Beneath The Skin(50)

Maybe Candace isn’t even spreading the rumor. Maybe others are. Maybe no one is. Maybe it’s just Avery’s wishful thinking.

I kinda wish I was gay. Eric makes it seem so fun.

The lights dim a few times, signaling the start of the show. I start to move toward the black box theater, a ball of confusion swimming in my head. Clayton’s whereabouts remain a total mystery as I find a seat all by myself. I belatedly spot Dmitri sitting with Dessie and Chloe on the other side of the seating area, which both annoys and comforts me. Dmitri makes eye contact and flags me over, patting an empty seat next to him. I cross my arms and pretend not to notice, turning towards the stage with a sigh.

I guess I really am just here for Eric. Wherever the hell he is.

Before the show starts, I yank out my phone and text good ol’ Clay-Boy, asking if he’s running the lights or if he stayed home. Then I fold my arms and slouch in my creaky chair, waiting for the play to start as the gentle murmur of the audience swallows me up.

The lights go down at last. Whether or not that’s a product of Clayton’s doing, I still don’t know.

I hear shuffling in the dark as the actors take their place. When the lights come up, they reveal a man and a woman at a table. The woman stirs a mug of something very demonstratively—y’know, to show us she’s acting really, really hard—and the man is scrolling through something on his prop phone, squinting at it.

Already, I’m annoyed at their positioning on the stage. They’re too center. The whole set is irritatingly symmetrical. Then, as they start to argue—as, I guess, most people end up doing in plays anyway—I get annoyed with the whole scene in general. If I were to direct this play, I’d throw off the balance visually. Maybe the table should be more to the left or something, just to give the stage more appeal to the eye, more asymmetry, more discord. That’d add to the tension, I think.

Most of the play is spent just like that: me, kicking back and acting like I know the first thing about directing or set design or lighting or anything at all. Really, that’s Dessie and Clayton’s world, and I’ve never had a part in it.

Still, the symmetry bothers me from the beginning to the very end. So much so that I only seem to pay attention to the dialogue at one key moment when the woman slaps the phone out of the man’s hand and says, “If ya’d quit livin’ in ya world, take a step back, and actually look at it, maybe ya’d see what the hell ya got right in front a’ ya!”

Her accent is terrible, true, but the words resonate. I lean forward at that point in the play, my elbows propped up on my knees and my chin balanced on my knuckles as I squint at the stage, scrutinizing every dumb little moment … and those words she just uttered.

Maybe I need to step back from my world, stop living in it, and actually look at it.

Look at it …

I really, really wanna wreck that annoyingly balanced stage.

After the show, the lobby becomes such a turmoil of noise and bodies that I don’t even bother looking for Dmitri. Besides, I’ve got somewhere else to be, according to the time and the flyer I saw hanging outside my digital media class this morning. Trouble is, without Dmitri, I don’t have his car to drive me.

Not that he’d allow me in it again, after the condition in which it was left the last time I borrowed it.

I push through the glass doors and dump into the courtyard, then pull out my phone, curious if Clayton might be, in fact, home. I didn’t get an answer from him during the whole duration of the fifty-minute play. I text him again, frustrated, then stare at my phone and await his response. I flip through Facebook while I have it open, scrolling past pics of kitties and big-boobed ladies in swimwear.

I hear the doors open behind me and a group of laughing people escape it. Behind them, the foot-taller-than-anyone-in-the-lobby Avery emerges, pulls a purse over his enormous, muscled shoulder, then saunters down the road.

An idea hits me. “Hey, Avery.”

He stops and turns, his eyes hunting for the person who said his name. They find mine and a look of curiosity takes his face.

I approach him, shove my phone away, then thrust my hands in my pockets. “You got plans?”

His face melts. “Ooh, Branty-boy. You’re gonna make all my dreams come true, hmm?”

I shrug. “Maybe. Do your dreams involve a big ol’ flashy art exhibit? I’m not walkin’ these streets alone at night, that’s for damn sure.”

He lifts a pencil eyebrow. “And you think a big girl like me’s gonna keep you safer?”

I appraise him for a moment. “Quite frankly, yes.”

A grin crosses his face that is both frightful and charismatic. “I got better things to do than gamble my heart on a straight boy. Been there, done that.”