I want to undo this. To make it right. But I have no idea how. I don’t seem to know how to open up to people without getting the door slammed in my face. So I do nothing.
“Today we will read one of my favorite scenes in As You Like It, the beginning of act four,” Professor Glenny says, one bone-chillingly cold March day that makes it seem like we’re heading into winter, not out of it. “Orlando and Ganymede/Rosalind are meeting again in the Forest of Arden, and the chemistry between them reaches its boiling point. Which is kind of confusing and amusing, given that Orlando believes himself to be speaking to Ganymede, who is male. But it’s equally confusing for Rosalind, who is in a kind of delicious torment, torn between two identities, the male and the female, and two desires: a desire to protect herself and remain Orlando’s equal, and the exquisite desire to simply submit.” Up in the front of the classroom, the groupies seem to emit a little joint sigh. If Dee and I were still friends, it would be the kind of thing that would make us look at each other and roll our eyes. But we’re not, so I don’t even look at him.
“So, Orlando comes to Ganymede in the forest, and the two perform a sort of Kabuki theater together, and in doing so, they fall deeper in love, even as they don’t entirely know whom they’re falling in love with,” Professor Glenny continues. “The line between true self and feigned self is blurred on all sides. Which I think is a rather handy metaphor for falling in love. So, it’s a good day to read. Who’s up?” He scans the class. People are actually raising their hands. “Drew, why don’t you read Orlando.” There’s a smattering of applause as Drew walks up the front of the room. He’s one of the best readers in the class. Normally, Professor Glenny pairs him with Nell or Kaitlin, two of the best girls. But not today. “Allyson, I believe you owe me a Rosalind.”
I shuffle up to the front of the room, along with the other readers he’s chosen. I’ve never loved this part of the class, but at least before, I could feel Dee cheering me on. Once we’re assembled, Professor Glenny turns into a director, which apparently is what he used to do before becoming an academic. He offers us notes: “Drew, in these scenes, Orlando is ardent and steadfast, completely in love. Allyson, your Ganymede is torn: smitten, but also toying with Orlando, like a cat with a mouse. What makes this scene so fascinating to me is that as Ganymede questions Orlando, challenges him to prove his love, you can feel the wall between Rosalind and Ganymede drop. I love that moment in Shakespeare’s plays. When the identities and false identities become a morass of emotion. Both characters feel it here. It gets very charged. Let’s see how you two do.”
The scene opens with Rosalind/Ganymede/me asking Orlando/Drew where he’s been, why he’s taken so long to come see me—I’m “pretending” to be Rosalind. That’s the gimmick. Rosalind has been pretending to be Ganymede, who must now pretend to be Rosalind. And she tries to talk Orlando out of loving Rosalind, even though she really is Rosalind and even though she really does love him back. Trying to keep track of all the pretending makes my head spin.
Drew/Orlando replies that he came within an hour of his promised time. I say to be even an hour late when you’ve made a promise in love’s name puts in question whether you’re truly in love. He begs my forgiveness. We banter a bit more, and then I, as Rosalind as Ganymede feigning Rosalind, ask, “What would you say to me now, an I were your very very Rosalind?”
Drew pauses, and I find that I’m waiting, holding my breath, even, for his answer.
And then he replies, “I would kiss before I spoke.”
Drew’s eyes are blue, nothing like his, but for a second, it’s his dark eyes I see. Electric and charged, right before he kissed me.
I’m kind of rattled as I deliver my next lines, advising Orlando that he should speak before he kisses. We go back and forth, and when we get to the part when Orlando says he would marry me—her—I don’t know about Rosalind, but I’m feeling dizzy. Luckily, Rosalind has more grit than I do. She, as Ganymede, says, “Well, in her person, I say I will not have you.”
Then Drew says, “Then in mine own person I die.”
And then something in me just comes undone. I can’t find the right line or the right page. And I seem to have lost something else too. My grip on myself, on this place. On time. I’m not sure how much of it elapses while I stand there frozen. I hear Drew clear his throat, waiting for me to say my next line. I hear Professor Glenny shift in his chair. Drew whispers my line to me, and I repeat it and somehow manage to regain my bearings. I continue to question Orlando. Continue to ask him to prove his love. But I am no longer acting, no longer pretending.
“Now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her?” I ask as Rosalind. My voice no longer sounds like mine. It is rich and resonant with emotion—full of the questions I should’ve asked back when I had the chance.
He answers, “For ever and a day.”
All the breath whooshes out of me. This is the answer that I need. Even if it doesn’t happen to be true.
I try to read the next line, but I can’t speak. I can’t breathe. I hear a roar of wind in my ears and blink to stop the words from dancing all over the page. After a few moments, I manage to choke out the next sentence, “Say ‘a day’ without the ‘ever,’” before my voice breaks.
Because Rosalind understands. Say a day without the ever. That after the one day comes heartbreak. No wonder she won’t tell him who she truly is.
I feel the hot tears in my eyes and through their veil see the class, silent, gaping at me. I drop my book to the floor and bolt toward the door. I run out into the hallway, past the classrooms, and into the ladies’ room. Crouching in a corner stall, I gulp deep breaths and listen to the hum of the fluorescent lights, trying desperately to push back against this hollowness that threatens to swallow me alive.
