Since You've Been Gone

6 KISS A STRANGER

I pulled my car through the gates at Saddleback Ranch, feeling my hands tighten on the steering wheel. This was what I’d been afraid of, ever since Frank told me that he had an idea for the list. Since he didn’t know what Penelope meant, or which dress Sloane was talking about, and whenever he’d brought up the list, he’d avoided even mentioning the skinny-dipping or stranger-kissing, that only left a few options. And it seemed that Frank had decided today was the day I would finally ride a horse.

When I woke up the morning after our talk on the beach, I’d surprised myself by reaching for my phone and texting him, asking him if he wanted to run. And we’d been running every day since—usually mornings, but occasionally in the afternoons if neither of us had to work. It was the last thing I would have expected, becoming friends with Frank Porter, but it seemed like that was exactly what was happening. The downside to this, apparently, was that he did things like schedule horseback rides for me.

I parked in front—it looked like there was a small office and, across the parking lot, a barn and an outdoor riding ring where horses and riders were going through a jumps course, much nearer to me than I would have preferred. I got out of my car slowly, wanting to stay close to it in case one of the horses went rogue and charged at me or something. I could hear horses in the barn, and I tried not to think about how close they were, and how Frank expected me to ride one of them—horses that could kick you or step on you or fling you off their backs, if they so chose.

“Hey,” Frank said, coming out of the office, looking relieved. “You came. I was worried you might have seen the sign and bolted.”

“Ha ha,” I said hollowly, suddenly wishing that Frank hadn’t done this. It was one thing to share embarrassing stories with him; it was quite another to let him see me at my most pathetic and afraid.

“You doing okay?” Frank asked, taking a step closer to me. “You look kind of pale.”

“I’m just . . . ,” I started, looking toward the barn again. My heart was hammering violently, and I could feel that I was starting to sweat, and I wiped my palms on my jeans. “I’m not . . .”

“You here for the eleven o’clock?” I turned and saw a woman in jeans and a Saddleback Ranch T-shirt leading out a horse that was so enormous, I almost had to tilt my head back to see the top of it. “Oh,” she said, looking from me to Frank. “Were you here for the couples’ ride?”

“No!” Frank and I said immediately, in unison.

“Just Emily,” Frank said, nodding toward me.

“Okay then,” the woman said, patting the horse hard on his flank, which made me wince.

What if he didn’t like that, and took it out on me? Were horses one of those animals that could smell fear? It seemed likely, after all, their faces were practically all nose. Maybe sensing—or smelling—this, the gigantic horse snorted and stamped his feet, making me take a giant step back and bump into my car.

“Well, I’ve got Bucky all saddled up for you,” she said.

“Why is he called that?” I asked, trying to take a step even farther back, not remembering that I was already pressed against my car. I could hear how high-pitched my voice sounded, but I also didn’t think I was going to be able to do anything about it. “Is it because he throws people off?”

The woman frowned at me. “You okay, hon?”

“Do you maybe have a smaller horse?” I asked, trying to think of some way that this could maybe still be salvaged. “Like, something not so high?”

“Em, you okay?” Frank asked, taking a step toward me, his voice low.

“Like a pony?” the woman asked, looking confused.

“Maybe,” I said, happy to have an option that would still be horseback riding, but just not quite so far off the ground. “Do you have any of those?” Before she could answer, my phone rang, and I grabbed for it, happy to delay the moment when someone would expect me to get on one of these horses and take my life into my hands. “Hello?”

“Hey,” the voice on the other end said, and after a moment I recognized it was Dawn. “Are you at work?”

The day after my pizza ride-along, I’d stopped by Captain Pizza to say hi, making sure to glower at Bryan as I did so. I figured he deserved it—not only for what he’d done to Dawn, but also because he’d been wearing mirrored sunglasses indoors. We’d exchanged numbers, and Dawn would sometimes call me before she went into work, asking me to go into Captain Pizza and see what was happening with Bryan and Mandy.

“No,” I said, then suddenly realized I might be able to turn this to my advantage. I would still be chickening out, but at least Frank wouldn’t have to necessarily know I was chickening out. “Why, do you need me to come in to work?” Work, I mouthed to Frank, trying to ignore the woman holding the still-stamping Bucky by the reins.

“What?” Dawn asked, sounding confused. “No, I was just wondering if you could scout the Mandy and Bryan situation for me. I was trying to figure out how much time to put into my hair.”

“Oh, I understand,” I said, hoping that Dawn wouldn’t think that I’d lost my mind—I figured I’d just explain things to her the next time I saw her. “Totally. I’ll come in as soon as possible.”

“Emily, what are you—” Dawn said, sounding more confused than ever. I hung up, then quickly switched the phone to silent in case she called back.

“I’m so sorry,” I said to the woman, trying to make my voice match my words, but I could hear the relief creeping in. “I’ll, um, have to reschedule.”

“Trouble at Paradise?” Frank asked. His voice was light, but he was looking right at me, and I somehow had the feeling that he knew I was lying.

“Yeah,” I said, tucking my phone into my pocket, looking down at the ground. “Really unexpected.”

“I’m going to have to charge you for this since it’s outside the cancel window,” the woman said, leading the gigantic horse back to the barn. “But I’ll give you half off your next ride, how about that?”

“Sure,” Frank said. “We’ll try again another time.”

“I’m so sorry about the money,” I said. “I can pay you back.” But it was more than the money that was suddenly making me feel awful, now that the giddiness of getting out of this situation had subsided. I had the opportunity to cross something else off the list just handed to me, and I’d taken the first excuse to run away from it. And I’d wasted Frank’s time, all because I wasn’t brave enough to even try to get on a horse.

I gave Frank a half smile and got into my car, pulling out faster than was probably advisable when surrounded by giant horses, but I just wanted to get out of there. And as I turned down the street that would take me back home, I suddenly wondered if trying to ride a horse would have actually made me feel any worse than I did right now.

Mix #7

Don’t You Worry Child

Swedish House Mafia

Jolene

The Weepies

King of Spain

The Tallest Man on Earth

She Doesn’t Get It

The Format

Dirty Paws

Of Monsters and Men

Blackbird

The Beatles

High School Reunion

Curtis Anderson

The Gambler

fun.

