The past two weeks have been the worst of my life. Thatcher, Patti, and Moth tried their best to keep me included, but between my grounding, my mom taking my phone, and my new stupid sewing class, I'm essentially cut off from them. My separation from the misfits was finally as official as it could have possibly been when I forgot to put my phone on silent before dinner and it went off.

"Who was that?" Mom asked between chews.

"Thatcher," I mumbled. She would have known I was lying to her and punished me more if I had. She held out her hand to take my phone, so I turned it off and gave it up. I'm hoping that goodwill will grant me my phone back sooner, but that was Friday and it's Monday now. Still no phone.

Patti has been trying to fill me in on their progress with the play at lunch--because, as she says, she's still waiting for me to come back--, and Thatcher and I catch up on our walks home; but there's distance there now. He wants to talk about what's going on in theater and about his excitement for Grant O'Reilly to come, and I have nothing to talk about. Literally nothing. Nothing is going on in my life, all the fun and excitement has been drained from my days. All I do is sleep anymore.

And when Thatcher and I fall into our silent moments, my thoughts start to spiral, only making me quieter.

What do he and I even have in common if we can't hold down a conversation?

Should we even be together?

What's the point of being a couple if we only see each other to walk home?

Sometimes I'm able to calm myself down and think that maybe we will get back to normal after all the stress from performing for Grant O'Reilly subsides or after my mom finally calms down and realizes I did nothing wrong. But I've never had a blueprint for healthy relationships, so every day it becomes harder and harder to believe everything is okay.

It became especially difficult last Tuesday, when Patti started hosting her "Let's Get Serious" rehearsals at her house after school and Moth started giving Thatcher rides. That's why Thatcher ended up texting me while I was eating dinner: He wanted to let me know that he missed me. I didn't get a chance to reply that I missed him too before my phone was gone.

On Thursday, I decided to try my best to make amends with my mom in the hopes that she would let me hang out with Thatcher and the misfits over the weekend, but it was no use.

"Hey Mom," I said in a gentle tone after dinner that night. She was on the couch reading a book, but she placed her finger in the page and turned to face me.

"Yes?" She knew I wanted something.

I rounded the couch to take a seat on the cushion beside her. "I just wanted to say that I'm really sorry about what happened with Thatcher. You were right: I should have texted you to let you know that the dance was over and I was going to be hanging out with Thatcher. If I had done that, you would have probably even let us come here to hang out a bit."

She winced as if to disagree.

I continued, "Well, anyway, I'm sorry. I will never ever go behind your back like that or lie to you again."

She examines my face for a moment before nodding her head in approval. "I accept your apology. Thank you."

"Thank you, Mom. Because, well... next week is the week Grant O'Reilly is supposed to be at the school to watch the plays, and I was thinking that--"

She cut me off. "--The answer is no."

"But Mom, I like theater. I did better in my classes when I was in theater, I promise. Remember how much Thatcher helped me?"

"You're just not trying as hard as you should be right now, because you're mad. Once you get over all of this, you'll see, you'll do much better. Besides, Thatcher won't be around your whole life to help you. It isn't good to become too dependent on people."

High school sweethearts staying together is a thing, I thought, but I didn't dare say it. I didn't dare say anything, because I knew that my anger toward her in that moment would only make things worse. Instead, I withdrew, mumbled a faint, "I love you, Mom," and went to my room to cry in peace.

As the weekend crept on, I reverted back to my old self more and more, helpless, invisible, and apathetic. Why care about anything if nothing in my life means anything to me? Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, and now all this morning have felt like a fog. Like I'm living behind a TV and the things in front of me are just pictures on the screen. It's life, but it doesn't feel real.

Even math with Layla was weird. She turned to me halfway through a problem Mr. Buford was walking the rest of the class through (my paper was blank still), and asked if I needed help. Not in a sarcastic way or a shove-it-in-my-face sort of way, either. A real genuine moment of human decency.

"Why?" I asked her.

She shrugged and leaned closer to whisper, "Because you haven't done anything yet. And because I know you've been having a hard time lately, since leaving theater."

"What do you care?" I said under my breath. "You got the script you want and now your chances are going to be even better against a group with only three people in it."

She smiled a sneaky grin. "That's not how I want to win the part on A Call from Midnight." She takes a moment to catch up with the notes from Mr. Buford, and then turned back to me. This was the really weird part. Her face softened, and she said, "I'm sorry that you couldn't finish the quarter with us. We're rivals for plays in theater class, but when we do plays all together, we have to work together. You were better than Gina anyway."

I smiled. "Really?"

"Really. She can't remember her lines to save her life." She looked back up at Mr. Buford and wrote all the notes she missed while talking to me.

"Thank you for being nice for once," I said.

"Sure," she said, but that was the end of the conversation. She was all business after that. Maybe she'd run out of kindness and that was it, but it only made me feel sadder not to be in theater anymore. Not that I wanted to be friends with Layla ever, but now I won't get to see her and Patti work together. That'll be hilarious.

I can't stop thinking about all the things I'll miss in theater, not just in the next two weeks as the quarter comes to an end, but also in the quarters and years to come. I'm only a sophomore, and I could have had two more years with the misfits and the rest of the theater kids I didn't even get a chance to know.

But now, in 5th period English, my thoughts are interrupted when Mr. Taylor says a familiar name: Shakespeare.

