Also by

WILLIAM BELL

Crabbe

Absolutely Invincible

Death Wind

Five Days of the Ghost

Forbidden City

No Signature

Speak to the Earth

Zack

Stones

Alma

Just Some Stuff I Wrote

The Blue Helmet

WITH TING-XING YE

Throwaway Daughter

For Seamus

“But if there is real love, of the sort that one doesn’t go around telling everyone about, the sort that is felt and lived …”

“You’re a changed man, Fermín.”

“I am. Bernarda has made me want to be a better man.”

“How’s that?”

“So that I can deserve her.”

—Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

PROLOGUE

“HEY, MISTER! Your smoke machine’s broken.”

The tall man in the orange parka spun around and gave me a look that could have shattered a mirror. He held a clipboard with a stopwatch pinned under the clasp.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he snapped.

“And it’s in the wrong place,” I added helpfully, pointing. “It should be on the other side of the battlefield. The wind—”

“Go away,” Orange Parka demanded. “We’re trying to shoot.”

“This is a public park. I have a right—”

“It’s not public as long as we’re here. It’s a closed set. Now go and sit over there and I’ll let you watch, ’kay?”

He waved toward the steep grassy rise that formed the eastern barrier of 11th Street Park. I climbed the bank and sat down. From there I had a great view of the whole lakefront and the crowd of people, some wearing outlandish costumes, others decked out in designer T-shirts and jeans, milling around and shouting at one another as they consulted their notepads or binders. Beside the lake a shapeless contraption huffed and wheezed and thumped, burping out puffs of black smudge that broke apart in the breeze and drifted out over the water. After a few minutes, two burly men hefted the ailing machine away from the shore and put it down where the wind would push the smoke in the right direction.

I leaned back, ankles crossed, and waited for the show to begin.

This is what I saw.

A cannon blast thundered like a sledgehammer on stone. Musket fire crackled in the smoky air. Striving to keep their footing on a barricade of rubble, overturned wagons, smashed carts and dead horses, Gascon musketeers—their long guns useless in close combat—desperately wielded their swords, holding off a howling swarm of black-clad Spaniards. Men bellowed and cursed. A trumpet blared. Drums rolled. The cannon roared again.

In the midst of the brawl, his plumed, broad-brimmed hat at a jaunty angle, one musketeer stood out, furiously thrusting and parrying. “Courage! Don’t give up, men! I have two deaths to avenge, Christian’s and my own!” he hollered from the barricade.

The long white feather in his hat dipped and swayed as he fought, and sunlight danced on the edge of his blade. He feinted, then drove forward, plunging his weapon into a Spaniard’s chest, yanking it free as the man fell—and pushed on again.

Then a snarling Spaniard swung his halberd in a vicious arc, narrowly missing the musketeer’s head and knocking his hat to the trampled ground. The musketeer retaliated immediately. Dashing at the Spaniard with a triumphant shout, his free hand arched behind him like a scorpion’s tail, his rapier a blur, the musketeer lunged. But he tripped on his hat and crashed awkwardly against his enemy with such force that the Spaniard’s halberd sprang into the air. As the two warriors collapsed in a heap and rolled off the barricade, the halberd dropped with a whack! onto the musketeer’s head.

“Ow! Dammit!” the hero screamed. He scrambled to his feet. Mud smeared his cheeks, his moustache had disappeared, his goatee hung off the end of his chin like a ragged bit of moss. He threw his rapier to the ground. “Harry, you idiot!”

“It wasn’t my fault!” the Spaniard protested from his hands and knees. “You fell into me.”

“Cut! Cut!” a female voice hollered. “Winston, you clumsy lout! That’s the second time today!”

A lanky blonde woman, her baseball cap turned backwards on her head, leapt from her lawn chair, knocking it over. “You bloody fool! Do you realize how long it will take us to set up this scene again?” Flinging a notebook to the ground, she stomped over the dolly rails toward the embarrassed warriors. “We’re going to lose the light!” she screamed, pointing at the sky.

Around the disgraced swordsman, who stood awkwardly rubbing the back of his head, the musketeers and Spaniards turned toward the shrieking interloper and lowered their weapons. Behind her, the stationary-camera man fiddled with his equipment. The dolly camera drew to a halt alongside the barricade, its operator shaking his head in frustration. Then a herd of men and women clutching clipboards and water bottles invaded the battleground, their upmarket casual rags out of place among the dusty uniforms from another era. As manufactured smoke dispersed over the lake, and the soldiers began to chat among themselves, the director and the hero squared off in boisterous conflict—verbal this time, and very personal.

I hung around for hours afterward. Although the shoot had ended badly for the movie people, everything about it fascinated me—the energy created by dozens of people busily contributing to the group objective, the technical details of cameras, lights and sound equipment, and the creation of another era in front of the cameras. For me, Winston’s comical blunder didn’t change any of that. And I was amazed that my imagination could operate on so many levels at once. As I watched the actors and the director packing up and drifting away toward their cars, the technicians dismantling their gear and snapping the clasps on odd-shaped cases, I imagined, as in a movie scene flickering on a screen inside my mind, a cavalier standing on a sunlit, cobbled street, sweeping his plumed hat from his head and bowing deeply as an elegant woman glided past, the trail of her gown whispering on the stones. In another scene I pictured myself as a fencing master, crossing sabres with a masked villain, beating him backwards thrust by thrust as admirers oohed and aahed from the sidelines and a beautiful wide-eyed girl with hair the colour of honey clutched a rose to her breast, breathless with fear for my safety.

By the time darkness had begun to fall, the moviemakers were long gone and a couple of security guards had taken up residence in the little trailer parked some distance from the shore. Before I set off for home I had decided two things.

I would skip school the next day and come back to the park.

And someday, somehow, I was going to make movies.

ACT ONE

CHAPTER ONE

I WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD when I stumbled onto the movie set in the park on 11th Street, and I couldn’t get the spectacle I had witnessed out of my head. It was like Christmas morning. What present should I open first? Acting? Directing? Operating cameras, booms, sound equipment? Creating the story? I began to pay more attention to the movies I watched on TV. I took a few cinema-history books out of the library at the top of our street. I kept my eye out for some of the movies mentioned in the books—Citizen Kane, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Casablanca, Red Sorghum. By the time I was nearing the end of grade ten and the school guidance types were nagging us to choose what they called a “career path,” I already knew what I wanted to do with my life.

There was only one problem—or, to be exact, two.

My parents.

My sister, Janine, was ten years older than me—I was “mommy’s little surprise”—and had proved she carried the Blanchard business genes when she signed up for accountancy at university as a first step toward business administration and a career as a stockbroker. She planned to amass her first million before she was thirty. I told her that unless she stopped taking courses, she’d still be in college when she was thirty. She tossed her auburn hair, planted her skinny hands on her skinny hips and told me to shut up. Besides, she added, she didn’t care if she made a million. Playing with money, especially other peoples’, was fun.

My mother, a tiny, slender woman with a limitless supply of energy, operated a hairdressing business out of our basement. The grey-haired ladies who tottered in and out our side door were a reliable indicator that Maryan’s Custom Styling wasn’t going to put the gleaming salons on Lakeshore Boulevard out of business. But Mom liked her “old dears.” They made few demands, and although they wouldn’t tolerate high prices, they always paid in cash. Our basement was like a small social club where the members came one at a time and swam around for half an hour in chemical smells and gossip.

As the hand-painted sign on the side of his blue panel van announced, my father was Cyrus’s Custom Cabinets and Carpentry, Cyrus Blanchard, sole prop. It was unusual to find a tradesman who could build a house working from nothing but a sketch on a piece of paper and then design and craft complex cupboards and cabinets with fine scrollwork and drawers that still rolled freely ten years after they were installed. I had always believed that cabinetry was Dad’s true calling, but it was the less refined work that paid the bills. Dad hired workers when he needed them and paid above scale. He resisted the pressure to expand and make more money. He said the quality of his work would drop. Besides, he didn’t need the aggravation. “Keep it simple” was his motto.

One of the people who helped him was me. I went out on the job with him on weekends and holidays. For the first years I guess I mostly got in his way. When I was ten, he gave me my own leather nail bag to hang around my waist, just like the one he wore but smaller. Better still, he put me on the payroll at a dollar an hour. By the time I was twelve, I knew how to frame a room, shingle a roof and plumb a wall. He made me learn how to lay out a roof truss—which required a few geometry lessons—even though most contractors ordered them prefabricated from the builders’ supply. “Anybody can make a phone call,” he’d say. “A builder builds.”

During the summer following my graduation from 7th Street Elementary School, he offered to give me a project to complete on my own. The reward would be half union-scale pay. When I agreed to take on the challenge, he handed me a drawing of a garden shed and gave me two weeks to build it in our yard. I had to calculate the materials list, submit an estimate, arrange for the materials to be delivered, then construct the shed. It was like a simplified, miniature house.

I passed the test, raising a structure exactly according to his drawing, except I added a window on each side wall to let in light and a gable vent on the rear wall. He inspected it carefully, tapping the studs and door frame with his knuckles and muttering. I was a little puffed up with my custom additions, but he just nodded when he saw my changes and said, “Fine.”

“‘Fine’?” I replied. “That’s it? ‘Fine’?”

“The windows and vent were left out of the plan on purpose,” he said with irritating nonchalance, scratching his prematurely balding head. “It was part of the test.”

He taught me some of the cabinetmaking part of his limitless fund of wood-knowledge, encouraging me to think differently, find alternate ways of doing things, learn the personality of each kind of wood. It always amazed me that someone built like him, with a square body, strong, thick arms and hands like baseball gloves, could produce such delicate work. Framing was done mostly with spruce, but cabinets could be pine, oak, walnut, cherry—whatever the customer wanted. I was in grade nine when I made my first cabinet from scratch—a simple corner unit with full-length doors, in cherry wood.

All this time, I kept my desire to work in movies to myself. I knew the day was coming when I’d have to tell my parents the truth, admit that I wanted to break out of the Blanchard business trust and make my career in, of all things, the arts. Then one day I came home from school and saw my father’s panel van parked in the driveway of our house on 11th Street, under the maple tree.

There was something different about it. I took a closer look.

“Oh, no,” I said.

SCREENPLAY: “JAKE, THE UNGRATEFUL SON”

by

JAKE BLANCHARD

FADE IN:

EXT. THE STREET OUTSIDE THE BLANCHARD HOME—DAY—APRIL

JAKE tears into his driveway on his bike, skidding to a stop beside his father’s van. Does a double take. Peers at the writing on the side panel.

CLOSE UP:

The side panel of the van, showing first line of print:

CYRUS’S CUSTOM CABINETS AND CARPENTRY

ZOOM IN TO second line of print:

CYRUS BLANCHARD and SON, PROP.

ZOOM TIGHTER to words:

and SON

CUE MUSIC: the first few bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

CUT TO:

INT. THE BLANCHARD HOME—DAY

Following JAKE as he drops his backpack inside the front door, walks down the hall and turns into the living room. MARYAN is sitting on the floor, photos spread on the carpet around her.

CLOSE UP:

Various photos: Jake as a baby, as a toddler mounting a tricycle, at his elementary-school graduation; more recent shots of Jake and Cyrus at a construction site, wearing their leather nail aprons. MARYAN looks up at JAKE, her face a mask of grief.

MARYAN

Oh, Jake! How could you?

CUT TO:

EXT. BACK YARD OF THE BLANCHARD HOME—DAY

Following JAKE as he runs out the back door of the house and into the garage where Cyrus has made his workshop.

INT. CYRUS’S WORKSHOP—DAY

CYRUS, wearing his nail apron, stands behind a workbench, facing away. On the bench and floor, smashed and broken tools are scattered.

CYRUS

(to himself) All for nothing.

All for nothing.

JAKE

Dad? What’s going on?

CYRUS

(turning)

Who is that? My son? It can’t be.

I don’t have a son!

FADE OUT

CHAPTER TWO

ALL RIGHT, IT WASN’T THAT BAD, but that’s how I felt when I saw the new words painted on the side of the van. I slunk into the house, wondering why Dad was home so early, shrugged off my coat and hung it on the hall-closet door handle. I yelled an unfocused “I’m home” toward the kitchen and headed for my room, hoping to put off the inevitable as long as I could. I dropped my backpack on the floor by the unmade bed and collapsed into the chair by my desk—which my father had made for my graduation from elementary school. It was solid cherry with a glowing matte finish that seemed to glare at me accusingly.

I turned on the sound system that rested on shelves above the desk, selecting a rock radio station, and threw myself onto the bed. How, I wondered, was I going to get out of this mess? I had never shared my ambition to learn screenwriting, and if anyone asked me why, I couldn’t have come up with an answer. I had always hoped my parents would figure it out without my saying anything directly. Mom and I still watched old flicks on Sunday Night Cinema together. I had a collection of DVDs running to almost a hundred titles. I hoped I’d be able to qualify for university and, if I did, to get into whatever program would take me toward my goal. Without really looking into it—I was only in grade ten—I had just assumed those kinds of courses existed. Lying on my bed, with the subwoofer exercising my eardrums, I realized I couldn’t put it off any longer.

So I trudged downstairs to dinner with a sense of dread hanging over me like a water bomb. I slouched at the kitchen table that my father had built, on a chair that my father had made, and looked at the plate of mushy pasta that my mother—not the best cook in the world, or in the country, or on our street, or, not to push the point too hard, in our house—had prepared, and said, “Hi, Dad.”

He was sitting across from me, beaming, struggling to hold back what he was itching to tell me. He wasn’t aware that I already knew. I twirled spaghetti onto my fork and started eating. Mom chatted about Mrs. Somebody-or-other, who had confided something-or-other that morning about her husband or brother. Dad murmured noncommittal responses like “Really?” or “You don’t say.”

I asked for another helping of pasta to prolong the meal. Mom’s eyes widened briefly at the spectacle of her son asking for seconds, then narrowed with suspicion. “What are you up to?” said the eyes. I tried an innocent look, but she didn’t buy it.

My father forced the issue. “So,” he said, putting down his fork and spoon and dabbing tomato sauce from the corners of his mouth, using a paper napkin with pictures of squirrels on it, “I guess you didn’t notice the new inscription on the van.”

“The new—I don’t think so, Dad.”

He jumped to his feet, pushing back his chair. “Come on,” he enthused. “I’ll show you.”

I followed him outside. An icy wind shook the leafless lilac bushes bordering the lawn, and the bare branches of the maple clicked “Ungrateful son! Ungrateful son!” overhead. Standing beside me on the porch, Dad put his arm around my shoulders and pointed to the van and the new words “AND SON,” white against the blue background.

“I could have waited until you were older,” he bubbled, “but I thought, Why? I’m making you a partner in the business. Part owner, that means.”

My heart, as they say, sank—into a sticky pool of guilt.

“Let’s go inside,” I said. “It’s freezing out here.”

Back at the kitchen table, Mom poured cups of weak coffee for herself and Dad. He was eyeing me expectantly, a broad smile on his open, friendly face, the way he did on Christmas mornings just before Janine and I tore the wrapping off our presents.

“So what do you think?” he said. “Partner.”

“That’s great,” I replied, pushing as much eagerness as I could into that insincere word. “Thanks, Dad. Wow, part owner. Is that allowed? At my age, I mean?”

“It’s my—our—company. We can do whatever we want with it.”

Mom had her eyes locked on me. She had an irritating way of knowing what I was thinking no matter what words came out of my mouth. I stared into her eyes. “Help me,” I said telepathically.

She blinked, her eyes empty of sympathy. “More pasta, dear?” she said, meaning “You’re on your own this time.”

I sighed dramatically. I clinked my fork on the edge of my plate. I cleared my throat. “Dad, Mom, there’s something I have to tell you.”

And I did. I started off badly, messing up the explanation until my father interrupted, saying, “I still don’t get the point about the guy with the sword and the plumed hat.” So I began again. I loved working with Dad, I said, and I wanted to go on doing it. But guidance department teachers had been badgering us all year about our career goals, reminding us that we had to “choose a track” at the end of grade ten—only two months away. And ever since I happened on the movie company shooting a scene down by the lake, I had wanted to make movies. So my track had to be university—the arts, not business. I couldn’t quit school after grade twelve and join the company full time.

Once I had wound down, my father stopped asking questions. He just sat there looking dejected where an hour before he had been buzzing with plans for the future. I looked at my mother.

“I’m not surprised,” she finally said.

Dad ignored her remark. “I always hoped you’d continue the family tradition and be a carpenter and cabinetmaker like your father and his father before him and his fa—”

“Dad, your father owned a gift shop.”

“Well, true, but he was a builder before that. And—”

“He was lousy at it, though,” Mom put in diplomatically. “That’s why he bought the store. And he almost went bank—”

“Okay, okay,” Dad conceded. “So it’s not so much continuing a family tradition as starting one. It amounts to the same thing.”

I felt like we were ganging up on him. “Dad, remember, I still want to work with you. I just don’t want to make it my only career. If I ever do get into screenwriting and stuff, I’ll probably need a real job anyway.”

That seemed to reassure him a little. His face brightened. He asked for more coffee.

“Can you make a decent living at this film thing?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

“So, like you said, you can still be ‘and son.’”

“Exactly, Dad. That’s what I want, too.”

He forced a smile. “Well, I guess I’ll have to settle for that. In the meantime, I’ll leave the new inscription on the—our—van.”

Mom ceremoniously plunked some kind of fruit pie in the middle of the table. It had collapsed and now resembled a deflated basketball leaking blue juice.

“Who’s for dessert? Jake?”

I was so relieved I said yes.

CHAPTER THREE

“YOU’LL PROBABLY WANT TO go to that arts school on York Avenue,” my father said as we drove to the building-supply store on The Queensway. It was the Saturday morning after I broke the news, and we were picking up lumber to repair a deck for a friend of one of Mom’s clients.

“I’ll never get in there.”

“Why not?”

“Instant told me you have to audition or something. I’m not qualified for anything artsy.”

Instant Grady had been my best friend at 7th Street School, but he had enrolled in the music program at the York School of the Arts right after grade eight. I went to Lakeshore Collegiate.

“Do they even have a film course?” Dad asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, we better find out.”

That night, at the urging of my overly organized parents, I visited York’s website to find that Instant had been accurate in describing the prerequisites to enrol. I was pretty sure I had the academic requirements covered, but my hopes took a nosedive when I read that I would be asked to attend an interview, where I would either “audition”—which I assumed meant blowing a horn, or acting, or pulling a rabbit out of a hat—or show somebody a portfolio. What a portfolio entailed I had no idea. I was certain, though, that I didn’t have one, and that my chances of acceptance were a notch below zero.

When I told my mother between appointments in her little hair salon, she was irritatingly chirpy. “Maybe they’ll ask you to sing or something,” she guessed as she swept grey hair into a dustpan. “You have a nice voice. Or you could dance. Or recite a poem. I know: pick a couple of poems and memorize them. Old poems. I’ll bet they like old poems.”

“A portfolio?” Dad asked at dinner. He forked a lump of watery mashed potatoes into his mouth and looked thoughtful. “Hmm.”

“I’m going to call the school and ask them,” Mom said. “How hard can it be?” Then, offering a plate of roundish, hockey-puck-like things, she added, “Porkchop, dear?”

Mom phoned the next day. She and my father conferred—which meant they argued good-naturedly—as they loaded the dishwasher. From my room I could hear their voices rising and falling like a budgie in a windstorm. “Don’t worry,” Mom said the next day over the top of Mrs. Burgess’s newly hennaed head. “Your dad and I have it all figured out.”

CHAPTER FOUR

THE YORK SCHOOL OF THE ARTS sat on a few acres of ground bordering the greenbelt that flanked the Humbolt River on its sinuous path through the city to the lake. The land had once been owned by the Carnaby family. The original Carnaby had emigrated from Europe back in the mists of time and made his millions in nuts and bolts. His son took his inheritance from Carnaby Fasteners and struck off on his own, piling up even more money manufacturing pet foods and confectionery, especially Carnaby Creams—artificially flavoured and coloured gooey stuff coated with milk chocolate made without milk or chocolate.

Mr. Creams built a stone mansion on twenty acres of land along the Humbolt River, retired from the cat-kibble and bonbon businesses and devoted his time and cash to culture. The Carnaby Wing of the city art gallery was built with his money, and just about anyone in town who painted, sculpted, tootled on a clarinet or visited museums found themselves looking at the name Carnaby on a wall or exhibit. In his will he gifted most of his land to the city for a park, and the remainder of his money was stashed in a fund to establish an arts school. The stone mansion went to the school. Over the years the mansion was given over to administration, and an academic wing and a stand-alone theatre were added.

“Doesn’t look very artsy,” Dad commented as we drove into the parking lot and took the last space marked Visitor. I peered through the rain-drenched windshield at a blank wall with a No Smoking sign bolted to it.

We got out of the van and I followed my father through the rain, up the cracked sidewalk, past a flagpole that pinged rhythmically as the wind snapped the halyard back and forth, and into the school. Dad had a file folder tucked under his raincoat. What was in it he hadn’t said.

The office was opposite the main entrance. Inside, it looked like any other school admin centre. There were no students there, no staff to be seen—just one secretary sitting behind the counter, working hard to unjam the jaws of a staple remover.

“We have an appointment,” Dad informed her. He looked at his watch. “Two minutes ago.”

The secretary, a pudgy woman in a too-tight blouse, pointed a finger armoured with a blue glued-on nail at a couple of plastic chairs. “If you’d like to take a seat.”

“I still don’t think they’re going to let me in,” I whispered. “I can’t see there’s any point in coming here.” Except to be humiliated, I should have added.

After about ten minutes, the door marked Principal opened and a tall woman in a green turtleneck sweater and fire-engine red jeans appeared. Her clothing contrasted dramatically with her dark skin. She held a clipboard thick with well-thumbed pages and had parked a pencil behind one ear.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Blanchard, Jake,” she said smoothly, nodding to each of us in turn. “Rehearsal. We’re doing the Scottish play this year. I’m Sylvia Pelletier. Please come in and take a seat.”

She led us into an office that looked more like a living room and waved us toward two chairs. There was a thick Persian rug on the floor, a couple of abstract oils on the green wall opposite the door, a library lamp with a brass chain on her desk. She sat in the leather chair behind the desk and opened a file.

“Now, Jake, I have the student records sent to us by your present school,” she began, avoiding small talk, “and”—lifting a single sheet of paper—“I’ve read your application. You say here that you hope to become a screenwriter.”

I nodded. Cleared my throat. What are you doing here? I imagined I heard under her words. My father made me come, I wanted to tell her.

“You’ve read our school calendar, I take it,” the principal went on patiently, removing the pencil from behind her ear and looking at it as if she wondered how it had got there. I nodded again, sinking deeper into my chair.

“Yes,” my father said brightly.

“Then you must know that we don’t have a screenwriting program here at York.”

Yes, I knew that, I wanted to say, feeling stupid and angry with myself anyway. What a couple of hicks, she must have been thinking, the old one smiling like a halfwit and the younger one looking like a one-legged lumberjack trying to get into ballet school. I stole a glance at my father. He seemed cheerfully unaware that we were making fools of ourselves. He turned to me and flicked his eyes in the direction of the cool and sophisticated principal. Talk to her, he was urging me.

But I was tongue-tied, and I’d had enough. I gripped the arms of my chair, preparing to get up and get out.

“Yes, of course we know,” my father replied, in the voice he used when he explained to a client why her renovation was going to cost 40 per cent more than she thought. I settled back down. “But, you see, there’s nothing at all of a creative nature available at Jake’s present school. Mrs. Blanchard and I hoped that he could take some writing courses, maybe something in the art or theatre department, and that the general, er, creative environment would inspire him. He’s wanted to be in movies—well, not in them, exactly, but writing them—since he was a little boy. And graduating from York would be a help when he applies to film studies at college.”

“I see,” Pelletier said, slipping my application into the file. “I understand your thinking, Mr. Blanchard. But an important part of our application process is the interview and audition—for dance, theatre and music—or the portfolio—for creative writing or the visual arts.”

Gotcha, she seemed to be saying. Or maybe I was being too hard on her, silently accusing her of falling back on the rules the way teachers usually did. This is just getting worse the longer I sit here, I told myself. Finding my voice finally, I urged, “Dad, maybe we should—”

“Well, this is an interview, isn’t it?” he said to Pelletier, cutting me off.

“Yes, I suppose. But—”

Dad held up the tattered folder he had brought with him. “And I have Jake’s portfolio right here.”

I stared at the file folder. What could he have in there?

Pelletier’s brow creased. She wasn’t getting rid of us as easily as she’d hoped. Rehearsal would have to wait. She ran a fingertip across her forehead, pushing a strand of hair into place. When she lowered her head, the hair fell back across her eyes, making her look a little vulnerable. She was very attractive, even if she was going to kick me out of her office in a minute.

“You said you were rehearsing when we arrived?” Dad plowed forward.

It was then that I knew he was up to something; the giveaway was his last statement, which didn’t follow from what had come before. It was an old trick of his. Whenever he argued, with me or with Mom, he’d seem to retreat, then come at you from the side, catching you unawares.

“Um, yes,” Pelletier said, thrown off her stride.

“A play, you said.”

“Opening night is in two weeks. We’re rather under the gun, so if—”

“It’s nice to meet a principal who actually works with her students, who doesn’t just go to meetings and send memos and so on.”

You’re trowelling it on too thick, Dad, I thought. Pelletier seemed to sense a con too. She straightened up in her chair, ready to bring things back on track.

“I guess you do a lot of plays each year,” my father rolled on.

“At least three major productions. Our theatre and music programs are performance-oriented.”

“Must be expensive,” Dad said, tapping the file against his thumbnail.

The principal let out a short laugh. “You can say that again.”

“The sets alone must run you a fortune. All that designing, building, the cost of materials. Not to mention the bill for labour.”

Bing!

Like a pinball flipped back into play, his strategy became clear.

Pelletier nodded. “Yes, labour is more than 50 per cent of the total cost.”

My father got out of his chair and drew some page-sized photos from the folder. He placed them slowly in a row across Pelletier’s desk. His big mitts with their thick, callused fingers contrasted with the principal’s soft hands. On cue, she focused on each picture as he put it down, facing her.

“Ms. Pelletier, these, as you can see, are building projects. Each is different and unique.” He tapped the pictures in turn as he elaborated. “This is a garden shed, framed, before the siding was added.” Tap. “A multi-level deck.” Tap. “A dormer set into the roof of a century home so as to make space for an attic bedroom. Notice that the original style of the home has been faithfully adhered to.”

He stepped back and resumed his chair. Pelletier looked at him questioningly.

“Jake built all of them. Alone.”

Pelletier scanned the photos once more. “Very impressive,” she said, raising her eyes to me.

“Thanks.”

“There are a few other tradesmen and-women in the city who could do those jobs,” my father went on, “but Jake designed every one of them, working from nothing but the client’s imagination, or at most a sketch. Now, personally—and I admit I’m not an expert in these things—I think his work takes artistic talent, creativity, not just skill with a ruler and square.”

Pelletier hesitated, then nodded.

“It’s an unusual portfolio, we know,” Dad said. “But then, Jake is an unusual young man.”

