I can see it. "Like in the James Bond movie with the new guy on the skyscraper."

"Exactly."

"That stuff is amazing."

"I know! Isn't it? It's brilliant."

"Can you do any of it?"

"I'm learning."

My breath whooshes out. "Really?"

"Life's not all about fighting. It's about flight, too, you know. And in parkour, it's like your only opponent is you. It's not very John Wayne, but I like it."

I nod. "I like it too."

He smiles all big and ambles away. He tips an imaginary hat at me and against my will, my faces blushes bright red. Sasha giggles, slips into the empty seat next to me and grabs my arm. "Somebody likes somebody."

"Shut up," I mumble, but I can't stop smiling.

"It's okay to like him. He's so long-legged cute and he moves ... have you noticed the way he moves?"

"Like he knows where every one of his muscles is?" I say.

"Yeah." Sasha squishes her eyes tight. "And he likes you. He's memorizing John Wayne lines for you. It's so cute."

"He keeps asking me if my dad is gay." When I say it, it's like all the good whooshes out of everything, like I'm jumping between buildings and I've missed the edge. I'm just whooshing down towards a concrete parking lot and a dumpster full of trash.

Sasha saves me. "Lily, everyone thinks your dad is gay. He's probably just trying to give you a way to talk about it."

I slam back in my theater seat. "They do?"

"Yeah."

I bend over, touch my face to my knees. "Oh God."

"It is so not a big deal." She rubs my back in little circles. "And Olivia thinks he might just have gender identification issues and cross-dress. And who cares? He is what he is. He's your dad first, anyway."

My jeans smell like honey from my bodywash or something. I breathe it in and say, "Nicole doesn't think he is."

"What?"

"She doesn't think he's gay."

Her hand starts rubbing again. "Oh, sweetie. Nicole is very good at seeing the world the way she wants to and ignoring the rest."

"People!" Mrs. Gallagher shouts. "Act One. Scene Two. Places."

I sit up. Sasha smiles. "It's okay."

I repeat, "It's okay."

But Sasha doesn't fall for it. "What are you thinking?"

"That I wish I could do parkour. That I could run up walls and leap things. Or that I could just stand my ground and fight."

She cocks her head at me. "But you can."

Play rehearsal starts and we all read the script. I shoot off glances at Paolo, who is all stretched out on the stage. I have so many lines. Most people highlight their lines but I don't. I highlight the lines around mine. Sasha taught me this. By highlighting your lines you focus only on your character, you become stilted, too focused on your own words. By highlighting the others' lines, you focus on interactions, interplay, the cause and effect of the movements, the beats of the play. Motivations.

Sasha's amazing. And right.

So as we read through the play, the entire cast sitting in a massive circle on the stage, most of us cross-legged, Sasha, yoga-style. Tyler Reed, the cute boy with the eyes, and Paolo lie on their stomachs. Stuart Silsby gets bored and tries to balance his body in weird pseudo-yoga poses until Mrs. Gallagher yells at him.

I sneak peeks at Paolo Mattias, who wears jeans and work boots, which aren't cowboy boots, but kind of close. I highlight with yellow all the lines of everyone around me.

My character is stupid. I can't stand her. She's bigoted, but comes through in the end. All she cares about is this Emile guy she's in love with. She's prissy and corny. You can see her smiling while scrubbing the greasy scum off the stove. That kind of person. The kind of person that would just say the Pledge of Allegiance and never think about the words, just repeat it every day, mindlessly.

I worry that I was picked to be Nellie because I'm like her.

"I hate Nellie," I say in the car, perched between Olivia and Sasha.

"Oh, no," Sasha says. Her hand covers her mouth.

"I can't stand her."

"Why?" she asks and takes a stick of gum out of her jacket. She breaks it in three and offers some to me and some to Olivia.

"Thanks." Olivia pops it into her mouth and drives the car with one hand, and that hand barely on the wheel, not gripping the wheel or anything, just floating on it.

"Thanks," I say. "It's just that she's so, she's so ..."

"Stupid?" Sasha suggests.

"Yeah. Stupid and mindless and sappy."

"A man wrote South Pacific, right?" Olivia asks.

"You guessed it," Sasha says Olivia snorts. "Figures."

"Why?" I ask, chewing my gum with my mouth closed, not like Olivia who opens her mouth wide and then clamps it shut on the gum like she's an alligator or a snapping turtle biting its prey, or a machine, each stop exact and hard.

"Men always made women stupid in musicals."

"Why?" I ask again.

"Because," Sasha says, "that's how men like women."

"Stupid?"

"Stupid in life. Smart in bed." Olivia laughs.

I don't know if this is true, but I don't follow up on it because then I would have to think about my mother and Mike O'Donnell. So instead I ask, "How am I suppose to play this woman if I don't like her?"

"Play her like a caricature. Make fun of the playwright's intentions. Then it's a statement. You know?" Sasha says. We are almost at my house. Mike will be waiting inside.

"Is that what you're doing?" I ask.

Sasha nods. She's Bloody Mary, an Asian woman who is the comic relief of the musical. Greedy with stilted English, but with a mystical part to her as well.

"What if no one gets it?" I ask as I climb out of the car.

She shrugs. "I don't know if they will. Maybe one person will get it, and that makes it worthwhile."

"Just one person," I say.

"All you need is one," Sasha and Olivia sing at me together before Sasha shuts the door and they turn around to go home.

I'm going to have to kiss Tyler, the other romantic lead. I haven't told Nicole. We haven't done it yet. Whenever we get to a kissing part Mrs. Gallagher yells, "KISS!" and Tyler and I look at each other and laugh. I can't imagine kissing him. What it will be like. Better than my pillow I'm sure, but what if it's too wet like a dog, or too dry like cardboard? I have to start eating more Certs. Thank God I don't like him that way. I'd never be able to do it.

I stop halfway up the rock path behind my house, grab a dandelion that's growing between the stones. I think of what Sasha said: All you need is one. Maybe that goes for kisses too, just one and then they'll be coming to me all the time, a whole life of kisses.

It sounds like a chant. All you need is one. All you need is one. All you need is one. I wonder if they've learned that at a protest somewhere. I mosey up the path to the house and worry about my character being a caricature and it makes me think of my uncle, the one who visited from California right after my stepfather died. And thinking of him makes me shudder and wonder if I'll ever be able to kiss a boy at all without my mind straying.

My chest feels hot where that cross would hang. My chest feels his hands there, feels them lower. I stagger against a tree and close my eyes, but that doesn't help. I open them and stare up at the leaves, all orange and yellow.

"Beautiful leaves," I say. "Beautiful leaves."

But that's what he said to me: "Lily, do you know how beautiful you are?"

And there were his fingers, moving back and forth, back and forth.

"Hello," I say to Mike when I muster up enough courage to go inside my own damn house.

"How was your day?" he asks and stands up, blocking my way out of the kitchen. He is big, big, big. He is just too tall and his shoulders are broad, like the doorframe or a guillotine.

"Good," I say, taking a step backwards into the kitchen even though I want to go forward to my room. "Long rehearsal. Lots of homework to do."

I nod past him towards my room. I wait for him to get the hint. He doesn't.

"I need to get to my room," I say, ambling forward. "Sorry."

He barely moves when I walk past him. We are so close that my shoulder almost touches his arm. He sways on the balls of his feet.

"Sorry," I mumble and it's all I can do not to run down the hall.

In my room, I shut the door. I think about it and then I shove my dresser up against it. The damn thing thumps against the rug, sounding like a bull about to rumble through the house, but I don't care. I can't make it quieter. I shake my head at myself, but I'm not moving it. No way.

He walks to the door. I hold my breath. I cross my fingers. What if he tries to get in?

I can hear him breathe.

"Lily?"

"Yep!" I yell, backing up to the window.

"Can I come in?"

"Um. Um. I'm kind of getting dressed," I lie.

There is silence. I hear his breath. "Okay, well, I'm going out to the store. You want anything?"

"Nope," I say even though I want more Coke since he keeps drinking it all. "Thanks."

He sighs and walks away. I pull back my white curtain that used to make me think of ghosts when I was little, and I watch him drive away in this car he's bought on the cheap. It's dented and rusty and more embarrassing than my father's beige Ford Escort.

"Big breaths," I tell myself. "Big, deep breaths."

I imagine the car exploding as it turns out of the driveway, vaporizing Mike O'Donnell instantly. My mother will be sad, of course. I will wear a black shirt with my jeans and big belt to the funeral. No such luck.

I move the dresser and go out to the kitchen and call Nicole. I tell her about the potential play kiss with Tyler Reed.

"I am so mad at myself," Nicole says.

"You should be," I tell her on the phone. "You said theater was for losers."

"I was wrong. Okay. Shut up." She chews so loud I can hear her teeth hit each other.

I can see her going to every single performance, chewing gum and drooling in one of those dinky auditorium chairs, not paying any attention to the musical but just thinking about him, Fire Man, Red Pants Boy, Tyler Reed. But who will she sit with all five shows? Who will listen to her rant about his calves, his eyes, his toenails? I wish I could be there for her as her hormones kick into overdrive, but I can't. I'll be up on stage with Fire Man, and you can bet, romantic lead or not, there will be no male Nicoles sitting below me fantasizing about my shins when I sing "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair."

Nicole wants me to invite her to the cast party. She tells me this on the phone. I pull the cord all the way and then sit in the coat closet to get some privacy, shutting the door behind me. It stinks in here like mothballs and mice, almost a death smell, but it feels safe.

"You have to invite me to the cast party," she says.

"I don't know if I can."

"What do you mean you don't know if you can?"

"I don't know if it's allowed."

"Well, break the rules."

"I don't even know if there is a cast party," I say, shoving a big, ugly duck boot from L.L.Bean out of the way. I was sitting on it and the ribbed toes were pretty uncomfortable beneath my butt.

"There's always a cast party."

"How do you know?"