Dreamers Often Lie Read Free Page B

freshman hazing ritual. But he was holding the audition sign-in sheet and clipboard. A ballpoint pen was in his hand.
    His back was to me. I got one good look at his T-shirt, the shape of his muscular shoulders, the waves of his dark blond hair. Everything about him was a disorienting mix of familiar and unfamiliar, like a house you’ve visited a thousand times, but that’s now occupied by strangers.
    He turned around.
    Pierce didn’t look surprised to see me. He didn’t look happy, either. Or
un
happy. He just gave me a smooth half smile, said “Hey, Stuart,” and turned back to the clipboard.
    The electricity inside me blew out like a fuse. My head went dim. Roxanne’s speech vanished. All that was left was the shape of Pierce’s back. Dad’s arm wrapped around his shoulders.
    “Oh,” I said, like a moron. “Hi.”
    Pierce’s pen whispered across the sign-in sheet. He held the clipboard out to me.
    “What are you doing here?” The words shot out before I could decide how to say them. They came with an edge. A little sharp, a little shaky.
    Pierce’s eyebrows went up. “Auditioning.”
    “But—why?” Still too sharp. “Don’t you have—I don’t know—whatever sport they play in winter? Hockey, or curling, or something?”
    “Swim team,” Pierce supplied. There was a tiny smile in the corner of his mouth—but maybe it was just left over from the earlier one. “I quit. Coach Black will be pissed when he finds out, but he’ll just have to deal with it.”
    “So . . . what are you doing
here
?” I smoothed my voice. Firm. Cool. More like his. “You’ve never done any plays.”
    Pierce looked straight at me for a moment. His eyes were the hazel I remembered, but his jaw was squarer, and his chin was a different shape. I wanted to reach out and re-form them, like Play-Doh. And then I would wad his whole face into a ball and smash it down into its little yellow tub.
    “Actually,” he said, “I’m here because of you.”
    I felt the firmness waver. “Because of me?”
    “Yeah. It’s my last chance to get to do this. You know, before graduation, and going off to college. Being an adult with no time for fun stuff.”
    What was he talking about? Electric moths spiraled from my stomach up into my brain. I fought not to let them flicker across my face. Was this an apology? Was this the start of an explanation for the way he’d unsnarled himself from all of our lives?
    I hardened my face again. “What does continuing to age have to do with me?”
    “Arsenic and Old Lace,”
said Pierce.
    Now I must have looked like someone had just yanked a hair out of my nose. I blinked at him. “What?”
    “The play, last spring.” His lips curved into a smile. “You were great.”
    I hadn’t seen that smile—that full-on, genuine smile—in so long. Not aimed at me, anyway. The hardness started to melt. I even felt my cheeks go hot.
Damn it.
I looked down at the laces of my high black boots.
    “Oh,” I managed. “Thanks.” So, he’d seen me dressed up as a batty old lady, complete with poodle wig and body pads. Oh god. I hoped he
knew
they were body pads.
    “I thought, ‘I’ve got to try that at least once in my life.’” Pierce went on. “So here I am.”
    “Oh,” I said again. And then I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Everything was either too big or too small.“Well . . . break a leg,” I finally blurted. “That’s what us theater freaks say.”
    “Yeah. You too, Stuart.”
    He gave me another flicker of a smile. Then he brushed past me, close enough that I could smell the sharp minty-ness of his skin, and stepped out through the greenroom door.
    “When the cast list was posted, and I saw that the two of us would be playing Titania and Oberon, it seemed like life was making some kind of giant joke.” I cleared my gravelly throat. “That this guy who went from being my oldest friend to being some fashion-model stranger was going to be with me every day, pretending