Now Is the Start

A Fine Frenzy

5 Years Time

Noah and the Whale

I Will Wait

Mumford & Sons

Paperback Writer

The Beatles

Synesthesia

Andrew McMahon

Where Does This Door Go?

Mayer Hawthorne

House of Gold

Twenty One Pilots

Misadventures at the Laundromat

Curtis Anderson

Young Love

Mystery Jets

It Won’t Be Long

The Beatles

Truth in the Dark

The Henry Gales

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

The Beatles

Re: Your Brains

Jonathan Coulton

Hannah

Freelance Whales

Mtn Tune

Trails and Ways

Home

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

Trojans

Atlas Genius

When They Fight, They Fight

Generationals

Take a Walk

Passion Pit

“I’m really sorry about that,” Frank said as he looked over at me. It was two days later, and we were running. I’d shown up at his house that afternoon, ready to apologize, but Frank had just shaken off my apologies and then, to my surprise, had offered his own once we had gone about a mile into the five-mile loop I’d planned for us. “I never should have just sprung that on you. I keep thinking how I would have reacted if someone had just told me to go to the top of a skyscraper, with no warning. It wouldn’t have been pretty.”

“I am going to need to do it at some point, though,” I pointed out.

“You will,” Frank said, with such confidence, that I almost believed him. We ran for another mile before he looked over at me. “Music?” he asked.

I nodded and handed him my iPod. We’d been running together three more times now and had worked out our routine. We talked for the first mile or so, while we were warming up. When breathing became more important than talking, we switched to music, which we would listen to for the rest of the run, and then we’d turn the iPods off as we’d cool down and walk to one of our houses—we alternated. But the run before, Frank had proposed that we switch iPods so that he could see if my “music, not observational comedy” theory was effective in terms of helping him run faster, and I could apparently learn all about some group called Freelance Whales which was, apparently, an actual band. I’d made him a mix of my favorite songs that hopefully weren’t too alienating for someone who claimed he never listened to country and had no idea who the Cure was.

We fell into our running rhythm, and I noticed that our shadows were lengthening out in front of us in the late-afternoon sunlight, occasionally overlapping each other on the pavement. Even though it had been a hot day and was very humid out, I pushed us, keeping the pace up, and we both struggled to maintain it for the last three miles. As ever, we sprinted toward the finish. Frank was right next to me until the very last second, when I managed to spring forward, hitting our mailbox with an open palm, then bending double trying to catch my breath. I turned my head to the side and saw Frank doing the same.

“Would you think any less of me,” he managed, “if I collapsed in that hedge?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I might just join you.” I straightened up and started shaking out my legs and hands, getting a fun preview of just how sore I’d be in the morning.  We started walking in the other direction, cooling down, like my track coach was always yelling at us to do.

“I liked the mix,” I said, handing him back his iPod. “But what was with all the handclapping songs?”

“That was Mumford,” Frank pointed out, looking scandalized. “Do you know how many awards they’ve won?”

“Then you would think they’d be able to hire an actual drummer,” I said, as Frank shook his head.

“Do you have any idea how many songs about trucks I just listened to?” he asked, as he handed me my iPod. “Five. Seriously. Not even just the country songs. What’s that about?”

“You’re the one with the actual truck,” I pointed out. “So you’d think you’d be more in favor of them.”

“If that logic made any sense—which it doesn’t, by the way—you, with your Volvo, would have been way more into Swedish House Mafia.”

“Which one was that?”

“Track one,” Frank said, and I made a face. “Told you.”

“Well,” I said, trying to think back to what I’d just heard, “I’m sure the Beatles sang songs about trucks occasionally.”

“Not that I can think of,” Frank said immediately. “Unless you mean the fire truck in ‘Penny Lane.’ ”

I shook my head and he lifted up his shirt to wipe his face, and I took a long look, then glanced away quickly, before he could catch me staring. “So what’s with the Beatles?” Seeing the look of incredulity on Frank’s face, I added quickly, “I mean, you told me why you started listening to them, because of the codes. But there were a lot of Beatles songs on that playlist.”

“Do you not like the Beatles?” Frank asked, sounding shocked, as we finished our cool-down and started walking back toward my house. “Do you also not like sunshine and laughter and puppies?” I just stared at him, waiting for Frank Porter to reappear and realize he was being a little crazy, but apparently Frank was just getting started. “I don’t think the Beatles get enough recognition,” he said, speaking fast. “I mean, when you look at their body of work and how they changed music forever. I think there should be federal holidays and parades.”

“Well, you can work on that,” I said, as we arrived back in front of my house. “In case you need another summer project.”

Frank laughed and looked toward the house, wiping his sleeve across his face. “Think you could spare a water?”

“Sure,” I said automatically, not thinking about anything except how thirsty I was as we headed up the driveway together. I opened the front door and we stepped into the dark and cool of the mudroom, and it wasn’t until the door was shut behind us that I suddenly realized what I had done—invited Frank Porter into my house.

He’d already seen my father in his robe, and I had just hoped—if he was going to come inside again—that I might be able to convince my parents to wear actual clothing. I suddenly realized I had no idea what Frank might be walking into.

I just crossed my fingers that the house wouldn’t be too much of a disaster, that my parents would be quietly typing in the dining room, and that Beckett wouldn’t be lurking in doorways, lying in wait to terrify us. “My parents are probably working,” I said. “So we might need to keep it down—”

But as soon as we’d crossed through the mudroom and into the house, the sentence died on my lips. My parents were not only away from the dining room and their laptops, but they were in motion, pushing the sofa against the wall while Beckett skated around the TV room on his sneakers that turned into skates when he leaned back on his heels. Stacks of plays were balanced in his arms, and the cat seemed to be deliberately as underfoot as possible.

“Um,” I said as I closed the door to the mudroom, causing everyone to stop for a moment and look over at me. I was very grateful to see that neither of my parents were wearing robes or sweatpants, but my mother had her hair in curlers and my dad was wearing two ties around his neck, so I wasn’t sure this was that much of an improvement. “What’s going on?”

“Emily, thank god you’re home!” my mother said. She grabbed a stack of plays and papers from the ground and thrust them into my arms. “Go put these somewhere. And then could you see if we have anything to eat? Is there something in the freezer? Mini bagel micro whatsits?”

