My Life After Now - By Jessica Verdi Page 0,78

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He tasted like Chapstick and orange Tic-Tacs, and there was not one iota of fear or doubt in his entire body.

Entirely too soon, the stage door opened and throngs of hyped-up drama kids poured out. Evan and I pulled apart, matching perma-grins on our faces.

“I have to go take care of something,” I said regretfully. I didn’t want to leave him, but time was of the essence. I may have already been too late. “Don’t leave, okay?”

“Never,” he promised.

• • •

I weaved through the crowded lobby, searching. I spotted my dads mingling with Roxie and my support group supporters over by the coffee table, but I ran past them with my head down. I would talk to them later. Right now I had to find the principal. He always made a point of coming to the drama productions’ opening nights, so he had to be here somewhere. Unless he’d already left. I was really hoping that wasn’t the case, because if I had to wait until Monday to tell him my idea, I might lose my nerve.

Finally I saw him chatting with a few teachers, his rolled-up program sticking out of his jacket pocket.

“Excuse me, Mr. Fisher?” I said, tapping him on the shoulder. “Can I speak with you for a minute?”

Shock crossed his face. “Miss Moore! Um…yes, of course! Shall we step into my office?” I followed him as he unlocked the office door and invited me inside. “What can I do for you, Miss Moore?” He pushed his glasses up on his nose nervously.

I smiled. The man was terrified of me. Probably thought I was going to follow through on my lawsuit threat. I should have strung him along for a little while and let him swelter in his wildest fears, but I was eager to get this over with so I could go back to having fun.

“I have a proposition for you,” I said, and explained my plan.

39

Day By Day

“Did it start yet?” Dad asked worriedly, hurrying into the living room armed with snacks.

“Not yet. They said seven-oh-eight, so we have a few more minutes,” I said. I raised an eyebrow at the colossal popcorn bowl. “You do know it’s only a sixty-second commercial, right?”

“So I’m excited. Sue me. It’s not every day my daughter is on national television,” Dad said.

“I agree, Adam,” Evan piped up and helped himself to a giant handful of the buttery stuff. “This occasion absolutely calls for popcorn,” he said through a full mouth.

“We third that!” Papa said from the big red armchair, bouncing my little sister on his lap.

I rolled my eyes at the four of them, but I was secretly loving every second of this. I’d already seen the completed commercial, and I was incredibly proud of the way it had turned out. But Dad, Papa, and Evan had insisted on waiting until it aired to watch it—claiming it was more fun knowing they were watching it along with the rest of the country. Or, at least, the percentage of the country who tuned in to Jeopardy! at seven p.m. every night.

“Shhhh!” Papa said, as the show cut to commercial. “It’s starting!”

I didn’t pay much attention to my face on the screen. Instead, I took the full sixty seconds to observe my family as they watched, their faces full of pride and joy.

In the four months since Romeo and Juliet closed, I’d come to appreciate exactly how lucky I really was.

• • •

Mr. Fisher had turned out to be an incredibly useful ally in my mission to open the eyes of my peers. As I’d lain fake-bleeding to death on the Romeo and Juliet stage back in December, I’d realized that I had to do something. The HIV/AIDS plague wasn’t going away, and yet no one was really talking about it. At least, not in the same way they had a decade or two ago. We’d become complacent and we’d become ignorant. Dedicating a health class here or there to discussing statistics and the ways you could and couldn’t contract the virus clearly wasn’t doing much. If it was, Evan wouldn’t have been wary of touching me back when he’d first learned the truth. If it was, Elyse wouldn’t have been worried about having caught it through kissing. If it was, I wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.

We needed to talk about it, so that kids would understand that the plague was still spreading across every single demographic—including our own. There needed to be an unrelenting, ongoing