Бекки Алберталли - Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

But, you know: double helixes. Twisty, loopy, double helixes.

Martin walks in through the doors in the back of the auditorium. He’s wearing a long, old-fashioned nightgown and curlers.

“Oh. Wow. He really—okay.” Abby nods, grinning up at Martin, who does a pirouette and immediately gets tangled in his nightgown. But he catches himself on the armrest of a chair, and gives this triumphant smile. That’s Martin. Everything’s part of the show with him.

Ms. Albright joins the circle onstage and calls us to order. Abby and I scoot in closer to the group. I end up next to Martin, and flash him a smile. He punches my arm lightly but keeps his eyes locked forward, like a T-ball dad. A T-ball dad who dresses like my grandma.

“So, here’s the plan, pajama gang,” says Ms. Albright. “We’re going to fine-tune the musical numbers this morning. Big ensemble numbers first, and then we’ll split into smaller groups. We break for pizza at noon, and after that, we run through the whole caboodle.”

Over her shoulder, I see Cal sitting on a platform, writing something in the margin of his script.

“Any questions?” she asks.

“For those of us who are already off book, should we still carry our scripts to take notes?” asks Taylor. Just making sure we know she’s memorized her lines.

“This morning, yes. This afternoon, no. We’ll go through the notes after we’re done. I’d like to run both acts once without stopping. Obviously, it will be messy, and that’s okay.” She yawns. “All right, so. Let’s take five, and then we’ll jump into ‘Food, Glorious Food.’”

I pull myself up, and before I can talk myself out of it, I walk over and sit beside Cal on his platform. I nudge him in the knee.

“Nice polka dots,” I say.

He smiles. “Nice Labradors.”

I mean, he’s cute, so I’ll let it slide, but the dogs on my pants are clearly golden retrievers.

I sneak a look at his script. “What are you drawing?”

“Oh, this? I don’t know,” he says. He pushes his bangs back and blushes, and good God, he’s adorable.

“I didn’t know you could draw.”

“Sort of.” He shrugs and tilts the binder toward me.

He has this style of drawing that’s all movement and sharp angles and bold pencil lines. It’s not bad. Leah’s drawings are better. But it hardly matters at all, because the important thing is that Cal’s drawing is of a superhero.

I mean, a superhero . My heart almost squeezes to a stop. Blue loves superheroes.

Blue.

I slide an inch closer, so our legs are touching, just barely.

I’m not sure if he notices.

I don’t know why I’m so brave today.

I’m 99.9 percent sure that Cal is Blue. But there’s that fraction of a percent chance that he’s not. For some reason, I can’t seem to come out and ask him.

So, instead, I ask, “How’s the coffee?”

“Pretty good, Simon. Pretty good.”

I look up and realize that Abby is watching me with great interest. I flash her the stink-eye, and she looks away, but she has this tiny knowing smile that just kills me.

Ms. Albright sends a bunch of us to the music room and puts Cal in charge. All things considered, it’s a perfect situation.

To get there, we have to walk all the way past the math and science classrooms and down the back stairway. Everything is dark and spooky and awesome on a Saturday. The school is totally empty. The music room is tucked into its own alcove at the end of the hall downstairs. I used to do choir, so I’ve spent some time here. It hasn’t changed. I get the impression that it hasn’t changed in about twenty years.

There are three rows of chairs on built-in platforms that edge around the sides of the classroom in a split hexagon shape. In the center of the room is a big wooden upright piano. There’s a laminated sign taped to the front reminding us to have outstanding posture. Cal sits on the edge of the piano bench, stretching his arm back behind his head.

“So. Um, maybe we could start with ‘Consider Yourself’ or ‘Pick a Pocket or Two,’” he says, shuffling his foot against the leg of the piano bench. He looks so lost. Martin attempts to transfer one of his curlers onto Abby’s ponytail, and Abby stabs him in the gut with a wooden drumstick, and a couple of people have taken out the guitars and started plucking out random pop songs.

No one is really listening to Cal except me. Well, and Taylor.

“Do you want us to clear away these music stands?” I ask.

“Uh, yeah. That would be awesome,” he says. “Thanks, y’all.”

There’s a piece of paper on one of the stands that catches my eye—neon orange, with the words “SET LIST” written in black Sharpie. Underneath that is a list of songs—classic, awesome songs, like “Somebody to Love” and “Billie Jean.”

“What’s that?” asks Taylor. I shrug, handing it to her.

“I don’t think this is supposed to be here,” she says, throwing it away. Of course she doesn’t. Taylor is the enemy of everything awesome.

Cal has Ms. Albright’s laptop, which has piano recordings of the accompaniment to all the songs. Everyone’s a pretty good sport about running through everything once, and it’s not a total disaster. As much as I hate to admit it, Taylor probably has the best voice out of anyone in the school other than Nick, and Abby is such a good dancer that she can seriously carry the whole ensemble. And anything Martin touches is strange and absurd and hilarious. Especially when he’s wearing a nightie.

There’s still almost an hour before we’re supposed to reconvene in the auditorium, and we’re probably supposed to run through everything again, but I mean, really. It’s Saturday, we’re in an empty, dark school, and we’re a bunch of theater kids wearing pajamas and jacked up on donuts.

We end up singing Disney songs in the stairwell. Abby weirdly knows every word to every song in Pocahontas , and everyone knows The Lion King and Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast . Taylor can improvise harmonies, and I guess we’re all warmed up from singing the Oliver! songs, because it just sounds really amazing. And the acoustics in the stairwell are freaking awesome.

And then we go back upstairs, and Mila Odom and Eve Miller pull a bunch of rolling chairs out of the computer lab. It’s pretty convenient that Creekwood has such long, straight hallways.

Perfect happiness is: gripping the bottom of a rolling chair with both hands, while Cal Price pushes me down the hall in a full-on run. We race against two of the sophomore girls from the ensemble. Cal is kind of a slow-moving person, so they totally dominate, but I don’t even care. His hands grip my shoulders, and we’re both laughing, and the rows of lockers are a toothpaste-blue blur. I let down my legs, and we skid to a stop. And I guess I have to get up. I raise my hand to give Cal a high five, but instead, he threads his fingers through mine for just a second. Then he looks down and smiles, and his eyes are hidden by his bangs. We untangle our hands, and my heart is thudding. I have to look away from him.

Then Taylor, of all people, mounts one of the chairs. Her blond hair flies backward as Abby pushes her, and they’re the indisputable champions. Abby and her leg muscles, I guess. I had no idea she was so freaking fast.

Abby collapses into me, laughing and panting, and we slide to the floor against the lockers. She leans her head on my shoulder, and I slide my arm around her back. Leah can get weird about touching, and it’s this unspoken thing that I don’t really touch Nick. But Abby’s a huggy person, and I sort of am, too, so that’s been nice. And everything has just felt really natural and comfortable between us since that night in the car after the Waffle House. It’s pretty cozy sitting next to Abby and smelling her magical French toast scent, while we watch the freshmen take turns racing in the chairs.