Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli (ereader with android txt) 📕

fine with Matt not liking me. I mean, he’s gay—it’s not even personal. It’s just another Éponine situation, right? He was never mine to lose.

I’m even warming up to the idea of Matt and Anderson dating. But the thought of Matt knowing I liked him—I can’t shake that. I can’t stop thinking about how it all must look to Matt. My sad, misdirected thirst. I hate being pitied. It makes me feel like such a loser. When someone feels sorry for you, you can’t help but become that sorry person, at least a little bit.

It’s enough to make a person want to lock herself inside a dressing room forever.

To be fair, the dressing rooms are party central. I always forget how much I love these backstage moments. Someone took the gender signs off the doors years ago, and we use both rooms interchangeably. There are tiny bathroom stalls for when you’re actually changing, but for the most part, people just lounge around in folding chairs and eat pretzels and listen to the Official Once Upon a Mattress Playlist, curated by Lana Bennett. Admittedly, full of bops.

There’s just something to be said for the fact that I’m sitting in a circle, smack-dab between Margaret Daskin and Emma McLeod, whom I suddenly trust with my life, even though I never really hang out with them outside of theater. It’s this strange way of knowing someone. I never think of it as true friendship, because how could it be if we don’t know each other’s secrets. But when you can sit in a room with someone and feel totally at home, what else would you call it?

Devon Blackwell appears in the doorway with his binder. “Okay, Minstrel’s starting the prologue. We need Aggravain, Sextimus, Dauntless, Wizard, Lady Larken, Lady Rowena, Lady Merrill, Lady Lucille, Princess Number Twelve, and”—he turns the page—“any other knights and ladies for Act One, Scene One. In the wings, please.”

“Raina, Noah, and Anderson are already in the wings, stage left,” Emma says, rotating her wheelchair toward the door. “But Colin and Pierra are, uh. In the lighting booth.”

“Of course they are.” Devon double blinks, shaking his head slowly.

Scene 68

“Zhao’s going to quit,” I murmur to Raina and Brandie two and a half hours later, as we settle onto the various platforms and set pieces for our first round of notes. “She’s gonna be like, nope, y’all are hot messes, and I’m out.”

“You say that every single show,” Brandie says.

“I know, but this is going to be the one. I can feel it.” I scoot back against the stack of mattresses, tucking my legs up into triangles. “See, it’s because we lost a Saturday rehearsal because of Rosh Hashanah. So now everyone’s going to blame us Jews if this sucks.”

“No one’s blaming anyone,” Brandie says, scooting up beside me—and then she sniffs the air suddenly. “Hey, pizza’s here.”

“Which means Zhao needs to hurry up and give us notes. I’m hungry,” says Raina.

“And, Kate, it’s not going to suck,” Brandie says. “This happens every time, remember? We run through it, it’s rough, we keep going, it gets better, and by opening night, it’s great. Every time, Kate.”

“I just want to fast-forward,” I say. “Let’s just skip to the part where it’s great.”

“She’s just hangry,” Raina tells Brandie. “Watch. She’ll have one slice of pizza, and she’ll be a brand-new person.”

“Shut up.” I shove Raina’s arm.

“Am I wrong?”

I sigh heavily. “You’re not wrong.”

Pizza’s forbidden onstage near the set pieces, so we all trickle out into the auditorium seats and the lobby. Anderson and Matt disappear pretty much immediately, which doesn’t hurt anywhere near as much as I thought it would. Maybe one quick pang, but mostly relief that I can just settle in with Brandie and Raina and Colin and Pierra and whoever, and not worry about avoiding them.

But I’ve barely had time to grab my pizza and a water bottle when Noah materializes beside me. “Hey, want to eat outside?”

I nod. “Should I grab Raina and Brandie?”

“Oh.” He presses his lips together. “I was thinking just us.”

“Oh.”

“Is that . . .”

“Okay.” There’s this pinprick feeling, just below my rib cage. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

“Okay, great,” he says, smiling, and the next thing I know, I’m cutting through a row of seats behind him, out through the side door of the auditorium. It feels strangely rebellious, stepping out here in the middle of rehearsal even though we’re on break until two thirty. Noah stakes out a spot around the back of the auditorium, and we settle in for a curb picnic. He sets his pizza on the ground beside him and leans back against the school’s brick exterior. “This is perfect.”

“Better than the lobby,” I agree. “Hey, you were great this morning.”

He looks both startled and pleased. “Me?”

“I don’t think I’ve seen you guys do ‘Man to Man Talk’ since the read-through. Y’all are hilarious.”

“Well, so were you.”

I laugh. “I don’t think my character’s supposed to be hilarious.”

“It just makes it even more impressive.”

“I don’t know if that’s how it works.” I shake my head, smiling.

“Well, you were really good. Matt too. Are you sure you’re not dating him?”

“Ha ha.”

“You’re not bf-gf?” Noah glances at me sidelong, and for one stomach-plummeting moment, I’m sure he knows the whole story. Maybe Andy and Matt really did spill the beans in Senior D. But then again, something about the way Noah’s looking at me makes me think he’s really asking. It’s as if he’s trying to read between the lines of my expression.

“We’re not bf-gf. I already told you that.”

“On our walk home,” he says, nodding. “Hey.”

I turn to face him, head-on, but he doesn’t elaborate. “Hey what?” I ask finally.

He nods, opens his mouth, shuts it, grins nervously, and then shuts it again, and I almost laugh from the pure Noah-ness of the sequence. But something stops me. Maybe it’s the strange flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. Or maybe it’s the way my own heart won’t stop pounding. “Hey. Okay,” he says finally. “I