“I finished those last week,” Beckett said, skating past me. “So no.”

“I should probably go,” Frank said to me quietly, but apparently not quietly enough because my dad straightened up from the couch and spotted him.

“A boy!” he said, relief in his voice. “Wonderful. Come help me lift this.” He squinted at Frank through his glasses. “Hey, don’t I know you?” he asked.

“Seriously, what is happening?” I asked, stepping slightly to the left to stop Frank from going to join my father. Both my parents looked at each other and then down at the floor and I suddenly worried that they’d really let the bills slide this summer while they’d been working, and everything in the house was about to be repossessed, or something.

“Living Room Theater,” Beckett finally piped up when it became clear my parents weren’t going to, as he skated deftly around the cat. “They forgot.”

“Wait, here?” I asked, my stomach plunging, as I suddenly understood why everyone was running around. “Tonight?”

“Tonight,” my mother said grimly, depositing another stack of plays into my arms. “We weren’t exactly prepared.”

“Living Room Theater?” I heard Frank echo behind me.

“Did someone cancel or something?” I asked.

“Well,” my mother said, “we technically did volunteer to host it this year. But that was before we knew we would be writing. And your father thinks that e-mail is interfering with his creative process, so he missed the reminders.”

I closed my eyes for just a moment. “How soon?” I asked.

My dad looked at his watch and winced. “An hour.”

“Um, what’s Living Room Theater?” Frank asked me, as this information seemed to panic the rest of my family, who all sprang into motion again.

“Well, unless you leave now,” I said, realizing it might even be too late as my mother dropped a stack of printer paper into his arms, “I think you’re going to find out.”

JULY

One year earlier

“Explain this to me again,” Sloane said as we—me, Sloane, my parents, and Beckett—walked up the driveway to Pamela Curry’s house. “You guys don’t get enough theater during the school year?”

My mother smiled and took a step closer to Sloane, linking her arm through hers. The two of them had gotten along right from the beginning, and a lot of times when she stayed over, I’d come downstairs in the morning to see Sloane and my mom sitting across the kitchen table from each other, talking, almost more like friends than anything else. “It started a few years back,” she said. “At a theater/English department meeting about parking, of all things. We ended up talking about all the plays we loved, and how they had to be so carefully selected at the college—not to offend anyone, to cast as many students as possible, come in under budget, all the usual concerns. And then someone . . .”

“Harkins,” my dad piped up from the other side of our group. “Remember? He got this thing going and then left when he got tenure at Williams.”

“Anyway, Professor Harkins suggested that we get together once a summer—both the theater and English departments—and put up a play that would have been impossible to do during the school year. No props, no costumes, everyone holds the book.”

“Sounds fun,” Sloane said as we reached the front door, and my mother knocked once and then just pushed it open and stepped inside. Living Room Theater tended to make things a little more casual, and there was usually enough chaos going on before the show that people weren’t bothering with details like answering the door.

We walked in and, sure enough, the downstairs was packed, mostly my parents’ colleagues from both their respective departments, plus their kids. Kids were always invited to Living Room Theater, unless it was Mamet, in which case there was a strict thirteen-and-over rule. People were milling about, tonight’s actors were walking around holding scripts and muttering, and everyone else was clustered around the food table.

I looked around, trying to be as subtle about it as possible, but apparently not succeeding, because Sloane leaned closer to me and whispered, “Seen him yet?” I felt myself blush as I shook my head. Pamela Curry and her two kids had moved here the year before, and she’d started working with my dad in the English department. Her son and daughter had been seniors when I was a sophomore, and I really only knew her daughter, Amy, because she’d shocked the whole school when she’d started getting all the leads in the plays, as a newcomer, right out of the gate. But I’d had an irrational and kind of gigantic crush on Charlie Curry, even though he went on to captain the tennis team and didn’t seem particularly interested in dating non-tennis-playing underclassmen.

“Andrea! Scott!” Pamela Curry rushed up to my parents, giving me and Sloane a quick smile—Beckett had already disappeared in the direction of the food. “We’re having a crisis.”

“It wouldn’t be Living Room Theater without one,” my dad said sagely.

“We’ve lost our youngest sister,” she said. “Susan Greene has the flu.” Even though Susan, one of my mother’s colleagues, was at least ten years older than my mom, Living Room Theater had always been cast age-blind.

“In Crimes of the Heart?” my dad asked, his eyes widening. “That is a crisis.”

“I know.” Pamela winced. “Babe is such a great part, too, but if it’s not done well . . .”

“Why can’t your thespian daughter do it?” my mother asked, and Pamela shook her head.

“She and her boyfriend are backpacking across Europe,” she said. “Otherwise, I would have tapped her weeks ago.” She looked suddenly to me and Sloane, her eyes lighting up. “Maybe one of you two?”

“Um,” I said, trying to ignore my mother’s encouraging smile, “not me.” I looked at Sloane and raised my eyebrows. “Want to step in?”

“I’m happy to,” she said, looking from Pamela to me, her brow slightly furrowed. “But Emily . . .”

“Wonderful!” Pamela said, almost collapsing with relief. “I thought I was going to have to do it, and believe me, that’s something nobody wants to see. I’ll get you a script.”

A colleague called out to my parents, and they headed toward the other side of the room as Sloane turned to face me. “Why don’t you do it?” she asked. “I’m pretty sure you know this play much better than I do, considering I’ve never heard of it.”

“I didn’t want to be in it,” I said, even though this wasn’t exactly true. And I couldn’t blame it on not wanting to make a fool out of myself in front of Charlie, since he was nowhere to be seen. I just knew Sloane would do a much better job than I would.

“I’m not sure about this,” Frank said as he peered around the dining room door and into the TV room, where the couch had been pushed aside to create enough space for a makeshift stage, and all the chairs we had in the house—and then pillows in front of them, once we’d run out of chairs—were lined up in front of it. We were both still in our running clothes and sneakers. I could have changed, of course, but since it was because of my parents that he was doing this, I didn’t want him to be the only person there in athletic gear. It was five minutes to showtime, and Frank was looking a little pale. But given everything that had occurred in the last hour, I didn’t exactly blame him.