As overwhelmed as I was by my father praising me in front of a stranger and calling me not a kid but a young man, I now saw his plan. I kept my eyes on the principal, alert for signs that gears were silently engaging behind her eyes. I didn’t have long to wait. An amused, closed-lipped smile appeared on her face. She gave an another, almost invisible nod—to herself—and then looked at me.

“And you’d be interested in set design as part of your program here?”

“And construction,” I replied on cue, making my first positive contribution to the interview.

To my father she added, “At no cost to the school?”

It was his turn to nod.

“There’s still a problem,” she added. “Insurance. The school board can’t allow a student to work here. He’s underage, he’s not insured—”

“Whenever he works,” Dad cut in, “he does so as an employee of Blanchard and Son, under contract to York School for the Arts. Our company is fully insured.”

“Well,” Pelletier said, rising to her feet as she gathered the photos and tapped them into a neat stack. “Let me talk to the Board of Governors. I can’t speak for them, of course, but I think they’ll decide that we can find a place for you this coming September at York.” Then, turning to my father and holding up the photos, she added, “Mind if I keep these for a few days?”

“Certainly,” he said, his eyes telling me he was struggling to keep the exultation from his voice.

Pelletier shook hands firmly with both of us. “Thanks a lot,” I said. “I won’t let you down.”

“You’re welcome, Jake.” And to my father, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Blanchard. This has been a most interesting meeting.”

We left the school with a bunch of pamphlets and a booklet and a course selection sheet, provided by the blue-nailed secretary, Mrs. Zhou. We walked back through the rain to the van and climbed in.

“I can’t believe it,” I said.

Dad started the van and turned on the wipers.

“Dad … thanks.”

He made no reply. Bending to peer through the fogged window at the academic building, he said, “Why do schools always look a little like prisons?”

I laughed. “I don’t know. Budget?”

“Maybe while you’re here you can show them how to put up a decent-looking building.”

ACT TWO

SCREENPLAY: “ROMEO AND JULIET IN PARADISE”

by

JAKE BLANCHARD

FADE IN:

EXT. A QUIET CORNER OF THE AFTERLIFE—DAY

ROMEO, sitting under a spreading oak, on a boulder, tossing pebbles into a brook. He sighs.

ROMEO

Ay me.

JULIET enters from the right, walking aimlessly, stops, picks a flower, sees ROMEO, does a double take.

JULIET

Romie? Romie, is that you?

ROMEO

(standing)

Jules! I can scarce believe mine eyes!

They rush toward each other, embrace, kiss.

ROMEO

Ah, mine honourable wife, ’tis thee?

Verily and forsooth?

JULIET

Cut it out, Romie. You know I hate it

when you talk like that.

ROMEO

Sorry. I’m so glad to see thee—er, you.

Where have you been?

JULIET

(breaking the embrace, pouting)

I’m still mad at you.

ROMEO

Mad at me? But, Jules, I killed for you.

Myself and others. After I found you dead

in your family tomb. Don’t you remember?

JULIET

I wasn’t dead, you nitwit.

ROMEO

Not d—Of course you were! I poked you a

couple of times, just to be sure.

JULIET

Friar Laurence gave me a sleeping potion to drink at the tomb. To fool everyone into thinking I had committed suicide. I was supposed to wake up in forty-two hours. Friar Laurence was supposed to be there. You were supposed to be there. You and I were supposed to run off to Mantua and live happily ever—

ROMEO

(still not getting it)

A potion?

JULIET

Instead I woke up surrounded by corpses.

ROMEO

Well, it was a graveyard.

JULIET

Fresh corpses, Romie. Recently dead. On top of the ground. Paris, in a heap, bleeding all over the place. You, lying across me like a fallen log. It was awful.

ROMEO

(musing)

You certainly seemed dead—all pale and cold and kind of washed-out looking, with your mouth open and all.

JULIET

Thanks a lot.

ROMEO

And there was a bug crawling over your—

JULIET

I get the point.

ROMEO

You were very convincing, believe me. I couldn’t stand the thought of living without you. So I drank poison—the real stuff, not some sleeping potion. Tasted awful, like rotten—

JULIET

Oh, Romie, that’s so nice. You drank poison rather than live without me! You really did love me.

(beat)

(remembering her anger)

Friar Laurence said he’d send a letter to Mantua, telling you to come home. But you didn’t turn up.

ROMEO

I got no letter. I got news that you were dead.

JULIET

Oh, what a mess! I should have known that stupid friar would screw everything up. What a meddlesome old twit!

ROMEO

Never liked that guy. We’d have been better off without him.

JULIET

He used to pinch my bum, you know.

ROMEO

(beat)

You, too?

JULIET

(smirks, then giggles)

Really?

ROMEO

It’s not funny.

(beat)

Well, I hope you’re satisfied.

JULIET

What do you mean?

ROMEO

Two guys dead at your feet when you came to. Must have been flattering.

JULIET

Don’t be a dope. I didn’t ask anyone to die for me. It wasn’t my fault.

ROMEO

(musing again)

It’s all very well to die for love. You think at the time you’re really noble, that your loved one will remember you forever. People will admire you, maybe compose a sonnet or two in your honour, maybe even a play. Then what happens? You wake up dead. Not very pleasant, take my word for it. You wonder, What was the point? Now I just feel a bit silly.

JULIET

Me, too. When I came to I had a blade between my ribs.

ROMEO

You stabbed yourself, eh?

JULIET

Yeah. With your dagger—which, by the way, was dull.

ROMEO

I drank poison.

JULIET

You said that already.

ROMEO

(beat)

So what are you doing this afternoon?

JULIET

I don’t know. Why?

ROMEO

Well, we are married. Verily and for—

JULIET

Forget it. I’ve still got a headache from stabbing myself.

ROMEO

Okay. Well, you wanna go and get a beer or something?

FADE OUT

CHAPTER ONE

“CARE TO JOIN US, Mr. Blanchard? That is, if you’re not too busy.”

I looked up from my screenplay to see the Vulture aiming his beady stare in my direction. “Sorry, sir.”

“The nunnery scene, Jake. Hamlet? By William Shakespeare? Ring a bell?”

“I’m there, sir. ‘Get thee to a nunnery.’”

“Indeed,” Locheed replied, refusing to acknowledge the double meaning.

I called Mr. Locheed, my English teacher for the second year in a row, the Vulture not only because of his appearance—the lifeless hooded eyes, the beaklike nose, the wattles of loose skin that hung under a chin so weak as to be a non-chin—but because he seemed to swoop into your personal space and peck away at you until there was nothing left.

Two weeks into the first semester, on a Monday morning, the Vulture was at his customary station, perched behind his lectern at the front of the classroom. He had taken attendance, his fat blue fountain pen uncapped and busy in his clawlike hand. The clock had struck nine, the strains of the national anthem had faded away, the morning announcements had come and gone. I had settled back in my seat, doodling on my R and J screenplay, ready for an hour of stupefying tedium as Locheed picked apart Hamlet line by line, like a raptor searching through a pile of bones for bits of meat.

The course was called Modern Drama, but Locheed was pushing us through Hamlet as an introduction. He had told us that Hamlet was, psychologically, “strikingly modern.”

He had begun to drone on about the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia when the classroom door flew open as if someone was trying to tear it off its hinges in one pull. I looked up from my notebook. A stranger took a couple of steps into the room. She was wearing a paisley vest over a long cornflower blue dress that fit loosely on her slender frame—not exactly the height of fashion. She had tucked her right thumb under the strap of the leather tote bag hanging from her shoulder, its weight pulling her slightly off centre. Her skin was light brown.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said.

What would have been a fairly attractive face—large, dark eyes with finely arched brows, full lips, black shoulder-length hair with a tight natural weave barely restrained by a blue plastic barrette over each ear—was dominated by the biggest nose I had ever seen. Long and straight, except for a little bump in the middle, it projected from her face like a balcony. It was an edifice, a marvel of genetic engineering. It was … big.

“Sorry,” the girl said in Locheed’s direction. “I thought the door had one of those plunger things at the top that makes it hard to open, so I … But it doesn’t. Is this English 4A? The office told me—”

“Well,” Locheed interrupted, eyes drooping. “You certainly know how to make an entrance.”

A few titters sparkled from the class. I saw something, a shadow, an almost unnoticeable reaction, cross the stranger’s face. Her smile dissolved, and her brow crinkled a little. A hard light came into her eyes.

“Name?” Locheed enquired, uncapping his pen and opening his daybook again, managing to convey the impression that he had been greatly inconvenienced.

“Well, see, that’s the thing,” the girl said earnestly, her voice a little less friendly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Thing,” she replied. “The thing.”

“The thing?” Locheed echoed.

“Yeah, the thing. The situation. The, um, existential state of affairs I find myself in. See, when I woke up this morning I had a headache and, you know, a sort of generalized, all-over listlessness. As though somebody had taken away my bones and put Plasticene there. You know the feeling. I’m not myself today, I thought.”

She paused—to give Locheed a chance to agree, I supposed. But all she got was the carrion-bird stare. She shifted the tote bag to the opposite shoulder.

“And I’m lying there,” she went on in what I recognized as an Irish accent, which sounded odd coming from a brown-skinned girl, “tangled up in the blankets, the radio alarm buzzing and the news lady droning on about the Middle East, thinking, No, I’m not myself at all. Funny expression, that: ‘I’m not myself.’ Then it hits me. If I’m not myself, I must be someone else. It’s only logical, isn’t it? But then, who could I be? That’s a very disconcerting thought at seven o’clock in the morning. Especially in the fall. In the fall I’m really—”

“I need your name for the attendance book,” Locheed cut in. “The rest can—”

“Ah, but that’s just it, y’see,” the girl said patiently, as if she was talking to a five-year-old.

Beginning under his almost-chin, a pink glow spread into Locheed’s face. Although he did it to us all the time, he hated to be interrupted.

“If I’m not sure who I am, it’s hard to come up with a name. You know, until I solve this thorny if-I’m-not-myself-then-who-am-I thing. I mean, who knows? This could be bigger than I think. Cosmological, even. The Hindus say that the whole world is an illusion and it’s all just Vishnu lying on a lotus leaf, dreaming the universe, or something like that. The entire cosmos is a dream. At least, I think it was Vishnu. I didn’t read the whole book. So it’s more than just a problem of identity; it’s a problem of reality and—”

“I need a name,” Locheed repeated, his reedy voice a trifle louder and firmer.

“—and what we think is real is … All you want is a name?”

Locheed offered a thin smile of mock tolerance—his famous air of superiority. His fountain pen hovered over the daybook.

“But I’m trying to explain—”

“Name!” Not an inquiring voice this time. An order.

“Um, okay.” She consulted the ceiling tiles, then said, “Louise Riel.”

Anyone in the room who hadn’t, so far, been drawn to the conversation now focused on the new girl with the mellow voice and the nose even more startlingly prominent than Locheed’s beak. With a decisive snap, Locheed recapped his pen and pointed it in her direction. “You’re telling me that you are Louise Riel.”

“Well, y’see, that’s what I’ve been trying—”

“Is your name Louise Riel, or is it not?”

“I was leaning toward Glenna Gould, but I don’t play the piano. Well, actually I do, but not as well as—”

“One last chance.”

“Okay,” the girl said. “Louise Gould, musical revolutionary. From Winnipeg, Man—”

“Turn yourself around,” Locheed commanded, each word crusted with frost, “go out the door, turn left, don’t stop until you get to the main office. Maybe they can teach you some manners.”

“Manners, is it?” she replied calmly. “Sure I’m not likely to pick them up here.”

Then she turned on her heel and glided regally from the room, without closing the door. A wave of murmurs, mumbles and giggles swept through the classroom, setting heads bobbing in its wake. Instant Grady threw me a look and a wicked smile that said, I like her, don’t you? I was already thinking of the exchange as the Battle of the Beaks.

“That’s enough!” admonished the Vulture as he opened his well-thumbed copy of the play, his mind already on higher things. “I believe we had just reached the nunnery scene when class ended yesterday. Now, as you will remember …”

But I tuned Locheed out. Who was the stranger, I wondered, and what on earth had she been talking about?

CHAPTER TWO

FOR THE REST OF THE MORNING I couldn’t get the girl who had called herself Louise Riel out of my mind, and I was still thinking about her when I slammed my locker door and made my way through halls ringing with lunch-hour mayhem to the dingy cafeteria in the basement of the school. What had she been up to? I wondered. It was easy to see why, after Locheed had treated her in his usual half-contemptuous manner, she wanted to shove a verbal sliver under his fingernail. Not many people stood up to him, and even those who did settled for swearing under their breath or dropping a snarky remark and taking the detention that would follow. But she had done a number on him that would have made Hamlet proud. The Prince of Denmark had pretended to be a little crazy when he wanted to throw King Claudius off his game. Was that her strategy, or was she a little off kilter herself?

And somehow her routine sounded so much more elegant and witty in her melodious voice and her faraway accent—especially because she was so calm. As if she had been playing a part in a drama—or maybe a comedy. Locheed hated to be made to look foolish, and he loathed it when somebody bettered him verbally. He thought he was mankind’s gift to the English language. Who was she, I wondered, and where had she come from?

She was in for a rough ride for a while: it was inevitable that she’d be peppered with snide remarks about her schnozz. Maybe, I thought as I took a seat at an empty table in the rollicking cafeteria, a lifetime of fending off personal insults was what made her so tough. Maybe that was why she could handle intimidating characters like Locheed with such ease.

My lunch was the usual dull, sturdy sandwich (ham and cheese today) and fruit (an apple) and juice box. I watched enviously as kids strolled into the cafeteria, lofted their brown bags in a graceful parabola toward a garbage can and took a spot in the food line for chips and gravy or a wedge of lukewarm pizza. I couldn’t bring myself to do the same. I’d feel guilty tossing away the health-conscious, nourishing, no-additive—and tasteless—lunch Mom had made for me, and I’d hear a Dad sermon in the back of my mind running on about wasting food when half the planet’s poor people … blah, blah. So I bit dutifully into my sandwich, looking around for my friends.

And that’s when I saw her come in, alone, her deep brown eyes darting back and forth. She didn’t look so confident now. To my surprise, she headed toward me and stopped at my table.

“Are these seats taken?” she asked, as if she expected me to say yes.

“Er, yeah, sure,” I said. “I mean, no. No, they’re not.”

A pause.

“So would you mind?”

“No, go ahead,” I replied.

She dropped a brown bag on the table and set her carryall on the floor. “Thanks,” she said, sitting down opposite me. “You were in that English class I visited this morning.”

Close up, her nose seemed even more prominent and impossible to ignore, like a refrigerator in the middle of your living room. You had the sense that maybe you should say something about it and get the awkwardness out of the way. You found yourself wanting to ask questions like, What is that, anyway? Or, Is it real? Or, What’s it like when your nose enters the room five seconds before you do? Or, Can I give you the name of a cosmetic surgeon? Or, How did you manage to get to this point in your life carrying that around with you and still hang onto your sanity? But at this point I wasn’t convinced that she was entirely normal.

One of the exercises Locheed liked to give us on the few occasions when he pretended he wanted us to be creative was to make up similes describing something “succinctly and poetically.” As I chewed and swallowed, I found myself trying to think up nose similes.

She must have read my thoughts. “If we’re going to be friends,” she said, “you need to get past appearances and think about the essence of things.”

I hadn’t said I wanted to be her friend. “Okay,” I conceded. “I’ll try.”

“Fair enough.” She held out her hand. “I’m Vanni.” Her fingers were long and tapered.

“So you’re not Louise Gould?”

She laughed. “Not today.”

“I’m Jake. Your name doesn’t sound Irish.”

“One of them does.”

“Um, okay.”

“There’s a story there.”

“Well, I’m not doing anything,” I said, taking her up on her unstated invitation.

“Would you prefer the long or the short version?”

“Short.”

“Okay. Surname: O’Riada.” She spelled it out for me and pronounced it O’Raydee. “My da wanted to call me Siobhan”—she enunciated Shiv-awn—“after my Irish grandma. My ma preferred Bhavani, which was the name of my Indian grandma, Bhavani Gopalan. The Bhavani is a river in southern India. Ma said I couldn’t be Siobhan because my short name would be Shiv, which sounds too close to the god Shiva, who some people think is a negative figure because part of his job description is the destruction of the universe. So they compromised on Vanni, which could be a short form of Siobhan or Bhavani. Spelled with two n’s, because with one n people would pronounce it Vay-nee. Vanni sounds Indian and Irish. I was raised in Ireland—all over the island, because of my da’s job. That’s why my accent is sort of a hybrid. I … What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I was just trying to imagine the long version.”

She laughed. “My da’s a musician. He plays the Uilleann pipes in a traditional band.”

“The—”

“It’s like a miniature bagpipe that you hold on your knee,” she explained. “Instead of blowing into it, you pump an air bag under your elbow and make the notes with your fingers. The band’s very well known over the ocean. Da’s the leader. My mom’s a writer of little renown. They decided to give North America a try.”

It’s hard to describe her accent, which wasn’t as strong in normal conversation. The word that comes to mind is “musical.” But there was an undertone of mockery—not as strong as sarcasm, but definitely enough to make you listen carefully for true meaning.

“Is your mom a poet?”

“She writes existential short stories that only she can understand.”

“Sounds like you don’t think too much of them.”

“Oh, I do. They’re grand. But most of them are beyond me.”

“You know, you’ve used that word twice since I met you.”

“Which?”

“Existential.”

“You’re quicker than most.”

“I try. What does it mean?”

Her reply was drowned out by the bell announcing the end of the lunch period. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “What do you have next?”

“Dramatic arts,” I answered.

“I’ve got”—she fished a timetable from her shirt pocket and looked it over—“biology.”

“Well, I guess I’ll see you around,” I said, getting up.

“Right,” she replied doubtfully, assuming I was brushing her off, it sounded like.

“See you in English tomorrow.”

She smiled. “I’m still trying to work out how Hamlet ended up in a modern drama course.”

“So is Hamlet.”

CHAPTER THREE

NOBODY KNEW FOR SURE how Instant Grady had come by his nickname. Instant was closed-mouthed about the topic. Some thought he’d earned his handle because he could come up quickly with an answer to almost any question a teacher—or student, for that matter—tossed his way. He had a sort of photographic memory, and a big, overheated brain to keep it in. “Hey, Instant,” someone would call out across the library, “I need a synonym for ‘really, really overdecorated.’” “Blatantly ornate,” he’d reply. “What’s the square root of 15,625?” “One hundred and twenty-five, you moron.” If he didn’t know the kid or didn’t like him, he’d either say “Look it up yourself” or give him a wrong answer.

We had been pals in grade school, then lost touch when he went to York in grade nine, but we hooked up again soon after I transferred. I was an okay student; he was brilliant, sort of. Although he could replay word for word anything he read, he claimed he didn’t always understand what he was repeating. The way he explained it was that he didn’t necessarily see the connections between things. I pretended I knew exactly what he meant. I got pretty good marks almost all the time. He failed tests all semester then knocked over the final exam and scraped through. He easily reached the solution to an equation, but often he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell you how he arrived at it, and he was hopeless at teaching it to someone else. He was in the music program—jazz tenor sax—and got straight A’s. Wasn’t music all about connections?

As far as I was concerned, he was just lazy. In most classes you could get by with memory work—you didn’t have to see how things fit together. He could have spewed out all the things he remembered and aced a quiz, but he couldn’t be bothered. In some subjects he’d ask me for advice about how to write a test. It was just a game. He was just fooling around, and I went along with him for the laughs.

The day after Vanni O’Riada strolled into our lives, he and I took our lunches outside to enjoy the early-autumn sunshine. We sat near one of the big maple trees that shaded the grounds of the school near the river. He wolfed down some nachos coated with processed yellow goo pretending to be cheese, leaving crumbs down the front of his shirt, then popped open a plastic tub of instant chocolate pudding that closely resembled a petroleum derivative. I was looking over his history test. He got five marks out of eighty. He had asked me to help him with his answers. McGillivray always made the kids who failed write out perfect answers.

Instant stretched his lanky frame on the grass, ankles crossed, hands linked behind his head, face to the clear blue sky. “Tell me what to write so I can get an A next time,” he begged insincerely.

Chewing a nourishing Mom-prepared sandwich, I read aloud, “Question 1: ‘State and discuss the reasons for the Allies’ invasion of the Normandy beaches in 1944. Twenty-five marks.’”

“Right. I remember that one. I thought my answer was brilliant.”

“You wrote, ‘Hitler had it coming.’”

I paused. Instant lifted his head and offered me an innocent look. “Well, he did.”

“If McGillivray had given you five marks per word, you still wouldn’t have gotten perfect.”

McGillivray taught a half-credit course called Major Conflicts of the Modern World. She saw everything in terms of wars and constitutions.

“Well, Hitler was a tyrant. One of the worst,” Instant said to the sky.

“That’s a value judgment, not an answer,” I said. “Your single sentence hardly qualifies as a discussion.”

“What’s to discuss? Hitler ordered a German soldier to dress up in a Polish uniform and attack a German post office or something. Then he claimed Poland had invaded Germany. He blitzed and looted most of Europe. The Holocaust was his handiwork. He got what he deserved.”

I decided to let that one go for a while. “Question 2 reads, ‘Discuss the reasons for the Second Gulf War. Twenty marks.’ You wrote, ‘Oil.’ This must be a new record, Instant, even for you. A one-word answer. Let’s see, at five marks per letter—”

“I’m still five marks short of a perfect score.”

“Correct.”

“But you have to admit I’m right.”

“Of course you’re right. Getting high marks isn’t about being right. It’s about barfing up enough facts so McGillivray can make twenty ticks in the margin beside your answer with her red pen.”

“She just doesn’t like my handwriting.”

I scoffed.

“How many ticks did you get?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Okay, thirty.”

“Maybe I should have written ‘Oil’ twenty times. Do you think that would have satisfied her?”

I laughed and tossed his pathetic test at him. Just then I spied Vanni strolling along the path by the river, her head down as if she was deep in thought. She was wearing a denim dress over a black T-shirt, and leather clogs. Very retro. I waved when she looked up. She returned the greeting and headed our way.

“Here comes Vanni,” I told Instant.

He sat up, cross-legged, his thin upper body curved like a comma. “The one who put Locheed in his place?”

“Yup. The very person.”

“The one with the colossal—”

“She’s a little sensitive about it,” I warned as Vanni drew closer, her shoes brushing the grass.

“Sensitive about what?” she asked. She stood with her tote bag on one shoulder, her wavy hair an unruly halo around her oval face. “As if I didn’t know.”

“Er, nothing,” I replied.

“Your nose,” Instant contradicted.

Vanni pinned him with a withering stare.

I tried to smooth things over. “Vanni, this is my friend Instant.”

She directed her stabbing glance toward me. “Instant friend, is it?”

“No, his—”

“Jake and I go back a long way,” Instant cut in, totally unaware of Vanni’s wrath. “It was a pleasure watching you run Locheed around in circles yesterday.”

“Is he always like that?” Vanni asked, letting Instant off the hook.

“You mean rude, arrogant, condescending, pompous and overbearing?”

Vanni grinned. “You forgot ‘imperious.’”

“I wasn’t making fun of your nose,” Instant said, looking up at Vanni with an innocent expression on his face.

I groaned inwardly. What an idiot. He’d gotten away with his first blunder. Now he’d blown it for sure.

Vanni gave him a forced smile.

Instant plunged toward disaster. “I merely remarked to Jake that it was big.”

The smile slipped off Vanni’s face. Fire sparked in her eyes.

“As big as a snowplow?”

“No, I—”

“Big enough to take shelter under it during a thunderstorm?”

“I didn’t—”

“I’ve heard all the jokes, Mr. Instant Whatever-your-name is.”

“It’s Gra—”

“And a few you’ve never thought of.” Hands on her hips, Vanni gave him a slow, deliberate visual examination from on high. She took a step closer, forcing Instant to look almost straight up at her.

“You’re a bit of a string bean, aren’t you?” she pointed out calmly, as if discussing tomorrow’s weather report. “A trifle on the lean side. A bag of bones. You’ll forgive the mixed metaphor.”

Instant looked my way.

“It’s true,” I said, enjoying his discomfort.

“You look like one of those noodle-shaped fellas in the weight-training advertisements,” Vanni continued. “You’d be the ‘Before’ picture, of course.”

Instant tried to defend himself. “I only said—”

“Is that your Adam’s apple there, or did you swallow a tennis ball? And those ears: I suppose they flap in a high wind. Must make it hard to hear.”

Instant tilted his head to the side and smiled innocently. “Pardon?”

Vanni laughed and nodded. “Good one,” she conceded, and she sat down on the grass, folding her legs beneath her and tucking her skirt under them.

“Are we even now?” Instant asked.

“We’re even.”

“Truce?”

“Why not?”

I didn’t know Vanni well enough to decide whether she realized she had won something rare: Instant Grady’s respect. He admired people—guys or girls, he didn’t care—who stood up for themselves. But for a brainy person he could be dumb sometimes.

I listened as Instant and Vanni chatted—mostly about music. Instant mentioned that music was his major and he played sax. Vanni told him about her dad’s band. After a while I looked at my watch.

“Twenty minutes ’til the end of lunch period. Just enough time for a coffee.”

Vanni agreed immediately.

“No, thanks,” Instant said. “I’ve got math after lunch. Coffee would keep me awake.”

CHAPTER FOUR

PARTIALLY ORGANIZED MAYHEM is a good phrase to describe our dramatic arts class, with Mr. Panofsky (“Call me Saul”) darting back and forth, his slender hands fluttering in a futile effort to bring some sort of order to the chaos. “Creativity is messy,” he was fond of saying, but sometimes we went way beyond messy.

On the Monday morning some people would call fateful, we were supposed to be preparing our little dramas for performance. Two weeks before, Panofsky had divided the class into groups of three. Our assignment was to write and present a two-hander (two of us acting, one directing) within the time period, and today was our last rehearsal day. I was in a group of four because the class hadn’t divided neatly by three.

“Jake,” Saul called just after I had dumped my backpack in the corner of the dais, “I have a job for you.”

I walked across the room to his desk, which he almost never used.

“We have a new student,” he said. “I want you to do the interview.”

“But—”

“No buts. It’s your turn. You’re kind of a fifth wheel in your group anyway.”

“How can I be fifth wheel in a group of four people?”

“Even you could find a way. The student should be along any time now. Once he checks in with me, I’ll give you a shout.”

Panofsky’s method of helping us get to know one another at the beginning of the course had been to pair us up and have us interview each other, then present our partners to the class. Some kids did it like a radio or TV face-to-face, some like a police interrogation—anything to lighten the mood. So I would interview this new guy and present him to the group.

But it wasn’t a him. About halfway through the period, I heard Panofsky’s bass tones calling my name over the gabble of voices. I approached his desk and saw, sitting at a desk near the door, a girl.

And what a girl.

“Jake,” Panofsky said, “meet the newest member of our class. I’ve explained the role you’ll play in introducing her. Let me know when you’re ready.”

He left us alone. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her thick, shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair contrasted with a tight charcoal V-neck sweater, emphasis on the V. I sat down opposite her and gulped. She adjusted her position, causing her sweater front to jiggle. A gold cross hung from a fine chain around her neck, and the vertical stem of the cross pointed invitingly, like a beckoning finger, to the dark space between her breasts.

