen—”

  “Did you do an idiot check on the lobby?” Ross interrupted. “Idiot check” was a slang term for triple-checking to ensure all the doors had been locked and everything valuable put away, that kind of thing. There were plenty of students with sticky fingers wandering around during school hours.

  “No, not yet,” I said, giving up my quest to ask them for more info on Becky’s whereabouts. “I’ll do it now.”

  “Cool, thanks. Hey, you coming to the cast party Saturday?”

  “I can’t heeeear this!” Mrs. Goldie sang with a laugh, and went into her office. Cast parties, I’d been told, had nothing to do with Masque & Gavel. Only students who’d been involved with the show got invited, but the parties weren’t official in any way. I’d also heard they were way more insane than the parties held by other students. It was hard to tell facts from rumors around the department, though. Freshman year, I’d heard that all the guys were black belts in karate. And that some kid once dressed up like the Phantom of the Opera and ran around the auditorium in the dark. And that—well, you get the idea.

  “I hadn’t … no, I didn’t plan … I mean, I don’t know,” I said to Ross.

  “Well, you should,” he said. “It’ll be a rager. I’m gonna get wiped out.”

  I wondered if Becky would be there. “Sure, yeah,” I said, just in case. “I’ll be there.”

  “Cool.”

  I headed back into the auditorium to do my idiot check on the lobby doors and the booth. The only lights left on now were work lights high above the stage. The set cast shadows in every direction. An empty auditorium, even with the house lights on, can be a creepy place, no doubt about it.

  I jogged through the auditorium, checked all the doors, then made my way back toward the stage. Movement in the stage right wings—the spaces just offstage—caught my eye. Not wanting to be stuck there any longer than I had to, I started to move in that direction to tell whoever it was that we needed to vacate.

  And stopped dead.

  The stage manager had a tall stool to sit on during the show so he could see over everyone’s head onstage and call up cues to Ross and me in the booth. Becky was sitting on that stool. I could only see her profile. She still wore the newsboy cap and the rest of her costume.

  But the straps on her overalls were undone and hanging by her hips, the bib rolled down to her waist. Her head was tilted back, her eyes closed. The off-white button-down shirt she wore under the overalls was open.

  She wore nothing beneath that. I could see one small point of her star tattoo.

  And Matthew Quince/Atticus Finch was in front of her, his face buried in her chest. The sounds I heard, the noises he made, grabbed my intestines and wound them around a splintered wooden spool.

  I hadn’t made a sound, but Becky’s head suddenly turned toward me, her eyes open. Matthew didn’t seem to notice. Guess I didn’t blame him.

  We locked eyes, Becky and me. For a thousand years.

  I waited for her to push Matthew away. Or tell him to stop, at least.

  She didn’t.

  Just looked at me looking at them.

  I took a backward step, quiet. Then another. Then turned and hurried out to the hallway. I didn’t know this for sure, but I felt like she watched me every step of the way.

  By the time I got to our car a few minutes later, I was enraged. I knew it was stupid, but it was like, how could she do this to me? And the obvious answer was, she wasn’t. We weren’t together. She could do whatever she wanted. With whoever she wanted.

  “All set?” Mom asked as I got into the backseat beside my sister.

  “Yes,” I snapped.

  “Whoa, Tyler,” Dad said, starting the engine. “Did you blow the place up by accident or something?”

  “Let’s just go.”

  Mom frowned, looking over her shoulder at me. Gabby’s face was surprised too.

  “Hey, Dad was kidding,” Mom said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t wanna talk about it. Can we go?”

  “Was it the show?”

  “No, Mom, it wasn’t the show, the show was fine, can we leave, please?” I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes, wishing for steel wool to abrade the image of Becky and Matthew from my corneas.

  “Okay,” Dad said. “We’re outta here.”

  I wanted to scream, wanted to punch Matthew dead in the face. I could’ve buried that tall sucker.

  “What’s up?” Gabrielle whispered.

  I shook my head.

  The parking lot was almost empty. Just as Dad was backing out of the parking space, I saw Becky come out of the drama department. She didn’t see me, and she didn’t know what kind of car Dad drove. She got into the driver’s seat of a blue Jeep Liberty SUV, shiny beneath the parking lot lights. She’d changed into her regular clothes.

