(C) 2010 by rmsl

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrival system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

An Absent Romeo

Cory waited for the phone to ring Saturday. It didn’t. He waited Sunday as well. But any time the phone did ring, it was for his brother or it was a family friend wanting to talk to his mom. Kym didn’t call.

He could’ve called her. But he figured since she kissed him, he should let her initiate the conversation that would move their relationship out of friendship and into a realm of constant bliss when she was ready. The call never came.

Cory wasted the weekend away trying to write about that kiss. But he couldn’t. His mind kept spinning and his movements felt dream-like both days. He lay on his bed with the baseball flying in the air and landing in his hand thinking of metaphors and poetic connections. He would throw the ball up again and it would float above him, but no words could do justice to how he felt…or how the kiss felt. His mind was blank. And this was strange for him.

Even when Cory wasn’t writing or struggling to put his thoughts into words, his mind still would race uncontrollably about things in his life: baseball, Kym, lately thoughts of college, school. And because of the last seven or so months with Leigh visions of Leigh’s Stage and Shakespeare would control his daily life like a movie on repeat.

Leigh’s dad had been doing much better as of late and his trips out of town for business increased. Leigh was happy that he wasn’t letting his emotions get the best of him and was starting to enjoy life again. He even began to play the piano a little every night. And by now, Cory felt completely comfortable being around the two of them and how they acted towards each other. They probably had the best parent-child relationship he had ever seen.

And the kiss. The weird feeling he thought was shock that he experienced after Kym kissed him didn’t go away like he first assumed it would. But it wasn’t as aggressive as it had been on the night of the dance. Cory buried it in the back of his mind and didn’t think about it; or he refused to. His life was turning out like he had always wanted it and nothing was going to take it away from him.

He went to Leigh’s Stage first thing Monday morning. Now that he was practicing with the other twenty-five varsity baseball hopefuls, he didn’t need to workout in the mornings. He must have been late because when he walked up to the door he heard talking and giggling. Jason and Leigh were already inside the alumni room and they were in the middle of one of the scenes from her play. Cory figured she just wrote it recently. He had never read it or seen it acted out before.

When he entered the room neither one of them acknowledged him. They went on performing a silly scene about the “gung ho” soldier talking to her son about being potty trained. At first, not being noticed irritated him a little but soon he was absorbed in their acting. Jason wasn’t bad. He was way better than Cory and Leigh seemed to respond to him better.

“Oh…hi, Cory.” Leigh didn’t look at him.

Jason turned around on Leigh’s greeting and he smiled widely like usual when he first saw Cory every morning. “Tell me about the dance. Leigh said she had a blast.”

“Well, it…” Cory started.

Leigh cut him off. “Hey, Jason and I talked about it and he’s willing to go over my lines for the play more. Seeing that auditions are only about ten days away.” Her voice was steady and business-like.

Cory had thought about telling Jason about Kym’s kiss but he wasn’t going to do it in front of Leigh. He wanted to talk to her about it alone. She got super serious whenever he talked to her about Kym and he didn’t want to ruin the fun they were already having. So when Leigh changed the subject from the dance to her audition, he went with it. “Sure. But I don’t think you need to practice anymore. No one will be better than you.”

“I can’t take that chance. I need to be the best.” Leigh walked over to get her copy of Romeo and Juliet. She saw Cory pull out his copy of the play from his book bag and she took a deep breath. She grabbed her copy and spun around hurriedly. “And eh…we also talked about…eh…Jason reading with me. Is that okay? He seems to know the tone of the words better.”

The request caught him off guard for a second. “Oh…okay. Whatever you think will help you more.” Cory went to hand his copy of the play to Jason.

“I got my own. Leigh gave it to me this morning,” Jason said.

Cory watched as they practiced the balcony scene. He did this scene with Leigh so many times he could recite Romeo’s lines without even looking at his copy. His lips moved as Jason read his lines becoming the young Montague.

Leigh’s performance flowed and he found himself staring at her while she moved around on the couch doubling as a balcony. He followed her wide brown eyes as they changed from the surprise of seeing Romeo under her window to the worry of being caught by Juliet’s nurse to the sheer infatuation with the young boy she just met at the party her father threw with the intentions of introducing her to the world. Her lips quivered and puckered and her chest heaved in and out with confusion. How could she fall in love with a Montague? Cory gaped in amazement as the world the young girl lived in for fourteen years shattered and was replaced by the vision of true love…with a Montague. For a second Cory felt like he was spying on the two teenagers behind a bush at the Capulet’s castle. No matter how many times he heard and saw Leigh becoming Juliet it never bored him. He could watch her all day.