“Hi, I’m Alba,” she said with a dazzling smile. “And stop staring at my boobs.”

“I wasn’t!” I croaked.

“Yes, you were.”

“I—”

“What colour are my eyes?” she demanded.

Flustered, searching for the words to get me out from under her completely accurate accusation, I focused on her face to prove that her chest was the furthest thing from my mind. Her oval face was perfectly proportioned, with creamy, unblemished skin and a generous, full-lipped mouth. She was stunning.

And her large eyes, set beneath fine, fair brows, were closed.

“Well?” she insisted.

“Er …”

“Yes?”

With blonde hair and skin like a model in a TV commercial, I reasoned, she would not have brown eyes.

“Blue.”

“Gotcha!” she said, with what I thought was undeserved triumph, then opened her eyes.

I was right. Her eyes weren’t brown.

They were grey.

“But I wasn’t looking at … I was fascinated by your gold cross,” I lied for the second time.

Her not-blue eyes rolled in disbelief. She smirked.

“No, really,” I blundered on, too far from shore now to risk swimming back. “My mom has one just like it—well, not exactly the same, but close. I bought it for her on her birthday.”

Alba’s eyes softened. “Hmm. I almost believe you.”

Resolutely keeping my eyes on her lovely face I replied, “Well, good. I’d hate to think—”

“So Mr. Panofsky said something about an interview.”

“Oh yeah.” I clicked my ballpoint pen and opened my notebook to the list of questions we’d been given on the first day of the semester. “I’m supposed to ask you these questions, then introduce you to the class.”

“I get the picture. But to be fair you should tell me something about yourself too.”

“Well, I—”

“Tell you what. Let’s interview each other, one question at a time. It will take longer, but who cares?”

Not me. Anything to prolong a conversation with this angel. She was beautiful. And sexy. And the opposite of the wilting-geranium syndrome you usually see when a new kid joins a class partway through the semester. She had moxie.

“Okay,” I began, finding my feet after my rocky start. “Name, in full.”

“Alba Magdalena Benedetti.”

“What a beautiful name. Italian, right?”

“You’re supposed to write it down. Don’t forget the silent g in Magdalena.”

“Got it.”

“Your turn.”

“Jake Blanchard. Sounds pretty dull compared to yours.”

“‘What’s in a name?’”

“‘That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’”

Alba’s fine fair brows lifted slightly. “Not bad,” she said.

I didn’t tell her it was the only line from Romeo and Juliet that had for some reason lodged in my drafty memory box after we’d studied the play—which I hated—the year before.

“Address?” I asked, pretending to consult my list.

Alba smirked again. “Nice try.”

“Phone number?”

“No chance, Mr. Jake Blanchard. I hear the school is putting on R and J this year,” she said, changing the subject.

“That’s right. Not the whole thing, though. A few scenes.”

“I’m going to try out for the part of Juliet.”

You’d get it without an audition if I was the director, I thought. “Great,” I replied lamely. “I’m doing the set.”

“Really?”

“I’m the school’s official set designer and builder. Next, your post-graduation plans,” I said, my pen poised like Locheed taking attendance.

“Theatre studies at university. Acting courses. You?”

“I want to take screenplay writing.”

“Really?” she said again. “What’s your favourite movie?”

“Casablanca.”

“That’s an oldie,” she said, surprised again. “Black and white. And it’s romantic. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.” She smiled warmly. She mimicked Bogey’s voice—not very well: “Play it again, Sham.”

“He didn’t say that,” I corrected. “He said, ‘You played it for her, and you can play it for me.’”

“Hey, you’re pretty good.”

No, I’m not, I thought. Bogey would know what to say now. He’d do that thing with the corners of his mouth, then light a cigarette with a wooden match. He’d come up with a snappy line or two and have this gorgeous creature staring into his eyes, lost in admiration. He wouldn’t feel like he was walking through a minefield, terrified of tripping over his own dialogue and making a fool of himself.

“‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine!’” I heard him say in my mind’s ear. Then I realized I had said the words out loud.

“You’re not going to quote the whole movie at me, are you?”

“Sorry. Er, there are more questions,” I said, feeling myself blush.

We traded answers to the mostly humdrum questions on the list. I got the feeling she had lost interest in the conversation. Her eyes roamed the classroom. Panofsky had given me three Meaningful Looks already, trying to hurry us up.

“Last one,” I said. “The quality you most admire in the opposite sex.”

Alba didn’t answer right away this time. She glanced into a corner of the room. She seemed to consider her reply. “All right. A poetic soul.”

“Seriously?” I replied, searching her face for signs of mockery.

“I could never love a man who couldn’t express his heart poetically,” she said, shifting her gaze to me. “He’d have to be very articulate and sensitive, and talk to me in beautiful language.”

And not start a conversation by staring at your chest, I thought.

“Which, by the way, leaves out most guys I’ve met.”

We were silent for a moment.

“Your turn.” Alba broke the stillness. “The thing you most admire in the opposite sex. As if I don’t know,” she smirked.

“Um …”

“Yes? Go on.”

“A profound commitment to world peace,” I said.

The left corner of her beautiful mouth twisted a little and an amused look came into her eyes.

“And nice boobs,” I added.

But the joke crash-landed. Alba Magdalena Benedetti tsked, rose gracefully from her chair, and walked away.

SCREENPLAY: “ETERNAL LOVE”

by

JAKE BLANCHARD

FADE IN:

EXT. A DESERTED TROPICAL BEACH—DAY

Waves crash on golden sand under a porcelain blue sky. Coconut palms sway rhythmically in the onshore wind.

CUE MUSIC: violins

ALBA, barefoot, holding her sandals, enters from left, gazing out to sea.

CLOSE-UP:

She walks slowly, her eyes on the horizon. The wind lifts a strand of her hair, lets it fall gently against her cheek, presses her silk sarong against her body.

PAN RIGHT along the beach to JAKE emerging from the forest. JAKE stops, shades his eyes, drops his hand. He begins to run.

CUT TO:

ALBA sees JAKE, runs toward him.

SLOW MOTION, CUT TO JAKE then ALBA alternately until:

They come together, embrace, kiss. They drop to their knees, kissing passionately, then fall supine onto the sand. They continue to kiss as the waves crash on the beach, the surf rushing up the sand to envelop them in foam.

CUE MUSIC: violins rise to a crescendo

FADE OUT

CHAPTER FIVE

I LEFT DRAMA CLASS THAT MORNING in a daze, as if my senses had been wrapped in cotton and my brain had slipped out of gear. I bumped into Vanni in the hall, knocking her books out of her arms and all over the floor.

“Ach! You great lumbering oaf,” she complained.

“Eh?”

“What’s wrong with you?”

When I began to focus, I found her standing in front of me as kids streamed past us, her hand on my arm and an expectant look on her face.

“You look like you’ve just returned from electroshock therapy,” she said.

“Eh?”

“Let me rephrase the question. How was the lobotomy?”

“The lob—?”

Vanni peered up into my face. Pinched my chin between thumb and forefinger. Turned my head from side to side.

“Hmm,” she said.

“Hmm what?”

“You can’t even see the scars.”

“Very funny,” I said.

Vanni grabbed me by the arm. “Come on. We need to find a quieter location.”

She led me out of the school and across the road to a joint called the Blue Note. By night it was a jazz and R & B club with a seedy reputation. Instant played there sometimes when one of the bands needed a saxophonist. By day it was a rundown restaurant that specialized in trendy vegetarian concoctions whose descriptions on the dusty menu were more than enough to put me off—salads featuring seeds, sprouts and roots; soups heavy on beans and spices with unpronounceable names; and vaguely Asian treats like oily spring rolls, samosas and flatbreads.

There were only a few customers about, hunched over their tables as if guarding their food. Vanni tugged me toward a table by the window. The server was a skinny, surly-looking guy with a paper chef’s hat that didn’t quite hide his oily black hair.

“Yeah?” he greeted us, flipping pages on his order pad.

Vanni asked for a samosa with tamarind chutney and a cup of chai.

“What about you?” the server demanded, scratching his neck with the butt-end of his pencil.

“Chips with beef gravy and a cherry cola,” I said. “A side order of deep-fried pork rinds.”

“Not on the menu,” the guy replied, looking above my head through the greasy window.

“Okay. Let’s see … a dozen buffalo wings, extra hot. Hold the mayo.”

This time he just shook his head. Vanni gave me a look. I relented.

“Double-shot cappuccino and a piece of chocolate cake. Baked sometime this century.”

He nodded, made a note and wandered off.

“Guess what?” Vanni began, almost gushing.

By now I had returned to the real world after my encounter with the luscious girl with the beautiful name, so I noticed that Vanni’s face glowed with excitement. Her dark eyes danced. Her grin was a mile wide under her overdeveloped nose.

“You really want me to guess?” I asked.

“No. I want to tell you, but first you have to swear to keep this a secret.”

I raised my hand. “Girl Guide’s honour,” I intoned solemnly. “May my head be severed from my body with a rusty axe if I breathe a word. May my teeth fall out the day before Thanksgiving. May—”

“You’re holding up the wrong hand.”

The reappearance of our friendly server interrupted her. He put his tray on the table next to ours and set Vanni’s order before her. In front of me he banged down a small plate with a tiny wedge of chocolate cake looking lost in the middle. He delivered my cappuccino as if he had palsy—a third of the coffee slopped over into the saucer.

“Enjoy,” he sneered as he left with his tray.

The cappuccino was tasty. “So, your news,” I said.

“I’m going to be published in a poetry anthology!” Vanni declared. “Five of my poems. Hardcover. Clothbound!”

“That’s amazing,” I said. I had known she wrote poetry, but I’d had no idea she was this serious. “That’s really hard, isn’t it, to get published?”

“’Tis. And it’s not a vanity press, either, where you pay for the printing and all that yourself. It’s the real thing. This is Pentameter Press. They’re an old, well-known company. I’ve had poems in magazines before—quite a few of them—but this is the big time.”

“And you want to keep this a secret?”

“I don’t need the ridicule I’ll get if people around the school find out.”

She was right. The worst crime was to look conceited.

I’m not very perceptive most of the time, but I realized as I watched Vanni’s dark eyes sparkle that she was offering me a kind of gift. Not just her trust that I would keep her secret—she was sharing her happiness in her achievement.

“What’s it called, and where can I buy a copy?”

“It doesn’t come out for a few months. It’s called Water Beads, from the title of one of my poems. And you can’t buy a copy. I’m going to give you one.”

“Water Beads, eh?” I tapped the tines of my fork against the side of my plate. “Well, I guess a book of poems doesn’t have to have a snappy title.”

Vanni laughed and took a sip of her chai. She looked at me playfully over the rim of her cup. “There’s a story there.”

“Gee, I wonder if I could possibly persuade you to tell it.”

“My favourite poet is—”

“Seamus Heaney. You told me.”

“Right. You knew that. But what you didn’t know is that he’s the reason I decided to be a poet. One of his poems is called ‘The Railway Children,’ and it’s about these kids lying on a high embankment beside the train tracks, looking at the telegraph wires after a shower. There are raindrops suspended all along the wires, like beads, full of light, and the kids think that the words in the telegrams people send are carried along the wires inside the raindrops. Isn’t that a beautiful image? The speaker says, ‘We were small and thought we knew nothing worth knowing.’ That’s exactly how little kids think, isn’t it? The poem’s lovely, but it also tells us something true. And it’s only thirteen lines long.”

While Vanni talked, I ate my cake and drank my coffee. She had let her samosa and chai get cold, carried away as she was with her exciting news, and I recognized not for the first time that one of the reasons we were friends was that in at least one respect we were similar. She loved poetry and I loved movies. The difference was that where I was unfocused, full of plans and aspirations but short on production, she had done something about her dreams.

I thought about Vanni’s words and the stumbling attempt I had made with Alba to explain why I wanted to create movies, not just watch them. Okay, I had been trying to impress her—especially after she caught me scoping out her physical charms—but I had meant what I said. Only I was no good at expressing myself in words—especially compared to Vanni. Alba had said she would only be attracted to a man who could convey his thoughts and feelings poetically. What chance, I thought morosely, did an inarticulate clod like me have?

Bing!

“Hey,” I said. “I have an idea.”

“Really? Should I alert the media?”

“It’s brilliant!” I smiled.

“What? You look like the wolf after he swallowed Grandma.”

“I have to think about this. I’ll let you know. In the meantime, let’s celebrate your good news. How about another cup of chai?”

“Well, aren’t you the big spender.”

ACT THREE

CHAPTER ONE

LIKE MOST BULLIES, the Vulture held a grudging respect for anyone who stood up to him. Within a week or so of Vanni’s noisy arrival into our English class, Vanni and he had called an unspoken ceasefire, and had coexisted ever since. So I wasn’t surprised when, a couple of days after Vanni’s big announcement in the Blue Note, he directed his raptor gaze at her from behind his lectern.

“Turn to page 89,” he told us as soon as he had snapped the cap onto his fountain pen and closed the attendance book. “Today you meet James Joyce, Ireland’s greatest writer.”

I glanced at Vanni, saw her brows clench. Here we go, I thought. She’s going to defend her precious Seamus Heaney.

But Locheed beat her to the punch. “Vanni, perhaps you’d read ‘Araby’ to us. Your Irish accent will enhance the experience for the class.” It was as close to a compliment as Locheed would ever get.

So Vanni began to read, and her lyrical voice, far from crashing through the lines like most of us did when the Vulture called on us to take our turn, seemed to lift the words off the page. I settled back. Outside, the sun was bright on the coloured leaves of the maples, a light breeze glided over the window sill into the room, and Vanni took us to the winter-dark dead-end Dublin street where the boy in the story talked about Mangan’s sister. As he described himself watching her across the road on her porch, I thought about Alba, her graceful form, her unblemished skin, the curve of her lips. That morning I had caught sight of her in the clamorous sea of bodies as she moved down the crowded hall away from me. She had been wearing a long rose-coloured dress and had plaited her hair into a single gold braid. “‘Her dress swung as she moved her body,’” Vanni read, as if she was inside my head, “‘and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.’” The vision of Alba brought an ache—a deep, hollowed-out sense of longing. “‘And yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.’”

The kid in the story liked to watch Mangan’s sister secretly from his window. His love for her was like a chalice that he carried with great care through the dirty, thronging streets of Dublin. It was of a higher quality, brighter and purer, than the world he lived in. “‘My body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.’”

I had never heard love described the way he talked about it, as something refined and spotless. On TV, in commercials and in movies, love was sex—panting, sweat, sloppy wet kisses, the mindless tearing off of clothing. I was no puritan, but I had always secretly believed that there had to be more to love than clanking, preprogrammed biological urges and actions. The love we saw in the media was selfish and egotistical, a kind of mutual exploitation. Wasn’t love supposed to be the opposite—generous and liberating?

In the end, the boy’s hopes came crashing down. But that didn’t change my mind. I was going to let Alba know how I felt about her, because if I didn’t I’d regret it for the rest of my life.

“What’s this brilliant idea you mentioned the other day?” Vanni inquired.

We were in creative writing class. Mrs. Cleaver had paired us up to “brainstorm.”

“You’re going to be a published poet soon,” I began.

“Shhh! Someone might hear.”

“How are you at writing letters?”

In a low voice I explained my plan. Vanni wasn’t impressed.

“It would be fraud,” she said.

“Come on, Vanni, we’re not talking about identity theft here.”

“But you’d be tricking—What’s her name again?”

“You know her name. Alba.”

“Right, Alba. You’d be deceiving her, pretending something I wrote was created by you.”

“No, it wouldn’t be like that. I’d write the letter and you’d improve it. Think of it as editing. A minor rewrite. Like we do in this class all the time.”

“Well …”

“Please?”

“You say you fell in love with this Alba person after—what?—a twenty-minute conversation?”

“I think we’re soulmates.”

Vanni smirked. “Spare me.”

“No, really. I mean it.”

“Twenty minutes. You’re a deep one, you are.”

“Does that mean you’ll help?”

“I guess so. But you’ll owe me.”

“Of course. And you have to promise not to say anything about the letters.”

“Wait a minute. ‘Letters’? With an s? I thought we were talking about one letter.”

“S is one letter.”

“Don’t be clever. It doesn’t suit you.”

“So do you promise?”

“Oh, all right. And there was me, so eager to tell everyone at York that I’m ghostwriting a love letter.”

Mrs. Cleaver called the class to order.

“Quick,” Vanni said. “We need to come up with the idea we’ve supposedly been brainstorming.”

“How about a guy who falls in love at first sight with a girl whose name means ‘dawn’?”

“She’d never believe it.”

CHAPTER TWO

IT HADN’T TAKEN THE GUYS at York long to home in on Alba like heat-seeking missiles. Whenever I caught sight of her in the halls, there was someone with her, chatting her up—Brent Longman, Students’ Council exec and fledgling politician; or Emile Dupuis, with his black scarf and I’m an-artist-too-bad-about-you manner; or Chadwick Bromley, with his soap-opera-star looks, who, like Alba, wanted to be an actor. They were all in the graduating class and drove flashy cars. Every smile she gave them was a needle in my heart. I felt that I had already lost ground, that if I didn’t get into the competition soon, I’d miss my chance forever. I began to bug Vanni about the letter I had written for her to revise, and one Friday she finally came through.

Dear Alba,

Last summer my family and I took a trip to Newfoundland, and one day I went alone to a place called Cape Spear, the easternmost point in the whole North American continent. It was every bit as beautiful and rugged as the brochure said it would be—strips of spruce standing dark against the grey of wind-scraped granite, a red-and-white lighthouse, the endless grey-blue ocean.

A powerful wind drove foam-topped waves thundering against the shore, like armies hurled against a stone fortress. Deep fissures split the shoreline, and as the in-rushing surf surged into the narrowing channels, geysers of spume and mist spired into the bright summer air, hung there as if they would last forever, then crashed to the rocks.

I stood as close as I dared to the shore, soaked by the spray, looking out to the horizon, past the wheeling gulls whose white breasts were lit by the afternoon sun, past the ships plodding toward St. John’s harbour. For a few moments there was no one there but me, and I knew that there was nothing but the Atlantic between me and Europe, and that, for that brief moment, I was, of all the millions of souls in North America, the farthest east, the closest to Europe, and somehow that knowledge made me feel like a pioneer or a solitary explorer on the rim of a vast unknown sea.

Being in love is like that.

I read the letter a second time before I said anything to Vanni.

“This is nothing like what I wrote.”

“I took a few liberties.”

“A few liberties? This isn’t even about love,” I protested. “It’s about … tourism or something.”

“It’s about your emotions,” Vanni replied. “You told me—”

“I know what I told you, but I was expecting it to be about me and her, like my letter, not about the ocean.”

“It is about you and her. What did you expect—‘Dear Alba, I think you’re hot. I’d really like to pop the buttons on your bra’?”

“Bras don’t have buttons.”

“How would you know?”

“I read a lot.”

I looked over the letter once more, telling myself I had asked for this, then I began to see what Vanni was trying for in her flowery descriptions. She was talking about feelings. She was showing Alba that I could be sensitive, even poetic.

“I guess you’re right,” I admitted. “Thanks.”

I copied out the letter, and later that day, during drama class, while Alba was doing an improv with three other kids, I slipped it into her backpack.

But for all the difference it made, I might as well have sent her a dead mouse. Days went by without any acknowledgment from Alba that I had poured my heart out to her. When I was able to find her alone in class or in the halls and say hello to her, she was friendly but cool and reserved. What was going on? I wondered. Did she get love letters so often she just ignored them? Had I offended her? Was she playing hard to get? She didn’t need to—she was hard to get. Then began the paranoid fear that somehow my letter had fallen from her backpack and she hadn’t seen it at all. Maybe somebody would find it lying in the hall or on the playing field, laugh and share the joke with the whole school. I imagined someone reading it over the morning announcements to hilarious laughter. I’d have to leave town.

Why didn’t I just ask her if she had received the letter? I couldn’t have said.

Desperate, I decided to write another one. To be safe, I would mail it to her house. I already knew her neighbourhood—the upscale area called Maple Heights that bordered the east side of the river and park—and it was easy enough to get her address from the online reverse telephone directory.

This time I just jotted down a few ideas, hoping Vanni could flesh them out for me, and the next day, at our usual table in the cafeteria during lunch, I showed her what I had written. As she read, she twisted the unruly ends of her hair around her finger, or rested her chin on her thumb and slowly tapped the end of her very long nose with her index finger.

“Well,” she said, looking up. “Quite the challenge you’ve set for me.”

“It’s awful, isn’t it? That’s why I need your help.”

“Don’t try to butter me up.”

I could almost see the wheels and cogs and levers slip smoothly into motion as she began the process of turning my rough, stumbling phrases into graceful sentences. No, I thought, that’s the wrong metaphor. Vanni’s brain wasn’t a machine or a computer; it was more like a house of magic, where mysterious transformations took place in the dark.

“Didja come up with this one—‘I really like your hair’—all by yourself?” she asked.

“Didn’t even need the thesaurus.”

She continued to read. Vanni’s gentle mockery didn’t bug me anymore. It was her style, I had learned, and she only used it with people she liked. If someone took a verbal shot at her or, worse, made a comment about her nose, she cut them to bits before they knew what hit them. She had left more than one guy who made the mistake of thinking he was clever standing with his mouth open, mesmerized by her verbal swordplay after he called her Hatchet Face or Eagle Beak.

“Vanni,” I said as she took up her pencil and began to jot a few notes, “don’t answer this if you don’t want to, but … do you have a boyfriend?”

Her head snapped up. Her eyes bored into mine. “Why? Are you applying for the job?”

I held up my hands, palms out, to placate her. “Just wondering.”

“The answer is no.”

“Okay.”

“Boys aren’t my thing,” she added, deadpan.

Talk about being blindsided, suckerpunched, what Vanni herself would call gobsmacked. The background roar of a few hundred munching, yakking teenagers, the clatter of cutlery and crockery, all fell away. I held her eyes. When Vanni kidded or mocked, they crinkled at the corners. Not now.

I flashed back to random scenes of times I had been with her, searching for any clue that I should have picked up, but couldn’t recall anything. Not that I would have known what to look for.

“You mean—?” I began to ask, to confirm what I thought she was telling me.

Still she held my eyes, her face calm and serious, and didn’t reply.

“I didn’t realize,” I stumbled.

There was a long pause.

“It doesn’t make any difference to me,” I said finally.

Her face hardened. “That’s generous of you.”

“Because you’re my friend.”

The firm line of her lips softened. Her eyes warmed a little.

“You are,” I said quietly.

“Well,” she said, smiling, “don’t let it get around.”

CHAPTER THREE

IN MY SECOND LETTER I had asked Alba to meet me, and I had chosen the perfect spot. Each day, on her way home, she walked across the playing field to the gravel path along the riverbank. The trail followed the river through the trees for about a half a kilometre, then led over a wooden bridge to the far bank, where a stairway switchbacked up the steep bluff through the trees to her street. The bridge was the perfect rendezvous, I explained to Vanni.

“There’s a flat spot beside the river that’s visible from the railing. I can stand there and you can hide under the bridge—”

“Like a troll?”

“—and whisper to me what to say to her.”

“You’re daft.”

“No, really. It’ll work.”

“You’re soft in the head.”

“If I’m with her alone I’ll get tongue-tied. You know that.”

“‘If I’m with her alone.’ Didja hear yourself?”

“Please, Vanni.”

“This is a far cry from writing a letter,” she pointed out.

“You’ll be like those people at the United Nations.”

Vanni heaved a monumental sigh and gave me a blank look. “Not for the first time, Jake, you’ve lost me.”

“Simultaneous translators,” I said. “You’ll be like one of them.”

She shook her head in disgust.

“Okay, you’re right,” I conceded. “Bad simile. It doesn’t make sense to me, either, now that I think about it. But you know what I mean.”

“You got this brilliant idea from Romeo and Juliet, didn’t you? The balcony scene.”

“Yeah.”

“Except Romeo didn’t have anyone coaching him.”

“He didn’t need anyone. He had Shakespeare.”

Vanni rolled her eyes and shook her head slowly. “That doesn’t make any sense, either.”

“See? That’s why I need you.”

“You’ve lost your mind.”

“‘Mad for her love,’” I said, smiling.

“Now you’re quoting Polonius, from Hamlet.”

“Pretty good, eh?”

“Not really. Hamlet’s lover dies,” Vanni pointed out. “And so does he.”

We got to the chosen spot half an hour early. It had rained for two days, and the gravel path along the river was pocked with puddles, each reflecting sky and forest. The trees hung sodden and limp, as if they couldn’t wait to shed their leaves and be done with it.

Stepping carefully down the muddy bank, we made our way to the positions I had selected. If I craned my neck I could make out a bit of the path, so I’d be able to see Alba coming. I stood on a flat, grassy area by the rushing water. Vanni slipped and slid as she gingerly picked her way under the bridge. It was constructed of timbers, with a plank bed that allowed rain to drip through, so the sloping ground beneath was treacherously boggy.

My stomach fluttered like a leaf. I checked the path again. No Alba. Would she come? I wondered.

“Vanni, maybe we should—”

“Ahh! Ahh! Aarrgh!”

I turned just in time to see Vanni standing rigid, feet together, a startled expression on her face, her arms straight out from her shoulders and windmilling frantically as she slid backwards down the bank. “Ah! Ah!” she shrieked again. Then, as if a rope had been looped around them and suddenly jerked, her feet darted from under her and she crashed nose first into the mire, sending up an explosion of mud and water.

Heaving herself onto her hands and knees, glaring in my direction, she spat out a mouthful of mud. Her face and the front of her dress were dripping with ooze. A blob dropped from the end of her nose and plopped onto the ground. One of her shoes had come off.

“My nose!” she exclaimed, wiping clay from her face, smearing more sludge across her cheeks. “Where’s my bloody shoe?” She got carefully to her feet, struggling, legs apart, to regain her balance, and took a step toward the missing clog, which had rolled down the bank. The greasy clay beat her again. Her feet slid apart and she dropped like a bag of cement onto her backside with a loud squelch. “Ow! My bum!” she howled, looking at me over her shoulder. “Don’t you say a single word. If you laugh, I’ll drown you in that creek.”

Through the trees I saw someone walking our way.

“Quick! Here she comes!”

“Grand,” was all Vanni managed, once more scrambling drunkenly to her feet. She wiped her hands on her sweater and shook her head in disgust.

“No, it’s okay,” she said snarkily. “I can manage on my own.”

But I wasn’t listening. Alba was looking around—for me, I hoped—as she approached the bridge. Her feet thumped on the planks. I waited until she was halfway across before I called out to her.

“Greetings, Pilgrim,” I offered, using the affectionate name Romeo called Juliet.

She stopped, stepped to the railing and looked down. She was wearing a burgundy leather bomber jacket, white denims and western boots the same deep red as her coat. Her hair was plaited in a French braid, and diamond studs winked in her earlobes.

“Oh, there you are,” she said. “Hi.”

