I yanked open the bathroom door. The rest of the family was ostensibly downstairs and ready to go, which made it that much more startling to find Addie standing in front of the mirror.
She yelped. I seconded the exclamation, hopping into the air for good measure.
“Shhh!” She lowered the hand that had waved me to silence, exposing a thin, curving mustache drawn above her upper lip.
“Um,” I said, staring at that point on her face.
“I know it’s a little on-the-nose.”
“That is not what I was going to say.”
“It helps me get into the mindset.” Addie circled both hands in the air, as though drying her nail polish. A series of words had been inked in ballpoint on her palm.
“For Trivia Night?” I guessed, even though part of me knew that wasn’t the answer. Addie quivered with a strange new energy. I could practically hear the hum rising from her skin, like the time Jasper snuck a two-liter of Mountain Dew at a faculty picnic.
She leaned past me, confirming the emptiness of the hallway before whispering, “Iago.”
It took me a few seconds to put the clues together. “You’re doing Iago?”
She nodded, glancing guiltily at her hand before fixing her gaze on the frayed pink rug underneath the sink. I was missing something. Addie often acted various parts when she and Van were blocking a scene or hashing out their interpretation of a speech. There was no reason to be self-conscious, or shut herself in the bathroom, unless ... A radical possibility struck me between the eyes.
“You mean for real? In the show?” The twins had turned so snappish of late no one in the family had mustered the courage to ask howOthellowas coming along.
“We needed an understudy. Just in case.” Addie considered her reflection. “I doubt anything will come of it.”
Her tone had gone flat, leaving me in the dark about her true feelings. Did she want to strut and fret upon the stage, or was she dreading the possibility? Was this why she’d been so out of sorts lately, especially with Van? Licking the tip of her finger, she rubbed at one end of the mustache. A smear of black spread over her cheek.
A honk sounded from outside.
“You better go,” Addie said.
I hesitated. “What about you?”
She pointed to her face. “I have to wash this off.”
When I slid into the back seat of my parents’ car, Bo made a show of inching toward the middle without actually moving anything but his shoulders. The weather was chilly enough that I didn’t mind the tight squeeze, though had it been Jasper sitting next to me I would have elbowed him out of my territory on principle.
Mom threw the car into reverse. She had donned what Jasper called her game face, ready for the competition. There was just enough room for me to remove the rubber band from my ponytail and shake out my hair. It was too dark to check my reflection in the rearview mirror. I would have to hope the effect wasn’t too slatternly.
“It looks nice,” Bo said, leaning into me as we turned a corner. “You should wear your hair down more often.” I smiled my thanks, ignoring Jasper’s snort.
The parking lot behind Mung’s was packed, a phenomenon unique to Trivia Night. The familiar aroma of bean water, sweating onions, and cumin greeted us as we entered.
“Professor Porter-Malcolm,” Neill said breathlessly, stepping in front of my mother. “And Professor Porter-Malcolm,” he added, acknowledging my father with the exact same degree of deference. Van had once described Neill as an equal opportunity suck-up. “Right this way.”
We followed as he shouldered into the crowd, thrusting and twisting as though hacking a trail through the rainforest. It occurred to me that I could see the top of Neill’s head. Somehow, I hadn’t remembered him being quite so vertically challenged.
Plain wooden tables lined the walls, bordered by matching benches. It wasn’t a candlelight-and-flowers kind of place; the only adornments were gummy bottles of hot sauce and the signs indicating team placement.
“Here we are,” Neill announced, in case we’d lost the ability to read.
Our official team name was Let’s Get Lit. Other sobriquets included Oh, the Humanities!, Psy Fry, and Bougie Nights, the last of which uneasily accomodated both Noreen and Shaggy Doug as well as several other local business owners, including Steve, the ropy-limbed proprietor of Mung’s. Each team was permitted to field five players at a time, with up to four alternates. In later rounds, the bench was occasionally allowed to weigh in on a group question, but for the most part subs (like myself and Neill) were charged with keeping the first-string supplied with green tea and raw pumpkin seeds, and cheering when one of our own scored a point.
My plan, such as it was, consisted of asking Neill a few leading questions between rounds. I’d taken the precaution of writing them down on a sheet of lined paper, which rustled in my front pocket as I sat.
“Smell that?” Jasper asked, as he and Bo claimed the folding chairs on either side of me.
“Lentils?” I guessed.