Soon it was like Cory wasn’t even the room. Jason would stop during one of his lines and ask Leigh how he should say the line or if he was using the right voice inflection. They laughed and discussed each movement of their characters as if Cory was invisible. He felt a little uncomfortable.

When the first morning bell rang, Jason and Leigh walked out of Leigh’s Stage still talking over their acting and interpretations of the play. Cory silently followed them up to the main hall. He walked to his locker with visions of Leigh standing in the moonlight upon her balcony with her Romeo longing for her affections just below.

He was lost in his thoughts about Leigh’s Juliet when he spotted Kym at her locker. When she shut her locker and turned to walk to homeroom, books in hand, she noticed Cory. She looked like she would walk right by him, but he spoke to her.

“Hey you. What’s up?” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

She seemed startled but then stopped. “Weekends are too short, right?”

Cory nodded. “What’d you do all weekend?”

“Nothing. The weather sucked didn’t it?”

Cory acknowledged the weather was still wet and cold even for the ending weeks of February.

He walked her to homeroom and then went to his locker. No mention of the kiss or of their relationship. Cory was confused.

He chose to sit next to her in English. Jason and Leigh were talking away when he entered the room and he felt like he would be interrupting her preparations for the play. Jason was a much better Romeo than he ever was.

As he sat down behind her, for a moment he wished he had sat with Jason and Leigh. She didn’t turn around right away and her shoulders were hunched over as if she was trying to keep as much of her body away from Cory as possible.

When she finally did turn around, it was like the boring morning small talk conversation never happened. They were back in the gym at the end of the dance in each other’s arms.

“So…you wanna get together this Friday night?” she asked.

“Yeah. What do you wanna do? Take a walk or watch a movie? Or go to a movie?”

“I don’t care. Anything that’ll get me out of my house. My dad’s been in rare form lately.” She looked down at her feet and then put her hand on Cory’s. “Why didn’t you call me?”

Cory didn’t have an answer. He didn’t want to tell her that he felt she should have called him. She did kiss him. “I don’t know…I guess I thought you’d talk to me about it when you were ready.”

Kym stared at him blankly. “Hey, did you get The Heart of Darkness? Was Kurtz a bad guy?”

 

The rest of the week was sort of a blur to Cory. With Jason and Leigh practicing and Kym’s moods changing more than he changed his socks, the days mixed together like a whirlwind of confusion.

Some days Kym would talk to him like they were going out. She even kissed him on the cheek a few times in the halls and once on the lips when he dropped her off at her house after school. But they never really discussed the first kiss or what was going on between them. It coiled his stomach, even making him angry at times, but then she would lean into him when they walked down the hall and he would smell her hair and put his arm around her shoulders and all his frustration would be forgotten. Maybe this was the way boyfriends and girlfriends acted?

Their date, if that’s what it was called, was short and tedious. They went to play mini-golf at an indoor fun park and barely made it through one game. Kym wanted to leave and when Cory asked her to go get a shake or some ice cream she told him she was tired and wanted to go home. When he dropped her off, no kiss on the cheek; not even a hug. He promised himself he would talk to her about it at school on Monday.

Kym was absent on Monday. He tried to call her after school but her brother Jimmy said she wasn’t home. He didn’t even ask to take a message.

Along with not being able to talk to Kym about their relationship giving him headaches, Leigh’s Stage was becoming annoying as well. Jason and Leigh talked on and on about their lines and hardly included Cory. He even started to resent inviting Jason to join them at all. It was like he was replacing him.

Kym was absent on Tuesday as well. And when she came back they didn’t get a chance to talk on Wednesday and Thursday either. Mr. Maragelloto assigned the groups for their next paper on The Heart of Darkness and Kym wasn’t in his group. And she wasn’t in any of his other classes. He looked for her after school in the gym both days but Kym was nowhere to be seen.

On Friday morning in the alumni room, Cory and Leigh had their second fight.

She decided to take a break from practicing her lines. She feared if she didn’t she would forget them all on Saturday at the audition. So they decided to read Othello together. Jason was late and Cory was relieved.

“You know, this is nice. Just the two of us again.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You don’t like Jason coming to The Stage anymore?”

He couldn’t tell her how he felt. He knew she wouldn’t like it and he couldn’t take away a better partner for her to practice with, just when actual play practice would begin the following Monday. But he couldn’t hide it. The irritation dripped from his words. “No, not all. I just like being able to join in now and then.”

She threw up her hand in his face. “Whatever. You don’t like him coming anymore, that’s obvious. What are you jealous?”

“Jealous? Nope. I just get tired of watching all the time.” He was angry with her for accusing him of something he couldn’t be feeling. Who doesn’t know how to read people, huh? “I just liked it better the way it was before. That’s all.”

