So pretend it’s a play, I could practically hear Kat whispering to me.
I took a deep breath, preparing myself. I had, after all, run around the stage in what was essentially my underwear (Noises Off), sung an incredibly difficult score (City of Angels), and had to convincingly utter the lines, “Torvald, we may be a wee bit more reckless now, mayn’t we? Just a tiny wee bit!” (A Doll’s House) before hundreds of people. This was just in front of four college students and a Pomeranian. I could do this.
“Excuse me?” I asked. I stood up, taking Brad with me. This character was getting sketched out in real time, but it seemed like her voice was a little lower than mine, and her posture much better. I tossed my hair over my shoulder. “What did you just say?”
Mateo gaped at me, and I wished there was some way I could silently let him know what I was doing, but I knew from experience that if I broke character, it would be that much harder to get it back—like looking down for a second on a balance beam.
“The dog,” the Raptor said. “Having it in a residence hall is a clear violation. Who are you, by the way? Did you sign in?”
“That’s my stepsister,” Mateo said quickly. “I’m sure she did.”
“I didn’t,” I said as I strode a few steps closer to the Raptor, still holding Brad up by my chest. If he had any idea that he’d found himself in the middle of a drama, he gave no indication, just tried to lick my face. “There was no one behind the desk—apparently they’d gone out for dinner. Is that the kind of operation you’re running?”
“Whoa,” Alyssa murmured to Archie.
“I know,” he murmured back. “Can we keep her?”
“I’m not running any operation,” the Raptor sputtered. “But you can’t have a dog in here, and this is well beyond three strikes for this particular suite—”
“This is my emotional support dog,” I said, holding Brad up even higher. He panted at the Raptor. “He goes everywhere with me. I am, um, emotionally unsupported without him.” I said a silent apology for all the people who actually relied on emotional support animals, since I was about to besmirch their good names and actual needs.
“Really,” the Raptor said, raising his eyebrows.
“Yah,” I said, then a second later wondered where that had come from. Did this person have an accent? I decided just to go with it.
“It’s true,” Mateo jumped in.
“So true,” Archie added.
“The truest,” chimed in Alyssa. She and Archie had taken seats next to each other on the couch, settling in like they were watching a movie.
“I’ve heard that kind of thing before,” the Raptor said, shaking his head. “Down the hall, in Five A, they were trying to convince me they needed an emotional support goldfish. I mean, come on.”
“This is very real,” I said, running my hand over Brad’s head. “Do you want to see what happens when I’m without him?”
“Uh,” the Raptor said, looking around. “Not really…”
“Here,” I said, thrusting Brad toward him. I saw the Raptor recoil and I immediately liked him less, not that he was starting with a huge surplus, because Brad was clearly a very good boy.
“I’ll take him,” Mateo said, jumping in and taking the dog from me. He settled him in the crook of his arm and started scratching Brad’s belly, all the while looking at me like he was trying to figure out what was currently happening and why his normally silent stepsister was apparently losing her mind.
“Look,” the Raptor said, “I don’t have time for this—”
I burst into tears. Not quiet crying, with a single tear running down my cheek. Big, ugly, heaving sobs. I’d always been able to start crying at a moment’s notice. It was like there was an untapped reservoir of emotion just behind a door, and all I had to do was give it a nudge. “My puppy,” I sobbed.
“Oh my god,” the Raptor said, looking horrified.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever seen,” Alyssa whispered to Archie.
“I know. I wish we had popcorn.”
“Give her the dog back,” the Raptor said, sounding panicked.
I took a deep breath and then screamed for all I was worth, trying not to smile as I did so. You get to yell all the time when you’re acting, and there was just something so cathartic about it.
“Stop that!” the Raptor said, covering his ears as I started to cry again, this time in little shaky breathless sobs.
“I… need… my… emotional support animal…,” I gasped. Mateo widened his eyes at me as he handed me Brad, and the second that I had him in my arms, I stopped immediately, like a switch had just been flipped. I let out a breath, then smiled calmly at the Raptor, totally composed. “Thank you,” I said to Mateo, who was covering his mouth with both hands like he was trying to prevent himself from bursting into laughter.
“So are we good?” Archie called from the couch. “Inspection sorted?”
“Yeah,” the Raptor said, backing out of the room, looking horrified. He fumbled with the door handle, which seemed particularly ironic, given his nickname, and practically sprinted into the hall. “You guys are all set, just keep the noise down.”
He slammed the door behind him, and in the silence that followed, I suddenly started to feel embarrassed as I came back to myself again. This was why in plays, there was a curtain call—a moment to transition from pretending to being a regular person again.
“That was amazing,” Alyssa said as Archie started clapping. “Truly. How did you do that?” She frowned. “Wait, is that your emotional support animal?”
“No,” Mateo said with a laugh. “It’s my sister Mallory’s dog.” He looked at me and shook his head. “Impressive.”
“Thanks,” I said, brushing off my tears and hoping my eye makeup hadn’t smudged too much, very much wishing we could all go back to talking about something else. “So—”
“Oh, so you’re the actress,” Archie said. “That was brilliant.”
“I’m not an actress,” I said quickly. “I just do high school theater, that’s all.”
“Your dad’s always talking about how talented you are, but I figured that was just, you know, parent pride stuff,” Mateo said. “Clearly, he meant it.”
“What?” I asked, the word catching somewhere in my throat. My dad had never said anything of the sort to me, ever. And he’d never even made it to any of the Arcadia performances. Which was fine, I knew he was busy… but he always used to come. Somehow, since he moved, he couldn’t seem to travel the forty-five minutes back to Connecticut. And I’d given him the DVD of the performance, but if he’d watched it, he’d never told me what he thought.
“Right, now that that’s out of the way,” Alyssa said, jumping to her feet again, “what are we doing tonight? And does Brad live here now?”
“I’m afraid not,” Mateo said, and Alyssa’s face fell. “We might have been able to get away with that for the moment, but we can’t keep a dog. Stephanie here only got stuck with him because she got locked out of my sister’s apartment.”