GENTRY

20

Vieira hears a knock at her dorm room door. She answers it, and sees Evelyn standing, tilting back and forth on her feet. She looks less like Evelyn than the girl Vieira she has come to know. Her eyes are lined with heavy black eyeliner, and she wears a red plaid dress and fishnets, a far cry from her previous adherence to all that is soft and warm.

In her shock, Vieira opens the door wide. Evelyn enters. She moves over and sits at the chair at Vieira's desk.

"I'm glad I caught you," Evelyn says. "I knocked yesterday but you weren't home."

Vieira doesn't particularly want to see Evelyn, but this looks like a twisted version of the girl that she has come to know. Vieira, leaving the door cracked ajar to prevent Evelyn from talking about Poppy, goes and sits on her beanbag chair.

Evelyn looks at Vieira, who is still silent. It's been too long since she and Vieira had a chat. Words have not united them but physicality has. "You alright?"

Vieira opens her mouth. She is not as quiet as before, but she lacks what to say. She doesn't want to know more about Evelyn, but she also does not want to reveal her own secrets. "Do you have a piece in the art gallery?"

"Yes," Evelyn says. It's her midterm grade, after a semester of hard work. "It uses exclusively tulle, which isn't common. I find the material ghostly. It's light, it flows, and it's mesh after all. Like a net."

Vieira understands nets. She feels trapped in one herself, "why have you come?"

"I wanted to check on you, I haven't seen you in a while," Evelyn says. "I know that girl's death has been hard on you."

That girl, Vieira thinks. She doesn't even get the dignity of a name any longer.

Another knock at the door, and Evelyn gets up to open it before Vieira can protest.

Tom stands on the opposite Evelyn.

"Maybe not..." Evelyn begins, but he ducks under her arm before she can finish, "now."

"Vieira," he tells her. He didn't think through what he would say. He hasn't been able to think. He only feels half himself, the other half is a character that he puts on for the others to see. Tom is an actor first and foremost, but not an improviser. He needs a script.

Maybe he should have asked Ez for more words.

"I..." Vieira really thought she had seen the last of Tom.

Evelyn grabs Tom by the shoulders and rushes with him into the hall. She shuts the door behind it. Vieira clicks it into a lock.

"What are you doing?" he asks, his eyes wide.

"She's going through something hard," Evelyn says. "Now is not the time-"

"It's never the perfect time!" Tom shouts.

Evelyn begins to walk away, hoping he will follow. Instead, he lingers around her door. There is no one in the hallway, although there are eyes everywhere.

"Come now, Tommy," Evelyn says. "She doesn't want to see you. Don't take it too personally. I don't think she wants to see me either."

Tom cannot sleep without her. He cannot think without her. The world is going dark. He is backstage searching for the light, only to stumble out in front of everyone from behind the curtain. He reveals a deep part of himself that he wants no one else to know.