Read My Lips(52)

So after a miserable Sunday like that, why would I expect Monday to bring me anything good?

On my way into acting class, I see Victoria. She stands in front of the box office chatting with Eric at the window. They draw silent at my arrival. My stomach dances in the bad way at the sight of her. It’s the first time I’ve really seen her since the cast list was posted. How she’s managed to avoid me for this long is a total mystery, considering she lives directly across the hall from me.

“Hello,” she says coolly.

Between Clayton not answering my texts from yesterday and my own inner frustrations, I find myself in a state of having little to no patience. “Victoria.”

“Desdemona Lebeau,” she murmurs, crossing her tiny arms and tilting her head. “Daughter of Winona Lebeau, Broadway star and film actor, and Geoffrey Lebeau, world-renowned lighting designer.”

My heart stops. “Listen …” I try to say.

“It’s called Google, honey.” Victoria scoffs at me, shaking her head. “Unless you’re about to proclaim that there’s actually two Desdemona Lebeaus—”

“Please,” I beg her and Eric, rushing up to the window. “I didn’t mean to lie to anyone. I just didn’t want to be given any … special treatment, or … Listen, I just want to be another normal student, just like you guys, and—”

“Ugh, I feel so normal,” groans Victoria mockingly. “Don’t you feel that, Eric? Don’t you feel that sting of normalcy? Gosh, we’re so bloody normal.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” I beg her anyway, despite how quickly all trace of hope for her to respect my wishes is evaporating. “Please, Victoria … Eric …”

“Who would I tell? Who would care? You think we have nothing better to do with our days than sit around and talk about The Dessie From New York?” Victoria smirks. “Get over yourself. I have an audition at a community theater in-town tomorrow and an audition for Freddie’s play in November. I’m an actor and a big girl, Desdemona. When I don’t get cast, I get over it and move on. It’s an actor’s life.”

Her words do their intended job of pummeling me in the stomach. It isn’t lost on me that she’s calling me by my full name deliberately. That almost bothers me more than anything she’s already said.

Also, it hardly sounds like she’s moved on. “I’m sorry for lying to you. To both of you. I really am. Victoria, you were the first person I met here. Please, don’t let this ruin our—”

“I’ll see you later, Eric,” she says, turning to him at the window. “Lunch, maybe?”

He smiles tiredly, but it looks more like a grimace.

Then, Victoria saunters off, departing through the front glass doors. When I look back at the window, Eric’s on the box office phone helping a customer, his eyes going everywhere except to me.

What a lovely start to a lovely day.

I text Clayton while I have lunch with Sam sitting across from me in the UC food court. I’ve already dumped all my frustrations on Sam, subjecting her to all my worries as of late, from Clayton’s refusal to answer my texts, to Victoria’s complete one-eighty (sans the whole who-I-really-am thing), to the fact that rehearsals start tonight for Our Town and I am still swimming in fractures of lines that I do not have memorized. Not to mention a voice class routine I need to have ready to perform by tomorrow. Or a Thai Chi group-thing for my movement class I’m assigned to do Thursday. All the stress has me passing a banana and another half of a sandwich off to Sam, insisting I can’t eat it and meaning it this time.

When I finally get to the rehearsal room at six, my stomach feels hollowed out. I sleepwalk through the most of it, watching listlessly as the Stage Manager character is given the blocking for the opening scene—which basically means he’s told where to stand and who to direct his lines to and so on.

For a solid hour, I wonder what the hell I’m doing here. I stare at the screen of my phone and consider all the logical reasons for why he’s not responding.

I didn’t have sex with him. I put on the brakes.

He’s bored with me. He’s moved on to some pretty chick he met in a math class, a chick who’s tutoring him and showing him exactly how to solve for X.

He drowned himself in three more bottles of tequila and slept all day Sunday and simply missed my messages.

He made a sudden career change and he’s an astronaut now. I’ll find him on the news walking the surface of Venus and insisting that it’s totally not as hot as scientists say, his flesh boiling and his hair bursting into flames.