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  “Totally,” Robbie said, unable to keep a straight face as he nudged Raiden with his hip. “Because Raid’s all about having a good cry.”

  “Totally good cry.”

  They moved around me, peering into rooms before turning into the guest room. They closed the door behind them. There was the loud click of the lock.

  So much for not smoking up.

  I walked down the steps and out the sliding door, shivering in the frigid air. True to his word, there was a space for me between Durrell and Keisha; Heather sat on Durrell’s other side, Craig next to her.

  “Oh, thank GOD you’re here,” Craig said, snorting. “There was a severe lack of penis.”

  Next to me, Durrell stiffened. I looked at Craig, gesturing for him to cut it out. He ignored me. “Seriously, I haven’t gotten some in like . . . two weeks.”

  “A new record. You must be proud,” Heather taunted.

  “You’re acting like that’s a bad thing,” Craig said, voice rising in a sing-song.

  “It kind of is,” Durrell said, pulling a face. “Seriously, don’t you have any self-respect?”

  “Like the hockey guys aren’t hooking up whenever they can?” Craig brushed him off. “I’m pretty sure Raymond’s shoving his tongue down as many girls’ throats as he can.”

  “That’s because Ray-Ray’s an idiot,” Durrell reasoned. When Craig groaned, Durrell continued, “No, seriously. He’s really stupid. The bulk of us aren’t, though. I mean, Tristan’s got his head on straight.”

  “Don’t,” I cut in sharply. Last thing I needed was Heather to go off in a peel about me still having my V-card.

  Durrell nodded, picking up on it, changing the topic, “Beau’s always got a steady girlfriend. No one’s really flaunting anything, you know?”

  “What exactly do you mean by ‘flaunting’?” Craig asked.

  “Well . . . you know.”

  Craig’s eyes narrowed. “Actually, I don’t. How about you elaborate?”

  “You’re going to twist my words and try to make me sound homophobic.”

  “I don’t think I need to twist your words. I think I read you loud and clear.” Craig stood up with a tight-lipped smile and got out of the hot tub. “I think I’ve overstayed my welcome.” He hurried back into the house. I wasn’t sure whether I should follow him or stay with Heather and Durrell and the others.

  Keisha shot Durrell an angry look. “I dare you to tell any of your teammates that they should have integrity.” Then she climbed out of the hot tub and hustled into the house after Craig.

  “Ignore them,” Heather said, turning to face Durrell. “They’re drama queens.”

  “Craig looked really hurt,” I said loudly. But Heather ignored me as she brushed a wet strand of hair out of her eyes. I cleared my throat. “We should check on him.”

  “You do that,” she said, not even looking at me.

  “I said we.”

  “I know.”

  I hesitated before climbing out of the hot tub and into her house, for a moment tempted to turn the lock on the sliding door when Durrell put his arm around Heather’s shoulder.

  I walked through the house, but most of the theatre kids had left. Peering out the front door, I couldn’t see Craig’s car. I couldn’t blame them. Leaving sounded like a great idea. I walked up the steps and down the hall to Heather’s room. After changing in my regular clothes, I went to the guest room then knocked on the door. “Hey, Robbie? You still in there?”

  There was a scuffling before the door unlocked and Robbie poked his head out. Surprisingly, he didn’t smell like weed. “What?”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Are you serious? We just got here.”

  “Yeah, but this party sucks.”

  “I already was nice enough to come here instead of Durrell’s.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll get you when I’m ready. Jesus Christ, can’t you just fuck off for a while?”

  And, with that, Robbie slammed the door in my face.

  I stood outside the door for several minutes before I trudged down the steps with my hockey bag, curling up on one of Heather’s chairs, listening to the guys holler over NHL 16 until I fell asleep.

