This is dress rehearsal week, the week before Homecoming weekend and before tech week, when we have to stay after school and get serious about rehearsals before the big show in two weeks. There's a lot on my mind besides all the different weeks and their different levels of seriousness. There are only two more weeks before the quarter is done and Thatcher leaves for Hollywood, like Patti did. Like Moth will do this coming weekend instead of coming to Homecoming with us.

"Places everyone, places!" Mrs. Permala yells. Those of us who don't have to be on stage yet sit in the audience and wait for our turns to slink down the stairs and into the wings for our entrances.

Thatcher and Paige stand together in the stage right wing as one of the senior's moms adjusts the costumes she sewed for them to wear as though they are just mannequins. Thatcher stretches his long arms out to the sides for the mom to pin his sleeves a bit tighter, and he accidentally hits Paige, who of course starts laughing. Like she's flirting. Like she can smell our relationship is dying and she's gearing up to pounce.

"Chill," Moth instructs me.

"Look at her down there."

"Have you talked to Thatch at all?"

"Not really. Just to say that I loved him and that we needed to talk about all of this Hollywood stuff."

"Good, that's a good start. When is that happening?"

"Lights!" Mrs. Permala shouts up to one of the seniors in her control booth. The audience goes dark and the stage lights come up.

I shrug. "I don't know. Today?"

"Good. You two are too cute to let a little thing like Hollywood get between you." He smiles.

"Little, huh? It's only the dream."

He swallows hard. "Someone will call you too, Janie."

"Doubt it."

"You were great."

"I had the smallest part. And I'm new to all of this. I don't deserve it."

"Says who?"

"Says Layla."

"You know my stance on Layla, right?"

I smile and nod. "Yeah, fuck her."

He pinches my cheek and shakes it like a grandmother in 90s movies. "I love it when you curse. Gotta go, though. Gotta get my full get up on."

"I want to watch Thatcher in this first scene and then I'll be down to get my fairy stuff on too."

"See you there, kid."

I rest my head in my hand and huff to myself. What if a little thing like Hollywood gets between Thatcher and I?

Then my familiar fear of something else getting between us creeps in: He and Paige walk on stage together, hand in hand. They are their characters, but my stomach still twists. Here I am, away from my boyfriend who I'm currently mad at but trying to find a way not to be, and he's walking hand in hand with his onstage girlfriend, Hermia, who happens to be played by a girl who used to like him.

Greg Sussak as Demetrius struts toward them on stage and greets Paige's Hermia with a kiss on the hand.

"Relent, sweet Hermia: and, Lysander, yield thy crazed title to my certain right," he says.

Thatcher steps between them. His sleeves are a little baggy, so he reminds me more of one of his little brothers instead of himself. I smile to myself.

"You have her father's love, Demetrius," he says. His voice doesn't sound like a boy's at all. He sounds rugged and manly. My heart drops as he turns toward Paige and holds both of her hands in his as he finishes the line: "Let me have Hermia's."

I have to adjust in my seat to keep myself from feeling nauseated. His lines are so convincing--just like they always have been--that I am genuinely scared I won't be his Juliet anymore. He'll move onto a Hermia or a Viola or a Beatrice or a Katherine, or a whoever else that comes into the picture here in Riverside or off in Hollywood or wherever else he might go.

As my thoughts spiral, the scene continues until everyone but Paige and Thatcher are left onstage.

Thatcher touches her cheek. "How now, my love! why is your cheek so pale? How chance the roses there do fade so fast?"

Paige smiles and blushes. Can you fake a blush? Is that acting or a real life response? I clench my teeth.

"Belike for want of rain, which I could well beteem them from the tempest of my eyes."

Whatever that means, I think. Paige sucks.

Thatcher speaks: "Ay me! for aught that I could ever read, could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth; but, either it was different in blood,--"

He leans down to kiss her, and my heart stops. Luckily, she places her fingers over his mouth. Still, she shouldn't be touching his mouth.

"Cross," she objects, "too high to be enthrall'd to low."

"Or else misgraffed in respect of years,--"

"O spite! too old to be engaged to young."

"Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,--"

"O hell! to choose love by another's eyes."

Choose love by my eyes, Thatcher.

He touches her cheek again. "Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, war, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, making it momentany as a sound, swift as a shadow, short as any dream; brief as the lightning in the collied night, that, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, so quick bright things come to confusion."

Then he leans down again, and this time Paige--er, Hermia--doesn't stop him. He kisses her. I've seen this before, but no matter how many times I see it or how many times I remind myself it isn't real, it always hurts the same. My heart literally feels broken. It's beating irregularly and my breath starts to mimic it's crazy rhythm.

In, two, three, four.

Out, two, three, four.

In, two, three, four.

Out, two, three, four.

