The Darlings in Love Read online

  “Okay,” she said into her cell, which was wedged between her shoulder and her chin. “What do I write back?” Despite its being a damp, overcast day, she was sitting outside on the steps of Gainsford, the only place at school she’d been able to find privacy.

  “Sorry,” answered Jane. “You’re on your own.”

  Natalya was sure she’d misunderstood. “What? Jane, what are you talking about?”

  “You’re ready to text Colin back on your own.”

  “No!” Natalya shook her head frantically. “Not ready. Definitely not ready. Janey, I need you!”

  Jane was laughing. “Nat, listen to you. Of course you don’t need me. He already likes you, remember? You guys have a whole…frisson that totally predates me. You just needed a little help getting back on your feet. But if you keep relying on me, I’ll become a crutch.”

  “Yes! I need a crutch.” Natalya lowered her voice to a whisper even though she was the only one around. “Please. I’m begging you. You have to tell me what my next move is.”

  “I give you my blessing. Just be yourself. It worked before.”

  “Jane. Jane! JANE!” Natalya didn’t even care that she was shouting.

  But Jane was gone. Natalya thought about calling her back, but she knew her friend. If Jane said she wasn’t going to help Natalya, she wasn’t going to help her. She typed an angry text into her phone and sent it off. i’ll get u 4 this.

  Immediately, Jane replied: u mean u’ll thank me 4 this.

  Natalya growled at the message, then stared at her phone for what felt like eons. Be yourself. That was what Jane had said. Be yourself. It should have been the simplest thing in the world, but Natalya found herself turning the two words over and over in her brain as if they were incomprehensible hieroglyphics. Surely Jane didn’t mean for Natalya to respond, yes, colin, we r going 2 b finishing that game of chess and we’d better do it sooner rather than later bc ur all i think about.

  At the thought of sending that text, Natalya laughed out loud. A girl she didn’t know was walking up the steps, and she gave Natalya a bewildered look.

  What, you’ve never seen a person sitting outside in the freezing cold and laughing maniacally to herself before?

  She waited until the girl had disappeared through the main doors, then took a deep breath and grasped her phone firmly. She was being kind of absurd. Colin had asked her a simple question: r we going 2 finish that game of chess? She did, in fact, want to finish the game he was talking about. Ergo, the answer was yes.

  Ergo. Had Morgan really thought Colin was too big a dork for Natalya to talk to? Clearly she didn’t know Natalya used the word ergo when trying to negotiate her way through a flirtation.

  To: Colin Prewitt

  yes.

  The second she hit send, she regretted it. What if he didn’t remember what he’d written and had no idea what she was saying yes to? What if he thought she was weird for just sending a single word? Should she write a second text elaborating on her first?

  She opened her phone to explain what she’d meant by yes, but as the text materialized in her brain, she knew she could never send it. the yes i just sent u referred 2 your question about whether we will finish our chess game. by yes, i mean: yes we will.

  She could not send him that text.

  She could not send him any text.

  She’d made her move, taken her hand off her piece, and now she had to wait and see what countermove Colin would make. She sat for a minute, shivering against the cold gray day, then looked down at her phone like maybe it would have received a response from Colin without notifying her.

  Not surprisingly, there was no new text.

  There was no text in History, either. Or Greek. And Algebra came and went without any word from Colin. Which Natalya knew because she checked her phone approximately fifty times during each class. This, she was able to factor, equaled a frequency exceeding once per minute.

  By the end of the day, as she packed up her bag with the books she needed, she promised herself she’d stop checking. This was getting insane. What if it took him days to get back to her? She was going to give herself some kind of repetitive stress disorder from reaching into her bag so often.

  Now that school was over, she switched her phone to loud and dropped it in her bag. She would not even think about it unless it buzzed or rang. Then she said good-bye to Jordan and Alison at their lockers and made her way down the front steps. Just as she passed the spot where she’d sent Colin the “yes” she’d been worrying about ever since, her phone gave a piercing ding. Frantically, she dug around in her bag. Her fingers grasped at half a dozen things that weren’t her phone (her pencil case, her makeup bag, her assignment book) before they finally wrapped around her beloved cell.

  n, i respect your brevity. will meet u 2morrow nite @ 7 @ the site where we played last time. c.

