If We Were Villains: A Novel

Two weeks before opening night we had our photos taken for publicity, and the FAB was an absolute madhouse. In order to take photos we needed costumes, and everyone was running back and forth from the dressing rooms to the rehearsal hall, changing ties and shirts and shoes until Gwendolyn was satisfied. The previous year’s election had inspired Frederick to do Caesar as a presidential race, so we were all dressed as White House hopefuls. I had never worn a suit that really fit me in my life, and my own reflection surprised me more than once. For the first time, I entertained the idea that I could be handsome, with enough effort. (Previously, I’d thought of myself as attractive only in a forgettable, inoffensive way—an idea reinforced by the fact that the few girls I’d been mixed up with inevitably seemed to realize that they liked me better onstage as Antonio or Demetrius than offstage as my mild-mannered self.) Of course, among my classmates I might as well have been invisible. Alexander looked like a mafioso in shimmering charcoal gray, an onyx tiepin glinting on his chest. James, immaculate in deep ink blue, could have been the heir apparent of some small European monarchy. But Richard, in pale pearl gray and a blood-red tie, cut the most impressive figure of us all.

“Is it just me or does that suit actually make him taller?” I asked, looking through the door of the rehearsal hall, where they’d set up a black screen to be our backdrop. They wanted Richard first, for the “campaign poster shot,” as Gwendolyn kept calling it.

“I think his ego just makes him look bigger,” James said.

Alexander craned his neck to see between us. “Maybe so. But you can’t deny, the guy looks good.” He glanced at me and added, “So would you, if you could learn to tie a Windsor knot properly.”

Me: “Is it still crooked?”

Alexander: “Have you seen yourself?”

Me: “Just fix it, will you?”

Alexander tipped my chin up to adjust my tie and carried on whispering to James. “Honestly, I’m glad we’ve got a night off from rehearsal for this. Every time we do The Fucking Tent Scene with Gwendolyn’s commentary, I just want to lie down and die.”

“Arguably, that’s sort of how you should feel.”

“Look, I expect to be emotionally exhausted after a show, but she makes that scene so real that I look at you offstage and I can’t decide if I want to kiss you or kill you.”

I snorted out a laugh and Alexander jerked on my tie. “Stop squirming.”

“Sorry.”

Filippa appeared behind us from the girls’ dressing room. (She had at least three costumes; at that particular moment it was a pin-striped pantsuit, not flattering.) “What are we talking about?” she whispered.

Alexander: “I might make out with James tomorrow.”

James: “Lucky me.”

Filippa: “Could be worse. Remember Midsummer, when Oliver head-butted me in the face?”

Me: “In my defense, I tried to kiss you nicely, but I couldn’t see because Puck squirted his love juice right in my eye.”

Alexander: “There was so much innuendo in that sentence I don’t even know where to start.”

Across the room, Gwendolyn clapped her hands and said, “Well, I don’t think we’re going to get anything better than that. What’s next? The couples? Fine.” She turned toward us and called, “Filippa, go and find the other girls, won’t you?”

“Because they couldn’t possibly want me here for any other reason,” Filippa muttered, and disappeared into the dressing room again.

“Honestly,” James said, shaking his head, “if they don’t give her a decent role in the spring, I’m boycotting the show.”

When the other girls appeared it was immediately clear that wardrobe had spent more time on them. Wren was in a tasteful navy dress, while Meredith wore something red that hugged her curves like a coat of paint, her hair blown out to its full volume like a lion’s mane.

“Where do they want us?” Meredith asked.

“In the centerfold, I’d imagine,” Alexander said, looking her up and down. “Did they have to pour you into that?”

“Yeah,” she said. “And I’ll need five people to pry me out of it.” She seemed annoyed about it more than smug.

“Well,” James said, “I’m sure there will be no shortage of volunteers.” He didn’t make it sound like something to be smug about.

“James!” Gwendolyn barked. “I need you and the girls over here, yesterday.”

They made their way across the room, Meredith carefully tiptoeing between the tangled extension cords in gleaming patent pumps.

“So,” Filippa said, “I don’t even count as a girl now.”

“No offense,” Alexander said, “but not in that outfit you don’t.”

“Quiet in the hall, please!” Gwendolyn called, without even turning around.

Filippa made a face like she’d just bitten into a rotten apple. “God, spare me,” she said. “I’m going for a smoke.”

She didn’t elaborate, but she didn’t need to. As Gwendolyn and the photographer arranged Richard, Meredith, James, and Wren under the lights, it was impossible to ignore the blatant display of favoritism. I sighed, barely bothered, and watched James—hardly aware of the camera, unintentionally charming—as Gwendolyn jostled him and Wren together. I was only half listening when Alexander leaned close to my ear and said, “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

“Huh?”

“Okay, actually pay attention for a minute and then tell me if you see it.”

At first I had no idea what he was talking about. But then I did see something—just a twitch at the corner of Meredith’s mouth as Richard’s hand brushed her back. They stood side by side, turned slightly toward each other, but Meredith didn’t quite look like Calpurnia, the perfect politician’s wife, adoring to the point of distraction. Her hand lay flat on Richard’s lapel, but it looked stiff and unnatural there. At the photographer’s instruction, he put one arm around her waist. She lifted her own arm, just barely, so their elbows weren’t touching.

“Trouble in paradise?” Alexander suggested.

After the Halloween “incident,” as I kept thinking of it, we had all proceeded largely as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, dismissing it as a bit of drunken horseplay gone too far. Richard offered James a perfunctory apology, which was accepted with proportionate insincerity, and from that point forward, they were rigidly cordial to each other. The rest of us were making a commendable (if doomed) effort to get back to normal. Meredith was the unexpected exception: for the first few days of November, she refused to speak to Richard at all.

“Aren’t they sleeping in the same room again?” I asked.

“Not as of last night.”

“How do you know?”

He shrugged. “The girls tell me things.”

I looked sideways at him. “Anything interesting?”

He gave me a quick once-over and said, “Oh, you have no idea.”

I could tell he wanted me to ask what, so I didn’t. I peeked back through the door, hoping to reach a conclusion on the state of affairs with Meredick, but another small movement distracted me. At Gwendolyn’s instruction, Wren tilted her head to rest on James’s shoulder.

“Don’t they look the perfect American couple,” Alexander remarked.

“Yeah.” The camera flashed. James played idly with a strand of Wren’s hair, but at the nape of her neck, where I was fairly sure the photographer wouldn’t catch it. I frowned, squinted across the room. “Alexander, are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

He followed my gaze with only a vague show of curiosity. James continued winding one lock of Wren’s hair around his finger. I couldn’t tell if either of them even realized he was doing it. Wren smiled—maybe for the camera—as if she had a secret.

Alexander gave me a queer, sad sort of look. “Are you just seeing this now?” he said. “Oh, Oliver. You’re as oblivious as they are.”