I stole a glance at Vanni, streaks of river clay in her hair, on her face and dress, one shoe off and the other gripped in her mucky hand. I swore I could see steam coming out of her ears, feel the sharp darts shooting from her eyes as she spat more mud from her mouth.

“What’s that noise?” Alba asked.

“Er, nothing,” I said. “Just the river. I’ve been waiting for you. But seeing you at last makes the wait worthwhile.”

Vanni shot me a look of approval.

“Thank you for meeting me,” I added.

“Well, this is on my way home.”

Meaning she hadn’t intended to see me at all? I wondered. I squared my shoulders and told myself to be positive. I tilted my head in Vanni’s direction, silently asking, What now?

“Alba, I’ve never met a girl like you,” Vanni whispered.

“Alba, I’ve never met a girl like you,” I parroted, putting my heart into it, speaking the words with all the emotion I could summon up.

“What?” she asked.

I raised my voice. “I said I’ve never met a girl like you.”

“Eh? I can’t hear you. That stupid river is making too much noise.”

“I’VE NEVER MET A GIRL LIKE YOU!”

“Oh.”

Vanni began to speak again and I echoed her, adjusting my volume. “Ever since that first day, when we sat together in drama class, I’ve felt drawn to you, the way a wave is pulled to the shore, as if we were meant to be together.”

“Really? Me? You mean like Fate?”

I made the mistake of looking at Vanni, who was dramatically rolling her eyes. I gazed up at Alba again, at her long golden braid, her beautiful grey eyes waiting for my next line. It came right away.

“Yes, exactly like Fate. And if Fate is a goddess, I’ll pray to her tonight to thank her for bringing you into my life.”

“Play with who?”

“NOT PLAY. PRAY.”

“You don’t have to yell.”

“Sorry.”

I modulated my voice again, wondering if words of love sound as sweet when you’re almost bellowing. I repeated the line.

Alba asked, “Do you believe in Fate?”

“If she brought you to me, then I believe in her.”

There was a pause, then Alba spoke again. “Is Casablanca still your favourite movie?”

Keeping my face toward Alba, I flicked my eyes to the shadow under the bridge, thrown off by her question. Vanni extended her hand as if offering me her open palm. Over to you, Jake.

“Er, yes,” I replied. “The greatest, most romantic movie ever. Someday,” I added, back on track and making it up myself, “I’d like to write a screenplay, updating Casablanca. And I’ll picture you in my mind when I write the new Ingrid Bergman part.”

“She’s much better looking than me,” Alba demurred from the bridge.

I recognized a cue when I heard one. “No, you’re lovelier by far,” I said, and Vanni joined in smoothly, so I kept going without a hitch. “When I see you up there now, your face framed by the sky and the trees of autumn, I can think of a dozen movies I’d like to write for you.”

“Really?”

“But you’re not like other actresses,” I said, conscious that Vanni was whispering with a lot more passion than before. “You’ve got depth, a soul. That’s what I sensed in you the first time we met. My soul—”

“Mine’s gone with the wind,” Alba said.

“Huh?” I exclaimed before I could stop myself. Baffled, I glanced at Vanni. She shrugged, held her hands out to her sides as if to say, I don’t get it either.

“My favourite movie,” Alba continued, as though explaining it to a child. “Gone with the Wind. You know, Leslie Howard, the Civil War?”

I caught on. “Ah, I see. ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’”

“Well, that’s not a very nice thing to say!” Alba shot back heatedly. “I didn’t criticize your—”

“No, no! You don’t understand! I’m quoting from the movie. Remember? Rhett says to Scarlett, ‘Frankly, my—’”

“Oh,” Alba said doubtfully. “I forgot that part.”

She looked around, as though something had caught her attention. The mood had been broken. I had ruined it. And as if on cue, laughter burst from the trees, in the direction of the school, and four ninth-graders loped toward us, punching shoulders, shoving each other. They clattered over the bridge, giving Alba an exaggerated once-over as they passed.

“I’ve got to get going,” Alba said. “Nice talking to you, Jake.” She smiled and began to walk toward the far bank, the sway of her hips brushing further thoughts from my mind.

“Farewell,” I said, gallantly, I hoped.

When she was gone, I kicked the ground as hard as I could. Just when I had been getting into the scene, making headway, things had fallen apart. Those damn niners with their stupid antics and stupider smirks and remarks.

“I could use a hand here,” Vanni called out. “If you’re not too busy.”

“No sarcasm, Vanni. I’m not in the mood,” I said, taking her by the arm to steady her as we struggled up the slimy bank.

“You gave it a good try,” she said slipping her shoe onto a muddy foot.

“Do you think I got anywhere?”

“Certainly. You made your feelings plain.”

“I—you—did that in my letters.”

“Person to person is best.”

“You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

“True. Is it working?” she asked as we crunched along the path toward the school.

“Sort of.”

But as we walked I replayed the scene on the movie screen behind my eyes. For a moment there, when Vanni was feeding me my lines, she sounded very passionate, as if she really did mean what she was saying, as if she too had fallen in love with Alba.

Oh, no, I thought. Things have gotten really complicated.

I didn’t have the nerve to ask Vanni right out if she had feelings for Alba. Was Vanni my rival, too, like the guys who followed Alba around the school like brainless ducklings? Was I like a character in one of those pathetic old teen movies where two best friends are in love with the same girl? With, you might say, modern variations?

Alba wouldn’t be attracted to Vanni, though. Would she? When I thought about it, Alba didn’t seem to have a boyfriend. None of the guys at York seemed to be doing any better with her than I was.

It was weird competing against a girl for a girl. Was I odd man out in an odd love triangle?

CHAPTER FOUR

“DIDJEVER WONDER,” Vanni asked lazily, tilting back her chair, “where the story goes when you delete it?”

We were in creative writing class, which was held in the library’s computer centre. Mrs. Cleaver was conferring at her desk with two girls who were working together on an endless fantasy novel involving gnomes, pretty princesses, two unicorns, intergalactic travel and a precocious beagle named Ernie. I knew the plot because the girls had read a bit of the tale out loud and given an outline during the sharing circle two days before. I had suggested substituting a gerbil for the beagle. “Gerbils are cuter,” I claimed, having no idea what I was talking about. “And smarter. Most people don’t realize how intelligent gerbils are.” Other students—the ones not whispering behind their screens—worked away on their own projects or used the computers to make forbidden forays into chat rooms or websites with free games.

Attempting to ignore all this, I tapped furiously away at my keyboard, pounding out the last scene of what I would have freely admitted was a mind-bendingly lame short story. A couple of days had passed since the fiasco at the bridge, and I was racing the clock to the end of the period, when the story was due.

“No,” I said in answer to Vanni’s question, to head off what promised to be one of her rambles.

“Really?” she replied.

“Really.” Tap, tap, tap.

“Hmm.”

I refused to bite. I couldn’t let Vanni get started or I’d be led astray.

“It must go somewhere,” Vanni mused, gazing at the ceiling. “It’s a law of the universe or something, isn’t it? Everything has to be somewhere.”

Tap, tap, tap. My fingers flew. I glanced up at the clock. I might just get the last scene done on time.

“I mean, it stands to reason.”

Tap, tap.

“Funny expression, that. ‘Stands to reason.’”

I kept my eyes on the screen, which was slowly filling up with type, each boring sentence taking me toward my goal.

“See, the story I’ve written on my word processor is real, right? It must be—I can read it on the screen, show it to someone. It has places and characters and events and so on. Once you’ve read it, you remember it. You can talk about it. Ergo, it must have a certain kind of reality. So I’m wondering, if I delete it—I mean really erase it so it’s not recoverable—where does it go? How could something that was there suddenly be not there? How could something real suddenly be not real?”

Tap, tap, tap. I had no intention of asking her what “ergo” meant. Vanni turned in her chair to make sure Mrs. Cleaver was still occupied. She turned back.

“Didjever wonder—”

“No, Vanni,” I said. “I don’t wonder about the things you wonder about. Most of the time I don’t even understand them.” I cursed under my breath. She had hooked me again.

Vanni allowed a few moments to pass before she spoke again. “Imagine where our civilization would be today if every member of the human race, throughout recorded history—and unrecorded history, for that matter—possessed your relentless, aggressive curiosity. You’re such a plodder.”

I was nearing my final paragraph, where my hero, an eighty-year-old arthritic janitor from Congo, would reveal the name of the murderer who had cut the throats (from right to left, proving he was left-handed) of every registered delegate at the Ohio automobile insurance brokers’ convention—all 125 of them.

“How’s the story coming?” Vanni asked, peering at my screen and feigning interest.

She’s really desperate now, I thought. A direct question from Vanni in one of her philosophical moods was almost unheard of.

“Look, old pal, old buddy, leave me alone. I don’t have the time.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her link her fingers behind her head and lean back even farther. It drove the librarian, Ms. Kahn, nuts if you “used two legs” of the chair instead of four.

“Ah, well, time,” Vanni remarked casually in her world-weary way. “What is time? I mean, people act as if it’s a thing, an object in the universe, like this chair Ms. Kahn thinks I’m ruining. But really, the only thing time has in common with an article of furniture is that both are human inventions.”

Tucking her thick hair behind her ear in a futile gesture—it sprang free immediately—she looked over at me.

“THE END!” I typed, then banged the Save key triumphantly. “Done!” I crowed. “In spite of the distractions of a certain”—I jabbed a function key, sending the story to the printer—“bothersome female philosopher—or philosophess.”

“Didja spell-check it?” Vanni asked casually.

“Ah, shoot.”

“Not too late. You have”—Vanni consulted her watch, apparently having decided that time did exist—“six minutes.”

I frantically launched the spell checker and blasted through the story. It seemed like every second word had been misspelled.

“Oh, well, I got all the and’s and but’s and the’s right,” I muttered, saving the changes. As the printer churned out the last page, the buzzer sounded to end the period.

Vanni took off for her next class, and I carried my masterpiece of detective fiction to Mrs. Cleaver, who was gathering papers from her desk and shoving them into a huge leather briefcase. I handed my story to her and she smiled.

Cleaver, I was convinced, didn’t have a mean bone in her very short, very thin body. Always cheerful and encouraging, she gave you the impression that she liked everything you wrote, which, in a weird way, made you want to make it better—and which today, after my whirlwind effort to slam together a half-baked story, made me feel guilty. In a gentle manner, as we groaned in protest, she pushed us to revise and then revise again. I sometimes imagined what kind of conversations she and Locheed had in the staff room—if they talked at all. You could hand Locheed a verse from the Qur’an or the Bible and he’d find something to sneer about.

“Ah,” Cleaver said. “Jake’s latest foray into hard-boiled crime fiction.” She took the sheaf of freshly printed pages in her tiny hand and added it to her stack. “Whodunnit?”

“You’ll have to read it. I think it’s a prize-winner,” I joked. “I’m expecting a call any minute.”

Her smile grew wider. “Let me know as soon as you hear anything. I’ll wait by the phone.”

“See you tomorrow,” I said, turning toward the door at the far end of the library just in time to see Alba come in. Today, her honey-coloured hair was pulled back into a ponytail secured with a dark blue ribbon. She wore a tight, rose-coloured sweater over navy cargo pants and pink leather sandals. Alba was the only girl in the school whose clothing I could remember at the end of the day.

When we saw each other in class or in the halls, she never referred to my letters or our meeting at the bridge. I didn’t know if I was making any headway with her or not. I didn’t know if she liked guys or not. So I continued to be positive, taking her lack of response to be one notch better than rejection. I hung my hopes on that one notch.

She stood beside the library door like a work of art set down in the middle of an auto-repair shop and scanned the room as I stared at her, holding my breath. Her eyes met mine and she smiled. I felt the heat rise into my neck and face as she came forward.

“Jake,” she began breathily, “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

Her perfume, as usual, made me dizzy. Her nearness paralyzed my tongue. “Oh,” I managed to blurt.

“I need to talk to you. It’s really, really important. And private,” she added mysteriously, looking around to see if she had been overheard.

“Okay,” I replied. “What’s it about?”

“Not here. Can you meet me after rehearsal today?”

Can the sun find the energy to rise tomorrow morning? I wanted to ask. Does the grass bend when the wind blows?

“Sure,” I said. “Where?”

“At the bridge. We’ll be alone there.”

“Great.”

“See you then.” And with that, she hurried away, leaving a trail of scent that would melt the heart of a warlock.

SCREENPLAY: “THE SECRET LOVERS”

by

JAKE BLANCHARD

FADE IN:

EXT. THE BRIDGE OVER THE HUMBOLT RIVER—DAY—HIGH SUMMER

The afternoon sun bathes the trees with gold. A gentle breeze stirs the leaves. Butterflies flutter. Birds sing. The brook burbles beneath the bridge.

JAKE stands in the middle of the bridge, lost in thought, elbows on the wooden railing, his manly, chiselled profile lit by the sun.

SOUND of footsteps on the planking. JAKE turns to see ALBA running toward him. They embrace. JAKE kisses ALBA’s hair, her face, her lips.

ALBA

Darling! I thought the day would never end.

JAKE

No matter, my love. We’re together now.

That’s all that—

CHAPTER FIVE

“GOD! I THOUGHT PANOFSKY would never shut up. He explains things in detail, then explains them all over again. In more detail. He thinks we’re deaf, or stupid, or I don’t know what.”

I had gone to the bridge in lots of time to meet Alba. Too much time. I had been waiting since school got out, even though I knew her rehearsal would take an hour and a half at least. It was a sunny afternoon, with a light breeze. I was sitting at the edge of the river where I had stood not many days before, repeating Vanni’s lines to Alba. I was tossing stones into the riffle and daydreaming a torrid movie scene.

When I heard Alba’s voice I hurriedly climbed back up the bank and stepped onto the bridge, painfully conscious that Vanni wasn’t with me this time.

“Er, hi,” I said.

“I mean,” Alba ranted, sounding anything but romantic, “we know the play, right? We told him that we had studied it in school. But he acts like we’ve never heard of the Bard of Avonlea.”

“I think it’s Avon.”

Alba’s brows creased with displeasure. “Whatever.”

I cursed myself for correcting her. “It’s nice to see you again,” I said. “I’m beginning to think of this as our bridge.”

The sun was behind Alba, adding gold to her hair—and making me squint.

“Anyway, Jake,” she said, dropping her eyes as she rested her hand on the railing. “Thanks for coming.”

“You’re welcome,” I said—like a store clerk clinching a sale. I mentally kicked myself. Think! I commanded my brain.

“I … this is difficult,” she went on. “I have something to discuss with you.” She turned and looked down into the trees that flanked the river.

My heart began to thump so loudly I was sure she could hear it. Could this be, I hardly dared to ask myself, what I’d been hoping for? Did she share my feelings? She hadn’t seemed to, but she had never spurned me. Maybe all this time it was shyness that had made her seem unenthusiastic. She certainly seemed shy now. She must have liked my letters after all. I said a silent thank-you to Vanni.

“It’s hard to talk about,” Alba murmured, barely audible above the purling river, which, thank goodness, had receded to its normal state.

Take your time, I wanted to say, but my mouth had dried up.

“It’s about … love,” she said, softly. “I know I can say this to you.”

My pulse hammered in my ears. I wanted to jump a mile into the air and yell, “Hooray!” I stepped a little closer to her so that we were side by side at the railing, shoulders touching. I felt her heat through our clothing.

“Because you’ll understand. I can tell from your letters, and from our conversation here that day, that you’re not afraid to speak of love. You’re different from the others. You have a poetic soul.”

“Yes, I do understand. I feel the same way.”

“I knew you would, Jake.” She turned and put her hand on my arm. “I’m … I’m in love, for the first time in my life.”

She smiled shyly, eyes downcast. God, she was beautiful. She looked so vulnerable at that moment.

“And so am I,” I said softly.

“But it’s hard for me to express my feelings, you know?”

Tears formed at the corners of my eyes. I ached to embrace her, but I told myself to wait.

“Yes.”

“That’s why I need your help,” Alba was saying.

“It’s all right,” I reassured her, all my nervousness swept away by a warm tide of euphoria. “You can tell me. You can say it.”

“I’m in love with a boy at York.”

I nodded to encourage her.

“I think you know him.”

You bet I do, I thought.

“You know Chad, don’t you?” Alba asked.

At first, for one numb moment, the name didn’t register. I had been waiting, yearning, to hear “Jake” cross those perfect lips, the lips that I had been desperate to kiss since our first conversation—or, if not my name, that simple, magical pronoun “you.”

But the wave of happiness crested, and crashed, and disappeared.

“Chad,” I spluttered. “I see.”

“I knew you would, Jake. That’s why I came to you.”

“I see.”

“He’s everything to me,” Alba said. “I can’t get him out of my mind.”

I suppose that if I had to, I’d admit that Bromley was the male counterpart of Alba—tall, lean, good-looking in a movie-star sort of way and, as if all that wasn’t enough, rich.

“I see.”

“But he doesn’t know I exist!” Alba almost wailed, dropping her hand.

How could any male human being not know you exist? I wanted to ask her. Instead I said, “I know what you mean.”

“So I thought, if I could find a way to talk to Chad when we’re alone, explain how I feel, maybe I could win him over. Maybe—and I hardly dare to think so—he feels the same way about me and can’t find a way to let me know.”

“I see.”

“You know what boys are like.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, scuffing the planks with the toe of my shoe. “I do.”

“But I don’t know what to say. How to begin.”

“Right.”

“That’s why I need your help.”

“Me?” I blurted. “What help can I be?”

“You’re so good with words, Jake. You’ve proved that to me.”

“But I—”

“I was thinking I could talk to Chad alone at one of our rehearsals. Panofsky wants us to practise our lines together, just the two of us, right on the set, so we can get used to our surroundings and each other. He’s even told us to do the scene playing each other’s parts. He says we have to know all the lines, not just our own. You see? It’s the perfect opportunity.”

“But—”

“You could hang back in the wings, behind me, and tell me what to say to him, like a prompter.”

I was starting to get dizzy. Had Alba known all along that someone was under the bridge that day, feeding me lines? The forest around me began to revolve. “Well, I don’t know …”

Then she put a hand on each of my shoulders and held me with those wide grey eyes. The fragrance of her perfume, her lipstick—her—made me drunk. Her lips parted slightly.

“Please?”

I seethed with jealousy and disappointment and anger. So she liked guys after all—but not the guy standing in front of her now. I wanted to push her off the bridge, watch her flail in the water. I wanted to run down to the river and save her, and hold her, kiss warmth back into her lips. I wanted to shout at her that she was an idiot to fall for an empty bag like Bromley, to shake some sense into her. I yearned to press against her, kiss her hair. I fantasized Bromley tearing down York Street in his gleaming German-engineered coupe, swerving, skidding across the pavement and cartwheeling into the ditch in a howling, screeching confusion of tortured metal—then exploding in a fireball.

I lowered my eyes, breaking Alba’s magnetic hold.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll help.”

SCREENPLAY: “JAKE, BEREFT”

by

JAKE BLANCHARD

FADE IN:

EXT. A DESERTED URBAN PARKING LOT—DAY

CUE MUSIC: a funeral march

Fog. Decrepit brick buildings surround the parking lot.

CAMERA on a high rooftop.

Seen from above, a MALE FIGURE emerges from the mist, head covered, hands deep in the pockets of his hoodie, shoulders slumped. It is JAKE. He walks slowly, diagonally, across the lot. The fog swallows him again.

HOLD MUSIC

FADE OUT

CHAPTER SIX

“AWAY OUT OF HERE with that,” Vanni scoffed.

“I know it sounds crazy,” I countered, “but—”

“Crazy, is it? Every word that comes out of your mouth lately seems insane. But this goes way beyond nuts. It’s demented !”

We were at our usual table by the window in the Blue Note—Vanni with a carton of 100 per cent pure juice of some kind and a low-fat muffin, me with a lukewarm latte and a sticky bun. The surly waiter was waiting in the corner, ready to insult the next customer unwise enough to come in out of the blustery wind.

“I admit it’s complicated.”

“Complicated, is it? Let me get this straight,” Vanni said, setting down her juice with more force than necessary and tearing her muffin in half. “You want me to hide in the wings during their rehearsal and whisper words of love to you.”

“Right.”

“You are also hiding in the wings.”

“Yes.”

“You in turn pass on my words to Her Loveliness, who is not hiding in the wings.”

“Correct.”

“Her Loveliness knows you’re there, because she asked you to help her, but she doesn’t know I’m there. She in turn speaks my words—always supposing everyone concerned has perfect hearing—to Chadwick Bromley the Stuck-Up, who doesn’t know you’re there or I’m there and who thinks that Alba is saying her own words.”

“Yes.”

“It’ll be like passing buckets of water along a relay line at a fire.”

“Perfect simile,” I said. “See, that’s why—”

“Never mind your pathetic flattery. I’m not finished. Lord Stuck-Up is swept away by the force of my poetic utterances and falls in love with Her Loveliness.”

“That’s the strategy.”

“Stratagem. Your brain is so Alba-addled that you’re thinking backwards. What’s the net result of this plan—if it works? Alba and Dimwick are in love! You’ve been away with the fairies, you have. Do you not see the flaw, you thick fool? What will you do then?”

“I haven’t worked that out yet.”

“You haven’t worked—? Ach, why am I not surprised?”

Vanni popped a bit of muffin into her mouth and chomped on it for a moment.

“I’ve just thought of another problem,” she continued. “You say Her—”

“Stop calling her that.”

“You say Alba and Prince Charming are rehearsing?”

“Yes.”

“Then she’ll be up on the balcony, won’t she? How can anyone hear all the furtive whispering that’ll be going on? She won’t hear us from the wings, and there isn’t enough room for the three of us on the balcony even if we could conceal ourselves. You built the thing. You ought to know.”

“No sweat. Panofsky wants them to reverse roles as part of the rehearsal. Alba will be below; he’ll be above.”

Vanni groaned. “Jaysus. To complete the absurdity, we’ll have a male Juliet and a female Romeo!”

I had no answer for that, so I kept my mouth shut.

“And you’re still stuck with a plan that gets you the opposite of what you want: Chad in love with Alba, who is already in love with Chad.”

I said nothing. Vanni’s eyes flared. “Don’t tell me.”

“What?”

“Eejit! You’ve persuaded yourself that Alba will recognize your generosity, your selflessness, realize she’s given her heart to the wrong man, and in a flash of insight—which, believe me, would be uncharacteristic of her—discover that it’s you she loved all along.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” I said.

“You really think she’ll love you out of gratitude? That only happens in the movies.”

“What choice do I have?”

“Listen, Jake. Here’s a news bulletin for you: love isn’t self-sacrificing. It’s the opposite. It’s blind, and it’s selfish.”

Vanni’s face had become flushed with anger and frustration, as if she’d lost patience with a stubborn, dimwitted child. She slurped the last drops of juice from the container.

“Calm down,” I said. “It’s a moronic idea, I admit. But I promised.”

“You talked yourself into a mess and you want me to talk you out of it. Literally.”

I smiled. “What are friends for?”

“Don’t try to charm me.”

“Help me dig myself out of this hole, and I promise it’s the last favour I’ll ever ask.”

Vanni laughed, her mirth edged with bitterness. “There you go again.”

“What?” I asked, waiting for the punchline.

“What happens when you’re standing in a hole and you keep digging?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

A COVERED FLAGSTONE SIDEWALK connected the academic block to the big glass doors of York’s Nelson Makeba Building, where drama classes were held in the two studios built for them and performances were put on in either the Carnaby Theatre or the Carnaby Auditorium, depending on the size of the production. I had a key to the service door at the back because I worked on the sets. The key was functional when the security system was disabled for the school day, from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m.

Vanni and I slipped into the backstage area of the theatre a few minutes after Alba and Chad’s rehearsal was scheduled to begin. For the balcony scene, Panofsky had designed a simple set. Following his directions, I had constructed a stand-alone balcony—really a rectangular platform on a scaffold—that could be wheeled into place in front of a canvas backdrop. The wheels were then locked to keep the structure secure. Eventually the backdrop would be painted and lit to resemble the wall of the Capulet mansion. More canvas sheathed the framing that held up the balcony. The backdrop had an opening to form the door to Juliet’s “bedroom,” in reality a staircase with a small landing on top. This gave Juliet a place to stand until she stepped through the double doors onto the balcony. The staircase also had lockable wheels. On either side of the backdrop and a pace downstage was a “leg” made of framed canvas screen. The legs would also be painted and, when properly illuminated with stage lights, would become the tall shrubbery in the Capulet garden.

As Vanni and I crept into the wings stage left, we heard Alba speaking. The rehearsal had begun.

“… and Juliet is the sun! Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon …”

Vanni whispered, “Romeo’s lines sound strange in Alba’s voice.”

“They’re taking each other’s parts, remember,” I replied.

“As long as they don’t mix them up during the performance.”

I peeked around the leg. Alba looked casually beautiful in roomy woollen slacks and a bulky knit cardigan over a plain blouse, her hair loose on her shoulders. She stood on the taped X marking her spot, downstage left from the balcony and next to the leg. She would be able to hear me easily. Chad was up on the balcony, hands on the railing, leaning out, pretending to peer into the night.

Alba continued:

The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars

As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven

Would through the airy region stream so bright

That birds would sing and think it were not night.

“She’s really good, isn’t she?” I said to Vanni.

And she was. Even after only a few lines it was obvious that Alba had gallons of talent. In her mouth the words came alive. She gave every phrase an emotional charge that convinced you she was Romeo, deeply in love with Juliet.

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!

O, that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek!

Then came Chad’s voice, like a muddy boot stomping a bed of flowers: “Aye me! ”

“She speaks,” Alba said. I thought of a mad scientist in a monster movie who can’t quite believe that the creature he sewed together out of stolen body parts is really alive. “O, speak again, bright angel—”

And that’s when I laughed.

It wasn’t my fault. I was watching Chad up there on the balcony. When Alba said “bright angel,” he was picking his nose. He was pretending to scratch it, and he probably thought Alba wouldn’t notice in the dim light, but his baby finger was knuckle deep.

I felt a sharp punch on my shoulder from behind. “Stop it!” Vanni hissed.

“What did you say?” Chad called from above, breaking character. “I don’t remember that part.”

Alba covered quickly. “Give me a second, Chad. I forgot my next line.”

Vanni practically leapt into the wings behind a “tormentor” curtain just as Alba stuck her head around the leg.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” she said in a low voice. “Why did you laugh?”

“Sorry. Er, no reason, really.”

“Well, you turned up. That’s the main thing. Are you ready?”

“Um, sure,” I replied, automatically glancing at the two shoes visible below the tormentor. I quickly looked away.

“Let me get through the scene first,” Alba said, all business. “I’ll cough when I want you to feed me my lines. And,” she added, giving me a dazzling, knee-weakening smile, “thanks for coming.”

“You’re welcome. And, Alba,” I said as she was turning away.

“Yes?”

“You’re really good, really convincing when you act.”

“Thanks. But I wish I had your gift for words. I’m only good at saying someone else’s.”

She returned to her X on the stage. “Sorry,” she said to Chad, projecting her voice once again. “I’m ready now. Let’s take it from ‘Aye me.’”

“Aye me,” Chad repeated, the way you’d say “Get out of my way.”