“I tried to warn you,” I pointed out, and Frank just nodded as he clutched his script. I had a feeling this was not particularly comforting at the moment.

When I had seen the tornado that was Living Room Theater approaching, I had pulled Frank aside before my dad could enlist him in any manual labor. “You need to leave,” I said seriously. “Now.”

Frank glanced into the living room, where my dad was yelping in pain. He had accidentally stepped on Godot, and the cat had wasted no time in enacting his revenge. “But it looks like your parents need help,” he said.

I shook my head. “Seriously, get out while you can.” Innocent bystanders had a tendency to get cast in these things, which was how two years ago, the plumber who’d come by to fix a leak had ended up playing Mercutio and had almost fainted.

“Em!” my mother said, rushing up to me and depositing a stack of plays in my arms. “Find something we can use, can you?”

“You haven’t even picked a play yet?” I asked, aghast things were running this far behind.

“Hi,” Frank said, holding out his free hand to my mother. “I’m Frank Porter, I’m a friend of Emily’s.” I looked over at him when he said this, and realized that it was true—he was a friend of mine, as much as I was still getting used to this.

“Oh,” my mother said, raising her eyebrows at me and shooting me a smile before she shook Frank’s hand. “So nice to meet you. You’ve been running with Em, right?” she asked, and I realized my dad hadn’t been quite as distracted as I’d thought the morning he’d encountered Frank on the steps.

Frank nodded. “She’s been getting me in shape.”

“Hardly,” I said. My mother gave me a significant smile, and I shook my head at her, not knowing how to convey nonverbally that he had a girlfriend and she had the wrong idea.

“Well, we’re so glad you could join us for this,” my mother said, and before I could tell her that he hadn’t joined us, he’d just made the mistake of trying to come in for a water—which he still hadn’t gotten—she was ushering him in the direction of the couch. “Do you have any back injuries?” my mother asked. “Might you be willing to lift some furniture?”

Go, I mouthed to Frank, but he was clearly much too well-mannered for this and was soon picking up one side of our couch, while I tore through as many plays as I could, counting speaking roles.  As I tried to see if we could do Noises Off!, which had always been one of my favorites, I heard only snatches of the conversation that was going on as my dad and Frank tried to get the couch out of the TV room. “Your work . . . Bug Juice . . . Broadway . . .”

Then I heard a crash, and looked over to see my dad had dropped his end of the couch, leaving Frank struggling to hold one side of the couch aloft. “Andrea!” my dad yelled, as Frank lowered his end slowly, his face red. I had the feeling he was regretting that he hadn’t just gone home when he had the chance. “Fred here had a great idea!”

“Frank,” I corrected through gritted teeth. I couldn’t help but wish for the parents I normally had—the ones who never would have forgotten about Living Room Theater, the ones who weren’t bent on embarrassing me in every way they could.

“What’s that?” my mother asked, emerging from the kitchen.

“Bug Juice!” my dad said. “Emily, stop looking for plays. We’ll just put ours up. We have enough copies of the script.”

“Wonderful,” my mother said, her face relaxing. “I’ll figure out some food and you can cast it.”

My dad looked around, then pointed at Frank. “You can play Duncan,” he said, and Frank shot me a look.

“Dad,” I said, setting the pile of plays down and taking a step forward. Duncan was the second lead, after Cecily, and that was a lot to throw at someone who’d only come into the house in a futile attempt to get hydrated. “I’m not sure that—”

“And we need a Cecily,” he went on, talking over me. “Andrea,” he yelled in the general direction of the kitchen, “who can play Cecily?”

“Oh, god,” my mother said, coming back into the room and trying to run her hand through her hair, apparently forgetting there were curlers in it. “I have no idea. Maybe Pamela’s daughter?”

“If we don’t have a good Cecily, the whole play falls apart,” my dad said, shaking his head. “You remember what happened during that performance in Chicago.”

“I know,” my mother said. “Let’s see. . . .”

“I’ll do it.”  The words were out of my mouth before I realized I’d even thought them. My parents turned to me, both looking shocked. Frank, though, was giving me a smile from across the room.

“Seriously?” Beckett asked, sounding deeply skeptical.

“I think that seems very appropriate,” my mother said, crossing past me to go back into the kitchen, giving my arm a squeeze as she went. “Thank you, Em.”

“Yes,” my dad said, after a small pause, still looking at me like he wasn’t quite sure who I was. “That’s . . . wonderful. Now let’s move this couch.”

This was how, an hour later, scripts in hand, Frank and I ended up standing behind the doors of the dining room, looking out as the audience assembled. If I hadn’t been so nervous about what was to come, I probably would have been much more embarrassed that Frank had been pulled so far into my parents’ world and then forced to act against his will. I was beginning to feel dizzy, and it was becoming clear to me that it was much easier to volunteer to do the brave thing, and much harder to actually have to follow through with it.

I could see Dawn sitting in the back, and when she caught my eye, she gave me a wave and a thumbs-up. When it turned out we had almost no food in the house that we could serve, I’d proposed just getting pizza, and my mother had instantly agreed, putting me in charge of it while she tried to get the house in order. I’d called Dawn’s cell, and told her we needed ten pies and assorted salads and breadsticks. Dawn then told me that she had just finished her shift, but if I called the actual restaurant and paid with a card, she could bring the order to me and then go home. When she’d arrived, she’d helped me set up the food, and when she’d found out what was about to happen, had asked if she could stay, and had ended up helping my mother do the last-minute cleaning.

The crowd suddenly seemed much bigger than it had in previous years. And why had I never considered how disconcerting it was to have a room full of people staring at you? I rolled my script in my hands. I was hanging on to it for dear life, even though I really didn’t need it. Bug Juice had been such a part of our lives for so long that I had committed most of it to memory years ago, after seeing it performed over and over again.

“Two minutes,” Beckett said, sticking his head into the dining room and then skating away again. He was in charge of reading the stage directions and holding the book. Even though all of us would have scripts in our hands, I’d been to a number of Living Room Theaters where people lost their place and then fumbled through their script for what felt like hours, trying to find their line.