  6

  It was hard to write or concentrate on anything with Robbie close enough for our breath to sometimes synchronize. I opened a Word doc, fingers hovering above my keyboard. It had been a while since I’d written anything, but I usually got the itch whenever shit hit the fan, or when I was annoyed with Robbie. I gazed at the screen and typed:

  There were creatures that lived in caves on the beach. Their skin was slick and gray like dolphins, even though they had legs and couldn’t swim.

  I tried to continue, but Robbie’s presence grew, distracting me, getting closer, like the table was shrinking. My room was no longer my room. Even Robbie’s smell was stronger than mine, invading the air. His stuff pushed into mine, bigger and messier. His problems were bigger and messier too. The silent suicide attempt clung like a leech on my right to brood and figure out my own shit.

  The bunk bed took up almost the whole wall, covering my few posters. While Robbie had hockey posters, mostly of the different players on the New Jersey Devils, I had two prints of abstract paintings and one poster of Patina Miller that Heather gave me for my eighteenth birthday. Only now that it was gone did I realize I needed one space to exist independently of him.

  Forcing myself to stare at my computer screen, I tried to continue. There now was a smaller house of the dolphin people, all little orphans who had to be the adults in their little hut, lying horizontally on their beds so all of them would fit. They rotated positions because the littlest dolphin person who slept on the bed wet himself whenever he had nightmares, which was almost nightly.

  “What are you writing?”

  Robbie leaned to the side, trying to peer at my computer. His headphones hung around his neck, Tori Amos’s voice now distinguishable through the speakers.

  “Stuff,” I answered curtly, index finger hovering over the mouse, wondering if I should minimize the window.

  “Can I see?”

  “There’s nothing to see.”

  “Looks like something.”

  I started to type again. I only made it through half a paragraph with Robbie’s gaze on me. He was hesitating, like he wanted to say something but was figuring out how to make it not sound stupid. I let him struggle a bit longer. Having the upper hand, even for just a few minutes, was small revenge, but I’d take it.

  Finally, Robbie said, “Remember last year in English when we all had to write short stories?”

  Of course I remembered. The teachers saved creative writing for the end of the year when everyone was lethargic and reading books seemed unbearable. It made the month on Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations more bearable. “Yeah, why?”

  “Do you still have that story you wrote? The one that was like Inception meets Being John Malkovich?”

  Red warning lights went off in my head. Robbie didn’t do nice, and he didn’t do nostalgic either. Even if he changed over the past year, he couldn’t have changed that much. This had to be a set up, but I wasn’t sure for what. And that scared the hell out of me.

  See, “Trapped in Stardust” was a short story I wrote last year. It was about two juniors, Jeremy and Melissa, who are best friends. Jeremy is in love with Melissa, but she’s in love with a superhero named Stardust. Jeremy decides that the only way to get Melissa’s attention is to kill Stardust, but he accidentally gets sucked into Stardust’s body. He thinks it’s pretty cool at first since he gets to make out with Melissa a lot, but then, realizing he can’t control Stardust’s body, comes to loathe being intimate with Melissa while she loved somebody else. I got a B+ on it because our teacher Miss Maroney, who self-published a paranormal romance trilogy about a stripper and a figure-ska
ting werewolf—I shit you not—said Melissa should have realized that it was Jeremy at the end and fallen in love with him, breaking the spell that got him trapped in Stardust’s body.

  But it wasn’t like that in real life. Best friends never fell in love. Couples who were best friends only became best friends after they got together.

  Robbie asked, “Can you email it to me? I want to read it again.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was good.”

  “Not good enough for an A,” I muttered.

