Stealing The Show

By Baker Lawley

Lewis Champion has a theory that being in love with your best friend, when she doesn’t know it, is like being in Heaven and Hell at the same time. As a wallflower, he makes lots of theories about people, but this one’s personal. Lewis is in total, hopeless love with Jubilee Marshfield. His best friend. And he doesn’t have the guts to tell her.

But life gets urgent when his beloved grandfather gets terminal cancer. Paps, a wily old journalist with storytelling in his bones, wants to live his remaining days fully, so he helps Lewis plan to tell Jubilee his feelings.

Before Lewis tells her, Paps dies. Like a good story, though, Paps doesn’t go away. In his will, he leaves the strangest wish: he wants his ashes spread in his hometown, San Francisco, thousands of miles away from Minneapolis. And he wants Lewis to do it.

While Lewis’ instincts say to stay and be the quiet bystander in secret love with Jubilee, other forces say to go--his friends, a surprise chunk of money, and a mysterious series of letters that arrive after Paps’ death. Lewis decides the dying wish is worth the risk, and so is the risk of confessing his love to Jubliee.

On a rogue road trip that takes Lewis and his friends west into Paps’ past and closer together, Lewis discovers the power of stories, the courage to say what he feels, and the meaning of acting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Lawley
• Release date: Jan 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301829149

Baker Lawley

When I was about six, I defaced my copy of Stuart Little. I didn't like the ending, so I rewrote it, right there in pen on the last page. I've been a writer ever since--and I still have that copy of Stuart Little.I've worked as a septic system tester, a lifeguard, a school uniform salesman, an editor, a freelance writer, and currently I'm a Professor of Creative Writing and English, and every one of those jobs taught me a lot about writing.I write young adult novels, a Southern Gothic paranormal series, short stories, and writing guides, and I've had stories published in literary journals like Copper Nickel, The Cream City Review, Eleven Eleven, and The Southeast Review. I've been fortunate to receive grants from the Jerome Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board.You can see all my books and read excerpts on my website right at http://www.bakerlawley.com/booksAnd you can get FREE EBOOKS from me, too! Just sign up for my newsletter at http://www.bakerlawley.com/contactYou can find me on the web at:Website: http://www.bakerlawley.comTumblr blog: http://blog.bakerlawley.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/bakerlawleyFacebook: www.facebook.com/BakerLawleyAuthor

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Stealing The Show

by Baker Lawley

Published by ECRH Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Baker Lawley

Discover other books by Baker Lawley at his website, www.bakerlawley.com.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favorite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or actual locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover image courtesy just4fun31.deviantart.com. Used with permission.

Part I

This Is The Life

IT’S A PERFECT moment, really.

It’s almost midnight, and Jubilee Marshfield and I are sitting on the see saw at this little kid playground, without see-sawing. We just bob up and down slightly, our gangly teenager legs way too long for how low the see saw sits. There aren’t any lights here, since kids aren’t usually on playgrounds this time of night. And as we bob a little, the see saw makes this creepy moan that echoes around in the dark.

Perfect except for one thing.

I brought us here so that I could tell her—actually, finally tell her—that I am in love with her.

And I am failing miserably.

But the thing is, she says, and then she stops to think. Her hair is in these long wild curls and right then she pushes off the ground and her curls bounce way up when she reaches the top as I bang my ass on the ground.

And as I rise up in the air as she falls, and her curls look like her hair is a campfire atop her head, I ask, What is the thing, Jube?

Sometimes she starts thinking and just forgets to keep me updated. Once she gets going on these rants, it’s like trying to stop a hurricane. She starts railing against all the dumb rules of life and stuff, but can’t do anything about them, so she feels Life Claustrophobia.

We see saw up and down a few times and the only sound is the wail of the see saw across the dark.

It’s a perfectly horrible, impossible, useless time to tell someone you love them.

Especially that you’ve always loved them and have been too chickenshit all these years to tell them.

"The thing is, Lewis, we don’t even fucking remember most of our lives. We live this long life if we’re lucky, but most of it is so boring that we don’t even bother to keep it in our brains."

Then, when she’s at the bottom and I’m at the top of the see saw, she slips off her seat. I free fall until I feel my ass bang against the ground and my spine crunch together and my tailbone shatter. I hear her laugh and run off, and I stand up slowly and realize that I am, in fact, unhurt. Sort of.

I have this theory. The thing about being in love with your best friend, when they don’t know it, is that you’re in Heaven and Hell at the same time.

Or maybe the thing about being in love with your best friend is that you’re best friends, and you can be yourself, but you want to not be yourself. You want to be the guy that she will fall for, the guy she tells you about. You want to be somebody else different than you, better than you.

But then, if you did that, you wouldn’t be friends anymore. And where does that get you?

I’ve taken what I could.

My best friend is Jubilee Marshfield.