“We should probably go stand with the rest of the cast,” I said. The other main players were clustered in the kitchen, waiting for the play to start. The cast was big enough that people with one or two lines were just sitting in the audience and sharing scripts, and would make their way to the “stage” when it was time for their scenes. But the main actors—who included my mom’s department secretary, the Elizabethan scholar in the English department, the assistant costume designer, three of the set guys, and a few of my father’s grad students—had a green room for the night. Frank nodded but still looked nervous, and I suddenly realized that Frank Porter—who’d gotten up in front of the whole school, who was always making speeches, who seemed more together than anyone I knew—was nervous about performing a makeshift play in my TV room. It looked like he was much more nervous than I was—which for some reason made me feel brave.

“You’re going to do great,” I assured him.

Frank looked over at me, and gave me a half smile. “Thanks,” he said quietly. I smiled back just as Beckett stuck his head into the kitchen again.

“Places!” he yelled.

An hour and a half later, the play was starting to wind down, and no major disasters had occurred. My first few lines had been rushed, the script shaking in my hand and my voice high and trembly.  And it was a good thing I had the lines memorized—it didn’t hurt that eleven-year-old me had pretty much written them—because in my first scene, my vision was too blurred and my script was vibrating too much for me to have read anything on the page anyway. But as the play continued, I could start to remember what it felt like to breathe normally again. And it wasn’t like I was acting with Broadway’s best, either—the Elizabethan scholar playing Camp Director Arnold said most of her lines with her back to the audience, and the grad student who played Tucker had lost his place four times in his first scene, which was impressive considering he’d only had three lines.

To my relief, Frank, as Duncan, had more than held his own. I wasn’t sure I was going to encourage him to change direction and start auditioning for all the school plays, but he spoke his lines clearly, followed along with the script, and faced the right way. He also revealed an innate sense of comic timing I’d never guessed he had. So I was feeling like the evening hadn’t been a total disaster, and had actually gone okay, as Frank and I took the stage together for the final scene.

Duncan and Cecily had been on quite the whirlwind together, as they went from enemies to friends, until Cecily became convinced Duncan was only pretending to be her friend after it appeared he had turned against her during her court-martial after the color war. But it was just a misunderstanding, and in the final scene, on the last day of camp, the smoldering embers of what remained of Camp Greenleaf behind them, they finally cleared things up.

“I’m sorry,” Frank-as-Duncan said to me.

“He crosses to her, stage right,” Beckett intoned from his perch on the kitchen stool just offstage. He had been the true star of the night, always staying on top, reading the stage directions and jumping in with assistance when people lost their place.

“You should have told me what was happening,” I said, as Cecily.

“I know,” Frank said, glancing up at me and then looking down at his script again.

“I didn’t think I could trust you,” I said.

“But you can,” Frank said. “I’m here.”

“He takes her hand,” Beckett read out from the stage directions. Both Frank and I looked over at him, but neither one of us moved. “He takes her hand,” Beckett repeated, more loudly this time, and Frank glanced at me, then took a step closer.

I swallowed hard and could feel my heart start to pound. I tried to tell myself that it was just acting. It wasn’t a big deal.  And it certainly didn’t mean anything. I transferred my script into my left hand and met Frank’s eye. He gave me a small, embarrassed smile, then reached out toward me. I met him halfway, our fingers awkwardly colliding until we got our palms lined up and he threaded his fingers through mine. His hand was cool, and I was suddenly aware how nicely our hands fit together, our fingers overlapping easily.

My heart was beating hard, and I could feel the blood pulsing in the tips of my fingers. How had this even happened? How was Frank Porter holding my hand?

“Cecily?” Beckett prompted, and I was jerked back to reality as I tried to turn to the last page of my script with only one hand.

“Sorry,” I muttered, and there was low, polite laughter from the audience. I glanced up long enough to see my parents standing in the back, my dad’s arms around my mom, both of them looking more present, and more relaxed, than I’d seen them in a while. I was just relieved that neither one of them seemed furious I had ruined their masterpiece. I flipped to the last page of the script, and there it was, in black and white, two lines away—They kiss.

I must have totally blocked out that this would be happening. I could feel my pulse start to race, and I worried my palm, still pressed against Frank’s, was going to start to get sweaty very soon.

“Um,” I said, struggling to find my place in the script. “And you’ll always be here?” I asked him.

Now, just a bit too late, I remembered perfectly what came next. Duncan had the line that was always the last laugh of the play, about how he’d be there at least until his mom came to pick him up and take him back to Weehawken. And then Duncan and Cecily kissed while the rest of the campers filed onstage and sang the Camp Greenleaf song.

I didn’t want Frank to feel like he had to kiss me, like he had clearly felt compelled to take my hand. I couldn’t even imagine having to kiss Frank Porter, especially in front of all these people, and my parents and younger brother.  Also, he had a girlfriend. And while real actors kissed other people all the time, this was different. This was—

“. . . back to Weehawken,” Frank said, finishing the line I hadn’t heard him start, and there was laughter from the audience and I knew what was coming. I glanced, panicked, at my brother.

“They kiss,” Beckett read, and I could practically feel Frank’s shock and the expectant pause in the audience.

Frank and I looked at each other. We were still holding hands, but he still seemed impossibly far away from me, and I couldn’t even imagine crossing that gulf to kiss him. Mostly because I couldn’t even imagine kissing him. It was one thing to get to know him, and go running with him, but—

Keeping his eyes on me, Frank took a tiny step closer, and it was like my brain was wiped clear of thoughts. It was like the world had started moving in slow motion as he moved a little closer to me still, and then started to tilt his head to the side.

“Lights down!” Beckett yelled, jerking me back to reality, and I blinked, trying to catch up with everything that had just happened—or almost happened. “Curtain!”

Everyone started clapping, and the rest of the cast filed out and we all joined hands—Frank and I hadn’t stopped holding hands since Beckett told us to, I realized—and took a bow, and then people started getting up and putting the chairs away and drifting back into the kitchen to see if there was any food left.

Frank and I looked at each other, and after just a moment like that, we dropped hands. He stuck his hands in his shorts pockets and I grabbed the script with both of mine, twisting it into a tight roll, trying not to think about how cold my hand now felt.

“Hey!” Dawn said, coming up to us and giving me a smile. “That was really great.”

“Thanks,” I said, glancing at Frank, wondering what he was thinking about what had almost happened, but he was frowning down at his phone.

