A Step Toward Falling Read Free Page A

sometimes when he looks out at me from inside the TV screen, I’m pretty sure he loves me, too.
    I know I’m not supposed to say this out loud. Because then people will think many uncomfortable thoughts like I’m crazy. They’ll say I’ve never met Mr. Firth and that means he can’t love me. And I’d have to say what my momtold me: that love is a feeling. And you don’t always kiss people you love. “Sometimes you just love them,” she said.
    When I asked her, “Does that mean they love me, too?” she said, “Oh sure, Belinda. Everyone loves you.”
    I think she meant teachers at school mostly, but I think it could also mean Colin Firth. When he looks at me, I feel it. I just do. I know it in my heart.
    Rhonda, my speech teacher, doesn’t agree: “He’s a character. He’s not real. He’s on TV but TV isn’t real.”
    I’m not sure what to say to that. To me he’s real. Doesn’t that make him real?
    I don’t always watch Pride and Prejudice. Sometimes I watch different old movies. I like Gone with the Wind and The Sound of Music except I don’t like it when Maria and the Captain kiss because he’s too old and looks like her father. I like Liesl and Rolfe’s song even though Rolfe turns out to be a Nazi which is a terrible thing to be. In my mind afterward, I make him not a Nazi and I let them get married and live happily after.
    Same with Scarlett from Gone with the Wind. In the beginning she loves Ashley who has a girl’s name but is a man. Ashley is very nice but doesn’t love her back. Then she meets Rhett who is dangerous and handsome and loves her right away. In my imagination, I make Ashley change his mind and decide to love Scarlett. Then she’ll have someone she knows she can count on. She can’t count on Rhett. He is exciting but not dependable. Sometimes exciting is exactly what you don’t want in a boy.
    I learned this from other movies about exciting but undependable boys. You have to be careful with them because a lot of times they’re handsome, too. So that’s confusing.
    â€œI get around some of those men—they’re so handsome, I can’t talk,” Mom says. “I mean it. My tongue gets all dry. It’s like someone put glue in my mouth.”
    I know this feeling. I have it every time I watch Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth. I can’t talk at all. Sometimes I try to watch without blinking and I can’t do that either. I get light-headed which my mom says happened to her once on a date. When she stood up to go to the ladies’ room, she fell back into her chair and felt embarrassed.
    â€œThat’s what happens when I like the man,” Mom says. “I don’t act very likeable.”
    I know how this is. I’ve had it in real life, too, not just watching Colin Firth. I felt it every time I was around Ron Moody. Sometimes, just being near him, I felt like I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Or my heart might explode.
    I didn’t feel like myself. I felt like someone having a heart attack. Except it happened every time I saw him so it wasn’t a real heart attack. It was love. That’s what Mom said when I told her about him. “You’re in love, Belinda, and that’s a wonderful, special feeling . . .”
    She didn’t say it was bad to feel that way, or wrong. She didn’t even say, “Be careful, Belinda,” which she probably should have. She said, “You deserve love as much as anyone else,” which got me confused for a while. It made me think maybe Ron loved me, too.
EMILY
    T HE TRUTH ABOUT L UCAS—AND why we’re being punished—is a little more complicated than I want to admit to anyone, especially Richard, who loves to hate what he calls “the heteronormative class structure embodied by the football team.” I’m not sure exactly what he means by this,