The Juliet Spell (28 page)

“Drew,” I said. “I never want to see you again.”

Chapter Thirty.

Five

That was last year. It seems like yesterday. It seems like a century ago. Or four.

But it’s over. Somewhere, William Shakespeare is writ.ing another play. Edmund is acting, or juggling in front of a pub, trying to make a living as an actor. There’s no way to make contact, ever again. Drew wiped the memory on his computer and his cell phone.

Phil Hormel turned up at Drew’s house later the same day that Edmund left forever. He was almost out of his mind. The police investigated, but what was there to investigate? A man had disappeared, now he was back. Phil sold his house and moved far away. Nobody’s seen or heard from him since then.

Mr. Brandstedt got slapped with a weapons charge and had to do a lot of community service. He and Maria are still married.

We actually went on with the play. We had to. So many people in the cast had money in it we had to try to earn it back. So Bobby took Romeo and Vivian took Juliet and good old Bill Meisinger did Friar Lawrence and the Chorus. The show did okay.

Better than okay, I guess The Ashland apprenticeships went to Bobby and Vivian. They each got cast in small parts, and started dating after they got back from Ashland. They’re the hot couple of local theater, talking about all the shows they’re going to do in college. I’m good with it. I haven’t done a play since Romeo and Juliet. I can’t get interested in theater again. It hurts too much.

I’ve just been going through the motions. I concentrate on my grades because I don’t have anything else to do. I keep to myself. When Edmund’s fake birth certificate finally ar.rived in the mail, I didn’t even tear it up. I just threw it in the trash.

Lately, I’ve been reading in the folio, looking for charac.ters in the plays that might be us. In King Lear there’s a vil.lain named Edmund. I wonder if Shakespeare wrote it for his brother. And maybe Mom is in The Winter’s Tale as Pau.lina, the noblewoman who stands up for the truth against the king. It’s the kind of thing Mom would do. And maybe I’m Miranda in The Tempest and maybe Dad is the duke-magician who makes everything happen. There’s no way to know, of course. Reading the plays is just a way to touch that amaz.ing few weeks when I was magical and in love.

I cast a spell to make me Juliet. It worked. But I forgot that Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy. I got what I asked for.

Drew took me at my word. He’s left me alone, and at school I don’t ever look his way. But just lately I’ve been missing him a little. He was part of that whole crazy, magi.cal summer. And being alone all the time is beginning to lose some of its charm.

So today, for the first time in six months or so, when school was over I waited for Drew by his car.

“Give me a lift?” I said.

He opened the door for me.

We didn’t talk on the way home. But I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed being back in that silly little 2CV that could carry a basket of eggs across a plowed field and never break one. It was the first time since Edmund vanished that I’d felt any good memories from that time.

When we got to my place, we parked at the curb because one of Dad’s clients was in the driveway. Dad’s been getting a lot of work lately.

“Do you miss working with Doctor Dee?” I asked.

“I miss—everybody. All of it,” Drew said. “Well, ex.cept for the part when I worried that time might be coming apart.”

“I’m sorry I said I never wanted to see you again,” I said.

“I don’t blame you,” Drew said. “If I had the choice, I’d never see me again, either.”

I laughed. It wasn’t much of a laugh, but it was my first one in months.

“You were the best friend he had, Drew,” I said.

“Maybe. But I was the one who made it possible for him to go back.”

I closed my eyes. “But I was the one that brought him. And that started everything else. At the end, there were no choices left.”

“Not quite,” Drew said. “We did have choices. But we made the choices that we had to make.”

“Well,” I said. “That’s one definition of tragedy.”

“Ha, too true, I guess,” Drew said, and then we both looked across the parking lot in silence for a moment.

“I want some coffee,” I said. “Do you want some?”

“Yes.”

We drove to Malpaso Row and parked. We walked past the plaza where we’d staged the play a year ago. The banners were all gone. The set had been struck. There was no sign that there’d ever been a play there, one night when a cast of actors and its audience had made one great night of theater. That’s the way theater is. It leaves nothing behind, unless it changes you in some way.

I had been Juliet.

I had taken a try at being Beatrice.

Maybe now was time to be Miranda.

I took Drew’s hand. It was warm and strong. It wasn’t like holding Edmund’s hand had been, but I liked the glow it gave me.

“I’ve missed you, Mercutio,” I said.

“I’ve missed you,” Drew answered.

We pushed through the bookstore door. Our hands stayed locked together.

* * * * *

Historical Note

Edmund Shakespeare was born in 1580 and died in 1607. He worked as an actor in London at the same time his brother William was writing the greatest plays in the English lan.guage. He never married, but he had a daughter who died before she was two. That is all that we know about him, ex.cept for one fact. When he died, someone paid a pound to have all the bells rung from the Church of Saint Saviour on the day of his funeral. A pound was a great deal of money to spend on bells. If William Shakespeare gave the money for the bells, it may well be that he loved his brother very much.

Quotes Note

Readers may notice that Edmund spends a lot of time quot.ing from his brother’s plays. Some readers may even notice that his quotes all come from plays that were written after 1597. This is intentional. Shakespeare had no problem with taking inspiration anywhere he could find it, and of course one of Edmund’s problems with his big brother in The Juliet Spell is exactly this.

We’ve been quoting Shakespeare for four hundred years. Who was he quoting?

Readers of this story finally have the answer.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Sam Krow-Lucal for his background in.formation on acting Shakespeare; Charles McKiethan, of Thrust, which builds the sets for theaters all over the San Francisco Bay area for information on set construction; Carol Wolf for her insights into the structure of Romeo and Juliet; and my wife, JoAnn, for her help with a very difficult story.