“Nice work, you two,” my mother said with a smile as she passed me, giving me a quick hug as she went. I caught my dad’s eye from across the room and he gave me a very dorky thumbs-up.

“Thanks,” Frank said, glancing up from his phone for a moment before typing a response into it, then looking up at me, his brow furrowed. “Hey,” he said. “So here’s the thing.” He seemed to notice Dawn for the first time, and turned to her, holding out his hand in a manner that practically telegraphed I’m the student body president. “Sorry,” he said, “I’m Frank Porter.”

“Dawn Finley,” she said as they shook. “You did a really good job.”

“Well,” Frank said, and he shot me a small smile. “I’m sure that was just due to my costar.”

“What’s the thing?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

Frank looked back down at his phone and said, a little doubtfully, “So apparently Collins is at my house. He wants me to come and hang out, and told me you had to come too.” He looked up and shook his head. “Remind me to take his key away.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering why Collins had invited me specifically. But I had been seeing him more this summer than I ever would have predicted, so maybe he was just being nice, and inviting me to their hangout.

“And you’re welcome to come too,” Frank said to Dawn. “Unless you have other plans.”

“Nope,” said Dawn, looking thrilled by this invitation. “Sounds fun. You know, whatever it is.”

“Emily?” Frank asked.

I looked around at the chaos that was still reigning in my house, all the people standing around and eating cold breadsticks. I knew well how Living Room Theater nights ended up—the adults hanging out for far too long, exchanging department gossip for what always felt like hours. I had a feeling the house would be filled with people for a while, and if I did stay, I would undoubtedly be roped into cleaning up. “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

“This is a really nice house,” Dawn said, her voice dropping to a whisper as she stepped inside, her expression looking much like I had a feeling mine had when I’d seen it for the first time. Since my car had been buried behind everyone who had parked in our driveway, Dawn had driven us all to Frank’s in her convertible, her driving making me very glad that Frank lived so close to me.

“Thanks,” Frank said easily, leading the way inside. “Collins!” he yelled, just as he slid around the corner in his socks.

“Hello,” Collins said, a wink somewhere in his voice, smiling at me, stretching out the word more than usual, and giving it a few more o’s.

“Um, hi,” I said, giving him a smile. “What’s up?”

He looked behind me, saw Dawn and her shirt that read Captain Pizza—A great COLONEL of an idea! and brightened. “Did we order pizza?”

“No,” Dawn said, looking down at her shirt. “I’m off the clock. I’m Dawn.”

“Matthew Collins,” he said. “Matthew with two t’s and Collins with two l’s. But call me Collins. Although,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “let me be Frank.” He cleared his throat and gave me an earnest, serious look. “Emily,” he said, his voice both softer and deeper. “Is there anything—anything—I can do to help you? As soon as I finish saving the planet, I promise to get right on it.”

“Collins,” Frank said, walking past him and into the kitchen, but not before I saw that there were two dull red spots on his cheeks. “Will you stop it?  That joke was old back in middle school.”

“I’m just being Frank with them,” he said, giving me an actual wink this time. “Want something to drink?” he asked as he followed Frank into the kitchen and pulled open the fridge, clearly as comfortable in Frank’s house as Sloane had once been in mine.

“Sure,” Dawn said, heading over to join him in the kitchen. As I watched her walk closer to him, I couldn’t help but wish I’d had some way to warn her about Collins, and the fact that he’d probably be hitting on her relentlessly within seconds. But to my surprise, he just stood back respectfully to let her get a clearer view of the fridge, and didn’t ask her if it hurt when she fell from heaven.

“Emily?” Frank called to me from the kitchen area, and I realized a moment too late that I was the only one still standing by the front door.

“Yeah,” I said quickly, walking across the floor to join the group in the kitchen. Everyone was standing around the big island in the center that looked like it was made of granite or slate—some dark mineral, at any rate. There was a bag of tortilla chips on the counter that Collins opened as Frank grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and then handed one to Dawn.

“So,” Collins said, rubbing his hands together and looking at me. “I was thinking about your list.”

I stared at him in surprise, then looked over at Frank. The list hadn’t been a secret, exactly, but I was just a little taken aback that Frank would have told Collins about it.

“What?” Collins said, picking up on this. “Porter will not stop talking about it. And I decided to help.”

“What list?” Dawn asked, looking from Collins to me.

“The list from Sloane,” Collins said, like he’d been involved with this from the beginning.

“Who’s Sloane?” Dawn asked.

“Sloane’s my best friend,” I explained.

“The one who’s camping in Paris?” she asked, and I gave her a quick nod, not meeting Frank’s eye, even though I could sense he was looking at me.

“Anyway,” Collins said. “I had a solution, so—”

“Which number?” I asked, really a little baffled as to what Collins could have come up with.

“Yeah, Matthew,” Frank said, and his voice sounded measured, but I could also hear the irritation behind it. “Which number?”

“Hey.”

I turned around, surprised, and saw a guy behind me, coming from the direction of the TV area—I supposed it wasn’t really a room if there weren’t any doors. I hadn’t realized anyone else was there and I suddenly worried this perfect stranger had heard us talking about Sloane’s list. He had close-cropped blond hair, and was wearing a T-shirt that read Briarville Varsity Soccer. Briarville was a boarding school an hour upstate, but while I’d heard of it, I’d never met anyone who went there.

“Perfect,” Collins said, clapping his hands together. “We can get this going.”

I felt myself frown. “Get what—” I started, when Collins interrupted, opening the fridge again.

“Want something to drink?” he asked the guy. “Water? Red Bull?”

“Agua,” the guy said, coming to stand with us in the kitchen. “Thanks.”

“Hey,” Dawn said to him, crunching some chips and swallowing quickly. “I’m Dawn.”

“ ’Sup,” the guy said. “I’m—”

“Shh!” Collins yelled, so loudly that we all stopped and looked at him. He frowned at the guy. “What did we talk about?”  The guy just raised his eyebrows, and Collins grinned at me, gesturing to the guy with a flourish, like he was presenting him on a game show. “So he’s here for the first thing on your list. Enjoy.”

I thought back to the list, and the first one, which was—

I drew in a shocked breath. I had a feeling I’d just turned bright red.