I felt Vanni step up behind me as Alba picked up the scene and repeated her lines: “She speaks. O, speak again, bright angel! …”

“When do we make our contribution to this farce?” Vanni whispered.

“I don’t know. She said she’d cough when she’s ready.”

We stood behind the leg, listening. Soon Chad thundered the famous lines:

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny thy father and refuse thy name!

Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,

And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

He delivered the lines as if he was at a baseball game, yelling down the bleachers for a hot dog. Behind me I heard Vanni struggling to control her laughter. At this point in the scene, Chad/Juliet had most of the lines, and he plowed through them with determination, as if slogging through deep snow. Panofsky must have had a reason, besides Chad’s good looks, for choosing him over the half-dozen other guys who had auditioned for the part, but if Chad had even a molecule of talent, he certainly wasn’t showing it.

And then I realized why he sounded so awkward and unconvincing. He was embarrassed speaking a girl’s lines, especially in a romantic scene. Alba was brilliant, even though she was—for today, at least—Romeo. The poetry was moving and emotional. Chad felt foolish, so he didn’t try. Which meant Alba was the true professional.

“O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? ” Alba/Romeo asked plaintively.

“Come on up here, baby, and I’ll give you all the satisfaction you need,” Chad laughed. “You’ll be so satisfied you’ll never look at another man for the rest of your—”

But Alba cut in, remaining in character, and dragged Chad back into the scene. They went on. Vanni shuffled her feet restlessly.

Then Chad/Juliet intoned, “Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.”

“Get ready,” Vanni whispered at my back as Alba/Romeo wound up the scene.

“Okay!” came Chad’s voice from the other side of the leg. “We’re done. Now I can get off this stupid bal—”

“Chad, would you mind staying up there for a moment?” Alba said sweetly.

And she coughed.

I felt Vanni’s hand on my shoulder and her breath light on my ear as she spoke softly.

“Chad, it was easy for me to say my lines today …”

Vanni paused. I spoke through the unpainted canvas to Alba, then heard her repeat, “Chad, it was easy for me to say my lines today.”

Then the voice at my ear: “Because I meant every word.”

The sentence went from me, to Alba, to Chad.

“You meant every word?” he asked. “I don’t get it.”

Then, “I feel the same about you as Juliet does about Romeo,” Vanni whispered.

“I feel the same about you as Juliet does about Romeo,” I said to the canvas as if the words came from my own heart.

“I feel the same about you as Juliet does about Romeo.” It all sounded sweeter somehow, coming from Alba.

“But you were saying Romeo’s lines,” Chad replied.

“What a bonehead!” from Vanni.

“What a bonehead!” from me.

Alba said, “What a—” and stopped herself with another cough.

“Ow!” I blurted when Vanni twisted my ear.

“But it doesn’t matter, Chad, don’t you see?” Vanni slipped back into form and the murmured relay system took up again. “Whatever love Romeo feels for Juliet, or Juliet for Romeo, is equalled by my feelings for you.”

“Oh,” Chad said in wonder after a second or two. “You mean it?”

“And whenever I say Shakespeare’s words, no matter whose part I’m playing, it’s as if I’m singing a love song I wrote myself—for you. Chad, do you understand? I … I’m in love with you!”

“Wow! Holy Jeeze,” Chad replied. Then, after a beat. “Can I come down now?”

Vanni dashed behind the tormentor just as Alba came round the leg.

“You’d better go!” Alba gushed. “I think it worked. Oh, thank you, Jake!”

“That’s okay.”

“I think I can take it from here,” she said. “Wish me luck!”

I felt her hand in the small of my back as she shoved me toward the wings. I hope he trips on my stairs on his way down from my balcony and breaks his neck! I muttered. With unwanted images of Chad and Alba embracing and kissing behind my back, I grabbed Vanni by the arm.

“Come on,” I said. “I need a coffee.”

“Come on,” she repeated, mimicking Alba’s voice. “I need a coffee.”

“Oh, shut up,” I snapped.

“Oh, shut up.”

We barged through the stage door and out into the rain, Vanni’s laughter banging around inside my head, with my own inner voice shouting, “Fool! Idiot! Loser!”

Now what was I supposed to do?

Over the next couple of weeks, as late autumn faded into early winter, I asked myself that question a thousand times. I was like those idiots in the jokes and clichés. I had painted myself into a corner, sawed off the tree limb I was sitting on, shot myself in the foot, given myself enough rope to hang myself. The girl I loved had taken herself away from me, and I had helped her do it.

Alba and Chad became an item. One was hardly ever seen without the other. They held hands in the halls, nuzzled in the cafeteria, ogled each other across classrooms. Their enactment of the excerpt from Romeo and Juliet was a huge success. As a member of the stage crew, I had to be there for all three shows. Alba put in brilliant performances, and I had to admit Chad was good too. It was more than symbolic that during each production, Alba stood on the balcony I had built while Chad spoke words of love to her from the “garden” formed by the legs I had framed.

Vanni had been wrong about one thing. I hadn’t kidded myself that Alba would eventually see the error she had made in falling for Chad and realize she had loved me all along. Alba had never loved me. So why had I helped her? Because I was a pathetic loser who allowed himself to be used? I knew that was how it looked to Vanni. I was painfully aware I had made myself ridiculous.

But what else could I have done? I loved Alba; I wanted her to be happy. And that, for her, meant being with someone else. Wasn’t love supposed to be generous and giving? Unselfish? Vanni had said that love was the opposite, but I didn’t agree. When I saw Alba and Chad together I shrivelled up inside, but my feelings for her didn’t change to hate. I didn’t believe that hate was the dark side of love. Love has no dark side. It just is.

On some days I hoped my feelings would fade away to friendship and that the pain would go with it; other days I held onto my hopeless love, afraid it would dissolve as time passed. Like the kid who adored Mangan’s sister, I wanted to preserve it, as if it was a precious object you kept hidden in a dark cupboard, something you could take out sometimes and cradle in your hands. It’s a wonder I didn’t go crazy holding such contradictions in my head. I was confused, mixed up, turning in circles. I didn’t know up from down.

But one thing was clear.

It hurt.

ACT FOUR

CHAPTER ONE

ONE OF MY FAVOURITE PLACES in the school was the library reading room. It was on the north side of the building, and its floor-to-ceiling windows looked out across flower beds and shrubs and grass to the greenbelt that followed the river, although at this time of year the lawns and gardens were hidden under a thin layer of snow and the belt was white. If a relaxed, restful atmosphere was what you were after, this was the place to be. The For Quiet Study Only signs weren’t strictly enforced as long as conversations were carried on at very low volume.

Vanni, Instant and I were seated in comfortable chairs around a low table, working in the quiet background buzz. The library was crowded, and almost all the seats were taken. Vanni was composing a poem, Instant was reading a book called Music and Your Brain and I was struggling to keep my mind off Alba and jot down ideas for a project. So far all I had were three cartoons that had nothing to do with anything and a silly scene for a nonexistent screenplay based on Hamlet. Sometimes I wondered why I liked to make fun of famous tragedies.

“Vanni,” I said, “what are you going to do for the Big Project?”

The BP was a second-semester half-credit independent assignment that every York student had to complete. You were expected to come up with an idea yourself, get it approved by your teacher and see it through to completion. The only stipulation was that it be something in the arts, and preferably in your major. A low or failing grade would pull down your final average and make college entrance difficult, so everyone took the BP seriously. I had already decided on a screenplay, but that was as far as my imagination had taken me. The Alba fiasco had short-circuited most of my schoolwork.

“I’m thinking about adapting a play,” she answered without looking up from her page. Vanni used leather-bound notebooks she bought by the dozen from a supplier in New York.

“What play?”

“No details yet.”

“Something existential, I’ll bet.”

“When there’s news, I’ll issue a press release.”

“What about you, Instant?”

He closed his book, held it against his pigeon chest and put his long feet on the last empty chair, ankles crossed. Gazing up at the ceiling as he spoke, he replied, “I was going to do a research paper entitled ‘Why Are Classical Musicians So Boring?’ Then I revised the idea to ‘Why Don’t Classical Musicians Have a Sense of Humour?’”

Vanni closed her notebook. “You could combine the two. They’re closely related,” she said.

“Think your father would give me a hand?” Instant asked her.

“He’d just tell you they’re all snobs and let it go at that.”

“Speaking of snobs,” Instant whispered, and cocked his head toward the centre of the room.

Chad Bromley strolled through the reading room, chin high, casting his gaze from side to side like visiting royalty as he negotiated a path through the tables and chairs. He approached our table, then yanked the chair from under Instant’s feet, making them drop to the carpet with a muffled thump. Chad casually sat down, crossed his legs, adjusted the crease in his grey flannel pants and flicked a bit of fluff off one of the tassels on his polished loafer.

“I wonder if this library has any books on human aggression,” Vanni said to no one in particular.

Chad gave her a hard look. “Who knows?” he said, and smirked. “Ask Ms. Kahn. Maybe she knows.”

Vanni held Chad’s insolent stare. “Doorknob,” she said sweetly. “Wingnut.”

“Hey, Jake,” Instant commented lazily, “I think we’ve got a hardware theme going here.”

“Dipstick,” Vanni added when the colour rose into Chad’s face.

“Nope,” I said. “Automotive.”

“Hamburger. Weenie.”

“Make that culinary,” I said.

“That the best you can do, Miss Universe?” Chad drawled.

“You pimple on the arse of a sand flea.”

“Biological,” Instant pointed out.

Chad blinked first. He broke off visual conflict with Vanni and opened a John Grisham novel.

Ignoring Chad, the three of us got back to work, which in my case meant more aimless doodling.

After a few minutes’ silence, Instant muttered, “Well, I’ll be …” and got to his feet. He slouched over to the window. Shading his eyes with his hand, he peered out. “Hmm,” he said to himself, then returned to his seat. But he kept his attention trained out the window.

Curious, I asked, “What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing really,” he replied slowly.

I glanced at Vanni inquiringly. Her attention remained on her notebook, but her eyebrows rose slightly, which meant “I don’t know.”

It’s strange how compelling body language can be. Instant sat canted expectantly toward the window, focused intently on something in the distance. Finally Chad raised his eyes from his novel. He looked out across the snow toward the river, squinting against the glare.

“What are you staring at?” he demanded.

“That old guy out there, sitting on the bench,” Instant answered.

“What guy?”

“It’s a sad story. The poor fella’s crazy.”

“I don’t see—”

“He thinks he’s invisible,” Instant said solemnly.

“There’s nobody there,” Chad snapped. “You mean the bench by the path, right?”

Instant nodded. “He must be freezing in this weather. See, he knows that if he puts his clothes on—you know, with a heavy coat and hat and some snuggy gloves—he’ll be warm, but people would be able to see him. Strictly speaking, they’d see the clothes, but it’s the same difference. He doesn’t want that.”

“But there’s nobody—”

“It’s really tragic what happened to him last time,” Instant interrupted, shaking his head sympathetically.

Silence.

“Well, what?” Chad demanded when it became clear that Instant was not going to say more.

“Walking around nude is illegal, even in this town. He was arrested.”

“Wait a minute!” Chad said, a note of triumph in his voice. “How could the police arrest him if they couldn’t—”

“He tried to understand how the cops had caught him. After all, he was invisible. He was totally baffled. Couldn’t figure it out. Anyway, they hauled him into court. The judge told him he was going to jail for indecent exposure. The old guy protested, ‘How can you convict me for exposing myself when you can’t see me?’ So the judge said, ‘If I can’t see you, how come I know you’re standing right there in front of me?’”

“Exactly,” Chad put in, as if he’d just scored a point.

“And the old fella answered, ‘Because you can hear my voice.’”

Chad fumed. “You’re nuts.”

“That’s exactly what the judge said to the invisible man when he sentenced him to six months in the loony bin. ‘You’re insane,’ he told him. But the old man wasn’t too upset. He planned to escape. He figured it’d be easy because—”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t tell me. Because he was invisible.”

Pause. Chad, his cheeks red with frustration, began to read again. After a minute or so, Instant sat back in his chair.

“I wonder how he ended up sitting on that bench, though,” he mused.

“There’s nobody on the damn bench!” Chad exclaimed through gritted teeth.

“Shhh!” came from all sides. A girl at the next table pointed to the For Quiet Study Only sign and gave Chad a disapproving look.

“Buzz off!” he told her.

A minute or so passed in silence.

“So what’s this invisible guy’s name, anyway?” Vanni asked innocently.

Chad slammed his novel shut, jumped to his feet and stomped away, bumping into tables as he wove his way toward the door.

Instant looked very pleased with himself. “I guess Chad never saw that movie, The Invisible Man,” he said.

“The original version, with Claude Rains?” I asked, showing off.

“That’s the one.”

Vanni fixed me with her eyes. “Please confirm that you are not going to tell us the plot.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I laughed.

SCREENPLAY: “BOGEY AND JAKE”

by

JAKE BLANCHARD

FADE IN:

INT. THE BAR IN RICK’S CAFE AMERICAIN, as in the movie CASABLANCA—NIGHT

CUE BACKGROUND MUSIC—“You Must Remember This” on piano

JAKE sits at a table in the deserted nightclub. Dim lights, chairs upended on tables. Jake looks at his wristwatch, drums his fingers, glances around.

BOGEY saunters in through a door behind the bar. Stops at the bar, picks up a bottle of brandy and two glasses. Walks to Jake’s table.

BOGEY

Mind if I join you?

JAKE

Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for hours.

BOGEY

Take it easy, kid. You’ll live longer.

JAKE

Sorry. Thanks for coming.

BOGEY

Whaddaya mean? I own the joint.

JAKE

Right. Well, thanks for agreeing to see me.

BOGEY

(removes a cigarette case from the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket, opens it, holds it toward Jake) Cigarette?

JAKE

Thanks.

JAKE takes a cigarette. BOGEY puts one between his own lips, lights it with a wooden match, offers the match to Jake.

JAKE

(lighting up)

Thanks.

He blows a few smoke rings while BOGEY shakes out the match and drops it into an ashtray.

BOGEY

Well, what can I do for you, kid? Your note said you was in a jam.

JAKE

It’s about a girl.

BOGEY

(smoking, pours two brandies, shoves one across the table to Jake)

Uh huh.

JAKE

(takes his drink, knocks it back)

I’m at sort of a dead end.

BOGEY

Uh huh.

JAKE

She loves somebody else.

BOGEY

So what’s the problem? Plug the guy.

JAKE

Plug—?

BOGEY

Yeah. Get yourself a heater. A gatt. Put his lights out. Punch his ticket.

JAKE

I can’t—

BOGEY

Snuff his wick. Ice him. Shoot—

JAKE

I get it, I get it.

BOGEY

(takes a drink, lights another cigarette)

You got a problem with that?

JAKE

It seems a little drastic.

BOGEY

Oh, I get it. You’re yella.

JAKE

Yella?

(grinds his cigarette out in the ashtray)

Look, I think I came to the wrong place.

BOGEY

This is Rick’s Place.

JAKE

I know.

BOGEY

Of all the gin joints—

JAKE

(disconsolate)

Right, right. She hadda walk into yours.

BOGEY

(takes another drink, refills his glass from the bottle)

I’m glad we had this little talk.

JAKE

Right.

BOGEY

Glad I could help.

(beat)

Somethin’ else eating you, kid?

JAKE

It’s this Big Project for school.

A screenplay.

BOGEY

I’ve been in a lot of flicks, kid. You need—what?—a topic?

JAKE

Yeah. A central idea.

BOGEY

Hmm. That’s a tough nut to crack. Mostly I just say the lines. Somebody else does the scribbling. I’ll have to think about it.

JAKE

That’s what I’ve been doing.

BOGEY

Well, good luck, kid.

BOGEY stands, picks up the bottle and exits as MUSIC rises to a crescendo.

FADE OUT

CHAPTER TWO

WITH ONE WEEK TO GO until my BP proposal was due, I still had nothing solid to offer. My mind was a blank. The proposal had to be approved by a teacher in the project’s discipline. Instant had already gotten the nod from Mr. Lewis, the chunky, tuba-playing head of music. Vanni would go through Mrs. Cleaver, and Alba through Call-Me-Saul. Because I was not attached to a particular program, I had to hand in my proposal to Ms. Pelletier.

Except I didn’t have one.

A screenplay, certainly. But a screenplay of what? I could adapt a novel. I could write a remake. I considered Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the famous sci-fi story, but there were already at least four movie versions. I remembered bragging to Alba that one day I would do Casablanca with her in the Ingrid Bergman role, but as long as she was with Chad—or anyone else other than me—that was out, too. Besides, Casablanca was so perfect it would be almost sacrilege to lay my greasy hands on it.

“What are the chances Pelletier would buy into a case of screenwriter’s block?” I said as English class was getting under way.

Locheed had divided us up into “collaborative outcomes-based groups,” and Vanni, Instant and I had been joined by Daneale Halliday, a girl in the vocal-music program who also sang R & B at a club on the weekends. I had the feeling Instant had a thing for her.

Instant shook his head in answer to my question. Vanni smirked as if to say, “Yeah, right.” Daneale didn’t respond at all. She was focused on the play we’d been assigned to interpret.

“We have to discuss this,” she pointed out, anxious to get us on track, “and build an interpretation.” She checked her wristwatch. “In twenty-eight minutes.” She picked up her pen and held it above her notebook like someone ready to take dictation.

“Easy,” Instant began. “The play is about humankind’s brave but essentially futile struggle to find meaning in a hostile and indifferent universe.”

Daneale gave him a blank look. Her oversized brown eyes blinked once. “Come again?”

Instant repeated his sentence. The three gold chains hanging from Daneale’s ear brushed lightly against the coal black skin of her neck as she bent her head to write.

“So we done here?” Instant asked innocently.

“Sounds good to me,” I replied. “Mission accomplished. Outcome achieved. In”—I looked at my watch—“three minutes.”

“What do you mean, ‘a different universe?’” Daneale asked.

“Not different, indifferent,” Instant replied. “The universe doesn’t care about us. We’re just dust. Molecules. We live; we die. None of it matters. Life is pointless.”

I knew Vanni couldn’t keep out of a discussion on such a heavy topic for long. “Vladimir and Estragon spend the whole play waiting for Godot,” she explained, “but he never shows up.”

“Godot?” from Daneale.

“You haven’t read the play, have you?” I asked her.

“I had two gigs on the weekend. I didn’t get home ’til three, earliest, both nights.”

“I think Godot means God,” Vanni went on. “It’s a French nickname applied to the English name for Dieu. You know, like Pierrot is Pierre. Godot is God. The play was originally written in French. The author was Irish, by the way.”

Daneale nodded. The gold chains swung. “Oh.”

“So God doesn’t care about us,” Vanni said. “That’s my interpretation. He doesn’t arrive. Instant is right. Life is meaningless. The play ends where it began. Didjever wonder—”

“I think it means there is no god,” I interrupted. “Godot doesn’t appear because he doesn’t exist. He’s a figment of V and E’s imaginations.”

“So let me get this straight,” Daneale said with a hint of exasperation. “Samuel”—she picked up her copy of the play and checked—“Beckett, who was Irish, wrote a play in French, which he himself translated into English, which tells us God doesn’t exist and life is meaningless.”

“That’s about it,” I said.

“If nothing matters and everything is pointless,” she asked, smiling, “then why bother to write a play?”

“Good point,” I said. Maybe Daneale wasn’t such a dud after all.

“So we done here?” Instant asked again.

“Yup,” I said. “Right, Vanni?”

“I suppose. Now we can get back to Jake’s Big Project.”

“Which, like Godot, doesn’t exist,” Instant added helpfully.

Daneale ignored us. She was writing furiously, trying to put down everything we had said before she forgot it. Instant watched her.

“I had an idea, though,” I said tentatively.

“Uh huh,” Vanni said skeptically.

“A movie about three nauseatingly lovable British kid-wizards named Henry, Harriet and Randy who go to a school of sorcery where everybody has a magic wand and annoying teachers in academic gowns reward the students by giving them points.”

“Uh huh.”

“And one day Henry persuades his two pals to help him cast a super-spell. They wave their magic wands all over the place.”

“Uh huh.”

“Henry wants to make his aunt, uncle and fat, obnoxious cousin disappear in a cloud of brimstone smoke. But the three lovable magicians screw up—they’re only kids, after all—and they end up time-and-distance travelling to an American plantation called Tara, just before the Civil War.”

“Uh huh.”

“Henry’s spell has caused a race-reversal. Scarlett O’Hara is a slave. So are all the other white people.”

Daneale looked up from her writing. “This is starting to sound good,” she said. Instant laughed. Vanni smirked.

“I call it Gone with the Wand,” I said. “What do you think?”

Vanni pretended to give it some thought. “It’s a dumb idea.”

“Is a dumb idea better than no idea?”

“I suppose you could wait for Godot and ask him.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked Vanni. “Still considering that adaptation?”

“No, a small collection of poems. Cleaver already approved me.”

“What about you, Instant?”

“I’m writing and performing the music for Alba’s play.”

“Daneale?”

“I’m working with Instant.”

So my suspicions were confirmed.

“Alba wrote a play?” I asked.

Vanni let out a snort of derision.

“No,” Instant replied. “She and Chad are going to put on a scene from The Taming of the Shrew.”

“What is a shrew, anyway?” Daneale asked.

“A nasty, bad-tempered woman. A harridan, a scold, a battleaxe, a—”

“Stop showing off,” Daneale told him with a smile. “We get it.”

“So I’m the only one without a plan,” I pointed out needlessly. “I am alone in a hostile and indifferent universe, and I’m going to fail.”

Vanni rolled her eyes. “And you won’t get into heaven, and no one will ever want to marry you.”

Daneale picked up her copy of Waiting for Godot and waved it at me. “Don’t worry, Jake. According to Beckett’s play, it doesn’t matter anyway.”

York’s policy was that as much as possible, performance-oriented BPs—music or drama—were formally presented to an audience of students, usually at an afternoon assembly. The teachers connected to the project would be there and would grade the performance on the spot, with the supervising teacher’s mark counting for 50 per cent and the other staff grades averaged for the balance.

Because the productions were mounted by individual students, they required minimal staging. Alba’s one-act two-hander would need only a plain, dark backdrop and some furniture, not a constructed set, so I had no work to do. But luckily I was co-opted by Call-Me-Saul, the supervising teacher, as stage crew—which meant moving the few pieces of furniture on and off the stage before and after the scene. And being around Alba.

Alba held the first meeting for the whole production team. We got together in the drama classroom after school, moving our chairs into a circle by the window. Outside, fat snowflakes danced on a brisk February wind. Alba, as beautiful as ever in tight mauve jeans and a black shirt, was all business as she took a seat beside Chad and went over our duties. She was director and would play Katherina the Shrew. Chad would take the part of Petruchio, the gentleman from Verona who woos Katherina. Snowy Jenkins—a strange name for a brunette—was stage manager. Snowy was almost as easy on the eyes as Alba, a fact that was not lost on Chad, who kept sneaking what he thought were stealthy glances in her direction. Only Chad was vain enough to think he could get away with that in front of a group of people. Instant and Daneale were writing and performing the music, and for some reason Emile Dupuis, black-clad from head to shoes and skinny as a strand of spaghetti, was on the lighting panel.

Alba introduced us and outlined our respective duties—she had thought everything through in detail—then turned the meeting over to Snowy, who aimed a big smile at Chad before she led us through a schedule of rehearsals. She handed out sheets of paper containing the same information and broke up the meeting so the actors could begin the first read-through of the scene.

According to Snowy’s schedule, printed out in a flowery italic font that was almost impossible to read, I had no part in the whole production until the first dress rehearsal, so I was a little surprised when Alba came to me about a week later. Drama class had just ended with Call-Me-Saul shouting at us for “not taking this art form seriously enough.” I had a meeting with Pelletier to explain to her why my nonexistent proposal was late again, and I was rushing out the classroom door when Alba took me by the elbow and led me back inside.

“Jake, I need your help,” she whispered dramatically. “I’m in a jam.”

Whatever she asked, I was determined to say no. I reminded myself that the last time I had let her talk me into helping her I had thrown away my chance to win her heart. She looked deep into my eyes, the way she had that day in the library months before, the way she knew would dissolve any man’s resistance—especially mine—like hot water on sugar, and I urged myself to be strong and inflexible. I straightened my spine. I called up images of power in my mind’s eye—stout concrete pillars, rebar, thick steel girders, those robust braided cables they use on suspension bridges—and waited.

“I fired Snowy yesterday,” she began. “She wasn’t working out.”

Thick oak planks, glued and bolted together. Cast-iron stanchions. Cement roadbeds.

“And I need a new stage manager.”

“I … I’m not qualified,” I almost shouted. I was so relieved. “I can’t do it. I don’t know how.”

“I’ll teach you,” she breathed, stepping closer.

Bridge abutments, marble arches, the Great Wall of China.

“It’s such a short production, it’s over before it starts. You’ll see.”

“But—” My eyes dropped. Her chest rose and fell with her breathing—more than necessary, I thought.

“We’ll be working together,” she said, almost whispering. “Very closely.”

“I—”

She looked up at me. Her lips parted.

Fibreglass, Kevlar, titanium mesh.

“You’re my only hope, Jake. Without a stage manager we can’t go on. Say you’ll help. Please.”

“Well …”

Then she kissed me.

Not a kiss that Bogey would have received from Ingrid Bergman. Not a hard, long, searching, Hollywood kiss. A peck. Like you’d give your little brother on his birthday.

But it did the trick. “Okay,” I said.

After she had swept out of the room, I stood in the same place, half my mind bristling with self-criticism of the “You stupid jerk, you fell for it again” variety and the other half swamped with sweetness and light. I’d be with Alba a lot. I’d be an important part of the show, and she’d rely on me.

And I now had something to offer—late—to Ms. Pelletier. Stage managing a production counted as a Big Project.

CHAPTER THREE

I HAD A VAGUE IDEA of what a stage manager’s duties were, but I was still shocked—and a little scared—when I looked them up. The responsibilities were huge. Once the audience settled down and the production began, I would be in control—of everything, from the house lights to the props, from the music to the prompt book to the curtain calls. The more we rehearsed and I learned on the job, the more it looked to me as if the actors and the director got the glory while the stage manager worked like a drone behind the scenes and remained faceless—which was fine by me. As the day of the performance approached, I felt less and less clumsy as I moved about with my clipboard and cue sheets, and I began to like it.

Emile had turned out to be too artistic to operate the control panel. He hated to take the cues I communicated to him through a headset and mike. He said I was giving him orders.

“That’s what the panel guy does,” Alba explained patiently to him. “Jake gives you the cue, and you flip the switch or turn the dial.”

“I’m an artist,” he protested. “I won’t be instructed by a carpenter.”

“I could put the cues in the form of polite written requests,” I said, “but it might take too long.”

He humphed and stomped off. The next day Vanni turned up. Alba had collared her. “How could I refuse?” Vanni told me. “I owe it to the Muses.”

I figured she was there for the same reason I was—to be near Alba—but I kept my mouth shut. I was glad she had replaced Emile. I knew I could rely on her.

One of my unanticipated responsibilities was to write the synopsis of the play for the program. Most of the students at York had studied The Taming of the Shrew in grade ten, but Alba asked me to assume that they had forgotten it all—which was probably close to the truth.