“That’s really nice, Cory. Jason would never think of not including you.”

“Well, then maybe I should go and leave you two alone. You’d probably like that better, huh?”

“Cory, why are you acting like this?”

“Who’s acting like what?” Jason walked in and sat right next to them at an opposite table.

Cory and Leigh just looked at each other. Neither one of them spoke. Finally, Leigh told Jason they were going to read Othello today so she could take a break and rest up for the next day’s audition.

“What’s it about?” Jason asked, oblivious to the spat between his two best friends.

“A man who feels out of place but finds love and gets a promotion in the army he fights for. He ends up treating his first in command like someone he met on the street because of Iago, a deceitful officer who only thinks about himself.” She glared at Cory. “He also ends up treating his wife Desdemona, the woman he loves, unfairly. But I don’t want to give it away. All because he can’t see what is going on around him…” She paused. “Cory why don’t you read Othello’s part?”

“Yeah, and why doesn’t Jason read Iago?”

Leigh scowled at Cory as Jason flipped through the pages of his literature anthology in search of the play.

They read the whole play in an hour and a half. Shakespeare had a calming affect on the two of them. Half way through it, all three of them were discussing it like three scholars at Sunday brunch. Leigh smiled at Cory again and he forgot about his annoyance with Jason. He did make a nice addition to their group. Besides, he had really helped Leigh become a better Juliet.

Leigh left first. Cory pushed in the chairs and collected the papers they wrote on. Jason stayed with Cory this time. “I’m thinking about tryin’ out for Romeo. What’d you think?”

Instantly, Cory’s face reddened and his heart beat rapidly. He wanted to tell him the idea was stupid because Mr. Jurgenson would probably pick a senior no matter what. Was there a kissing scene in the play? The idea of Jason kissing Leigh didn’t make him laugh. It triggered an almost uncontrollable desire to punch Jason.

But he collected himself and didn’t let Jason see his irritation. He wouldn’t have been able to explain it to him if he did. “You’re really good. But I think Mr. Jurgenson always picks a senior. But why not try? Leigh would probably love it if you got the part.”

Cory grabbed his book bag.

“Probably. But I bet there’s someone else she’d rather have.”

As they walked into homeroom Jason turned to him and asked, “Haven’t you thought about auditioning?”

“Auditioning? For what?”

“Romeo.”

Cory started to laugh. The laugh wasn’t a quiet chuckle. It came from deep inside his stomach. “I would never do something like that to Leigh. What if I actually got the part?”

They were in their groups again in English class that Friday. So Cory couldn’t talk to Kym again. He tried one time in the hallway after fifth period, but Gwen came up to her crying or something. Cory didn’t pay much attention to her.

Cory honestly thought for the first time in his life to just let Kym go. It seemed like work to try to be a part of her life in more than a friendship capacity. He sulked the rest of the day.

Leigh had set crew that day to prepare the stage for Saturday’s audition. It was the final audition for the parts of Romeo and Juliet and Mr. Jurgenson wanted everything to be in place so it would run smoothly. He moved around on the stage like a newly formed butterfly.

Cory heard him telling everybody that the audition would start promptly at two o’clock and end exactly at three forty-five. He needed to have his tea at four. No exceptions. “So don’t be late,” he warned.

Leigh and Cory laughed about him while he sat with her for a few minutes on the stage. “I wonder if he goes through withdrawals if he doesn’t get his tea and crumpets exactly everyday at four?”

Leigh put her finger over her mouth shushing him. “I don’t need him mad at me. I gotta get back. But remember, pick me up at one-thirty. I wanna be early.”

Her dad left on another business trip and wouldn’t be home until Sunday afternoon. He was really starting to gain his confidence back and his boss was giving him some of his old responsibilities again.

Cory made one more quiet remark about how Mr. Jurgenson must keep his “shed-u-als.” Leigh shushed him again and went back to pull the fake balcony into place on the right of the stage. Since Cory couldn’t find Kym anywhere in the gym he went home.

 

Cory’s dad made him get up early on Saturdays. He had chores to do and needed to shovel the driveway so his mom could pull the car out and go shopping. His brother, who was seven years older than him, didn’t have to do chores anymore. So Cory’s list was long.

His brother started pestering him as soon as he got up around eleven o’clock. You missed a spot there. You missed a spot here. Make sure you get the corners. Use the hose, not the vacuum for the tight spots.

When Cory finally had enough, their arguing almost led to throwing a few punches. But Cory’s mom intervened and his brother left him alone to watch some television. By the time he finished all his chores, little patches of sweat appeared on his shirt. And he stunk.