Kiss a stranger.

“Wait,” I said faintly, looking at the guy. He wasn’t bad-looking or anything, but that didn’t mean I wanted to kiss him. Especially not here, in front of Collins and Dawn and Frank.

Collins smiled wide at me, and gave me another wink, this one bigger than before. “You’re welcome,” he said.

“Wait,” Frank said, looking from the guy and back to me, then glaring at Collins, sounding more annoyed than I’d ever heard him. “Matt, I told you not to do this the first time you suggested it. But you go ahead and bring some random guy here to—”

“Hey,” the guy said, lowering his water bottle, looking offended.

“What’s going on?” Dawn whispered loudly to Frank.

“No,” I said, taking a step away.  Then, worried I might have insulted the guy, I said quickly, “Sorry. No offense. I’m just not . . . I mean . . .” I ran out of words and took a tortilla chip, just to have something to do with my hands.

“What?” Collins asked. “It’s perfect. You don’t know him, he doesn’t know you. So get to it.” He raised his eyebrows at us. “Chop-chop.”

“Collins,” Frank said, keeping his eyes on me, “if Emily doesn’t want to do it—”

“Do what?” Dawn asked, crunching down on another chip, looking baffled but entertained, like this was a movie she’d walked into late.

“Kiss him,” Collins said. Dawn looked surprised, but then she gave the guy a not-so-subtle once-over and shot me an approving thumbs-up. “It’s on the list Emily’s friend sent, the first one is ‘Kiss a stranger,’ so—”

“No,” I said quickly, holding up my hands. There was no need to keep discussing this, because it was not going to happen. Ever. “I’m sorry. Um, thanks for the effort, but I’m not just going to go around kissing random—”

“You know,” the guy said, setting down his water, starting to look annoyed, “my name’s—”

“Shh!” Collins and Dawn yelled at him.

“No,” I said again, shaking my head hard. “I don’t even know him, and—”

“But isn’t that the point?” It was Dawn who asked this. She turned to me, her eyebrows raised. “I mean, it wasn’t ‘Kiss someone you’ve already met,’ right?”

Collins raised an eyebrow. I opened my mouth and then closed it again when I didn’t have anything to say to this. It was true. It was also one of the main reasons I worried I’d never complete the list. And here a stranger was, being presented to me to kiss. I thought back to the night I hadn’t hugged Jamie Roarke, and how frustrated I’d been with myself, how I was still mad at myself for chickening out on horseback riding.  And I really did need to get moving on the list, if I ever wanted to figure out where Sloane was. Would I get a better opportunity than this to kiss a stranger?

“Fine,” I said, before I knew I’d made a decision. Frank looked over at me sharply, like he was surprised, but then looked back down at his water bottle, like he was suddenly very interested in where it had been sourced from.

“Cool,” the guy said with a shrug. He took a purposeful step over to me, and without meaning to, I crushed the chip in my hand with a loud crunch.

“Um,” I said, dropping the pieces onto the counter and brushing the crumbs off my hands. “Maybe we could go somewhere less . . . public?”

“There’s a pantry,” Collins said, nodding past the refrigerator, toward what looked like a narrow hallway.

“Okay,” I said, mostly just to try and talk myself into this. Was I really going to do this? Furthermore, had I volunteered to do this? “Let’s go.”

“You could go outside,” Frank called as I forced myself to cross the kitchen on legs that suddenly felt wobbly, pointedly avoiding looking at Dawn, who was shooting me an excited smile. “It’s kind of tight in there.”

“That’s a good thing, Porter,” I heard Collins say, but I just concentrated on looking straight ahead, suddenly worried about my breath.

Frank was right—the pantry was not particularly big. A light went on automatically when I opened the door, and I could see that down the two steps, there were shelves of food on all sides, and in the middle, just enough room for two people. But that was about it.

I made myself put one foot in front of the other, walking down the steps to stand in the center of the room, surrounded by spices I could smell faintly and boxes of pasta and bags of rice and flour and sugar.

The guy followed, closing the door behind him and coming to stand in front of me. In the open-plan kitchen, I hadn’t realized just how big he was. But now that we were in this tiny enclosed space together, it was very apparent. He had broad shoulders and big hands, and the already small space suddenly felt even more compressed. My heart was pounding, but I tried to make myself smile at the guy, like this was just normal, like I was always going around kissing people I didn’t know in pantries.

I looked up at him and my heart started beating harder than ever. I tried to tell myself that I could do this. It was almost like, after not kissing Frank only an hour before, I was getting a second chance to try and be brave. I tried to tell myself that this was also just like a stage kiss, only without an audience. Just another kiss that didn’t matter.

“Ready?” the guy asked. He didn’t seem stressed by this at all, and I tried to take comfort in that. If it was no big deal to him, maybe it shouldn’t have been such a big deal to me. I swallowed hard and licked my lips quickly and took a tiny step toward him—really, all I could take in a space that small.

He gave me a lazy smile and put his hand on my shoulder, and started to lean down to me, just as the lights went out.

I took an instinctual step back, bumped into the shelf behind me, and heard something crash to the ground. I hadn’t realized the lights were on a timer, but it made sense, since they’d gone on automatically. “Sorry,” I said. “Um . . .” It was dark in there, since there were no windows and no light coming in anywhere. I didn’t think I could see anything, not my own hand in front of my face, certainly not the guy.

“It’s all right,” he said, from somewhere in the darkness. I took a cautious step forward, and collided with something—him. I stretched my arm out and it hit his chest. Suddenly,  I realized it might be easier this way, not having to see him. “Okay?” he asked.

I nodded, then realized what an idiotic move this was in a pitch-black room and said, “Yes.” I took a quick breath and let it out just as his nose bonked mine. “Sorry,” I said, reaching up and touching his face, trying to get my bearings. “I—” But I didn’t get to say anything more, because a moment later, his lips were on mine.

We stayed that way for a few seconds, and I figured that Sloane’s criteria had been met when the guy took a step closer to me, wrapped his arms around my waist, and started kissing me for real.