As far as friends go, she’s the best kind to have.

As far as people to fall in love with, I should’ve chosen a hedgehog. I’d have an easier time figuring out a Siberian fur trader’s daughter who could only grunt at me.

But I’m doomed because this very quality of mystery is what I love about Jubilee Marshfield.

I see her across the playground over on the swings and walk over.

I’m fine, by the way. You were saying? I say.

I sit in the swing beside hers and spin in circles to twist the chains together, then let them unwind. She pumps her legs to swing higher. She has a beautiful voice and on the swing, while she talks, she gets louder and quieter, back and forth.

Like this moment, right here, she says. This. Right. Now. Will we remember this?

I will. Because yet again I can’t muster the balls to tell her how I feel.

But I remember lots of things.

Because the other thing about being in love with your best friend is that you remember things that most people can forget. Like, I will certainly remember this moment. I remember that she hates curly fries but loves tater tots. I remember that her favorite Muppet was Fozzie Bear. I remember that she loves The Decemberists and Randy Newman, who I’d never heard of.

She prefers Dr. Pepper, the color green, Macs, flip-flops, books, and football. She can’t stand high heels (pumps, she calls them, and that name’s why she can’t stand them), Glee, music with keyboards in it, texting or cell phones in general, my car (even though she doesn’t have one, so we use mine all the time), and my other best friend, Freddie Shoemaker, or Shoe, as we’ve called him since first grade.

I remember this stuff, but not because I’m a creeper. She’s fascinating, and she’s my best friend. So it sticks. I can’t help it.

But I can’t show up in a Fozzie Bear costume, wearing a football helmet and carrying a case of Dr. Pepper and a new MacBook and singing Louisiana, 1948 by Randy Newman and expect her to suddenly fall in love back with me, either.

So what good does remembering so much of my life do me? Maybe I should forget more. It’s another theory I have.

I say, This is pretty cool, right now. I’ll probably remember it. I remember playing on this playground when I was a kid. Shoe and I used to jump out of these swings.

Ugh. You boys. You never change, she says.

Shoe could do a backflip out of it, I say anyway.

Jubilee laughs. Oh, Shoe.

It’s not true that she can’t stand him. She stands him all the time because we’re together a lot. He just drives her crazy, but in a good way, if that’s possible.

I keep getting texts on my phone, and I know it’s him. But I don’t check, because she hates it.

"See? I remember that, I say. I remember a lot."

But we haven’t been alive that long. We don’t have a lot to forget yet. She’s a good arguer when there’s no answer to the question. It’s her favorite kind of conversation.

She says, Like, what else are you remembering you remember?

I remember first grade, like, the whole year. Mrs. Peacock was my teacher. I remember the day you first came to school. I remember when my parents split up. Lots of things. Do you want my whole life story?

She takes two long swings, pumps her legs harder each time so she goes higher and higher.

"Yesssss, she says right when her face passes mine, her eyes all bugging out. Dying for it."

Well, it was a little rainy on the day I was born, I could see out the window. It was cold in the hospital, so I cried some. She’s passing back by again, her hair bouncing in the air behind her, and she’s smirking. But she doesn’t say to shut up.

My nurse was named Angela. She was really hot. I was totally in love with her. Then they handed me to my mom and I fell in more love.

Okay. Okay. Stop. She’s smiling, but she won’t stop. Seriously, though? What’s the point of being alive for a day we won’t even remember?

I don’t know, I say. Maybe it’s to eat food and breathe air and not die, so we can live until a day we’ll remember.

Yeah, she says. Sounds fun. Eat and breathe. Whoopty-shit.

Can I ask you a question? What’s the point of being alive on a day we DO remember?

She swings a few times. You mean, what is the Meaning of Life? The chain had this rusty part at the top, so whenever she came down it squeaked, but it squeaked like REurrrrp, pause, REurrrrp, pause. Maybe it’s to make more memories than we have right now.

Wow. That’s it. Two kids too old to be on a playground in the dark figure out The Meaning of Life. And we didn’t even look up shit on Wikipedia or anything.

She swings a few times without saying anything. Then she blurts out whatever was going on in her head like it’s a battering ram.

She says, Let’s make a pact: for as long as we know each other, let’s do something every day that we’ll remember. For the rest of our lives.

Of course I’m in. But I say, Like what?

Like this, says Jubilee Marshfield. She swings back and pumps her legs and the chain REurrrps, and at the top she flips backward and her feet swing over her head, her wild hair winging behind her, and she’s falling like a raindrop right onto her feet. She does a little gymnastics pose to the judges like she’s scored a perfect 10.

Damn, I’m in love. This sucks.

IT’S MOMENTS LIKE that that give me this theory I have about girls. Which is that there’s something girls understand about mystery that boys don’t. Or at least, they understand how to use mystery. They know just how to make their voice sound or just what to say to make a mystery out of it. They can make a mystery out of blinking. They know how crazy these tiny mysteries can drive a boy.

