The Thrashers(62)

Jodi let Paige’s voice wash over her as she watched Julian. His gaze drifted from Paige, slowly dragging over to Jodi. His hazel eyes were on her for barely a second before they flitted over her shoulder and stayed there.

Paige continued, “You didn’t, like, feel anything, right? You don’t remember seeing us through the medium?”

There was an infinitesimal pause before Julian shook his head. “Nope.”

As Paige and Jodi got ready to leave, Jodi couldn’t help but feel like there was something she should say. She’d let Paige talk the whole time, and Julian had barely looked at her.

Jodi decided to just give him a friendly wave goodbye and follow Paige out the door.

“Dillon.”

She turned back. Julian’s gaze was on her finally. She waited in the doorway, watching his open mouth fail to form words.

“Yeah?”

He ran a hand through his hair and pressed his eyes closed, like a migraine was coming on. “Can I have your notes? From class?”

Jodi blinked at him. “Oh, sure. Yeah, I’ll … yeah.”

He nodded, and it seemed he was back to not looking at her. Jodi swallowed.

“Glad you’re not dead,” she said quickly and spun on her heel, hurrying out the door and shaking her head in panic. “Glad you’re not dead,” she whispered to herself. “Great job, Jodi.”

She scurried to catch up with Paige.



* * *



The school play was in two weeks, and the theater classroom was a minefield of stressed actresses, costume fittings, and Mrs. Calloway’s short fuse.

For Jodi and Oliver, this was the final week to finish the backdrop and set building. Oliver had used a beautiful wood stain on the planks of a porch that matched Jodi’s paint perfectly. By that Saturday, when they loaded the set pieces into the theater, Jodi got to watch as Doug laced the backdrop to a pole and raised it up, revealing the clouds, then treetops, then shingle roofs. Jodi saw flaws and things she wished she could redo, but Mrs. Calloway cried when she walked into the theater on Sunday morning.

Jodi spent the next week learning the show, preparing to be Nikita’s “wardrobe assistant” to help with her costume changes. Oliver got to be in charge of opening and closing the curtain, putting a smug expression on his face, and Jodi thought she’d ask for that position next time—before she even realized she was planning for a next time.

Opening night went off with only a few hitches. The lead boy forgot half his lines for a scene and ended up skipping three pages of dialogue when he got them back on track, but all in all, it was exhilarating to hear three hundred people behind the theater wall, listening and chuckling and sniffling. Jodi waited for Oliver to finish mopping the stage, standing near the backstage door as Nikita and the rest of the cast came out to greet their family and friends.

Jodi had left tickets for her friends at the box office. She hadn’t really expected any of them to come, but now, standing alone while everyone else had someone to support them, looking at them with admiration, she thought she should have told Zack how proud she was of her backdrop. After news about her subpoena came out, it would have felt good to have Paige or Lucy here, to show they still cared about her.

“So she just dies? That’s the moral of the story?”

Jodi spun at the familiar voice. Julian looked like a fish out of water as he stood in a sea of stage makeup and rowdy drama kids.

“I guess…” Jodi tilted her head, trying to come up with an explanation for his presence. She followed his gaze down to what he was reading in his hands. A program for Our Town. She blinked. “Did you—You sat through the whole thing?”

“Yeah. You could have mentioned it was three hours, Dillon.” He leaned back on the wall next to them. “That’s a serious time commitment to see some trees and rooftops you painted.”

Jodi’s brows drew together. She looked past him, searching for Zack, or Lucy, or Paige.

“They were nice though,” he added, flipping the page in the program. “The trees. And it was cool how the houses in your painting matched the house that was onstage. Did they send you up on a ladder to paint the top?”

“I … No, I painted it on the ground, and then it was hung.”

“Right. That makes more sense.” He stared down at the program like it had brand-new information for him. She watched pinpricks of color bloom on his cheekbones.

Someone called her name down the hall, and she looked up to see Oliver nodding toward the parking lot.

“I have to go. They go to a diner after every show. Apparently it’s the worst food in existence, but the staff doesn’t kick them out unless they start food fights…”

She was rambling. Julian nodded and stood from the wall.

“Do you think you wanna do this?” he said.

“What?”

“Do artwork for theater. Like can you make a career in it?”

She looked back and forth between his eyes, searching for sarcasm, derision, condescension. She found none.

“I think you can. I’m not sure it’s what I want to do, but I may take theater again next semester.”

“Cool. Yeah, you’re good at it. Anyway. See you Monday.”

Before she could blink, he was slipping away through the stream of the crowd. If she’d ever seen Julian Hollister in a socially awkward moment, she would have said this was one of them. It wasn’t until she was chowing down on mozzarella sticks and sharing a strawberry milkshake with Nikita that she realized she hadn’t thanked him for coming.