And under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have been something I would have reciprocated. But it had been two months since I’d been kissed. And in the darkness of the pantry, it didn’t seem to matter that I didn’t know his name and wasn’t entirely sure he knew mine. It was like, because I couldn’t see him, or myself, those distinctions didn’t exist in the same way. It also didn’t hurt that he was a really good kisser, and soon I was kissing him back, my pulse racing and my breath catching in my throat, his hands twined in my hair. It was only when his hands slipped under the hem of my shirt, moving towards my sports bra, that I came out of the make-out trance, snapped suddenly back to reality.

I broke away from him and took a step back, pulling down my shirt and feeling my way toward the steps. “Okay then,” I said as I fumbled my way up the stairs in the darkness. I patted the wall until I found the light switch, and as it snapped on, we both flinched, the light seeming extra bright now. It was also disconcerting to suddenly see the guy, a whole person, not just lips and arms. I smoothed down my hair and opened the pantry door, the guy following behind me. “So,” I said, when we were both in the hallway, before we had to join everyone else. I didn’t feel embarrassed, exactly—it was more like I’d had an out-of-body experience in there and now was struggling to catch up. “Um. Thanks?”

“Sure,” the guy said, giving me a quick smile. “That was fun.”

I nodded and hurried back into the kitchen area. Frank was leaning against the counter, typing on his phone, and Dawn and Collins were now sitting around the breakfast nook, Dawn laughing at something he was saying. “Hey,” Collins called when he saw us. “Success?”

I ignored this question and turned toward Frank, trying not to look directly at him. “Is it okay if I grab a water?”

“Sure,” he said, not looking up from his phone, and I assumed he was texting Lissa. “Help yourself.”

I pulled open the fridge, grabbed a water, and, as I shut the door, caught Dawn’s eye. She raised her eyebrows, and I gave her a tiny nod, and she grinned at me. Mostly so I wouldn’t have to face the guy, or Collins, or watch Frank text his girlfriend, I turned my attention to the fridge door. Unlike the rest of the house, the collection of papers and magnets did not appear to be carefully curated. It looked kind of like our fridge door did—a mess of expired coupons, invitations, and reminders. I noticed an invite, slightly askew, toward the bottom of the fridge. The Stanwich Architectural Society’s Annual Gala! it proclaimed in embossed lettering, Honoring the work of Carol and Steve Porter. Then it gave the date, about a month from now. Even though it was absolutely none of my business, I was bending down to see where it was being held—the bottom of the invitation blocked by some kind of color-coded calendar—when an alt-pop song started playing in the kitchen. I turned at the sound of it, and saw the guy, pulling his phone out of his pocket and answering it.

“ ’Sup,” he said into the phone. “Yeah, okay. Just finishing up here. I’m with Matthew.”  There was a pause, and he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “See you in twenty.” He hung up, put the phone back in his pocket and said, “Gotta bounce. The night is young.”

“See you, Benji,” Collins said, getting up and giving the guy what looked like an affectionate punch on the shoulder. I just blinked at him, trying to make the name fit. I had just kissed a guy named Benji?

“Ben,” the guy said firmly, glaring at Collins. “Nobody calls me that anymore.”

“I do,” Collins said cheerfully. “Thanks for stopping by. See you on Sunday.”

“Yeah,” the guy said. “See you then.” He took a step over to me and leaned down. I took a startled step back, wondering for a moment if he was trying to kiss me good-bye. But instead, he asked, in a low voice that I nonetheless had a feeling everyone in the kitchen could hear, “So can I get your number?”

“Oh,” I said, thrown by this. I looked across the kitchen and saw Frank watching me, Dawn giving me a look that clearly said Go for it. “Um, thank you, but I’m kind of . . . I have this project this summer I’m working on, and . . .” He nodded and drew back from me. “Not that it wasn’t good. It really was,” I said quickly. “I mean . . .”

He gave me another lazy smile. “Just let Matt know if you change your mind,” he said. “He’s got my digits.”  With that, he turned and headed out, giving the people in the kitchen a wave as he left.

“So,” I said to Collins, after I’d heard the door slam and I knew Benji was out of earshot. “How do you, um, know him?” I was suddenly incredibly relieved, remembering the Briarville T-shirt, that I wouldn’t have to see him in the halls next year.

“Benji?” Collins asked, coming back to the kitchen island and reaching for the chips. “He’s my cousin.”

I nodded, like I was totally okay with all of this, with the fact that I had just kissed someone who was related to Collins, but my head was spinning. Collins took another handful of chips and headed back to the breakfast nook. I took a sip of my water, and realized it was just Frank and me together at the island, and that he was looking at me.

“Sorry that I told Collins about the list,” he said in a quiet voice.

“It’s fine,” I said with a shrug. It had been more than fine, but I didn’t think I wanted to tell Frank that. “And now I can cross that one off, so . . .”

Frank just looked at me for a second, then back down at his phone. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.” He started typing again, not meeting my eye, so after a moment, I took my water and joined Dawn and Collins, though I started to regret this as soon as I approached and Collins waggled his eyebrows at me.

“So?” he asked, stretching the word out. “You and Benji? I see a future there.”

“No,” I said, taking a sip of my water. “No offense to your cousin, but . . . no.”

“Surprising,” Collins said, arching an eyebrow at me. “Because you were just in there a long time.”

I coughed on my water. “We were?”

“You were,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me.

I took another drink of water and shook my head. “Oh. Well. Um . . .” I looked over at him and saw he was still grinning. “Oh, shut up,” I muttered, surprising myself—and Collins, by the look of it—as Dawn started to laugh.

Later, when I was walking home—after Dawn had left and the boys had started to play Honour Quest, a video game I had no interest in, despite Beckett always trying to get me to play with him—I found that I couldn’t stop smiling. It was a warm, humid night, and I could see fireflies winking in the grass and hear the cicadas chirping. I headed home, my thoughts still turning over what had happened.

I had stood up in front of a crowd and performed, and it had gone fine. Nothing horrible had happened, and I’d gotten through it. But bigger than that, I had kissed a stranger. My pulse started to pick up a little as I flashed back to the pantry, to Benji’s hands in my hair. I had kissed someone tonight, which I certainly had not been expecting to do. Not that I wanted to make a regular practice of kissing Collins’s relatives in dark pantries, but for just a moment, it had made me feel brave.

And as I tilted my head back to look at the stars, I began to really understand, for the first time, just why Sloane sent me the list.