Mostly, this theory comes from observing Jubilee Marshfield.

The way she looks at me when she puts her arms down and yanks me out of my swing, like a halfway eye roll for her being a nerd, but a halfway wink like she knows I’m a nerd for liking it, and this little tiny smile and twist of the neck. It’s unbelievable. It just kills me.

Come on, we gotta go. The Count is no doubt watching the clock. Her dad is head of accounting at some company. He seems alright, but Jubilee says he’s always keeping track of everything. He found his calling a long time ago, and it is counting things, she says. He was put on this earth to count stuff. So, The Count.

How long do you have?

Nineteen minutes. Don’t you have to get home? she asks.

I’m at my dad’s this weekend.

She does it again, one of those looks—a shrug, her brown eyes with a glint in them, I swear. She knows that my dad is a lot more chill than my mom about curfews and stuff since they split. At his place, there’s never any food in the fridge, so we order pizza or go out to eat. My mom has everything stocked at all times, just in case. Though she never says what case it would be when we would need thirty rolls of toilet paper.

My parents. It seems like it would’ve been a good partnership, because that’s their whole personality, but really that’s why they split. Not over groceries, but the philosophy of groceries. Among other things, too.

I have this theory that you can tell a lot about somebody by what’s in their fridge. It means something if they have milk in there. Or if there’s meals all prepared for the whole week. Or if there’s just beer and tofu.

The look Jubilee gives me is like two theories crashing together. She’s doing the girl-mystery thing and I wonder if she wishes she could come over and hang out longer, because my dad won’t care. He’d probably like it.

We’re walking to my car and I’m trying to decide if that is what she’s thinking. But there’s no way The Count would let that happen anyway, so I let it drop.

So I have this theory, I say.

Oh, God, she says. Again with the voice thing she can do. I know exactly what she means.

No, listen.

I always listen, she says. You have great theories. They’re smart, you’re smart. Whatever.

But I should DO something with them, I know. That’s the lecture she gives me a lot. Sure.

I have a theory that the weird destructive shit kids do isn’t because we’re young and stupid, it’s because we’re bored.

I have this theory that we spent our whole lives in helmets and kneepads anytime anything was slightly dangerous, so now we think the world ends anytime we get hurt any little bit.

I have this theory that the smarter you are, the more you have to act not smart, and part of the theory is that this, in fact, sucks.

She’s right, I do watch people and try to figure out what I see.

And she’s kind of right, that I don’t ever do anything. I’m not in any clubs or on any teams. I like watching people, and I don’t know why.

But I do actually do something. I’m a writer, writing a book with my grandfather, Paps. But I’ve never told her about it, for no good reason. I don’t bother to make theories up about myself.

OK, but this one matters for right now, I say. I have this theory that my car knows when we’re going to be late for curfew. He likes you, so he’s going to start.

Eeyore hates me, Jubilee says. She nicknamed my car Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, because it feels sorry for itself. It’s supposed to be navy blue, I think, but it’s like fifteen years old and the paint faded to that pale blue color Eeyore is. There are dents all over it from when it belonged to my grandfather, who had to quit driving because he was too old and couldn’t see good enough anymore. That was right around the time I got my license. If I don’t keep the gas tank half full and talk nice to it and start the engine with this gentle twist of the key, Eeyore doesn’t start.

I’m totally going to be late, she says.

We get in—it still smells like Paps in there—and I give the key a twist. I swear, the engine says I-don’t-wanna, I-don’t-wanna, I-don’t-wanna.

I know it’s late, buddy, I say. I pat the dashboard. Jubilee shuts her eyes and shakes her head no. Sometimes girls do things with no mystery behind them. So I stop. I try the key again, same thing. She makes a little noise like paper crumpling.

Hang on, I say. I take out my phone, and she doesn’t seem to mind, and it looks like Shoe is getting off work at the dumpy one-screen movie theater where he works as the fry cook. Shoe always has the shittiest jobs.

Anyway, the dirty, dumpy theater was showing a zombie movie marathon tonight, so like half of the dudes in our school were there. He was the one texting me over and over to come hang out, but now it looks like it’s finished. I text him and ask if he can shoot over here and rescue us.

He writes back:

BRAINS!

I think Shoe can come get us. Jubilee is looking out the window at the playground. The see-saw is the only thing we can see in the pale yellow of Eeyore’s headlights. What’s with all your Deep Thoughts tonight, anyway?

She laughs. Maybe all your theory shit’s gotten to me, she says. No, I don’t know what it is. Life. Change. We’ll graduate in the spring and then what? Go to college, get married, have kids? It all feels so planned out, lately.

You don’t want to go to college? You have to go, I say.

And just where is that rule written down? She’s a good