  “Because Miss Maroney’s a stupid bitch,” Robbie snorted. I forgot he had bad turf with her as well. When we got our short story assignment, for once Robbie seemed excited about doing his homework. So excited that he actually would knock on my door to ask me about plot devices and generic grammar. He actually thanked me. When Robbie’s name was called, he got to his feet, story in hand, and cleared his throat. In a horrible English accent, he said, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Robert Betterby and I’d like to present my story, ‘Michael Bay is a Douchebag.’” I could barely hear Robbie’s voice over the other students’ laughter. In his story, Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese are the bosses of the notorious director mafia. To save the IQs of future generations, Tarantino and Scorsese decide that they need to burn Michael Bay’s scripts and hire Matt Stone and Trey Parker as their hit men. It featured Optimus Prime, Captain America, an appearance from Rainbow Dash, a voiceover by James Earl Jones, and the accidental death of Tarantino and Scorsese by “divine intervention”—in this case, Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s lethal farts (no, really). It ended with Michael Bay announcing that he’d be doing a remake of Fried Green Tomatoes—now enhanced with EXPLOSIONS! BOOM-O!

  Robbie got a standing ovation, a “see me after class,” and four days of detention after he told Miss Maroney that she wasn’t qualified to critique him if she couldn’t get a traditional publisher to pick up her shitty figure skating werewolf trilogy.

  But that was last year when Robbie was loud and reeked confidence. When he tormented anyone who stood in his path. Before he thought wearing a fake lip piercing was cool, became mostly silent, and overdosed on leftover Percocet.

  “Are you going to take her advice? Make it the happy love story?” Robbie asked, pushing the silver ball on his fake lip ring around until it clicked against his teeth.

  “No. Best friends don’t get together in real life.”

  “Like you and Heather?”

  Without answering, I turned back to the computer, biting back a scowl. I knew there was a catch. Robbie wasn’t interested in my writing; he was just looking for another chance to rip on me. With enough ammunition, it’d spread around the locker room, spill into the halls.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” Robbie said with glee. “That it was about you two?”

  I reached for my headphones. Three years ago, Heather and I were acting out a scene when she said, “There’s this thing I learned in acting class today. A fake kiss. Just put your hand up in front of your mouth.” We only did it once. I kind of wanted to do it again, without hands, but didn’t ask. She never brought it up again.

  Only a few minutes passed before Robbie tapped me on the shoulder again. I took off my headphones. “What?”

  “Is it harder to write fan-fiction or original fiction?”

  “Excuse me?” I questioned, enunciating my words slowly although my heart rate slightly quickened. How did Robbie even know what fanfic was? This was bad. Really bad. I sometimes wrote stories with Heather when we were chatting on Skype and her voice teacher wanted to give her a rest. Well, really, it started as roleplaying—her typing a paragraph and me responding as another character, then Heather asking me to edit it into a story for her, upping the drama and tension and sometimes sex.

  Robbie couldn’t know about that, could he?

  “Is it easier to write your stuff on your own, or the fanfic stuff with Heather?”

  He turned his computer screen toward me. Indeed it was there, an account that Heather created on Archive of Our Own where she posted our stories. There wasn’t much. Just a little something here and there about Doctor Who or Sherlock or whatever Heather’s current obsession was that she got me hooked on. I pictured my twin’s old personality telling everybody at school at lunchtime, goading everyone to join in, being pegged with Heather as losers. Although probably people would let Heather be; Heather was a girl, and girls were allowed to write fanfic, especially when they had promising acting careers. But guys? Yeah, right. Especially if those guys played hockey, even reluctantly.

  Cautiously, I asked, “How’d you know about that?”

  “A year or two ago, Heather was talking about something on Facebook she was writing with ‘a friend.’ Linked up her site and saw stuff was written by GlitterB0mb and Silenced1. Kind of figured that was you. I looked at your profile and stories. The ones you write on your own are way better. I’ve been meaning to bring it up for a while but kept forgetting.”

  I didn’t know what sort of excuse I could use to keep Robbie from teasing me. He’d rip on me no matter what the fandom was. “Don’t tell anyone,” I said, mind racing to think of what I had to bribe him.

  Robbie’s brow raised. “Why wouldn’t I? It’s good.”

  What?

  “Seriously I wish I could write like half as good as you. Your Batman thing was fucking awesome.”

  “Stop messing with me.”