It was twelve thirty and he needed to pick Leigh up in an hour. He hopped in the shower, shaved, and got dressed. He had some time to spare so he decided to try and write before he left.

His doorbell rang.

He didn’t think anything of it. It was probably his neighbor bringing over some warm bread he just baked or a new trinket he made with his new wood carving kit.

He never expected it to be Kym.

His brother yelled down to him. Cory didn’t hear him the first time so when his brother called again he hollered, “Cory, get up here. Your little girlfriend is here.”

Why did Leigh come here? He was supposed to pick her up.

When he walked upstairs and saw Kym standing in the kitchen his stomach fell to his feet like he was on the steepest roller coaster in the world. She looked beautiful. The crisp air from outside made her nose red and her cheeks flush. She must have walked. Even the multi-colored gloves she wore were cute. The blue tassel from her winter hat hung next to her mouth and her coat was zipped all the way up to her chin.

“What’s up?”

“Wow, Core, she’s hot,” his brother said. ‘How much you payin’ her?”

Cory disregarded his brother’s comment and told Kym to follow him downstairs to his room. At first their conversation was their usual small talk. When she spotted a picture of her from when she was in the ninth grade she picked it up.

“I can’t believe I used to wear my hair like that.” Kym half giggled half cringed.

“That’s my favorite picture of you.”

“It would be, wouldn’t it?”

Kym warmed to him. They started talking about the things in Cory’s room. His pictures of Babe Ruth and why his favorite number was three led to what the poem called Footprints that he had about six copies of hanging on the walls was about. Before he knew it, he had told her every story behind every piece of sentimentality in his room. Things were going so well that he even showed her a few of the poems he wrote for her. They sat on his bed and he watched her read every one.

“You know, Cory, I always knew you wrote that poem for me in eighth grade.”

Her words didn’t register right away and he kept on talking about the poem he was showing her. Then he stopped and put down the poem. “What’d you say?”

“I’m sorry I never told you. I guess I was embarrassed that I didn’t tell you when it happened. But I always believed it was you. I can still say it. Word for word.”

Kym turned to him and recited the poem. Cory couldn’t believe it. All those years and she always knew. She told him how back in eighth grade she felt if she told him she didn’t like him that way he would stop being her friend. And she couldn’t have risked it. She needed him too much, even back then.

Cory didn’t even flinch. For some reason it didn’t bother him she never confessed.

She continued to say how she had tried many times to make herself fall for him, to show him the feelings he deserved from her but she never could. He found himself saying things like “It’s okay,” or “I understand.” But did he? Why wasn’t he mad? Hurt?

“It just seemed so unfair. You’ve always been there for me…but I just couldn’t…you know…”

“Kym, it’s all in the past. I’m over it.”

Suddenly, her face whitened and she seemed to have trouble looking him in the eye.

“Cory, please don’t stop me. I promised myself I would do this. I don’t want to hurt you anymore than I have already. And you deserve it.”

“Deserve what?” Cory felt no apprehension, no nervousness. He was as calm as he had ever been when around her.

She faced him and her smile was back but it didn’t last long. “Not a word, okay?” She giggled timidly. “These last few months I think I’ve been confused. No, I know I’ve been confused. My dad’s really messed me up hasn’t he? While I was going out with Joey something started to bother me. I know what it is now. But before I didn’t. I should never have kissed you and led you on like that when I didn’t even know what I was feeling.” She stood. “I got jealous of her and I thought what I felt was feelings for you but…the truth is…I think I love Joey.”

“You should get him back then. I know he loves you.”

What? Cory couldn’t believe what he was saying! He didn’t remember forming the words in his head and he definitely didn’t think he said them. Why would he tell her to get Joey back? And why wasn’t he mad at her for treating him like she has for so long? He was her friend. And she was his. He understood that now. They would share a bond like no other for the rest of their lives, but Cory knew at that moment that it was a bond of friendship and nothing more.

What Cory said startled Kym as well. She sat back down on his bed. “Really?” Her face sparkled for the first time in a long time. Her eyes lightened and it seemed to Cory that Kym looked the happiest she had ever looked in her life.

Cory left his bed and got his latest journal. He opened it and pulled out the original of the first poem he had ever written her. The edges were frayed and the paper was a pale yellow. He handed it to her. “I want you to have this. It will always be the truth. No matter what your dad says about you.”

She threw her arms around him and squeezed. She whispered into his ear. “You truly are my best friend.” She sat back and wiped her eyes. “I know now how stupid I was. Can you ever forgive me? I was scared when I saw you falling for Leigh that I would lose you. I can tell how much you care for her.”

Cory’s head jerked towards his clock so fast that he thought he might have broken his neck.

It was three-ten.