I practice my breathing right until Moth comes onstage in his old timey looking suspenders, tan pants, and newsboy hat.

That's my cue to go down the stairs and get my fairy garb on. One more deep breath, and then I tiptoe down the dark stairs and into the green room below the audience.

"Janie Myers, where is Janie Myers?" the mom is asking around the room.

"Right here," I answer, matching her hushed tones.

"Hurry up, young lady, you have a fairy costume to get into," the mother says. She sort of looks like Archie, maybe that's who she belongs to.

Behind her, in the dull warm lights of the green room during a performance, Thatcher's face is illuminated in blue light from his phone.

Mine suddenly buzzes in my pocket. As Maybe Archie's Mom gathers together all of my costume pieces, I check my phone.

Thatcher Gorsky (9:15am): Break a leg! Where are you?

I hold my phone face toward him and shine the light at him, and it catches his eye just before Archie's Maybe Mom can pounce on me with glittery fabric and blue, maybe purple--I can't tell in this light--wings.

He smiles or at least I think I see a smile before Maybe Archie's Mom is directly in front of me handing me an armful of clothes to change into.

"Go to the bathroom to change," Maybe Mom tells me.

The girl's bathroom is a one stall room on the stage left side of the green room, the side I'm already on, so I can't make a break for Thatcher to touch base with him. I'm not sure what I would say, because I'm still sort of angry with him--we still haven't really hashed anything out about what the coming months will bring--and I've also just witnessed him kissing his co-star, who happens to be one of my least favorite people at the moment.

I quietly slip into the bathroom, into the stall, and begin to get into my costume. In the bathroom's fluorescent light, I can see that the fabric of my tunic is an iridescent blue and purple fabric and my wings are white with purple tips. Black leggings go under my tunic and then pink ballet slippers go on my feet. I toss my hair up into my best attempt at a bun so it stops getting caught in the swirled tips of my wings, and then I step out of the stall. Right when the door is opening. Right when Paige enters.

"Oh, hey Janie," she whispers. Even though we are behind the door now, it's still important to be quiet in the greenroom.

"Hi Paige."

"I'm sorry to hear about Thatcher going to Hollywood. We'll miss him."

"Yeah, I know."

"I'm sorry it's been so hard on your relationship too."

"Yeah, me too--wait, who said anything about it being hard on our relationship?" I ask.

"Thatcher did. He said you guys are rocky right now. He wasn't sure if you still wanted to go to Homecoming with him anymore."

"He said that? What were his exact words?"

She laughs at me--jerk--and throws her hands up. "I don't remember, jeez. Sounds like something I don't want to get in the middle of."

"Then don't," I say as I push past her to exit the bathroom.

Maybe Archie's Mom greets me with a quick, "Perfect," before I storm past her to Thatcher.

"Don't talk about our relationship with people," I whisper as harshly as possible once I reach him.

"I didn't."

"You did, Paige was just telling me how sorry she was that we were rocky right now. It's embarrassing. It's like... I mean, do you even want to go to Homecoming with me anymore? Because I said nothing about that, but apparently you said something about it to Paige."

Maybe Archie's Mom taps my shoulder. "Janie, you need to get into position, dear."

"You know what, Thatcher?" I start, my cheeks warming with anger. "Don't worry about it. Maybe you shouldn't go with me anyway."

Before I can even see his reaction, I stomp away to my spot backstage in the stage right wings where Moth is exiting. His smile drops as soon as he sees me, and all I can do to stop myself from screaming or crying is fall in his arms.

"Janie, what's wrong?" he asks. "You're about to go on."

"I'm so upset," I whisper.

"Breathe."

In, two, three, four.

Out, two, three, four.

"That's your cue," Moth reminds me.

I shake my body of all my nerves, clear my face, fake a smile, and enter. Like a real actress. Like someone who belongs in Hollywood with her boyfriend and friends, but will be stuck in this stupid town forever.

On my way to lunch, Mrs. Larkin finds me. "Janie," she calls. I cut through the river of students to reach her.

"Hi Mrs. Larkin," I say, half-heartedly. My heart hurts too much still.

"I'm done with your patches," she says, beaming.

"Oh, yeah, thanks."

She disappears into her room momentarily, and when she is back in her classroom doorway, a box is in her hands. "Here," she says. "I hope this accomplishes what you hope it will."

I doubt it, I think. But I have to be grateful, otherwise I'll come off as totally disrespectful instead of just depressed.

"I hope so too, Mrs. Larkin. Thank you so much for doing this for me. You always seem to have my back when people who should don't even have it."

She shrugs. "That's the job. Enjoy, Janie."

"Thank you, Mrs. Larkin."

I can't even bare to open the box and see how foolish my past self was to ask for these badges. These pieces of fabric can't unite us. I don't know if anything can anymore. The misfits are done.