  Not caring who heard, Natalya gave a fierce squeal of joy, then skipped down the last few steps, dialing the Darlings as she went.

  WEDNESDAY AFTER SCHOOL when the door marked Black Box B closed behind Jane, she found herself standing in the darkest place she’d ever been. It was as if the pitch black were pressing in on her, making it hard to breathe. She took a hesitant step forward, fully expecting to slam her shin into a chair or her face into a wall, but she didn’t hit anything. She took another step.

  “Careful you don’t trip.”

  Jane let out a small cry of surprise. She’d thought she was alone in the darkened room.

  “Sorry.” Suddenly a row of hanging lights came on, and she saw Mark, who was standing by a wall of switches. He had a pen tucked behind his ear.

  “You scared the crap out of me.” Jane pressed her hand to her pounding chest.

  Mark didn’t seem to have heard Jane’s complaint, or else he’d heard it and didn’t care. He circled the room, examining the effect of the lights he’d just flipped on.

  Jane looked around also. Black Box B was, as its name suggested, a square room painted black. Glancing up, she saw that the black walls only extended about fifteen feet above her head, and that beyond and behind them were regular white walls, as if a black box had been constructed inside a larger white box.

  “The point is to have a performance space you can set up any way you want to,” said Mark, answering her unasked question as he crossed back to the wall of switches. He flipped something off and something else on, and now warm light bathed the entire center of the room in a soft pinkish glow. He nodded briefly at the effect, then continued. “They’re doing the love scenes in the round, but they’ve set this theater up in all kinds of ways. Did you see The Balcony last semester?”

  Jane shook her head.

  Mark shrugged. “No biggie. It was just kind of cool, how they used the space.” He crossed the room, grabbed two chairs by their backs, and pulled them over to the other side of the room.

  “Would you like help?” It felt almost awkward to be having a normal exchange with Mark, one in which neither of them was trying to insult or one-up the other.

  “No thanks.”

  “Okay,” said Jane, and she dropped to sit cross-legged on the floor. She was impressed by how focused he was. For once, he was too busy to be posturing.

  When the door opened and Simon walked in, Jane turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Hey,” he called softly.

  “Hey,” she answered.

  She’d thought she remembered what he looked like, how perfect he was, but either she’d forgotten, or else, in his navy blue V-neck sweater and black jeans that hung low on his hips, he looked even more impossibly beautiful than he had the day before.

  “Hey, Mark!”

  Attending to his chairs, Mark grunted in response.

  Smiling the same gentle smile Jane remembered from their first meeting, Simon took a few steps toward Jane and looked down at her. “I’m kinda nervous.”

  “Really?” She wondered if he was nervous because of her, because she’d been in the big fall production. But
that was a stupid idea. It wasn’t like she was a celebrity or something.

  “Well, sure.” He dropped his bag. “Mind if I join you?”

  She shook her head, and he sat down, so close to her, their knees were almost touching. “Don’t you get nervous before the first rehearsal?”

  Jane considered his question. She was a little nervous about acting opposite someone as handsome as Simon, but not only was that not something she was going to admit, it also wasn’t what he was asking. She thought back to how she’d felt the afternoon of her first rehearsal for Midsummer. “I don’t know. I think I’m more the get-excited type than the get-nervous type.”

  “Oh, that’s way better,” said Simon. “I wish I were the get-excited type.”

  Normally Jane might have made a suggestive joke about what he’d just said, but lately she worried that maybe she didn’t have the best judgment about what to say and when to say it. It made her feel weird and tongue-tied. Not around the Darlings. And not around someone like Mark, who she didn’t care about, but definitely around someone as cute and nice as Simon.