  “I’m not,” Robbie said. “Seriously, the guys would go nuts over this. It’s really freaking good.” His eyes lowered and he fidgeted with his headphones. “You’re lucky you’re smart enough to do college. If I don’t get drafted, I’m screwed.”

  “You’re gonna be in Juniors once you commit to a team. And you’re definitely getting drafted.”

  “But I wasn’t drafted to a Junior team,” Robbie protested.

  “Neither was I.”

  Robbie bit his lip and put his headphones back on. Like he wasn’t sure whether I insulted him.

  I turned to my screen, though I kept glancing at my twin, who now was watching hockey fights on Youtube. The profile of his shadow took up half of the wall, making the room feel even tinier. I didn’t trust any compliment that came out of his mouth, although these few were different. He’d never mentioned any interest in college hockey before. Not that I could remember. And he never acknowledged me being smart. Maybe he was just trying to make our living situation less awkward now that I was pretty much his babysitter. I’d never be able to figure Robbie out. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to. Sometimes people just weren’t meant to be close. We fell under that category, and I kept trying to believe that I was okay with it.

  Spoiler alert: I wasn’t.

  7

  One of the things I loved best about acting class was that we always started at barre. A few of the “serious students” (aka the jerkoffs who thought musicals were a lesser art) complained, only wanting to perform in plays or on screen, but our teacher Ms. Price insisted that we needed to be well-rounded. She pointed out the choreography in stage plays such as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time where the protagonist Christopher, a fifteen-year-old with autism, went through scene-by-scene doing impressive, gravity defying moves, getting flipped in the air by the company or walking across the walls. It was hard for the “serious students” to argue with such an award-winning play.

  Doing warm ups in a class instead of with a Youtube video was invigorating. I always warmed up behind Craig. He was the best male dancer at Briar Rose and did cheer in fall. He always said his body craved ballet and it was almost physically painful to take a day off. I could believe it as I watched him, mimicking his movement as best as I could. Even though Heather taught me a lot, there were some limitations learning from someone with different anatomy than mine.

  Convincing my parents I knew what I was doing when I registered for this acti
ng class—more than halfway through our season and just after the new year—wasn’t easy. I’d lied my way through by saying they were easy electives to get As. Mom especially hated anything related to theatre. I think it made her sad. On the living room mantel was a picture of our Uncle Anthony framed in white gold. He died during a run of Smokey Joe’s Cafe. Cancer, she told us with glossy, hurt eyes. Apparently, he didn’t even tell Mom he was sick.

  The exciting thing was that with each class, Ms. Price corrected my position less and less, complimenting me on my learning curve as she pushed me for just a bit more, a few straighter lines, putting her hand on the back of my calf as I raised it as high as I could, moving it away when my foot was head level. Only two weeks later, and I could do that on my own without assistance, and without holding the barre for support.

  “You’ve really never had acting classes before?” Ms. Price asked skeptically, arms folded across her chest. I wish, I wanted to say, but I didn’t.

  “Just these few weeks with you, but Heather’s taught me a lot,” I said as I lowered my leg. Across the room, Heather beamed at me. “She’s awesome.”

  “Yes, she’s very good, but no formal training? From a professional?”

  Heather’s smile faded just a hair. I rubbed the back of my neck. “Um. Youtube?”

  “Amazing,” Ms. Price said, shaking her head in admiration. “Absolutely amazing. I wish I had you when you were a kid. You’d be on Broadway by now.”

  My breath caught. I had to look at the floor. “That’s an exaggeration.”

  “No. That’s an understatement.” She smiled at me. “You really should audition for the spring musical. We’re doing The Drowsy Chaperone.”

  “But hockey . . .”

  “Doesn’t your season end in March if you make playoffs? February if you don’t?” Ms. Price grinned. “See? I do my homework.”

  I felt a strange warmth in my eyes, like I could cry. “You . . . really want me to audition?”