The afternoon of the show came on quickly. We assembled an hour before curtain. Vanni and I checked and double-checked our cues, even though we’d been over it time and time again. The furniture was in place. Alba and Chad were in makeup. Vanni and I sat by the control panel and drank takeout coffee from the Blue Note in the dim light of the tiny lamps.

“I’ve never been so nervous in my life,” I said.

She smiled. “Relax. You’re the stage manager. If anything goes wrong, it will be totally, entirely and completely your fault. What’s to worry about?”

AN EXCERPT FROM SHAKESPEARE’S

TAMING OF THE SHREW

SYNOPSIS

Baptista Minola, a wealthy citizen of Padua, Italy, has two daughters whom he is anxious to marry off. Bianca is pretty, with a sweet and gentle personality, and several influential men in town have asked for her hand. But Baptista has made it known far and wide that he will not allow Bianca to marry until he has found a husband for her older sister, Katherina.

Although Baptista is prepared to provide a huge dowry, including money and land, to the man who takes Katherina off his hands, there is no one interested. Katherina is renowned for her nasty disposition, temper tantrums and acid tongue. It looks as if Katherina will never attract a man and therefore Bianca will never marry.

Then, from Verona, comes a man called Petruchio …

The scene you are about to see is the first meeting between the scalding Katherina and the equally determined Petruchio.

Let the fireworks begin …

“Of course I can hear you, you flamin’ eejit.” Vanni’s voice shot through my earpiece. “I heard you last time you checked and the ten times before that.”

“Okay, okay,” I said.

“Calm down,” she advised. “Everything will be grand.”

“Okay.”

Once again I peeked around the curtain, my stomach fluttering. Students flooded noisily into the auditorium, filling the rear seats first, except for the last row, which was reserved for teachers. I checked my watch. Ten minutes until liftoff.

I saw Chad, costumed and made up and unusually jittery, standing behind Vanni at the control panel. She would signal to him when I gave the word for him to come onstage. He kept looking around, as if he didn’t know where he was. Chad was normally very cool under pressure; he had sailed through dress rehearsal the day before without a hint of tension.

I spoke into my mike. “What’s with Chad?”

“You don’t want to know,” Vanni replied.

“I don’t—What’s that supposed to mean? We go on in a couple of minutes!”

“He and Alba had a big fight.” Vanni was whispering into her mike. “It seems she caught him with Snowy earlier today.”

“Caught him?”

“Use your imagination.”

“Great. Fantastic.”

I had suspected that Alba had fired Snowy because she was distracting Chad, as she had at our first production meeting, and now my suspicions were confirmed.

Instant and Daneale were sitting in a corner of the backstage area, their music on a stand in front of them. I held up one hand with my fingers splayed. Five minutes. Daneale nodded. Instant was adjusting the reed on his mouthpiece. They would play a five-minute intro and repeat it at the end of the performance. I left them and took up my position, lowering myself onto a stool in the wings from where I could view the house and the stage at the same time. I clutched my clipboard to my chest.

“Is Alba in place?” I asked. “I can’t see her.”

“She’s right here. Relax.”

“Relax. Right. Why didn’t I think of that?”

I could see the teachers in the back row behind approximately seven hundred kids. Among them were Call-Me-Saul, Pelletier, Locheed and Lewis. Lewis had already graded Instant’s musical score and given it an A+. Today he would evaluate his and Daneale’s performances.

Okay, I told myself, here we go. Clearing my throat, I issued my first direction.

“Cue music,” I said.

A second later, the mellow tones of Instant’s saxophone filled the house and the audience fell silent. Daneale sang beautifully, using her voice as an instrument, for there were no words, and Instant’s saxophone traded phrases with her in a playful flow of jazzy sound. A few stragglers rushed down the aisles and plopped into seats. I kept my eyes on my watch.

“Petruchio, position, please,” I said. “Cue house lights.” The illumination in the auditorium ebbed slowly away until, two minutes later, I gave the next direction. “Cue curtain.” As the curtain rose, the music faded. “Cue stage lights.”

The stage lights came up to reveal Chad sitting at a table in the centre of a living room. He was wearing a loose white shirt with lace-on sleeves under a leather doublet, purple hose and grey “slops”—bloomer-like short pants. He sat casually, his long, athletic legs extended and crossed at the ankles. He kept silent for a few moments to let the anticipation build.

I felt movement at my side. It was Alba, who would enter from her mark a few feet from me. She was excellent in the part of Katherina. I wasn’t the only one to think she was a huge talent, able to make you believe she was the misunderstood shrew. I said nothing to her, not just because my eyes darted in a triangular path from Chad to my notes to the audience and back, but because Alba hated anyone to speak to her in the ten minutes or so before she went on. She used the time to centre herself and to focus. But I couldn’t resist stealing a glance her way. Her long, forest green hooped gown trailed the floor. Her velvet, scoop-necked, tightly laced bodice with a froth of white lace against her skin was enough to make any male stop breathing. But her normally serene pre-performance face, though heavily made up, looked as if a thundercloud had parked itself on her brow.

Petruchio/Chad began his short soliloquy. “I’ll attend Katherina here, And woo her with some spirit when she comes …”

Alba knew her cue and didn’t need a signal from me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her raise her skirt off the floor in preparation for her entrance.

“But here she comes,” said Petruchio/Chad. Alba/Katherina was, according to her own directions, supposed to enter the room nonchalantly, as if she couldn’t care less that a man who said he wanted to marry her was waiting to meet her for the first time. Instead, she stomped into the room, aiming herself at Chad like a torpedo. There was more energy in her entrance than there ever had been in rehearsals, and Vanni’s words popped into my mind. Alba had found Chad with Snowy.

“Oh oh,” I said.

“That’s not in our notes,” came Vanni’s voice in my earpiece.

“Good morrow, Kate—for that’s your name I hear,” Petruchio/Chad said. Katherina/Alba launched herself into the scene with the fury of a tornado, giving a snappy reply, every word bristling with anger. Shakespeare’s witty verbal fencing between the dominant, overconfident suitor and the shrewish woman sparkled back and forth. Katherina/Alba called him a piece of furniture, a stool. “Come, sit on me,” he shot back, and pulled her onto his lap. She struggled to free herself; he hung on tight, mocking her. The audience laughed. Katherina/Alba called him an ass, and the play-by-play continued.

If you knew the actors, and if you were aware of the fact that Alba had discovered Chad and Snowy making out, you could see the personal war between the wronged woman and the guilty man going on like violent background music behind Shakespeare’s lines. Chad was desperately trying to get back into Alba’s good books as Petruchio was fighting to dominate Katherina verbally and physically.

The scene went on, the energy snapping and popping like high-tension wires in a hurricane. The audience roared at a dirty joke. Katherina/Alba finally freed herself and jumped from Petruchio/Chad’s lap. She turned to leave. Petruchio/Chad grabbed her, spun her around and urged, “Good Kate, I am a gentleman—”

Katherina/Alba snapped, “That I’ll try! ”—in other words, “We’ll see about that!”

And she clouted him.

The script called for a smack, and in rehearsal Chad and Alba had practised the slap over and over to get it perfect, so that it was noisy and dramatic but didn’t sting. But today Alba hauled back and delivered a blow that knocked Chad off his feet, and he toppled over, sprawling with his purple-clad legs in the air. Alba stood over him, fists clenched, chest heaving. Chad struggled to his knees, shook his head, cringing, waiting for another punch. A trickle of blood ran from one nostril.

But he stayed in character. “I swear I’ll cuff you if you strike again.”

Watch it, Alba. He means it, I thought. She seemed to read his mind, and took a step back.

Petruchio/Chad hauled himself to his feet. More one-liners zinged back and forth between them, the volume increasing with each verbal shot as Alba and Chad followed their own agenda as well as Shakespeare’s. Petruchio/Chad stalked Katherina/Alba, hands out to clutch her as she backed away. The script instructed him to lay hold of her. But when he drew close, Katherina/Alba screamed, “I care not!” and tried to ward him off with a roundhouse punch.

Chad ducked the blow and grabbed her, pinning her arms, his face inches from hers. “In sooth, you ’scape not so,” he said triumphantly.

She wrenched her torso one way, then another, to free herself. “I chafe you if I tarry,” she hollered. “Let me go! ”

And, ignoring the script, she spat in his face. The gob hit him on the forehead and dribbled into one eye. He blinked.

“No, not a whit,” he replied, spit running down one side of his face and blood down the other. “I find you passing gentle.”

The audience was hugely enjoying all this. They were right into what they thought was simply a superbly acted, funny, farcical scene. Even the teachers were laughing, although Panofsky had a horrified look on his face and Locheed seemed a little troubled. I could imagine him saying to himself, I don’t remember that in the play.

The frantic, angry dialogue continued to flash back and forth at high volume as the two characters traded barbs and wrestled, Katherina/Alba fighting to free herself, Petruchio/Chad obviously terrified to let her loose. But the script demanded her release, so he complied—then dashed around to the other side of the table, keeping it between himself and the raging blonde banshee opposite.

They shouted their lines across the table, Katherina/Alba circling first in one direction, then another, as Petruchio/Chad retreated. She picked up a chair and hurled it at him. He ducked to the side just in time, and the chair clattered across the boards and into the wings. Then Katherina/Alba feinted left. Petruchio/Chad responded; she darted right, caught him and whacked him on the chops. His head snapped back. Half-blind from the sting, he grabbed her arm. “And will you, nill you,” he shouted, “I will marry you! ” Then he gave her a mighty shove, sending her tumbling onto her backside and sliding backwards across the floor. She tipped over. Her head thumped the boards and her hooped gown flew up over her face, revealing very un-Elizabethan blue denims and white canvas shoes.

Katherina/Alba scrambled to her feet. Petruchio/Chad kept talking, backing away as she relentlessly crept toward him like a mountain lion stalking a rabbit.

He shouted, “For I am he am born to tame you, Kate, and bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate conformable—”

Alba screamed her reply. “Like hell you will, you two-timing son of a bitch!”

“Cue curtain! Cue curtain!” I hollered, and the curtain began to descend, but not fast enough to hide a pair of purple legs rushing into the wings with a forest green blur in hot pursuit. The scene was supposed to end with Petruchio saying, “But here comes your father,” but this was good enough.

The audience roared, jumped to their feet, applauded thunderously. I hopped off my stool and ran backstage in time to see Chad dashing for the stage door.

“Wait!” I yelled uselessly. “Your curtain calls!”

“He’d better keep going if he knows what’s good for him!” I heard from behind me. I turned and saw Alba—her clothing rumpled, her hair a tangled mess, her eyes on fire—struggling to free her gown, which had snagged on the edge of Vanni’s control panel.

Out in the auditorium, the crowd continued with their applause. “Somebody has to make a curtain call,” I told Alba. “Chad’s gone. You have to go out there.”

Alba’s professional bearing slowly returned. She lifted her chin, picked up her skirt and glided to the front of the stage, taking up her mark at the curtain.

“Cue curtain,” I said into my mike.

The curtain rose. Alba took her bows, then stepped back.

“Cue curtain,” I repeated.

The curtain fell. Alba turned on her heel and disappeared backstage.

“Cue music,” I said, and through the auditorium speakers, Daneale’s voice and Instant’s saxophone began to mellow the crowd. After the last bar was played, I said, “Stand down. That’s it, everybody.”

“Didjever see the like?” Vanni said when I dropped into a chair beside her.

“A truly unique experience,” I sighed.

“It’s a good thing the scene was short. Otherwise Alba would have beaten him up, right there in front of the audience.” Vanni laughed. “It sounded hilarious. It must have been fun to watch—from the audience, I mean.”

“They seemed to enjoy it,” I replied, trying unsuccessfully to hold down the thought that Alba and Chad were no longer together, that maybe this was my chance. Should I go and find her right away? I wondered. Console her? No, better to let her cool off and see her tomorrow. Maybe she’d realize she had picked the wrong guy. Maybe—

My phone vibrated in my pocket. Somebody has a great sense of timing, I thought as I checked the screen. I didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Jake.”

It was my mother, and the way she said my name—with a ton of fear jammed into that one syllable—told me immediately that my life was about to change.

“I’m at the hospital,” she cried. “It’s your dad. His heart. You’d better come quick.”

CHAPTER FOUR

I SAT IN THE BACK SEAT OF A TAXI, terrified, staring at the driver’s blue turban, trying not to think. But it’s amazing the crazy things that go through your mind sometimes. I’m not religious, but as the car wove through traffic I muttered the same prayer over and over. And the father I whispered my desperate words to wasn’t the one Up There, but the one I imagined lying on a gurney, knocked over by a heart attack. “Please, Dad,” I chanted, “don’t die.”

I was still mumbling when the taxi slowed for the hospital access road, turned in and pulled up at the Emergency entrance. Two ambulances idled by the doors, their exhausts sending white plumes toward the sun. I yanked out my wallet and handed a ten to the cabbie. “Keep the change,” I said.

He turned and smiled sympathetically. He had a black beard and turned-up moustache. “It’s good to pray,” he said. “It will help.”

I dashed through the sliding doors and scanned the Emergency waiting room for my mother. There were a lot of people sitting around on the institutional plastic chairs, sniffling, holding damaged limbs, flipping through magazines, fretting. Then I saw her, perched on the edge of a couch below a window. She was wearing her slouch-around-the-house outfit—mauve tights that made me think briefly of Petruchio/Chad; one of my dad’s tartan shirts, baggy on her slender frame; powder blue slippers with satin bows; her hair piled up on her head. Her appearance reminded me it was Wednesday, when she closed the salon after 11 a.m. and spent the afternoon relaxing.

“Mom, what’s going on?” I said. “Is—” I couldn’t complete the sentence.

“Oh, Jake!” She began to cry. I sat down beside her and put my arm around her. In a few minutes she calmed down a bit and blew her nose. “He’s in there,” she said, pointing with a shaking hand toward double doors.

“What happened?”

“The microwave broke,” she wailed, swept away by another gale of sobs.

“The micro—Mom, take a few deep breaths.”

She did as I asked but still couldn’t force any words past the sobs.

“How about a nice cup of tea?” I suggested.

She nodded. I got up and followed the blue footprints painted on the hospital floor indicating the route to the cafeteria. I bought two teas, loaded one up with milk and sugar, and turned to go back.

“You can’t take those cups away from here,” the cashier said.

I ignored him and returned to my mother. She took the tea, tried a smile that came out like a grimace and sipped the hot liquid. It seemed to do the trick.

“The microwave broke,” she began again. “I called your dad—he was working on Chestnut Street near our house—and he came over. It was the fuse.”

She stopped and drank some more. “He was drinking coffee while he worked on the microwave, and just after he finished up he got this pale, stricken look on his face—you know, sort of surprised and pained all at the same time. He put down his cup and sat down, rubbing his chest and groaning. I called 911 for an ambulance. They took him in there”—she pointed again at the double doors—“and I’ve been waiting here since.”

“Nobody came to speak to you? They didn’t tell you anything?”

She shook her head.

I walked across the crowded room to the reception. A woman sat behind a glass partition at a long desk littered with forms and files and equipment. She was typing.

“Can you tell me anything about Mr. Blanchard?” I asked.

She didn’t look up. “Someone will come and speak to you.”

“Can you tell me where he is?”

“I don’t have that information.”

“Can you call someone to ask?” I said, pointing to the telephone.

“I—”

“You just pick it up and push the appropriate numbers.”

Her face blanked. “You don’t have to be—”

“I’m making a simple request,” I said. “Do me a favour. We don’t know whether he’s alive or—We just want to know what’s happening.”

“What was the name again?”

After I repeated our name, she advised me to take a seat and lifted her telephone handset. Instead, I returned the cups to the cafeteria and went back to the waiting room. Mom twisted her scarf between her fingers, breaking into tears every few minutes. I didn’t know what to say. I sat there trying not to ask myself what I would do if I didn’t have my dad in my life anymore. I pushed away images of our kitchen without him in it, sitting at the table, hunched over a mug of coffee. I tried to recall the sound of his voice—and failed. What would Blanchard and Son, sole prop., be without Blanchard? I bit back my own sobs, taking deep gulps of air, and took a walk down the hall.

I got back in time to see my sister, Janine, swoop down on Mom like an overly enthusiastic guardian angel. She looked as if she had just flown out of a business meeting—power pantsuit and low heels, briefcase, trench coat over the arm. I was glad to see her, and hugged her hard to show it.

Janine took after my mother. She had the same small, light build, the same barely contained vivacity. Her academic training had made her self-possessed, calm and methodical, but in times of stress her high-energy genes elbowed their way to the front of the line and asserted themselves.

“What do we know so far?” she asked, sitting beside my mother. She set her briefcase on the floor and draped her coat over it.

Mom shared what little information we had. “Jake just asked that nurse over there to find someone to talk to us.” A fresh gust of tears hit her. “I’m afraid of what they’ll say!”

“Mom, don’t assume the worst,” Janine soothed. “I’m sure—”

Then the doors opened and a man in green scrubs appeared. It seemed every eye in the room focused on him. He had a mask hanging from his neck and a file folder in his hand.

“Blanchard?”

The sounds of the waiting room fell away as I stared intently at his face, searching for a sign, a clue indicating what his message might be. He had a day’s growth of blue-black beard, and his wire glasses sat crookedly on his nose.

My mother leapt from her seat. “Here!” she shouted.

“Mrs. Blanchard?” the man inquired, approaching us.

She nodded, her face hopeful and terrified at the same time.

“Your husband will need an operation,” he began.

“A bypass?”

“No, his—”

“An angio-whatever?”

“No, Mrs.—”

“Oh, God, don’t tell me! A heart transplant?”

“Mrs. Blanchard, there’s nothing wrong with his heart. We checked that first. It’s as strong as a fifteen-year-old’s.”

“But—”

“The ultrasound examination showed he has gallstones, and one of them seems to have blocked the duct. That causes inflammation and considerable discomfort.”

“Oh,” Mom exclaimed. “Oh, good. I mean, not good, but—”

“If untreated, the condition could cause an inflamed pancreas, which is, as you say”—he smiled—“not good. So we’re recommending the removal of his gallbladder. It’s routine, a simple procedure. He should be home tomorrow.”

“Oh!” Mom said again. “Thank you. Thank you!”

“If you’ll just sign this form, giving permission for the operation.” He held out the clipboard and a pen.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Mom said, her voice flooded with relief.

She signed on the line. Then she fainted.

I was back in my chair, flipping through a six-month-old sports magazine. Mom was lying on a cot somewhere. My sister was outside, making calls on her cell. Dad was on his way to the operating room, doped and groaning, I imagined. All was right with the world.

But I was thinking. The scare I suffered had put me in a kind of free fall, and I had begun to see things from a different angle. My life will never be the same, I had thought when I heard Mom call my name over the telephone. I was right, but for the wrong reason.

A few minutes later, Mom came through the doors, shaky on her feet. She gave me a weak smile. “Let’s go to the cafeteria and have some more tea,” she suggested.

As I passed the cashier, he scowled at me and mumbled, “Stupid bugger.”

“You got that right,” I said.

CHAPTER FIVE

DAD CAME THROUGH THE OPERATION OKAY, but he hadn’t awakened yet and was still in recovery when we left. The nurse told us they’d move him to a room soon and it was probably best to let him sleep right through the night.

It was late when the taxi pulled up at the curb in front of our place. The house was dark. Dad’s van sat in the driveway. He had left the driver’s-side window open, expecting to head right back to work after fixing the microwave. While Mom unlocked the front door of the house, I closed the van window and took the keys from the ignition.

“I’ve got some leftover shepherd’s pie I can heat up,” Mom said.

My sister and I exchanged knowing glances. I set the table while the microwave hummed away healthily. The three of us sat down to the steaming, watery dish of greyish ground lamb with yellowed mashed potatoes on top. I managed to get it all down, and Mom had two helpings. “Boy, this hits the spot,” she said several times.

Janine left right after supper, promising to return to the hospital first thing in the morning. Mom and I cleared up the kitchen, then she went to bed after kissing me goodnight and holding me in a prolonged hug. On my way to the stairs I noticed the answering machine on the hall phone blinking. Turning down the volume so Mom wouldn’t be disturbed, I played back the messages—seven of them, all from Vanni. “Jake, where are you? What happened?” “Jake, why aren’t you answering your cell?” I erased the messages and climbed the stairs.

In my room I checked my cell for missed calls. There were five, all from Vanni. I cleared them without listening, then sat down at my computer and sent her an e-mail, recounting briefly what had been going on, telling her not to worry, that I’d see her soon. I didn’t want to talk to her. I wasn’t ready yet.

I fell back on my bed and tried for the second time that day not to think. I succeeded. “What a day,” I said to myself, then fell asleep on top of the bed with my clothes on.

Mom and I drove to the hospital the next morning in our old sedan. She had phoned for a report—at 5 a.m.—and had learned that Dad was being released that morning at eleven. “They told me not to come until then,” she said at breakfast. “Janine sat with him for a while and then went to her office.”

We got to Dad’s room to find him sitting in a corner by the only window, fully dressed, a plastic supermarket bag on the floor beside him. There were still specks of sawdust on his work shirt and pants. The pale sunlight from the window lit up his round face. He was a little pale and needed a shave but otherwise looked fit.

“They’re kicking me out,” he crowed happily as soon as he saw us. Gingerly he got up from the chair. “Hey, lookit,” he said, pulling his shirttails out of his pants and baring his ample tummy. There were three square bandages taped to his skin. “They took out my gallbladder through these little holes, er, slits in my skin! It’s called liposuction—no, laparoscopic surgery.” He pointed to the bandage near his belly button. “They stuck a camera on the end of a cable in this one. It was hooked up to a TV monitor so they could see what they were doing. They shoved their instruments through this other slit, and snip, yank, done!”

Tucking his shirttails back in, he added, “Amazing!”

“Stop talking for a minute and give me a hug,” Mom commanded, and she was immediately engulfed in my father’s brawny arms. I was next.

He talked non-stop all the way home, which meant he had been scared, like us, and was now swept along on a tide of relief. I drove, and Mom, who didn’t know how to drive, gave me advice on what lane to take, how fast to go and which buses seemed to be aiming themselves at us.

As soon as we got home, Dad said it was great to be back, but he was tired. I decided to go for a walk. I needed to think. As I passed their bedroom, I saw Dad curled up under the blankets, his head on the pillow. Beside the bed, my mother sat in a chair with a magazine in her lap. But her eyes were on my father’s face.

It was a sunny afternoon, the kind of late February day that gave you a little hint that spring just might come after all. I crossed the street and entered 11th Street Park, crunching over a thin crust of snow toward the lake. That part of the park had once been a creek bed about fifty metres wide, and the land rose steeply on either side. Each time I went there I remembered the day I happened upon the filming of a battle scene and its unplanned, comical ending. I never saw the movie, but that accidental event had changed my life.

I stood on the pebble beach. The grey-brown waves lapped the shore, each one receding with a prolonged hiss and clatter of stones. During the time that passed between my mother’s telephone call and the doctor’s reassurances at the hospital, I had felt lost and disoriented and scared, as if I had wandered into an unwelcoming room, cold and bare of furniture, with a hard floor that echoed each footstep. The sky outside the windows was grey and cheerless. Everything I thought I knew seemed to be in doubt. Everything that mattered seemed to shift, some things blurring at the edges, others coming into sharp focus, like the edge of a knife.

And today, standing by the lake in the park, I knew one thing with certainty. I had made the biggest mistake of my life, and it had nothing to do with my father.

ACT FIVE

CHAPTER ONE

I WENT BACK TO SCHOOL ON MONDAY. I wandered into Locheed’s room, lost in thought, a few minutes before class started and was immediately encircled by Vanni, Instant and Daneale. I gave them a quick update on the events at my house since the disastrous performance of the excerpt from The Taming of the Shrew, which Vanni now referred to as The Tempest.

“Don’t look so down, Jake,” Daneale said. “Everything’s okay now, right?”

I nodded, but I wanted to say, No, everything’s not all right.

“Glad to hear your dad’s fine, Jake,” Instant said as Locheed made his stately walk to the lectern and we took our seats.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Vanni was really—”

“If you’re quite ready, Mr. Grady,” Locheed interrupted.

The Vulture took the roll call and gave a sheaf of papers to the person at the head of each row, to be relayed back. He announced that today’s lesson was to critique a paragraph of descriptive writing.

“It’s from a modern novel,” he said in his reedy voice. “As is the custom, I won’t tell you the title or the author’s name, so that your assessment will not be influenced.”

We knew this to be a sham. For these exercises, Locheed chose only writing he thought was great. Our duty was to come up with reasons why the writing was brilliant—not to make up our own minds. Vanni often complained about these lessons. Most of us just went along with the pretense. I usually tuned out.

“Now,” Locheed began, “please follow along as I read. ‘On the floor, beside the dishevelled bed, lay an empty bottle of wine. Through the greasy window, watery sunlight—’”

“Excuse me, sir.”

It was Vanni, with her hand up. Instant smiled. Daneale sat back as if she was settling in to watch a movie.

Locheed glowered at Vanni as only Locheed could. “Yes?”

“Isn’t that a contradiction? ‘An empty bottle of wine.’ Can that be? I mean, if the bottle’s empty, it isn’t a bottle of anything, is it?”

Locheed began to bleed contempt. “Ms. O’Riada—”

“Shouldn’t it be ‘an empty wine bottle’?”

The Vulture’s eyelids lowered slowly, then rolled back up like window blinds. “I think,” he drawled, “we all realize—”

“No,” Instant cut in as if Locheed hadn’t said a word, “if the bottle’s empty, it’s just a bottle. It can’t be a wine bottle unless it has wine in it. A bottle can hold anything. Rum, whiskey—”

“My da likes whiskey,” Vanni said, taking one of her illogical sharp turns.

“So,” Instant continued, ignoring her attempt to distract him, “it should say ‘on the floor lay a bottle.’”

“You never really see a truly empty bottle, though,” Daneale joined in. “It may look empty, but it’s full of air. The author should have put, ‘On the floor lay a bottle of air.’”

I figured I might as well get in on this. “First, ‘bottle of air’ sounds demented. Second, the reader has to be told that the bottle used to hold wine, because it implies that whoever is in the bed—we don’t know yet because Mr. Locheed was rudely interrupted by Ms. O’Riada—drank all the wine and got drunk and fell asleep.”

“How do you know that?” Daneale demanded.

“Because the bedclothes are all jumbled up.”

Locheed tried to get a word in. “If we could just—”

“That could mean anything,” Daneale shot back, trying to hide a smile. “Maybe he had a nightmare. Maybe he had a companion.”

The room broke into laughter, with one abstention.

“Maybe they were going at it hot and—”

“Yer like a bunch of sheep,” Vanni interrupted. “You’ve wandered off the point.”

I smiled to myself. The queen of tangents accusing someone else of digressing.

“The notion that the bottle is full of air is not going to work,” Vanni continued.

“Sure it is,” Daneale replied.

“Who ever heard of a bottle of air?”

“Every empty bottle is full of air.”

