sixteen

“I’M GETTING ONE just like it tomorrow,” Julie Newman whispered to the girl playing Mrs. Pearce. “I mean, it’s waterproof! The rain ruined my Dooney & Bourke.”

Brooke set her jaw and tried to ignore this. It was the third such comment she’d heard that day. Colby-Randall students seemed to have crowned Molly the flavor of the week, and were therefore willing not just to embrace, but purchase, the grungy backpack that always dangled from her shoulder like she was about to set up camp in a tree. Brooke abhorred camping. It was dusty, there were no bathrooms, and trail mix had, like, four thousand calories.

She returned to the task at hand.

“Jake,” she began. “Your character definitely wouldn’t wink at Eliza.”

“What if he puts his hand on her knee?” Jake asked. “I mean, where is his mojo? I’m just trying to get a handle on this.”

“Tank tops are totally on sale at Fred Segal,” Mrs. Pearce—Brooke couldn’t remember her real name—hissed back at Julie. “I want a red one. It’ll match my new sneakers. Did you know how comfortable Converse are?”

Brooke shifted on the sofa that was the centerpiece of the set. She tried not to seethe.

“Jake, Freddy is from a different era,” she attempted.

“I’m going to go see if Molly’s done with my costume,” Julie said to Mrs. Pearce. “I kind of want to ask if she’ll sign my copy of Hey! anyway. It’s so fun to be going to school with someone so famous!”

“Julie, if you don’t shut up and let us focus, I swear to God I will recast you,” Brooke snapped.

Julie clamped her mouth shut, her eyes bulging.

Brooke closed her eyes and exhaled. It was bad enough that Ginevra’s pleasantly nasty little shoe-related blind item had been canceled out by Molly’s popular appearance in the latest issue of Hey! Between the fact that her actors were operating at straight-to-DVD levels and all the gushy comments she’d heard lately about Molly’s eyes, or her clothes, or that heinous backpack, Brooke’s nerves were as frayed as a pair of tights on Taylor Momsen. She’d even been seen eating chips in public. Like a commoner. She took one more deep breath.

“Jake,” she said firmly. “Freddy is simple. A bit repressed. He doesn’t wink at Eliza. He is not going to grope her. And you don’t need to worry about what he’d tweet about her, because none of that had been invented yet.”

He hung his head sheepishly. “I was just trying to relate to him.”

Brooke pondered this, then grabbed Max, who was passing by lugging a spotlight that was almost as big as she was.

“Think of Freddy as Max here: wussy, with lots of feelings nobody asks to hear,” she said. “So whenever he’s not onstage, he’s sitting up in an attic writing in his diary and then, like, staring out the window.”

“Oh. Like a blogger,” Jake nodded.

“And what does any of that that have to do with me?” Max huffed.

“You figure it out,” Brooke said. “Now run along. Jake, you’re also going to need to stop flexing in the background of all your scenes. It’s distracting.”

“But if people get bored, they need something to look at,” Jake protested.

“Works for me,” muttered Max as she heaved the light into her arms.

“Thank you, Magda.” Jake beamed.

Max almost dropped her cargo.

“Sure,” she stammered, bolting offstage.

“Try this, Jake: Listen to your instincts,” Brooke said. “And then do the opposite.”

Brooke got up and left the set. “Let’s take it from the top of the scene, please. Everybody, take your places. Wait, where did Julie Newman go?”

Her Mrs. Eynsford-Hill rounded the corner wearing a very large straw bonnet.

“What the hell is that?” Brooke snapped.

“It’s half of my costume,” Julie said, looking wounded. “Isn’t it cute?”

“I specifically told that girl no bonnets,” fumed Brooke. “And Bert, what is going on with your coat?”

“It’s Professor Higgins’s plaid suit,” Bert said.

“Professor Higgins does not wear plaid, he wears tweed!” Brooke yelled, her voice nearing dog-whistle levels. “I will not allow that girl to sabotage my play just because I’m keeping her from happy hour!”

Brooke tore the jacket off Bert’s back and stomped toward backstage.

“While you’re back there, could you tell Molly my pants are too tight in the crotch?” Jake called after her. “I think she measured my inseam wrong.”

“You let her measure your inseam?” Jennifer gasped, jealous. “How could you?”

Brooke didn’t hear the rest. She was on a mission.

Molly sat backstage in her makeshift costume corner cutting fabric for Mrs. Pearce’s maid’s uniform. Her phone lit up with an incoming text from Max.

HE KNOWS MY NAME!!!! SORT OF.

In the distance, Molly heard Brooke’s usual directorial bellowing, but she tuned it out with ease. It was a skill she’d developed living with Laurel, who couldn’t watch Molly open a jar of Jif without lecturing her on the liver-pickling toxins of nonorganic snack foods. In that sense, Molly reflected, Laurel and Brick were made for each other.

Max again:

YOU MEASURED HIS INSEAM?!?

Molly texted back:

A LADY NEVER MEASURES AND TELLS.

She heard very cranky-sounding footsteps coming in her direction just as Max’s reply buzzed through.

PLEASE DON’T ALTER HIS PANTS.

Molly didn’t have time to respond before she was confronted by a blonde banshee clutching a plaid coat.

“Plaid? Really, Molly?” Brooke seethed. “And what about ‘Julie’s chin can’t pull off a bonnet’ did you not understand?”

Molly ignored her and took a fortifying sip of the coffee she’d bought from the sophomore class snack cart. It had been like this since she was strong-armed into working on the play. Eliza’s gown wasn’t rich enough. Her flower-girl rags weren’t ratty enough. Henry’s monocle wasn’t round enough.

“And Jake says his pants are so tight he’ll split them in the first scene,” Brooke said. “I swear to God, Molly, if you ruin this… Eliza needs to look like a goddess, Freddy Eynsford-Hill should not have a porno package, and Julie Newman cannot wear a bonnet!”

“What’s so bad about it?” asked Julie from behind Brooke. “Molly has amazing fashion sense. Did you know that Katie Holmes owns that tank top? Besides, I think it’s kicky.” She patted her bonnet fondly.

“Well, your fake accent makes me kicky, so either go practice or put a plug in it,” Brooke snapped.

“Brooke, I have three weeks total to pull this together,” Molly said, summoning all her patience. “This is the fastest play production in the history of mankind. You’ll get what you get.”

“So nice to see you share your mother’s care and attention to detail,” Brooke snarked.

“So nice to see you share your mother’s…” Molly paused. “Wait, where is your mother, again?”

Rarely had Molly ever come up with the exact sharp retort in the exact moment it needed to be deployed. She didn’t have time to decide if this made her proud: Before Molly even registered what was happening, Brooke knocked Molly’s coffee all over the maid’s uniform, liberated the scissors from her hands, and—with a flourish—stabbed Julie Newman right in the bonnet.

“There,” Brooke said. “Maybe that will challenge you to do a better job.”

She walked out in a huff, leaving behind a gaping Molly and an awestruck Julie Newman, still wearing the bonnet, scissors dangling precariously over the top of her head.