  Rather than risk saying the wrong thing, Jane toyed with the pearl at her throat.

  “That’s pretty,” said Simon, noticing the necklace.

  “Thanks. It belonged to my grandmother.”

  Simon reached out to touch the pearl, then hesitated. “Do you mind?”

  Jane shook her head, and he very gently took it between his thumb and index finger. His fingers were long and tapered, and he managed to examine the pearl without yanking the chain against her neck.

  “Beautiful,” he said, letting the pearl drop and looking at Jane. “Are you close to her?”

  Even though Nana had been dead for more than six months, Jane still missed her, still found herself looking forward to Tuesdays, which had been the day Nana always picked her, Natalya, and Victoria up from One Room and took them on adventures around New York.

  “I was. She died last summer,” Jane answered simply.

  “Oh,” said Simon. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Thanks.” Jane could feel her throat growing tight, the way it did whenever she tried to talk about Nana.

  Simon looked away, giving her a moment of privacy. “My grandmother died two years ago,” he said, eyes on the opposite wall. “We were really close. I still think about her a lot.”

  The sadness in his voice made Jane feel strangely close to him, even though they didn’t really know each other at all.

  “Okay!”

  Jane jumped when Mark’s voice boomed across the theater. It was as if she’d been asleep or in a trance or something. Simon seemed as if he, too, had forgotten about Mark’s presence.

  “So,” Mark said, crossing toward them and rubbing his hands together, “like I said, it’s a night of love scenes, and we’re doing a scene from Medea.”

  “Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.” Simon ran his hands through his hair.

  Mark smiled as if he had been hoping Simon would say what he’d just said. “What were you going to ask?”

  Simon held out one hand in front of himself. “Medea.” He held out the other hand like it was the second tray in a set of scales. “Love scene.” Then he mimed trying to balance them. “Does not compute.”

  Now that she thought about it, Simon was right. Jane had been so focused on Simon and Mark and all the pros and cons of working with them that she hadn’t realized how bizarre it was that Mark wanted to use a scene from Medea—a play about a woman who murders her own children because their father has betrayed her by falling in love with someone else—in an evening of love scenes.

  An evening of hate scenes, maybe. But such a thing probably didn’t even exist.

  “Okay, let’s think about An Evening of Love Scenes, shall we?” asked Mark. He looked into the empty space on the floor in front of him and moved his hands as if they were circling a crystal ball. “Wait. Wait. I’m seeing. Yes, it’s a scene from The Importance of Being Earnest. And…here’s a scene from Much Ado About Nothing. And I…my god, can it be? Not one but two versions of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.”

  Jane laughed. Mark looked up and smiled at her and Simon. “Call me a cynic, but, yawn.”

  “Oh, no one would ever call you cynical,” said Simon. “Self-important, maybe. But never cynical.”

  Mark and Simon both cracked up. Jane was surprised by how well they seemed to know each other. When she and Mark had been…well, not friends, exactly, but friendly, at the beginning of the school year, he’d acted like he knew a whole bunch of upperclassmen when really he’d just known one random sophomore. Simon was a sophomore but not the one Mark knew. So apparently Mark had become good friends with at least one cool upperclassman in the past few months. Which was kind of a mystery. Why would someone as cool as Simon be friends with someone as annoying as Mark?

  “No, seriously,” Simon said as their laughter faded. “What are you thinking?”

  Putting his hands on his knees, Mark leaned toward Jane and Simon. “You both know the backstory, right?”

  “Not that well,” Simon admitted.

  Mark turned to her. “Jane?”

  Jane had done about ten million different units on Greek mythology at her old school, and she easily launched into the story of Jason and Medea. “Medea helps Jason steal the Golden Fleece. Then she kills her brother to prevent her father from catching them when they escape. They flee to Corinth, have a couple of kids, then Jason leaves her for another woman, and she murders their children to get back at him.”

  “Wow!” Simon whistled, whether because of the grim plot line, or Jane’s perfect recall of it, she wasn’t sure.

  Mark looked at Jane and narrowed his eyes. “You’re neglecting a crucial detail. Why does Medea help Jason steal the fleece in the first place?”

  “She’s in love with him,” Jane answered confidently.

  “But why is she in love with him?”

  Okay, how much longer was this catechizing going to last? “She’s in love with him because Aphrodite put a spell on her when—”

  “Aha!” Mark exclaimed, clapping his hands once.

  Was she dense or was Mark hopelessly opaque? One quick glance at Simon’s bewildered expression gave Jane her answer. “Aha, what?” she asked.

  “Aphrodite put a spell on her,” Mark repeated slowly, an excited gleam in his eye. “A spell that, in everything I’ve read about the play, is never lifted.”

  Suddenly, as she sensed what Mark was driving at, Jane felt a tingle of excitement. “Wait, are you saying—” she began, but then her phone buzzed. Out of habit, she grabbed it and checked the screen.

  i m trying out a new recipe for next cooking class @ the community center. do u want 2 be guinea pig w/jack later? ur darling v.

  Did she want to spend the afternoon eating Victoria’s delicious desserts? Um, survey says…duh! Jane was about to type her response when Mark said, “I’m sorry, is our rehearsal getting in the way of your social life?”

  She snapped her head up and was about to respond with something snarky when she realized he was right. Remembering Mr. Robbins generally made her feel like a complete moron, and she tried to avoid having any thoughts of him whatsoever, but she’d never forgotten the key word he always used when he talked about acting: serious. It wasn’t about being good or bad, talented or untalented. It was about being serious or not being serious.

  Mr. Robbins wasn’t here now (thankfully), but if he had been, what would he have said about Jane’s reading and replying to her friend’s text while her fellow cast member and her director waited for her to finish?

  Jane slid her phone back into her bag. “Sorry,” she muttered.

  She couldn’t look at Simon.

  Mark opened his mouth, his expression annoyed, but before he could say anything, Simon interrupted, “You were saying…”

  For a second Mark seemed torn between self-importantly telling Jane off for texting during his rehearsal and self-importantly sharing
his theory about one of the greatest plays ever written.

  The latter won.

  Stretching his legs in front of him and leaning back on his elbows, Mark asked, “Has either of you ever been in love?”

  Jane was completely taken aback. Mark’s question was the last thing she’d been expecting.

  Neither she nor Simon answered him for a minute.

  “I’ve been very deep in like,” Simon said finally, his eyes down and his voice quiet. Then he looked up at Mark. “Does that count?”

  Jane felt a wave of relief that he hadn’t said Yes, actually, right now I’m completely in love with my girlfriend. I’ll be meeting up with her after rehearsal.

  Mark frowned. “Sorry. I don’t think so.” He turned to Jane. “Lady Jane?”

  What was Jane supposed to do with both Mark and Simon staring at her, waiting for her to answer? Well, in the fall, I thought I was in love with Mr. Robbins. You might know him—head of the drama department?

  Two words: No. Way.

  “Have you?” she shot back at Mark.

  “I have,” answered Mark casually. “Once. And, like Medea, I had my heart stomped on.”

  “Ouch,” said Simon, grimacing.

  Jane said nothing. She had no trouble imagining someone dumping Mark. Her problem was trying to imagine who would go out with him in the first place.

  “Yeah, well, I’m heavily medicated now, so I can talk about it,” said Mark. “Kidding,” he added. “My point is that even in the real world, when someone dumps you, you still love that person. Maybe just for a little while, maybe forever.” He hesitated briefly, then shrugged. “This play isn’t about the real world. It’s about a woman who had a spell put on her. Eros shot her in the heart with one of his nasty little arrows.” He moved his eyes as if watching an arrow sail over his head, then land in Jane’s heart. “Boom! She’s got to love Jason forever; it’s beyond her control.”

  “But, I mean…” Simon seemed hesitant to contradict Mark, but finally he said, “She kills his kids. I mean, their kids.”