Vanni laughed. “Didja hear yourself? ‘Every empty bottle is full of air.’ If that isn’t a contradiction, what is? You’ve brought us back to where we started, only you’ve changed wine to air.”

“Isn’t that in the Bible?” Instant asked innocently. “A miracle? At a wedding or something?”

“You’ve been blowing your horn too loudly, you nit,” Daneale scoffed. “The Bible story was about water turned into wine.”

“Oh. Anyway, I still say it should read, ‘an empty bottle.’”

“What kind of bottle, though?” I asked.

“A wine bottle, obviously,” Vanni offered.

“Then it should say, ‘an empty bottle of wine.’”

Vanni nodded knowingly. “I see.”

“So,” I said to Locheed, “you were saying, sir?”

“Nice one, Jake,” Daneale said with a big grin as we left English class.

“Thanks. Always a pleasure to clip the Vulture’s wings.”

“Don’t get too cheery,” Vanni cautioned as the four of us pushed through the throng in the hall toward the drama room. “We’re about to have our own wings clipped.”

Alba and Chad were already there, sitting at a round table near Panofsky’s desk. I hadn’t seen Alba since the performance. She looked stunning as usual, anticipating spring with a bright yellow V-neck T-shirt. Chad slouched across from her, every inch the cool senior. The four of us took the remaining chairs. Alba gave us a cold greeting. Chad nodded as if he was too bored to speak to us.

All BPs received an adjudication along with the grade. The supervising teacher, in this case Call-Me-Saul, gave the adjudication in person, pointing out the strong and weak points of the project and giving the final mark. We were about to get the news about the fiasco in which we had all taken part the week before.

Panofsky swept into the room and took his seat behind his desk, hands fluttering to a file that he didn’t open. He looked at us the way a kindergarten teacher would regard a bunch of kids caught with their pockets full of stolen candies. He wasn’t Call-Me-Saul today; he was Mr. Panofsky.

“Well,” he began.

Alba dropped her head. She was embarrassed. She knew she had no excuse for what had gone on. Chad seemed as if he was going to try to bluster his way through. Good luck, Petruchio, I thought.

“Well,” Panofsky said again. “This is going to be difficult.” He cleared his throat. “I think it would be best to keep it short and bitter.” He smiled at his lame play on words.

“Grady and Halliday, A+. You’ve received your composition grade from Mr. Lewis already. Your performance was very accomplished and, ahem, professional.”

To their credit, Instant and Daneale showed no smiles or exhilaration. They knew what was about to happen.

“O’Riada, a first-class job,” Panofsky pushed ahead. “You get no grade, as you’re aware, because your major project is in the creative writing field, supervised by Mrs. Cleaver, and you’ve already received your evaluation. But I thought you’d like to know.”

Panofsky fixed his eyes on us three remaining victims. “We here at York gear our programs to reflect as much as possible the real world of music, writing, the visual arts, theatre and drama. That is why, of all the aspects of a performance that can be, and are, evaluated, we place a premium on professionalism. Benedetti, Bromley and Blanchard receive a failing grade. The reason, you will not be surprised to hear, is that you, Alba and Chad, as well prepared as you were and as skilful at your chosen trade as we know you to be, put on a display that embarrassed the entire staff. Certainly the audience enjoyed your … performance, including”—he nodded at Alba—“the profanity, but they were largely unaware of what was really happening. An actor simply cannot allow his or her personal life to intrude on a performance in such a way.

“You, Jake, were stage manager, and by definition responsible for everything once the theatre doors opened. It may seem unfair to you. After all, how did you know that your two actors would choose to have a quarrel onstage in the middle of a public performance?”

Exactly, I thought. What could I have done once Chad and Alba had launched themselves at each other like underweight Sumo wrestlers? I was just along for the ride at that point.

“But in the real world outside of school,” the drama teacher continued, “such goings-on would destroy a production, ruining careers and losing money for producers—and the stage manager would be held responsible.

“As professionals, all three of you failed, hence your mark of F.”

As Panofsky was talking, Chad had grown more and more agitated and impatient to get a word in. When the teacher finished, Chad spoke.

“Can I just say something? This is all Alba’s—”

“No, young man, you may not say something,” Panofsky shot back. “The matter is closed. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

And with that, he rose and left the room.

As soon as the classroom door closed, Chad let out a string of curses, along with a couple of remarks about Panofsky’s ancestry. Alba kept silent, her face still pink with embarrassment and probably guilt.

Vanni turned to me. “Why didn’t you speak up?”

I didn’t answer her. Slowly, we all filtered from the room. Vanni headed off for her next class. I walked out of the school, numb with the certainty that Panofsky had just snatched my dream of writing for the movies from my hands.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS CHAD WHO, without knowing it, put an interesting idea into my head.

The next morning, Tuesday, I pushed through the normal uproar of the halls toward Locheed’s room. I came around the corner in time to see Chad and the drama teacher at the staff-room door. Even from a distance it was obvious that they were not exchanging pleasant remarks about the weather. Chad’s face was mottled with anger, and he leaned over the teacher, talking hard and fast. Panofsky stood his ground, one bony hand on the doorknob, his torso arched back a little as he shook his head again and again. I stopped and waited. Finally, Chad turned away, snarled, “I’m going to appeal!” and stomped off down the corridor.

Panofsky’s evaluation of Chad, Alba and me had been gnawing away at me without let-up. People were always complaining, That’s not fair! I heard it every day, like a theme in the background, a childish whine that got on my nerves. I had never begged a teacher for a better mark and never would, even if I thought the teacher was wrong. So when Panofsky had rapped his gavel and delivered the judgment he and Pelletier and the other evaluators had come up with, I had kept my thoughts behind my eyes and my words behind my teeth, even though I thought it was completely illogical to give me the same mark as the lovers who had duked it out onstage while I watched helplessly.

I had forgotten about York’s appeals policy until I overheard Chad threatening to use it. On any major evaluation a student could go over the teacher’s head and appeal the grade. You had to petition in writing, stating your intention and formally requesting a hearing, so I persuaded myself it wasn’t the same as whining.

I wrote out my submission that night, and both my parents signed it.

“Good for you, son,” my father commented. “It wasn’t fair, what they did,” Mom added.

On Friday I presented myself at 7:30 a.m. in the main office, where Mrs. Zhou sat behind her desk reading the newspaper while she sipped coffee and glued on a new set of fingernails—candy-floss pink this time. She had powdered sugar down the front of her blue blouse but didn’t seem to notice.

“Morning, Jake,” she said, looking up from the paper.

“Hi, Mrs. Zhou. I have an appointment with Ms. Pelletier.”

“They’re waiting for you in the boardroom. Ever had the pleasure?”

The boardroom? They? “Er, no,” I replied.

“Across the hall, up the stairs. Pay no attention to the sign on the wall. The boardroom’s across from the head of the stairs.”

My stomach performed an outside loop. The inside of my mouth dried up. I had assumed my hearing would be a little chat with the principal in her office. Why the boardroom?

“Thanks,” I muttered.

“Good luck, Jake,” I heard from behind me.

The staircase and bannisters were made of polished oak, and the treads creaked as I started up. On the wall of the first landing a sign warned, Out of Bounds to Students. I climbed on, past dark portraits of stuffy-looking men and one woman, my nerve leaking away with every step.

The upper floor was quiet except for the ominous tick-tock of a grandfather clock somewhere down the carpeted hallway. The door opposite the stairs bore a brass plaque: Boardroom.

I cleared my throat, took a deep breath and knocked.

“Enter.” Pelletier’s voice. I turned the big brass knob, pushed the door and went in.

SCREENPLAY: “JAKE TO THE GALLOWS”

by

JAKE BLANCHARD

FADE IN:

EXT. THE YORK SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS PLAYING FIELD DAY

Under a grey sky, the playing field, bleak, striped with the last remains of the winter’s snow, is deserted except for a GALLOWS.

LONG SHOT: three figures on the platform.

From RIGHT a lone person trudges toward the GALLOWS and slowly mounts the stairs.

CUT TO:

EXT. THE GALLOWS PLATFORM—DAY

Following JAKE as he climbs the stairs to see MS. PELLETIER, MR. PANOFSKY and MR. LOCHEED standing formally behind the noose hanging from the overhead beam.

CROWS rustling, landing and taking off from the platform railing throughout the scene.

PELLETIER

(stepping forward)

Do you have anything to say before the sentence is carried out?

JAKE

I just wanted to write movies!

LOCHEED

(snickering)

Movies!

PANOFSKY

Tee-hee! Tee-hee! We’ve got you now.

Tee-hee!

PELLETIER

(dodging a swooping crow)

Put your hands behind your back.

JAKE complies. PELLETIER ties his hands.

PELLETIER

Now, step forward and meet your doom.

PANOFSKY

(eyeing the long lever protruding from the rear of the platform)

Tee-hee! Tee-hee!

JAKE takes a step. PELLETIER slips the noose over his head and snugs it.

PELLETIER

Comfy?

JAKE

(nods)

PELLETIER

Hood?

JAKE

(shakes his head)

PELLETIER

Sure? It’s the latest style. It would go so well with your windbreaker.

PANOFSKY

(eyes still on the lever)

Tee—

LOCHEED

(breaking in loudly)

Oh, would you stop that infernal noise!

A startled CROW takes off from the railing, cawing, excretes a large blob of white feces, which plops onto Jake’s head.

PELLETIER

(shrugs)

Should have accepted the hood.

JAKE

Uh huh.

PANOFSKY

I get to pull the lever this time.

LOCHEED

Not a chance. It’s my turn.

PANOFSKY

Is not!

LOCHEED

Is so!

PELLETIER

Gentlemen, please.

PANOFSKY and LOCHEED struggle to get to the handle first. LOCHEED trips PANOFSKY, who falls on the handle.

There is a deafening CRASH. JAKE disappears through the floor as CROWS explode from the railing, CAWING and flapping.

CUT TO:

EXT. THE GALLOWS ON THE PLAYING FIELD—DAY JAKE, dazed, sits on a pile of straw under the GALLOWS, a broken noose around his neck, CROW DROPPINGS dripping from his forehead.

CUT TO:

EXT. THE GALLOWS ON YORK PLAYING FIELD—DAY PELLETIER, PANOFSKY and LOCHEED are lined up formally behind JAKE, who stands, hands behind his back, a fresh noose around his neck along with the first one.

PELLETIER

(to JAKE)

Any last—?

PANOFSKY

Could we just get on with it?

LOCHEED

(taking up his position, hands on the lever, humming tunelessly)

Ready, set—

There is a CRASH.

FADE TO BLACK

with SOUND of CROWS

CHAPTER THREE

I SHOOK MY HEAD CLEAR of those unwelcome images and walked into a room carpeted in royal blue and flooded with light coming in the high windows along the far wall. The space was dominated by a long walnut table shaped like a coffin. Grouped around the wider end on high-backed chairs were Ms. Pelletier, Call-Me-Saul—who, judging by the grim set to his face, would be Mr. Panofsky again today—and Mr. Locheed. There was a writing tablet and a school pen before each of them. Pelletier gestured to the single chair at the narrower end of the table.

I knew enough about theatre to see that the whole setup—the quiet authority of the boardroom, the formality of the teachers, the three-against-one arrangement—was designed to intimidate me. But for some reason it had the opposite effect. I had nothing to lose now. If this was an exercise, if they’d already made up their minds, I was sunk. A low graduating average meant no film school. I’d walk out of York at the end of June with my diploma, toss the scroll into the back of Dad’s van, strap on my nail bag and be “and son” for the rest of my life.

If, on the other hand, they intended to be fair, to give me an open-minded hearing, why the show? I had thought I got along, more or less, with all three of the adults sitting like grumpy Supreme Court judges at the opposite end of the table—even Locheed. Now, no matter what they might say, they were lined up against me, and they had fallen back on the old strategy of authority figures.

Okay, I thought, you three follow your script; I’ll read from mine.

I took the chair Pelletier had indicated and casually leaned forward to rest my arms on the table. It was difficult, but I looked each of them in the eye, taking my time, as if I was interviewing them. The long table top, I told myself, was a bowling lane, and they were the pins.

Pelletier cleared her throat. “Good morning, Jake.”

“Pardon?” I replied, my hand at my ear. I had heard her well enough.

The principal frowned and raised her voice as she repeated the greeting, then went on. “Are you ready—”

“It’s too bad we don’t have microphones,” I interrupted.

The Vulture flinched. Panofsky looked at Pelletier, who turned up the wattage on her frown. “I don’t under—”

“You know, like in those government inquiries and hearings you see on TV. Or at City Council meetings. My class went to City Hall when I was in grade six. Or was it seven? Anyway, all the councillors used mikes, and they were sitting closer together than we are here. Maybe they needed them because they recorded their sessions. You’re not recording this, are you?”

“No, Jake, we are not,” she huffed. “I’m sure we can proceed without amplification. Mr. Panofsky,” she said, nodding to him, “if you will.”

The drama teacher hemmed a couple of times and trapped his fluttering hands by linking his fingers together on top of his writing tablet. “Jake, this is the formal hearing for your appeal. The panel’s decision will be final, with no further avenues to pursue. Is that clear?”

“Could you repeat the last part?”

Panofsky made a quick glance at the ceiling. “What part?”

“Everything after ‘Jake.’”

He exhaled loudly through his nose, then repeated his statement word for word.

“Got it,” I said.

“Very well,” he replied. “You may now enter your defence.”

I let a moment pass. “Sorry?”

Pelletier intervened firmly. “Jake, you know very well you heard Mr. Panofsky. Now stop—”

“Yeah, I heard him. But there seems to be a misunderstanding.”

Slowly, Locheed’s eye lids rolled down, then retracted. He fixed me with the Vulture gaze. Panofsky looked at the principal, who said tiredly, “Explain.”

“I’m not here to defend myself.”

“Then what—”

“I was stage manager.”

“Yes …”

“I’m speaking on behalf of the entire production—director, actors, stage crew, musicians …”

It was Pelletier’s turn to take a deep breath. She plastered on an I’m-patient-and-understanding look. “Your notice of appeal”—she lifted the pages I had written—“talks about your grade.”

“Yes.”

She smiled. “So …”

“But Mr. Panofsky, when he gave me the grade, was careful to emphasize that I was responsible for everything that occurred ‘once the theatre doors opened’—I think those were your exact words. Right, sir?”

Panofsky flushed. “Well, yes. Or words to that effect.”

I let that go. “Thank you. I am here as stage manager. I’m speaking for the whole production. Not for myself.”

To my surprise, the Vulture gave a barely noticeable nod.

“Point one,” I began, working hard to be calm and not speak too quickly, “another teacher, who isn’t here today, gave the musical composition and performance an A+.”

Something interesting seemed to be happening with the panel of judges. Their unified front looked shaky. The Vulture was hard to read. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, although I didn’t have the impression he was against me. Panofsky’s wide eyes and body language told me he was lost, still trying to catch up with me. Pelletier, by the half-amused look in her eye, seemed to sense what I was up to.

“The musicians are under the auspices of the music program,” Panofsky sputtered.

“They were part of the production,” I reminded him. “Alba directed them at rehearsals, and I cued them for the performance.”

I paused. Panofsky looked at his hands, clinching his fingers tighter. The Vulture nodded again.

“Go on, Jake,” the principal said.

“Vanni received a first-class evaluation, which, I know, didn’t count as a grade. But Mr. Panofsky made a point of mentioning it. Vanni was also part of the production.”

I stopped again. I had come to the hard part.

“How can the production be first-class and a failure at the same time? Okay, the performance didn’t go as planned. I can’t explain what happened without intruding in private business, but—”

“Jake,” Pelletier cut in, her voice quiet and even, “the whole school probably knows about Alba and Chad. Certainly the three of us do. You’re not uncovering any secrets here.”

“Okay, let’s say they had a spat,” I conceded.

“More like a seismic catastrophe!” Panofsky said with a sneer. “And they positively ruined the performance! You simply cannot treat Shakespeare in that manner! Especially here at York. This is a school for the arts. That sort of adolescent tantrum might be allowable in an … an ordinary school, but we have professional standards. Our graduates—”

“Just hold it right there, sir,” I said. I was about to stray from the point I was making, but I didn’t care. “School for the arts or not, this isn’t the professional theatre, and we’re not middle-aged actors and musicians and artists. Alba and Chad fell apart and—at least according to you—ruined the performance. But isn’t that what a school is supposed to be—a place where we can screw up and make a mess of things and still be safe? And learn from our mistakes? You’re supposed to get us ready for the professional world, not be the professional world.”

“But—”

“Alba has phenomenal talent. You know that better than I do. Chad is really good too. In the rehearsals they were terrific. I know. I was there for all of it. The grade they got from this school will probably ruin their chances to get into a college theatre program that can match their potential. And what was the reason they fell apart during the performance? They were in love!”

“That has nothing to do with it! It’s irrelevant to the issue,” Panofsky exclaimed, red-faced.

“With your permission.”

I had almost forgotten him in the heat of the argument, but the Vulture had finally spoken, and his tone of voice chilled the room. He nodded to each of his colleagues. “Ms. Pelletier. Mr. Panofsky.”

He paused. His lids lowered and returned to their places. “You say, sir,” he said, his raptor eyes on Panofsky, his words rumbling out of him like empty barrels rolling off a wagon, “that love has nothing to do with it. If you examine our literature program, if you investigate every novel, play, short story, poem, you will find that a very large number—perhaps most—are about love. Love, like life, informs all the arts. Why do we teach these works if we believe they have no relevance? Why put love, as it were, on the curriculum, with all its passionate, tragic, comical, exhilarating and, yes, messy manifestations—and then deny it, pretend it doesn’t matter when it appears in the lives of our students? Romeo and Juliet were teenagers, as was Ophelia. And Alba and Chad were enacting a scene that is famous for its brilliant presentation of a conflict of wills that is part of a courtship. At the same time they were struggling to cope with the admittedly untidy presence of love in their own lives. And they managed by some deep sense of dedication to their art to make it through the scene without damaging each other and without—I said it at our first evaluation meeting, and I’ll say it again now—without ruining Shakespeare’s play. They brought it to life. The audience, who ought to be the real judges of the performance, were thrilled.”

Locheed paused and seemed to reach inside himself for something. “And is this panel going to repeat its judgment that Jake and his colleagues failed?”

He stopped again and calmed himself. “Let us not treat literature as if it were a dead thing at the bottom of a museum showcase. I see no reason to continue this hearing. I call for a vote. I move that Alba, Chad and Jake be given an A+.”

Pelletier was taken by surprise. “Mr. Locheed, you can’t—”

“I already have. I have called for a vote.”

“I second the motion,” I said.

“Jake, be quiet,” Pelletier snapped. “You can’t second it. It’s not a legal motion, and you have no standing.”

“Okay, then, I vote for Mr. Locheed.”

“Shut up!” Panofsky shouted.

“Let’s remain calm, please,” Pelletier urged. “Jake, if you have nothing to add, perhaps you’d excuse us.”

I looked at Locheed. How he nodded to me without nodding, I don’t know, but he did. I got to my feet.

Before I closed the door behind me, the voices rose like sparrows bursting from a hedge.

CHAPTER FOUR

LONG BEFORE I LEARNED TO HAMMER a nail into a board without bending it or to saw a straight line, my father taught me never to get personal with a client. He meant that even when a customer is unhappy with you, or you’re working for someone you don’t like very much, you don’t let those feelings get in the way of your craft. You put the same effort into the job. Your pride in your trade is what motivates you, he told me many times, not money or praise.

So when Pelletier gave me my next assignment a couple of days after the hearing, I put my resentment aside and accepted the job with as much grace as I could scrape together. She and Call-Me-Saul had sketched a rough set design for the school’s finale show, The Pirates of Penzance. It was meant to suggest the deck of a sailing ship without being too realistic. Panofsky wanted to place the musical in a more modern context, he explained. I wasn’t familiar with Pirates, so I didn’t really know what he was getting at, but I nodded wisely. It took a day or two to work up a proper layout and then get Pelletier’s and Panofsky’s approval before I got down to the construction.

The call for auditions had gone out by then. Because of the Shrew disaster, Alba and Chad were allowed to try for only minor roles. Alba had accepted the ruling. Chad had cursed, then swanned off, saying he had better things to do anyway.

I toiled away alone in the school’s workshop, wearing my yellow safety hat and my steel-toed boots, measuring, cutting, nailing, immersed in the hollow whine of the exhaust fan and the odour of fresh sawdust. On my third day, as I was crosscutting a length of spruce with a handsaw, a voice broke through the fan’s noise.

“Hey, stranger! Time for a break.”

I looked up to see Vanni at the shop door, a couple of takeout cups in her hands, her carryall slung over one shoulder.

“I’ll meet you onstage.” Without waiting for a reply, she ducked back out the door.

I finished cutting the board, took off my apron and tossed it onto the bench, then shook the sawdust out of my pant cuffs. I locked the shop and walked down the hall to the theatre door. Crossing the backstage area, I found Vanni on the main stage of the darkened auditorium. Dressed in a loose-fitting dress and open cardigan, she was sitting on the proscenium, feet dangling over the edge. She looked back over her shoulder when she heard me approach.

“Double-shot cappuccino for the hired help, chai for the writer,” she announced, handing me a cup. “From the Blue Note.”

I sat down beside her and pried off the lid. The coffee was still hot. “Thanks,” I said. “You’re an angel.”

“True enough,” she replied.

There was an energy coming off her, although she couldn’t have looked more relaxed. Her shoes dangled off the ends of her feet and she was leaning back on one arm, sipping her drink. I waited. Finally, she put down her cup, pulled her tote bag closer and removed a small oblong package wrapped in brown paper.

Holding it out to me, her eyes bright with excitement, she said, “For you. As promised.”

“What is it?” I asked, breaking the taped seal and removing the paper. It was a small, thin hard-bound book covered in green cloth. “Water Beads” was printed in gold on the front, and under it, “Pentameter Press.”

“Your book,” I said, turning it over in my hands.

“Partly my book. I contributed five of the fifty poems—and the title.”

“I’ll think of it as yours anyway.”

“It’s yours now. Open it.”

On the title page Vanni had written, “ To Jake,” and under that, “Like gold to aery thinness beat,” and under that, “Love, Vanni,” with the date.

“Thanks, Vanni. And congratulations. It’s beautiful.”

“You’re welcome, and thank you,” she replied.

“What does this mean?” I asked, pointing to the quotation.

“That’s for you to find out. It’s from a poem.”

I opened the book, flipped a few pages. “One of yours?”

Vanni smiled. “No, someone else wrote that line. John Donne.”

“I’m proud of you,” I said, and she smiled again, wider this time.

We sat quietly for a while, sipping our drinks and looking out over the ranks of empty seats ascending into the gloom of the auditorium.

“You’ve seemed kind of low these days,” Vanni remarked.

“I guess I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

“Still waiting to hear from Pelletier?”

“No, that’s not it.”

“Some things to work out?”

“Sort of.”

We were silent for a moment.

“Aren’t we a pair,” Vanni sighed.

I didn’t reply. Vanni’s tone of voice was unusual for her. The indirect irony, the edge were gone.

“We have something in common,” she said.

“We have lots—”

“We’re each of us in love with someone we can’t be with.”

Even though I was accustomed to Vanni’s mental leaps, this one took me by surprise. She hardly ever talked about my feelings for Alba, and had never admitted she loved her too. My passion for Alba had disappeared, but Vanni didn’t know that.

I thought about how lonely it must be for Vanni. Lots of people accepted gays and lesbians—maybe most people, at least those our age. Even so, it must be hard to find someone to be with. And there was always the possibility you’d end up in a quandary like Vanni’s, in love with a girl who was straight, who must have seemed as if she was on the far shore of a river, impossible to reach.

“In the movies,” I mused, “love solves everything. The sun goes down, the music fades and everybody’s happy.”

“But in life, love complicates things.”

“Yeah.”

“Will you always love her?” Vanni asked softly, still looking into the darkened theatre.

I thought long and hard before I replied.

“I don’t love her. I only thought I did.”

Vanni’s head snapped around, her eyes searching mine. “What do you mean?”

I cleared my throat. I hadn’t planned this. I wasn’t sure how to proceed.

“There’s a story there,” I said, trying a smile.

Her eyes, deadly serious, fixed me like arrows. “Tell it. The long version.”

“I didn’t intend to say anything.”

“Spit it out, Jake.”

“Remember the day I got the phone call telling me my dad was sick?”

She nodded.

“Mom told me it was his heart. On the way to the hospital, in the taxi, I thought, He could die. He might even be dead by the time I get there. I was terrified. I’d never felt so alone in my life. I wished I had someone with me, just to be there. But it wasn’t Alba I thought of.”

I swallowed hard.

“It was you.”

I heard a sharp intake of breath. Vanni turned her head toward the empty theatre again. I rushed ahead, anxious to get it all out before I lost my nerve.

“And while Mom and I waited in the Emergency room, after we’d heard he was going to be okay, well, the happiness and relief were like a small explosion inside me. I ached to talk to someone, to share the good news. I took out my cellphone and without even thinking about it started to key in a number, but then I remembered you can’t use cells in the hospital. The thing is, Vanni, the number I entered was yours.”

Vanni had begun to cry. She sat quietly on the edge of the proscenium, hands tucked under her legs, and tears trickled slowly down her cheeks.

“I’m aware that it’s impossible,” I continued, “and I’m sorry to upset you this way. I realize we can only be friends, but you know what? You’re my best friend, and I’m okay with that.”

Suddenly, Vanni launched herself over the edge of the stage, landing on her feet with a jolt. She spun around and grabbed her carryall, knocking over her chai. She was crying full out now, her shoulders heaving, her face red and hot and wet with tears.

“I’ve got to go,” she blurted between sobs.

“Don’t. I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t have—”

She turned and fled up the aisle, like someone running from a fire.

I berated and criticized myself all the way home. I had been selfish, thinking of myself rather than Vanni. I had given in to an overwhelming desire to tell her my feelings, had wanted to confess them ever since I realized the mistake I had made in believing I loved Alba. But this was Vanni’s big day, the publication of her book of poems, and what I had done? Ruined it, like a spoiled infant breaking some other kid’s favourite toy. No wonder she had run off in tears.

When I got home I went straight to my room, disgusted with myself. I tried to take my mind off things by listening to music, watching videos on my computer. Later, Mom called me down for dinner, but I told her I wasn’t hungry. “We’re having your favourite,” she yelled from the bottom of the stairs. Dad called up to me an hour later, asking if I wanted to watch a hockey game with him. “No thanks,” I hollered back.

Much later, Mom tried again. This time she tapped on my door. “There’s a good movie on,” she said. “What’s-his-name is in it. That actor.”

When I didn’t respond, she added, “You know, the one you like.”

“No thanks, Mom.”

After she left I mumbled, “I’ll just stay here and make a mess of the rest of my life.”

SCREENPLAY: “SO LONG, BOGEY”

by

JAKE BLANCHARD

FADE IN:

EXT. A STREET IN CASABLANCA, OUTSIDE RICK’S CAFE—NIGHT

CLOSE UP:

The neon SIGN above the nightclub’s door:

RICK’S CAFE AMERICAIN

ZOOM OUT:

BOGEY, in evening dress, stands on the sidewalk by the door, smoking casually. Customers arrive and leave. BOGEY flicks his cigarette butt into the gutter. A man strolls down the sidewalk, a woman on each arm. They are chatting and laughing. They go in.