I have a full life. How can I be this empty? Because of one guy? Because of one day? But as I hold back my tears, I see the days before Willem. I see myself with Melanie at school, feeling all cocooned and smug, gossiping about girls we didn’t bother to get to know or, later on, on the tour, pantomiming a friendship sputtering on fumes. I see myself with my parents, at the dinner table, Mom with her ever-present calendar, scheduling dance class or SAT prep or some other enrichment activity, leafing through catalogs for a new pair of snow boots, talking at each other but not to each other. I see myself with Evan, after we slept together for the first time and he said something about how this meant we were the closest people to each other, and it had been a sweet thing to say, but it felt like something he’d gotten out of a book. Or maybe it was that I hadn’t felt it because I’d begun to suspect that we’d only gotten together because Melanie had started dating his best friend. When I’d started to cry, Evan had mistaken my tears for joy, which had only made it worse. And, yet, I’d stayed with him.
I have been empty for a long time. Long before Willem entered and exited my life so abruptly.
I’m not sure how long I’m in there before I hear the squeak of the door. Then I see Dee’s pink Ugg knockoffs under the stall.
“You in here?” he asks quietly.
“No.”
“Can I come in?”
I unlock the stall. There’s Dee, holding all my stuff.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell him.
“Sorry? You were stupendous. You got a standing ovation.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you my parents were coming. I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry I bungled everything. I don’t know how to be a friend. I don’t know how to be anything.”
“You know how to be Rosalind,” he says.
“That’s because I’m an expert faker.” I swipe a tear with my hand. “I’m so good at faking I don’t even know when I’m doing it.”
“Oh, honey, have you learned nothing from these plays? Ain’t such a line between faking and being.” He opens his arms, and I step into them. “I’m sorry too,” he says. “I might’ve overreacted a hair. I can be dramatic, in case you haven’t noticed.”
I laugh. “Really?”
Dee holds my coat, and I slip into it. “I don’t like being lied to, but I do appreciate what you tried to say to me. People have never known what to make of me—not in my neighborhood, not at high school, not here—so they’re always trying to figure it out and tell me what I am.”
“Yeah, I know something about that.”
We look at each other for a long minute. A whole lot gets said in that silence. Then Dee asks, “You wanna tell me what all that was about in there?”
And I do. So much it’s squeezing my chest. I’ve been wanting to tell him this, everything about me, for weeks now. I nod.
Dee offers me his arm, and I loop mine through it, and we leave the bathroom as a pair of girls come in, giving us a strange look.
“Well, there was this guy . . .” I begin.
He shakes his head and gently clucks his tongue like a sweetly scolding grandmother. “There always is.”
I take Dee back to my dorm. I serve him a backlog of cookies. And I tell him everything. When I finish, we’ve munched our way through black-and-whites and peanut butter. He wipes the crumbs off his lap and asks me if I ever thought about Romeo and Juliet.
“Not everything tracks back to Shakespeare.”
“Yes it does. Did you ever think what might’ve happened if they weren’t so damn impatient? If maybe Romeo had stopped for a second and gotten a doctor, or waited for Juliet to wake up? Not jumped to conclusions and gone and poisoned himself thinking she was dead when she was just sleeping?”
“I can see you have.” And I can. He’s pretty worked up.
“I’ve seen that movie so many times, and every damn time, it’s like screaming at the girl in the horror movie. Stop. Don’t go in the basement. The killer’s down there. With Romeo and Juliet, I yell, ‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’ But do those fools ever listen to me?” He shakes his head in dismay. “I always imagine what might’ve happened if they’d waited. Juliet would’ve woken up. They’d already be married. They might’ve moved away, far away from the Montagues and the Capulets, gotten themselves a cute castle of their own. Decorated it up nice. Maybe it would’ve been like The Winter’s Tale. By thinking Hermione was dead, Leontes had time to stop acting like a fool and then later he was so happy to find out she was alive. Maybe the Montagues and Capulets would find out later that their beloved kids weren’t dead, and wasn’t it stupid to feud, and everyone would be happy. Maybe it would’ve turned the whole tragedy into a comedy.”
“The Winter’s Tale isn’t a comedy; it’s a problem play.”
“Oh, you hush up. You see where I’m going with this.”
And I do. And maybe I hadn’t thought about this with Romeo and Juliet, but I had briefly gone to the what-if place with me and Willem. On the train back to England and then on the flight home, I’d had second thoughts. What if something had happened to him? But both times, I’d voiced my doubts—first to Ms. Foley and then to Melanie—and both times I’d been set straight. Willem wasn’t Romeo. He was a romeo. And I’m no Juliet. I tell Dee this. I enumerate all the examples of him being a player, beginning with the fact that he picked up a random girl on a train and, an hour later, invited her to Paris for the day.
“Normal people don’t do that,” I say.
“Who said anything about normal? And maybe you weren’t random. Maybe you were something to him too.”
“But he didn’t even know me. I was someone else that day. I was Lulu. That’s who he liked. And besides, let’s pretend something did happen, he didn’t ditch me. I only know his first name. He doesn’t even know my name. He lives a continent away. He’s irretrievably lost. How do you find someone like that?”
