Page 125 of Everything's Coming Up Rosie

I wring my hands, then force myself to set them in my lap. “My mother didn’t handle it well—his leaving. I remember she got really depressed. The house was always dark. I ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And... I spent a lot of time alone.”

He glances over at me, but his eyes don’t linger.

“I had big feelings back then too,” I say softly. “But I knew that sharing them wasn’t good for my mom. So I learned how to mask them. Cover them up. Mostly with humor, which came easy tome. Making people laugh. I would pretend to feel other things, and I got so good at it—the acting—that it turned into a whole career.” I chuckle, mostly to myself.

He shifts in his seat and folds his hands on his lap.

I continue, “I stuffed the real feelings down, and I did everything I could to make my mom smile. I was intent on not being a burden—I didn’t want her to leave me too, you know?”

“And these are the memories you don’t use in your work,” he says, more of a statement than a question.

I nod. “I never have. And I’ve had professors and teachers, heck, even friends, recognize that I close myself off. But until you, nobody made it make sense.” I pause. “I’m afraid of my big feelings. I don’t like that everything seems deep and difficult.” I half laugh. “I want to be the joy. I just want things to be easy.”

“Things arenevereasy. Not the things worth anything anyway,” he says.

“True,” I agree. “But if I’m not the happy, upbeat, funny one, then who am I?”

“Be happy and upbeat and funny when it suits,” he says. “But sometimes, you might be quiet and thoughtful—and honest.”

Honest. It’s hard hearing that.

“I want people to like me.” I shift in my seat. “And sometimes I find fiction easier than reality.”

He meets my eyes, questioning, and I’m not even sure why I said that. Except that... I sometimes find fiction easier than reality.

Easier to escape into someone else’s story than to face everything in my own.

But that’s not what I tell Arthur. Instead, I say, “I made a promise to my mom not long after my dad left.”

“What kind of promise?”

“That I’d get a big dream and go after it. Never let myself be swayed or deterred or stopped. Not by a guy, not by circumstance,not by anything. I think she sometimes wishes she hadn’t gotten sidetracked.” I think but don’t say,Hadn’t had me.

“So the whole pursuit of this dream—it’s all been for her?” he asks.

“I didn’t think so. Idon’tthink so.” I shake my head. “Actually, I’m not sure.”

“Rosie.” He leans forward. “Why doyouwant to be an actor?”

His simple question confounds me.

Because I can’t answer it.

I don’t know.

When I meet his eyes again, I can see him read through all the things I’m not saying.

He goes still for a long moment, and then he says, “The first time I ever met my Annie was when she came to audition forFunny Girl.”

My shoulders drop, and I go still.

“She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” he says, looking off, and I imagine him picturing her. “In a quirky, sort of oddball way.” He leans back in the chair and seems to go somewhere else. “When she sang that song”—his eyes flick over to me—“The same song you sang, I remember thinking,Where has this girl been hiding?”

My gaze drifts past him to a framed photo next to the computer.

“When you sang it that day in the dining hall”—he looks away, then shrugs—“You reminded me of her.”

“I’m sorry, Arthur,” I say. “I didn’t know—”

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