From inside we hear MUSIC and LAUGHTER. The song is “It Had to Be You.”

JAKE rushes up to Bogey.

JAKE

I gotta talk to you.

BOGEY

Calm down, kid. Don’t get your shirt in a knot.

JAKE

(looks down)

My … ?

BOGEY

(removes his cigarette case from the pocket of his dinner jacket, flips it open with a flourish) Smoke?

JAKE

(waving it off)

Not now.

BOGEY

(takes one himself, returns the case to his pocket, lights up with a wooden match, indicates door to RICK’S)

Drink?

JAKE

(shakes his head)

Look, I need your advice. It’s about a girl—or, girls.

BOGEY

You came to the right place, pal.

JAKE

I’m … This is a little difficult to explain.

BOGEY

Go ahead, spit it out.

JAKE

The thing is, I was in love with this girl. Now I’m certain I’m in love with a different girl.

BOGEY

(laughs)

You ain’t the first mug in history with two fish on a line at the same time. As long as they don’t find out—

JAKE

No, you don’t understand. I don’t love the first one anymore.

BOGEY

(shrugs)

Ah, what’s the difference? A dame’s a dame.

JAKE

But I need to understand what’s changed. It’s driving me nuts. First Alba, then Vanni. I—

BOGEY

What kind of a name is Vanni?

JAKE

Keep your eye on the ball here, will you, Bogey?

BOGEY

Okay, lay it out for me. Take it slow.

JAKE

I was in love with Alba. Because of her looks, I know that now. She has beautiful hair. A dynamite dresser. And a body made in heaven.

BOGEY

You don’t say.

JAKE

And I thought she was kind of sweet. In a way. But I didn’t really know her. Maybe I sort of, I don’t know, idealized her. Like the boy in Joyce’s story. Maybe it wasn’t real love at all, although it certainly felt—

BOGEY

Who’s Joyce? I thought you said the other girl’s name is Vanni.

JAKE

Joyce the writer. “Araby”? Mangan’s sister?

BOGEY

(beat)

Well, if this Alba girl is Arab, she’ll fit right in around here. This is Casablanca.

JAKE

She isn’t Arab. Araby’s a story.

BOGEY

So she’s Mangan’s sister. Or is that Vanni?

JAKE

(exasperated)

I think I came to the wrong place.

BOGEY

(beat)

This is Rick’s place.

JAKE

I know!

BOGEY

Of all the gin joints—

JAKE

Aarrgh!

Look, let me start over.

BOGEY

Good idea. Shoot.

JAKE

(slowly, as BOGEY nods after each sentence)

I was in love with Alba.

I’m not anymore.

Definitely.

Now I’m in love with Vanni.

I came to you so you could help me figure out what happened to me.

BOGEY

(lights another cigarette, tosses the match into the street as a LIMO pulls up)

Oh, I get it. But who—?

JAKE

Never mind! Forget the other names!

BOGEY

Whatever you say.

JAKE

Are there different kinds of love, do you think? Is that it?

BOGEY

(lost)

You might be on to something.

JAKE

(musing)

The question is, When did I start to love Vanni? Vanni and I became friends, then best friends. We go together like—

BOGEY

(eyes on the limo)

Whiskey and soda? Champagne and caviar?

JAKE

I was going to say peanut butter and jam, but never mind. I think I’m beginning to understand. I told her things I’d never shared with anyone else. Whenever I laughed, I’d want to share the laugh with her. It wasn’t like that with Alba. When my dad was sick, it was Vanni I wanted by my side. She makes me want to be a … a better person.

BOGEY

Say, you’ve got it bad, kid.

JAKE

Somewhere along the line, my affection for her as a friend grew into love. It was a metamorphosis.

BOGEY

(not following)

Er, sure. Whatever you say.

A half-dozen party-goers climb out of the limo and crowd through the doors of RICK’S CAFE. BOGEY focuses on a statuesque redhead among them. When the doors open we hear MUSIC: “You Must Remember This.”

The doors close behind the redhead. BOGEY tosses his cigarette to the pavement, grinds it out with his shoe.

JAKE

I feel better now. It all makes sense. I didn’t need you after all, but thanks for listen—

BOGEY

I gotta shove off. Sam’s playing that damn song again.

JAKE

But—

BOGEY

Just remember, when you get right down to it, a dame’s a dame.

JAKE

Maybe that’s true in the movies, but—

BOGEY

So long, kid.

JAKE

(waves at BOGEY’S back)

So long, Bogey.

FADE OUT as BOGEY rushes through the doors of RICK’S CAFE AMERICAIN

CHAPTER FIVE

“HERE YA GO,” Dad grunted as he heaved two strapped bundles of cedar shingles onto the scaffold beside my feet.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“I’ll be around front.”

Dad was building a boathouse for an old customer, on the shore of the Creed River, and we were sheathing the walls with wooden shingles to match the house and garage on the property. I had taken the afternoon off, glad to be away from school, a place that had become full of uncertainties lately.

Using my tin snips, I cut the strap binding the shingles together and stuffed a half-dozen into the side pocket of my nail bag. It was slow, meticulous work, but I liked it. There was a rhythm to it: fit the shingle, hold it in place, nail it to the wall with the pneumatic power stapler—whap-whap! Every few minutes the air compressor would kick in, rattle away for a bit, then cut out with a sharp hiss. There was a light breeze off the river, and the cedar gave off a fragrance that always reminded me of summer.

I soon lost myself in the work, and thoughts of my broken career plans slipped into my mind. I hadn’t heard anything from Pelletier about my appeal, and I had concluded that no news was bad news and the door was finally closed. I had to accept that I was going to have to readjust my goals. I tried not to feel sorry for myself. Lots of people had dreams about the future—interesting jobs where they could make a name for themselves or pile up a fortune or do what they loved—and lots of people came up short and had to settle for second or third or tenth choice. I was lucky, I knew. I had a backup, and the proof was written on my father’s van. But that didn’t make me feel any better.

Was I feeling sorry for myself? Maybe, but I knew I would never be content unless I could write the things I wanted to write—release the ideas that were building up inside me like water behind a dam and let them flow onto the page and maybe one day onto the screen.

I reached into my belt for another shingle, tried it for a fit, trimmed the edge with my utility knife, slapped it into place—whap-whap!—and reached for another. The row of shingles, pale golden and aromatic, slowly rose up the wall, and with it my frustration. Why should I give up? To hell with the York School for the Arts! Whap-whap! If I couldn’t get the university program I wanted, I would find a movie company somewhere and sign on as … as anything that would keep me close to the action. I aligned another shingle with the blue chalkline. Whap-whap! I could be a gofer, a stagehand, a camera-lens polisher, a lighting man. I would make sandwiches, hold scripts, take out the garbage if I had to. Once my foot was in the door, I’d somehow persuade the producers and directors to read my stuff. And someday I’d come back to York and show all those teachers that I’d made it without them. Whap-whap!

I felt a surge of confidence. Yes, if the university door was closed, I’d push open another. Whap-whap!

“Ow!”

“Jake? What’s up?” my father yelled as I watched a bright red line run down the pale face of the new shingles.

“You’d better come over here,” I answered. “I just stapled my hand to the wall.”

CHAPTER SIX

I OPENED MY LOCKER DOOR, grabbed my brown bag from the top shelf, clamped it under my arm and closed the locker. Moving quickly, I left the school, crossing the playing field toward the river, and didn’t slow down until I was well into the trees. I still felt guilty about hurting Vanni that day in the empty theatre, and I wanted to avoid her.

Spring was moving in. Along the bank of the river the branches on the bushes were dotted with plump green buds. Birds, all singing and calling at once, zipped overhead and squabbled in the trees, while squirrels rushed up and down the trunks, their claws rustling on the bark, as if they had forgotten something.

I wandered along the path, glad to be alone, and eventually found myself at the bridge—“our bridge,” I had once told Alba. I laughed at myself, picked my way down the bank and sat down on a smooth, dry log in a patch of sun on the shore of the river. I looked up at the bridge.

Alba was the apex of the love triangle that had changed and not changed. I was still in love with someone who could never love me back.

I dug awkwardly into the brown bag with my good hand. My mother had constructed a sandwich of pink meat slathered in ketchup and mustard and covered in slices of dill pickle. She had given me Dad’s lunch by mistake—he was a fan of the Technicolor school of sandwich making. Out of duty I took a bite, but then spat into the river and rewrapped the sandwich, settling for the apple that came with it.

I watched the water flowing over the gravel bottom, where small fish drifted and darted like tiny shadows, and Vanni crept into my mind. I knew I would have to be content with her friendship. I was lucky to have it. I should stop what Vanni herself would call whinging. But I also knew I would always feel an ache when I remembered that there could never be more.

I tossed my apple core into the stream.

“Hi, Jake.”

I turned. “Alba!” She was standing at the bridge. “On your way home?” I stammered, surprised to see her.

“Yeah. I skipped off early today. Got room on that log for me?”

“Er, sure,” I replied.

Alba shucked off her backpack and sat down beside me, very close. “What happened to you?” she asked, taking my bandaged hand in both of hers.

“A little mishap at work.”

She held onto me. Our shoulders touched. I could smell her perfume and, under it, a hint of lip gloss.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said.

I didn’t reply.

“You know, I never went back with Chad,” she told me.

“Yeah, I heard.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Neither could she, I guess. We sat listening to the birds and squirrels.

“You used to have feelings for me,” she said after a few minutes, her words like an accusation.

“Yes, I did.”

“Maybe we—”

“The thing is, I’m over you now.”

Alba dropped my hand. “You make me sound like a case of the measles.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Just joking,” she said unconvincingly. She tried to smile, then heaved a theatrical sigh. “Two lonely people,” she said. “What a shame. Oh, well. ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ ”

“‘Gone with the Wind, right?”

Alba nodded.

“ ‘We’ll always have Paris,’” I said to lighten the mood.

“Casablanca?”

“Right.”

“Who says it, Ingrid Bergman or Humphrey Bogart?”

“Bogey. ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’”

“Huh?”

“Just talking to myself.”

“You should watch that, Jake. It isn’t normal.”

“Getting ready for exams?” I asked to change the subject. “They’ll be on us before we know it.”

“Yes. I drew up a study schedule last night. But I think I’m okay. My average will be an A or better.”

“Really? What about the BP grade? Won’t it pull you down?”

“It was changed. Saul told me today. They reconsidered. I got an A.”

“Oh. That’s … great.”

Alba got up and retrieved her backpack. “I guess I’ll be going. See you tomorrow, Jake.”

“Okay,” I mumbled toward her back as she walked across the bridge.

Panofsky had said that she, Chad and I had received the same grade. I had an F. Alba’s grade had been raised to an A. Did that mean … ?

I snatched up my lunch bag and took off down the path, my feet crunching on the gravel as I ran. I burst out of the trees and sprinted across the newly mown grass of the playing field. As I rounded the corner of the theatre building, my feet squirted out from under me and I went flying, sliding across the lawn on top of my lunch bag and coming to rest with my mouth full of grass clippings. Cursing and spitting, I got to my feet and brushed off the bits of green as I walked quickly into the academic building, leaving the bag behind me.

In the main office I stood at Mrs. Zhou’s desk, waiting while she chopsticked the last few noodles from a bowl into her mouth. She slurped and put down the bowl, then looked me up and down. I followed her gaze, noticing for the first time a wide green smear across my T-shirt and a fist-sized ketchup-and-mustard stain on my upper leg.

Just then, the door to Pelletier’s office opened. “Jake,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you.” She looked me over. “What happened?”

“I, er, fell.”

“Well, come on in. This won’t take long.”

Her office hadn’t changed much since the day my father had persuaded her to let me enrol in York. The Persian rug still decorated the floor, and the brass lamp stood on her desk, illuminating a sheaf of papers. She went behind the desk and sat down. She didn’t invite me to take a chair.

“It’s about your appeal,” she began.

“Yes?”

“I wanted to let you know that it’s been upheld.”

“Which means what?” I asked, a bit too abruptly, I knew, but I was nervous.

“Which means you prevailed.”

“So …”

“So your grade—or, as you so eloquently put it in your, um, presentation to the Appeal Board, your production’s grade—has been changed to an A.”

“This is official?”

“Jake, I am the principal.”

“You’re not going to change your mind?”

“Certainly not.”

The rush of relief carried my breath away. I stood silently for a minute.

Then I felt the anger rising like heat through a soldering iron. Just shut up, thank her and get out, I told myself.

“It’s too bad the three of us—Alba, Chad and I—had to go through all this agony,” I said evenly.

Pelletier’s face softened. “Jake, take a seat. No, close the door first.”

I did as she asked.

“I want to tell you something,” she began, “but I need your assurance that you’ll keep this in confidence.”

“Okay.”

“The original grade was the result of, well, some heavy lobbying on the part of one of the grading teachers. The rest of us allowed ourselves to be too much influenced by him. We made a mistake.”

“You mean Mr. Panofsky.”

“We needn’t name names. That’s not the point.”

“You mean Mr. Panofsky.”

“He takes professional standards very seriously, Jake. And he’s fiercely proud of the school’s reputation. It wasn’t personal.”

“It’s my future. It couldn’t not be personal.”

“I’m asking you to put this behind you.”

I forced myself to calm down a little. “Okay,” I said, not sure I meant it.

“I don’t want you to hold this against Mr. Panofsky.”

I looked directly into her eyes, on the edge of telling her she might as well ask the rain not to fall.

“I’ll try.”

The principal stood up. “Good.”

I went to the door. Before I opened it I heard her voice behind me. “Jake, I want you to know I’ve never regretted bending the rules a little so you could come to York. I’ll be sorry, in a way, to see you graduate.”

I turned, nodded and let myself out of the office.

As I passed Mrs. Zhou’s desk, she grinned mischievously. “Starting a new fashion trend, Jake?” she asked, pointing to the grass stain on my shirt and the ketchup on my pants.

I laughed, my relief finally finding some expression. “Yeah, what do you think? Pretty stylish?”

“Well, they used to put egg and beer in shampoo, so why not?”

On my way down the hall a thought elbowed its way into my mind. It was the Vulture who had stuck up for Chad, Alba and me.

Life was funny sometimes.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THAT DAY I STAYED LATE in the workshop, having got special permission to remain after the security system kicked in. I needed to take stock of things and absorb the good news, and the best way I knew to put my mind on an even keel was to work with my hands, so I puttered away on the Pirates set until well after suppertime.

At home, I dragged myself into the kitchen and forced down a plate of meatloaf Mom had kept warm in the oven. She hadn’t burned the edges too badly this time. I washed it down as well as I could with water, then took a coffee up to my room.

I still felt guilty about Vanni. She hadn’t been avoiding me lately, but she had definitely been keeping her distance, which was ironic because I had been doing the same. I didn’t blame her. She was probably wondering what kind of fool she had picked for a friend. Someone who switched love interests the way a bee moves from one flower to another. A guy who blind-sided her with a declaration of love for her, knowing she was lesbian.

I decided to call her and tell her about the Appeal Board decision. She didn’t answer her cell, so I left a message. I put on some music and settled into my easy chair to read. Then Vanni’s book on the shelf above my desk caught my eye. I had been so preoccupied lately that I hadn’t read her poems carefully. I took down the book, recalling the day at the Blue Note when she told me she was about to be a published author. She had been so proud. Vanni was brilliant. And funny.

What a loser you are, Jake, I said to myself. You find the perfect girl, except for one thing.

Although she had unknowingly got the details mixed up, Vanni had been right. We were both in love with someone we couldn’t have. It was a classic love triangle, the basis for hundreds of screenplays.

I opened the book to the title page and read the inscription Vanni had written:

To Jake

Like gold to aery thinness beat.

Love, Vanni

I didn’t understand the quotation. Well, Vanni, I thought, I can’t apologize again for upsetting you, but at least I can try to work out the meaning of what you wrote for me. She had told me the poet’s name. I sat at my desk and went online. I didn’t know how to spell the last name, so I tried a few variations: Dunn, Dunne, Done, Dun.

“Do you mean John Donne?” the search engine asked, mocking me.

John Donne was a sixteenth-century English poet and Protestant minister—a playboy in his youth and a preacher later. I read the brief biography, then searched the long list of his poems. No help. All I had was the one line. Now that I knew his name, I investigated a few more sites. It took a while to nail down the title of the poem I was after. It was called “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.” Great, I muttered. This is going to be one of those poems that send you to the dictionary at least twice per line. I printed it off and pulled my dictionary from the shelf above my desk.

Valediction: a farewell.

Okay, a goodbye poem. Strange title, though. I struggled through the nine stanzas. Somebody was dying at the start, and that was about all I got. I slipped downstairs for another cup of Mom’s prize-losing coffee and returned to my task. My parents were glued to the tube watching the eleven o’clock news.

Back at my desk, I reread the poem—a few times. There was nobody at death’s door after all. It was a simile. The speaker in the poem was going away, and he was telling his lover not to cry. Let their parting be as quiet and gentle as the soul leaving the body. That explained the title. I reread the poem several times. I couldn’t say I got all the rest, but I thought I understood the stanza where Vanni had found the line she quoted in my copy of her book.

Our two souls, therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to aery thinness beat.

What are you trying to tell me, Vanni? “Our two souls, which are one” suggested … what? Our friendship? Okay.

I got up and stretched and paced my room for a few minutes to increase the blood flow to my brain. I still wasn’t getting it. I sat down and read the poem out loud, slowly and carefully, the way the Vulture had taught us.

And that was when a certain line jumped out at me: “To tell the laity our love.”

That didn’t sound like friendship.

But Vanni hadn’t quoted the whole poem—just one line. What she was saying was in that line, “like gold to aery thinness beat.” Another simile. What was like gold beaten to the thinness of air? The “expansion.” The expansion of what? “Our two souls.”

So, I was back to the idea that the two souls are “one.” They’re united. United in friendship?

That wasn’t what the poem said. The poem said “our love.”

I gasped. My heart rate leapt into a higher gear.

I snatched at my cellphone, sending it spinning and clattering off my desk to the floor. Cursing, I got down on my hands and knees, fished around among the dust balls and retrieved the phone. My hands shook so hard I could hardly hit the redial button.

She answered after four rings.

Still on my knees I almost shouted, “Vanni! I’ve been reading ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.’ I wanted to know what ‘Like gold to aery thinness beat’ means.”

“Didja, now?”

“You love me! I figured it out!”

“It took you long enough.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

IF YOU WERE TO LOOK UP THE WORD “awkward” in the dictionary, you’d find a picture of Vanni and me on the morning after our life-changing telephone conversation. I’d been waiting at her locker since I arrived—earlier than usual—at school. A few minutes before nine I caught sight of her walking down the hall toward me.

She wore her usual outfit, carried her bag in the usual way. But she seemed different, as if I was seeing her for the first time. Her thick black hair, as unruly as ever, was held at the back of her neck by a silver pin, and the effect was to emphasize her face—her light brown skin, those beautiful dark eyes, the full red lips with their ironic curve, the I’m-here-get-used-to-it nose.

“Hi,” she said, smiling, embarrassed.

“Hi.”

She set down her carryall and opened her locker. We stood close together, flat-footed, shy and goofy, while people streamed past us paying us no notice as they scurried to class.

“You’d better kiss me and end the suspense,” she murmured.

“Good idea,” I said, and woodenly moved to do as she suggested.

“Mind the nose,” she said. “Don’t damage yourself.”

In reply I kissed her—but first on the nose, right on the little bump in the middle, then I pressed my lips against her mouth. Without breaking contact I slowly slid my arms around her waist and drew her in as she put her arms around my neck.

The buzzer right above her locker sounded, rattling my eardrums. Vanni broke the kiss.

“In the movies, people usually hear bluebirds tweeting or angels singing,” I commented.

Vanni laughed and gathered her stuff, and we headed off to the Vulture’s class.

We skipped the joys of lunch in the riotous cafeteria and headed across the street to the Blue Note, taking our usual table by the greasy window, warm with spring sun. We sat down, shrugging our coats onto the backs of our chairs. The waiter approached, wearing his bored look like a formal suit, and stood insolently by the table.

“I’ll have the usual,” I said. “We’re celebrating.”

He held his pen above the order pad, prepared to wait me out.

“Barbecued elephant ears on a sesame-seed bun,” I said. “Heavy on the mustard. A cup of beef blood to drink.”

Vanni smirked. “Hot soya milk and a butter croissant, please,” she said. “Ignore this peasant. He’s unduly frisky today.”

The waiter gave me one last chance. I ordered a cappuccino and a raisin bun. “Hold the alfalfa sprouts,” I added.

Vanni and I made small talk until our food and drinks arrived, then I said, “I want to ask you something.”

“Do I have to answer?”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

“Why did you tell me you were a lesbian?”

She tore a chunk off her croissant. “Strictly speaking, I didn’t.”

“But you let me believe it.”

“True enough,” she admitted, popping the bread into her mouth.

“So why?”

“It’s pretty complicated,” she replied. “It involves psychology and everything.”

I waited.

“I guess it was one of those things that gets out of control, then it’s too late to stop it,” she said. “Remember, we were talking about the love letter you asked me to help you write?”

“Yes.”

“I was wishing the letter had been written to me, not to Alba. Then you asked me if I had a boyfriend. I said the first thing that jumped into my mind: ‘Are you applying for the job?’ I was being sarcastic—I was hiding my anger that you were in love with Alba—but at the same time I wished you would apply for the job. Then, because I felt so rejected, I had to pretend I didn’t care, so I said I wasn’t interested in boys. Which was true, in a way. I wasn’t interested in boys in the plural; I was only attracted to one boy. You. You formed the obvious conclusion. And, yes, I let you.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It is complicated.”

Vanni took a gulp of her soya milk, looking relieved, as if she had just completed a very difficult task.

“But I understand,” I added.

“Once the words were out of my mouth, it was hard to get them back in again,” Vanni explained needlessly. “Sometimes I talk before I think.”

“You told me one other fib,” I pointed out.

“Away with that.”

“It’s true. You said one time that love isn’t self-sacrificing. It’s selfish.”

Vanni looked down at the crumbs on her plate, then she raised her eyes to mine, smiling. “Guilty as charged, m’lord.”

“But you proved yourself wrong. You helped me. Over and over again. When you knew I was after another girl.”

“Ah, there was nothing on TV anyway,” she said. “I’d nothing better to do.”

“Ha. Admit it: you did it because you love me.”

“True.”

“And I was too thick to realize.”

“Also true.”

“And too self-centred.”

Vanni said nothing.

“You can stop me any time,” I said.

“You forgot something while you were busy tearing yourself down.”

“What?”

“You helped Alba when she was trying to win the heart of the gallant Mr. Bromley.”

“I did, but I had something to gain, didn’t I?”

“You would have helped her anyway.”

We sat in silence for a moment, enjoying the sun at the window and being together.

“Didjever wonder what attracted me to you in the first place?” Vanni asked.

“My sparkling personality? My vast personal wealth?”

“Your hands.”

“My—”

“That first day, in the cafeteria, after I fenced with Locheed, you were sitting there eating lunch. You were holding a very unappetizing-looking sandwich—”

“You should’ve seen the one I had the day before.”

“—in your right hand, and your left was resting on the table top. Your fingernails were cut short and you had calluses on your palms. A workman’s hands, honest and strong. And sexy.”

“So you’re after me for my body.”

Vanni grinned and her eyebrows rose. “It’s a start,” she said.

I reached into my pocket and removed a folded sheet of paper. Smoothing it out on the table top, I handed it to Vanni. “After I talked to you last night, I read some more poems by Donne. They’re hard, but the more I read, the more I liked them. This is from the one I liked best.”

On the paper I had written a couple of lines, and Vanni read them out loud.

“If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.”

Vanni lowered her head. “Jake,” she whispered, and remained silent.

“I don’t deserve you,” I said.

Vanni looked up, into my eyes, and smiled. “True enough,” she said. “But I deserve you.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Sincere thanks to: Maya Mavjee and Kristin Cochrane at Doubleday Canada for supporting this project; Amy Black, my ever-patient and encouraging editor, for her assistance and for putting up with me; John Pearce, my friend and agent, for helping steer the book along; Stephanie Fysh, for a painstaking copy edit; and my children, Dylan, Megan and Brendan Bell, for helpful comments on the manuscript.

As always, a special thank-you to my chief inspiration, Ting-xing Ye, for her unwavering support, encouragement and love.

I am indebted to William Shakespeare, Edmond Rostand and the creators of Casablanca. Here’s looking at you, kids.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William Bell’s young adult novels have been translated into nine languages and have won a number of awards, among them the Manitoba Readers’ Choice Award, the Mr. Christie’s Book Award, the Ruth Schwartz Award, and the Canadian Librarians’ Award. He lives in Orillia, Ontario, with writer Ting-xing Ye.

ALSO BY WILLIAM BELL

THE BLUE HELMET

Lee wants to be a Tarantula—a member of the most powerful gang in his neighbourhood. But when his initiation goes wrong and he is caught robbing an auto supply store, Lee’s father sends him to live with his aunt in New Toronto. Though he initially resists his Aunt Reena and the eccentric and unusual customers of Reena’s Unique Café, Lee gradually learns to open himself up to his new surroundings. When he strikes up an unlikely friendship, Lee is suddenly confronted by the ravages of violence, and is forced to face the consequences of his own aggression.

ALSO BY WILLIAM BELL

ALMA

Times have been tough since Alma’s father died and she and her mother had to give up the family farm and move into town. With few friends, Alma loves to lose herself in stories—books she reads and re-reads, and tales she writes herself.

To help make ends meet, Alma takes a job transcribing the letters of Miss Lily, the eccentric and reclusive elderly woman who has just moved into the old house on Little Wharf Road.

Eventually, their mutual love of words creates a strong relationship, and Miss Lily encourages Alma’s spark for writing, introducing her to the art of calligraphy and lending her some of her favourite books. But why is Miss Lily so secretive about certain parts of her life? Alma is determined to find out—but will she be prepared for what she will discover? …

ALSO BY WILLIAM BELL

STONES

Garnet Havelock know what it’s like to be on the outside, not one of the crowd. Now, in his final year of high school, he’s just marking time, waiting to get out into the real world.

Then a mysterious girl transfers to his school and Garnet thinks he might have found the woman of his dreams—if only he could get her to talk to him.

At the same time, Garnet becomes caught up in a mystery centred in his community. As he and Raphaella draw closer to the truth, they uncover a horrifying chapter in the town’s history, and learn how deep-seated prejudices and persecution from the past can still reverberate in the present.

Copyright © 2009 William Bell

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Bell, William, 1945–

Only in the movies / William Bell.

eISBN: 978-0-307-37437-0

I. Title.

PS8553.E4568O55 2010      jC813′.54      C2009-904042-5

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada,

a division of Random House of Canada Limited

Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website:

www.randomhouse.ca

v3.0

Table of Contents

Other Books By This Author

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Part 1 - Act One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Part 2 - Act Two

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part 3 - Act Three

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part 4 - Act Four

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part 5 - Act Five

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright