“Write what down?”
“Whatever it is that did … this to you,” she says, gesturing at the general space I am occupying. When I continue to stare at her like she’s just asked me to play the piano accompaniment in a Sondheim number, she taps a firm finger on the clipboard. “Writing will help.”
“B-but my Check List.”
She sighs. Then she takes the clipboard and writes at the top of it, Write until you stop crying.
“There,” she says, setting it back down in front of me.
It is a true testament to the absurdity of this that I have to bite my cheek so I won’t laugh. When I do open my mouth, all that comes out is a wet “Okay?”
Maybe Georgie was going to say something else, but my eyes cut to the office door.
“Steph’s out today,” she says before I can ask.
The smallest, most microscopic piece of mercy the universe has offered me in the past few minutes, but I’ll take it.
“You won’t need to report to her when your tasks are done. Text me instead,” says Georgie. “I’m in client meetings most of the day.”
“Okay,” I say again, because apparently it’s the only word I know how to say.
Georgie clears her throat and waits until I look up at her. Her brow is as steely as ever, but there’s something soft in her eyes. Something that examines me, only this time not to size me up. Maybe to understand.
“You will not be embarrassed about this when it’s over. It will be business as usual. No need to explain.” She pauses. “Unless you want to.”
I’ve never heard a human command another human not to be embarrassed before, but with an iron will like Georgie’s, I’m not entirely convinced it won’t work. I nod at her, and she nods back, first at me and then at the clipboard.
“Writing will help,” she says again.
Then Georgie takes Oliver’s Check List from her desk and sweeps out of her office, closing the door behind her.
The office is so quiet that I might have just imagined the whole thing.
I stare down at the empty pages attached to the clipboard, or at least what I can see of it through my steady stream of tears. Write until you stop crying. Trouble is, knowing me, that could be five minutes or five hours. Once I’m in the grips of a Millie Mood, it’s like the brakes get cut loose in a speeding car. I don’t get to stop on my own. Something else does it for me.
I pick up the pen and for a moment my hand just hovers there. I’m not really a writer. My idea of catharsis is singing in the shower or going full Éponine and humming to myself walking along the Hudson.
Dream Role #3. Yet another dream that went from being a thousand miles away to a million in ten minutes flat. My eyes sting and my vision blurs, then all at once, I’m not just writing—I’m tearing into the paper, the words pouring out of me like lava. It starts with my dad and the precollege, but it doesn’t stop there. It’s everything. It’s the years I’ve spent trying to recover from “Little Jo.” It’s the exhaustion of keeping up with all the different versions of myself I’ve been since. It’s the bajillion times I’ve watched my reflection perform in a mirror and wondered if the girl staring back at me was good enough. It’s the fear that maybe I never will be.
It’s the rare but punctuating moments in my life that despite everything—despite a dad who loves me enough for two people, and an aunt who taught me everything I know, and a happy life in a nice apartment in the greatest city in the world—I still lie awake at night and wonder, What was wrong with me? Why would my mom decide to have me and then walk away?
I put the pen down. I’m not crying anymore.
I pull the pages out and read them back to myself, my heart finally slowing in my chest. Then I fold the pages in half, hold them to my chest for a moment, and take a breath.
It’s all still there, heavy as ever. But it feels like it’s a little easier to lift now.
After I put the pages in the trash I get to work on my Check List, picking up a rare piece of sheet music from a library at Pace for a client’s audition, grabbing Georgie’s dry cleaning, picking up paper towels for the office. Usually the Check Lists feel like a pain, something I have to race through to beat Oliver, but today there’s something soothing about it. Something to tell me where to go and what to do. Simple. Easy. Distracting.
“If you’re … behind at all, I don’t mind taking something from your Check List.”
I frown, straightening up from where I was stashing the paper towels under the sink. I didn’t hear Oliver come in.
“I’m…” Not behind, I’m going to say. But then I meet his gaze. See the caution in it. The concern. And it becomes abundantly, painfully clear that he witnessed some of the shit show from this morning.
“I mean, not for credit,” he says quickly. “It’s just—I’m in good shape on my own. It’d be easy for me to grab something.”
I walk over to him, searching his face. He shifts his weight between his feet, wary, but lets me come right up to him, until I’m close enough that he has no choice but to search my face too.
His reminds me of a few months ago, when we were opening Jesus Christ Superstar and one of the freshman girls in the ensemble burst into tears just before curtain, too scared to go on. How Oliver lowered the backstage mic strapped to his ear and pulled her aside, his entire demeanor changing at the drop of a hat. How he probably had a hundred thousand things to be doing and a dozen people shouting in his ear, but for those two or three crucial minutes, all that mattered to him was making sure a stranger was going to be okay.
I reach out and put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re a good guy.”
I’m expecting him to shrug me off like he usually does, but we both go very still. “Sometimes,” he says, his voice low.
I smile, and it feels different. Not just because it’s the first time I’ve smiled all day. But because Oliver’s smiling back at me.
“Thanks,” I say, pulling my arm away. “I’m good, actually, but—thanks.”
Oliver clears his throat. “Well, if you … let me know if you change your mind.”
When Georgie comes to collect our Check Lists at the end of the day, she doesn’t say anything about the meltdown. She just nods and says, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” which is about as close to friendly conversation as either of us have gotten with her. Oliver waits for me at the elevator, and for the first time we leave the building together on purpose, walking down the street until we have to split off to get home.
“This morning,” he says suddenly, just before the light changes for me to cross. “Is everything … I mean, are you…”
I shrug, trying to play it off. The truth is I can still feel the weight of what happened this morning sinking like a stone, but it’s more than just the precollege now. It’s too many things to count. It’s Steph and Beth and Farrah and all the in-betweens and uncertainties, all the little lines I’ve crossed and the ones I’m still trying to define.
“You know me. Just being a drama queen.”
I can tell he doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t press the point either. Instead he says, “Hey. If I’m not allowed to call you that, you’re not, either.”