  Briefly, through my rage, I wondered how in the world she was allowed to drive. She was fifteen too, and couldn’t have gotten more than a permit to drive with another licensed adult. I didn’t see anyone in the car with her.

  When Dad drove past her, she didn’t even look up. She just put both hands on the top of the steering wheel and rested her forehead between them.

  I almost told Dad to stop. To go back. That there was someone I needed to talk to.

  Almost.

  Dad turned on the radio as we pulled out of the lot. I guess I’d brought the whole fam down, because no one said a word. I did see Gabby getting and sending text messages for a bit, but that was all.

  Gabrielle scowled at her phone. “Give me your cell,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Now.”

  Because older sisters always win no matter what, I tossed her my cell. Gabby began texting real fast, eyes narrow in the pale light of the screen. After a minute, she tossed it back into my lap.

  “There,” she said. “I just bailed your ass out.”

  I looked at my outgoing messages. The last one was to Sydney.

  Hey sorry my last text was short had stuff to do. You are awesome! I knew you’d do great. Congratulations, Syd. I’ll take you out for dinner to celebrate. :)

  “The hell’s this?” I said to Gabby.

  “Her team won first place,” Gabby said. “And you’re all like, ‘Hidey-ho, whatever, nice job, have a neat summer.’ God, you’re dumb sometimes.”

  Oops. While I couldn’t bring myself to thank Gabby out loud—my mind was still mostly elsewhere—I did have to acknowledge that she probably just saved me a whole lot of trouble.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Mom asked.

  “Nothing,” we said together.

  A few minutes later, about halfway home and only mildly back in my right mind, I asked everyone, “You’d tell me if I did a bad job, right?”

  Mom turned. “Bad job at what, sweetie?”

  “In the show. I mean, if the lights sucked, or the stage went black or something. You’d tell me, right?”

  “If the stage went black, I think you’d know,” Dad said.

  “Okay, what if I was an actor, and I totally sucked? You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  Mom winced. “No,” she said carefully. “I don’t think we could ever say you sucked.”

  “Even if I did?”

  “No,” she said again. “Even if you did, we’d still be proud of you, and we’d tell you so. At the absolute worst, it still takes a lot of guts to get up in front of people and perform. And, Tyler, we are proud of you, being so involved like this. We both think it’s been really good for you.”

  “Yep,” Dad said. “Absolutely.”

  I hadn’t known that. I forgot about Becky for a nanosecond. “How so?”

  “It got you away from your computer,” Mom said, glancin
g at me with a grin. “Not that we want you to stop writing, of course. We’re both proud of that, too. But your mood has definitely been different coming home from school after rehearsals. Lighter. More … smiley.”

  Well, that was an easy one to explain. Not that I was about to try.

  I wasn’t surprised by her response, either. It was nice to hear, obviously, but not a shock. Mom and Dad were pretty attentive to me and Gabrielle both. Irritating, yes. But kinda nice.

  “You want to tell us what’s bothering you?” Mom asked as we stopped at the last streetlight before our neighborhood.

  “A friend of mine is in the show,” I said. “And her parents didn’t even congratulate her. Just went on and on about this other guy because his parents are their clients or something.”

  “What kind of clients?”

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, that is obnoxious,” Mom said. “How’d she take it, this friend of yours?”

  “She seemed okay, but I think it hurt her.”

  “It did,” Dad stated, moving the car through the green light. “I guarantee you it did.”

  Mom nodded. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “You should’ve pointed her out to us so we could give her extra lovin’s.”

  I snorted at the dumb phrase. “Extra lovin’s,” huh?

  Was that what Matthew had been giving Becky?

  I sit down on the short wall delineating the grass from the parking lot, switching my cell to my other ear. “Mom and Dad again, huh?” I ask Becky. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Becky says. “Just everything.”

  “What can I do? Name it.”

  Becky is quiet. I don’t push. I’ve learned over the last year it won’t get me anywhere. So I sit and wait, wishing for the first time in my life that I smoked so I’d have something to do.

  “I don’t know where else to go,” she says finally.

  “Go?”

  “I mean … I don’t know.”

  “Becky, if you want me there, I’m there. You know that.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Another long pause.

  “You gotta talk to me,” I venture. “I’ll sit here on the phone all night if you want me to, or I’ll come over, or bring you a freaking gallon of Ben and Jerry’s, or whatever, but I can’t help if you don’t tell me how.”