“What the hell...?” Hand to a cheek that had to be stinging, Rod was shocked.
“Don’t you laugh at me!” Sadie was improvising.
“Stay in character,” Hobbit said from the sidelines. “Rod, if you don’t stay in character, shewillslap you silly.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said. His lip had barely healed from his father’s so-called punishment and he moved his jaw back andforth and used his tongue to check the inside of his cheek, which had most likely been abraded by his teeth from that slap.
“What did I do now?” Sadie fed him his line in an intentionally bad imitation of Rod, her voice pitched low with a heavy sheen of extra stupid. She then responded in her own voice. “You aresuchan asshole! Talking shit about me? You’re just jealous because Tom got what you wanted—like I’d ever so much as eventouchyou! Gun to my head, I’d take the bullet! You’re disgusting, you disgust me!”
Rodney actually looked stricken, which was not great, since he was supposed to snap back at her.
Instead he said, “Shit, I’m sorry. I know I’m supposed to... Can I just... I need a minute...”
Sadie was about to just keep riffing about ten-foot-poles and never in a million billion years, but now she stepped back, respecting her fellow actor.
Jules moved closer to Hobbit. “Maybe it’s enough that she just unloads on him. They can just end with the go-dog-go.” It was what they were calling the standard, constantly repeated “Fuck you!” “Fuckyou!” that marked the angry conclusion of most of these scenes. It was a reference to the repeated lines in that Dr. Seuss children’s book.Do you like my hat? I do not like your hat. Goodbye again. Goodbye...
“Can you just try the line?” Hobbit called to Rod.
“I don’t even know what it is at this point,” Rod admitted.
“Yeah, like I’d want your fricking chlamydia,” Sadie told him.“Hard pass, thanks.”
“Right.Right. Sorry.”
Belle moved to be included in Jules and Hobbit’s little sidelines pow-wow. “Problem is, he really does want her chlamydia,” she whispered. “Euphemistically speaking, because you know, she doesn’t actuallyhave?—”
“We get it,” Jules said.
“Ugh, when this is over, we’re going to have to hang out with Rodney, aren’t we?” Hobbit said.
“If Sadie likes him, there must be something in there to like,” Jules said.
“Still.”
“Yeah.”
Hobbit clapped his hands because Rod just could not get the line out without stumbling awkwardly. “How about this?” He pointed to Rod. “Fuck you,” to Sadie, “Fuck you! Stay the fuck away from me.” Back to Rod, “You stay the fuck away from me. I don’t want to catch chlamydia, with that last part being optional. If you remember it, great, if not, no problem.” He gave one more note to Sadie, “And feel free to slap the hell out of him whenever you want. Let’s run it one more time.”
And as Sadie and Rod did just that, Hobbit turned to Jules and quietly said, “We don’t need to review our thing, right?”
Oof, yes, that was right. Tomorrow wastheirlittle fake break-up scene in the cafeteria, too. Not as big as Sadie and Rod’s scene, but still important since Jules had been targeted by Suspect X, and they needed to let him know Jules wouldn’t be at the weekend party.
But, “No.” Jules shook his head. They didn’t need to rehearse. Hobbit had written a script that was pretty damn brilliant, and Jules had already memorized his lines. “Just... you’re gonna findme, right?”
“I am,” Hobbit said, eyes on the performance. Sadie was literally running rings around Rod. “I’m... also not gonna come to the FU Club after school, which means...”
That’s right, tomorrow was Wednesday. It made sense that, after they argued and yes, “broke up,” Hobbit would stay far away. And if Hobbit wasn’t there...
“I’ll ask Topher and Joey about Mexico,” Jules said. Although really it was Topher, whose parents had money, who was most likely to have vacationed somewhere more exotic than Cape Cod.
“Thanks,” Hobbit said. “I really want to get my future brother-in-law off our suspect list.”
Jules laughed as Hobbit smiled, too, meeting his eyes.
He didn’t need to say it, but Jules knew what his friend was thinking. A world in which Topher’s brother Liam hooked up with Hobbit was completely unrealistic. It was very similar, in fact, to the odds of David ever coming back to Jules.
Except maybe it wasn’t—and oh, there it was. That ever-presentmaybe David would come back. That whisper of hope that Jules couldn’t shake, regardless of how hard he tried.
