Page 13 of Bring me Back

Hallie nodded, pencil in her mouth as she thrusted a bunch of light material into my hands. I looked down. “You think it’s better to do it with fabric than wood?” When she lifted a shoulder, I chuckled. “I am the woodwork teacher, Hallie.”

She rolled her eyes and went back to her own work. I took the fabric between my fingers, bringing it under the light to examine it better.

“Half-wood, half-fabric?” I offered.

Hallie arched an eyebrow, and I knew it was the right answer.

Anyone who heard me that week would have thought I was insane, but I was just fascinated. The girl didn’t take part in the land of the living. She was always surrounded by fabric, old and new, stitching or not; she was an island and it made me relentless to figure out what happened when she went to Bluehaven High.

They—the adults around while she was a teenager—told me she was bullied. But her body language, on the rare occasions she roamed the halls while school was still in session, gave me hints that the bullying was worse than people were willing to accept. She had baggage; anyone could see it. It was selfish and not right, but I became obsessed with finding out Hallie’s secrets.

Finally, the last day of casting arrived, and after a round of particularly terrible Pucks, our game was flying high. That afternoon, I tried to engage Hallie again. Coming close, I asked, “Isn’t it better to wait until casting so you can measure them?”

I had no idea what she was doing; for all I knew, she was just sitting there fiddling with things. I knew she needed the right measurements to make costumes, but that was as far as my knowledge went.

Hallie looked up and opened her mouth. I could almost taste her words. But as soon as she saw my smirk, it closed back with a snap.

“Almost gotcha.” I grinned.

She raised her chin up, twisting the needle in fabric and staring at me.

We both knew she was going to talk eventually, but it was fun to see how long she lasted. I was still smiling and almost missed when Helen came through the door, script in hands, distracted as she talked.

“They were ok, weren’t they?” she asked no one in particular.

I grunted, lacking anything nice to say. Hallie pursed her lips and nodded. I didn’t think she had anything nice to say either.

“Tommy Garrison wants to be Lysander, but I think he would be a great Puck,” Helen talked to herself. “I always give them the part they want…”

Silence.

“… But I think he would do great things with Puck.”

The case of who played who didn’t seem like something I wanted to weigh in on. It was a school play; there wasn’t much to be said about it. They could do well or not; if we were lucky, we’d get one mediocre actor in the bunch. Helen was committed, though. The annual play was her baby, and she took every bit seriously.

“Maybe I should just give him Puck,” she wondered. “That’s what a good teacher would do. Give something that he can excel at. See the potential he doesn’t see in himself. That’s what a good teacher does, isn’t it?”

I opened my mouth to reply, as I was the only educator present, but Hallie got there first.

“What I always liked about you is that you listen. You never decided what was good for me.”

Helen blinked at her ex-student with a far-away smile. “You always knew what you wanted.”

Hallie shifted on her own butt, tasting the words before they were out. “And only a few people listen. It was good that you did.”

Helen considered Hallie’s words, tilting her head right as she looked down at the script. Eventually, she nodded. “That’s right. Tommy is Lysander then…”

She said more things about the casting, but I wasn’t interested anymore. My eyes were glued on Hallie; she was nodding to Helen’s words but offered nothing else. I smirked when, without taking her eyes off Helen, Hallie flicked her earlobe, demanding me to stop staring.

I shook my head just a little for her to see, and she wrinkled her nose and rubbed her thighs in reply. I liked too much that we had our own way to communicate. It was stupid as fuck, but made me feel worthy.

When Helen finally left, Hallie sliced me a look like we were in the middle of an argument.

“I’m like the Han Solo for your Chewbacca.”

She did not like that.

Tommy was Lysander.

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