I pick my head off the desk, where it has been pretty much exclusively for the past two weeks, and I'm nearly brought to tears hearing his name. Shakespeare is the reason I first noticed Thatcher. He's the author of the first story I can say I truly enjoyed reading in school. Plus, like Thatcher once said, Shakespeare is the great equalizer. Everyone struggles with his writing, so when we read his works, I'm not the only one who stumbles. I don't feel dumb reading Shakespeare.

"So now that we finished our Catcher in the Rye unit," Mr. Taylor starts—oh yeah, I failed the second half of that unit test last week—, "We are going to get into the second Shakespeare play you'll read in high school." He leans back against his desk, picking up a book and holding it up to us. "Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Macbeth, a play all about desperately wanting something you didn't realize you wanted until you knew about it. Kind of like how all of you guys are with the newest video games or Jordans."

He gets a laugh from some of the kids in the class, but I can't relate to them. When I think about desperately wanting something you never knew you wanted, my thoughts immediately return to theater and Thatcher and the misfits.

"Macbeth wants to be the king of Scotland so badly that he will risk anything to get it, which is noble and good as long as you don't kill to get it, which... well, it's a Shakespeare play, so you can imagine."

He gets another laugh from the class, only this time, I laugh along. I finally get one of Mr. Taylor's nerdy jokes.

He continues, "And that's exactly what gets Macbeth into trouble, eventually making him arguably the unluckiest character in all of Shakespeare."

"Unluckier than Romeo and Juliet?" I ask without raising my hand.

Every head in the class turns, and Mr. Taylor seems so shocked that I've said anything at all that I half expect the top of his head to blow right off. "Well," he starts, sort of stuttering, "I will let you be the judge of that, Janie. Although, a sort of interesting tidbit: in the theater, it is considered bad luck to say the name Macbeth. A lot of actors even believe it to be cursed, so inside a theater, they'll refer to Macbeth as 'The Scottish Play' to avoid risk."

I raise my hand this time.

"Janie?"

"What if everything is already going wrong in the theater? Like, what if you're already cursed. Can a curse reverse a curse?"

He laughs. "I have no idea, Janie, but that would be an interesting experiment. You let me know, okay?"

I smile. "Okay."

"You know what, Janie. Why don't you read one of the witches parts in the beginning of the play. First Witch?"

"Sure."

"Great," he says, a wide smile stretching across his face. This is literally the first time I've volunteered or even participated in anything all year, so his teacher feels must be all kinds of excited right now.

He assigns two other girls in the class to read for the other witch parts and a few other students for a whole bunch of other parts. Then he passes out the books, and we begin reading.

I have the first line of the whole play. I take a deep breath and slow down my thoughts, and the words start to clarify on the page. Beneath the cloak of Shakespeare's language, my dyslexia and I start to read: "When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain?"

"When the hurlyburly's done, when the battle's lost and won," the second witch girl, I think her name is Paige, reads.

We continue with the scene, and even though the witches are definitely not referring to me and the misfits, I can't unsee the connections. When shall we meet again, as in when will we be together again? When the hurlyburly's done and the battle lost and won, as in when all of this nonsense with my mom and Grant O'Reilly is done.

"Fair is foul and foul is fair," the three of us witches read in unison.

What happened to me wasn't fair, it was foul. So maybe I have to be foul too. A seed of thought takes root in my brain. My life right now can't get much worse, right? So why not fight for what I want like Macbeth? Minus the killing stuff, of course.

Would it be crazy to just perform in the one act anyway? I wonder.

When class ends, Mr. Taylor stops me before I head off to lunch. "Incredible work today, Janie," he says.

"Thanks, Mr. Taylor. I like Shakespeare."

"Yeah, but he's pretty tough to read, especially for people who struggle with reading already, and you did a great job. You have a real talent for Shakespeare." He pauses before saying, "Don't give that up."

"Thanks. I'll try not to. It's been a little harder lately, but I'll try."

"Yeah... one of my students has been confiding in me about a certain someone he knows with a talent for Shakespeare who was just removed from his theater class."

That has to be Thatcher.

Mr. Taylor lets a little knowing grin creep over his face. "If I could talk to the person who was removed from the theater class, I'd tell her not to give up her dreams, especially if her dreams have been the only things that have brought any sort of smile to her face since I've known her."

"Thank you, Mr. Taylor," I say.

"No problem. Have a good day."

"You too."

I think about what he said as I make my way down to the cafeteria. He's right: it isn't just a class, it isn't just about my friends or my boyfriend, it's about me too. It's about my happiness and my dreams and my talents.

It wouldn't be too crazy to perform in the one act. Would it?

No, it wouldn't. And I know why: Because I owe the misfits so much. Thatcher taught me acceptance. Moth taught me individuality. Patti taught me determination. So now I'm going to show them loyalty.

"Hey Janie," Patti greets me as I approach the lunch table.

"Teach me the blocking. Catch me up on the one act. I'm going to do it."

"You're back in the class?" she asks, nearly squealing with excitement.

"Nope, but that's not going to stop me from performing with you guys. You're my troupe, and I'm going to be there for you. I can't rehearse at your house after school, but I can at lunch. I can come early too if you want me to. I want to do this."

"That's not allowed, you know?"

"Yep, I know."

She smiles. "Then we have a lot of work to do."