Hummingbirds by Joshua Gaylor

to him for a second.
    “I have an idea,” she says as he follows her to a gap near the edge of the stage where unused floodlights are stacked. He seems confused but willing. “We’re going to practice our lines together.”
    “Didn’t we just do that?”
    “I don’t mean here. Anyone can rehearse here. We’re the leads. We have a greater obligation to the play.”
    “Oh,” he says, nodding. “Okay.”
    “We can do it at my house. Tuesdays. You should meet me here after school. If I’m not here, wait for me—sometimes I’m a little late.”
    He looks at her blankly. Then a little grin begins to grow on his face.
    “Now don’t be silly,” she says admonishingly. “This is my last play here. I want it to be good. That means you have to be good, too.”
    “Are your parents going to be there? I mean in the afternoons?”
    Dixie rolls her eyes for an answer. “And one more thing. From now on when we talk, I’m going to call you Ivan, and you should call me Clarissa. That’s the way they do it.”
    “Who?”
    “Actors. It’s called method.”
    “Okay, Dixie. Whatever you say.”
    She gives him a playful slap on the arm. “Be good, Ivan. There’s a lot of things you don’t understand. I’m just one of them.”
    “What? Huh?” He is nonplussed.
    “It’s from the play, Ivan. The play. You know, the one we just read?”
    “Oh. Sure, I remember that.” And then he smiles broadly, proud of himself, and Dixie leaves him standing there.
    Liz Warren, who is sitting against the wall just around the corner making emendations to the script, overhears the entire conversation and cringes. Closing her eyes as though in deep concentration, she gnaws on the end of her pen.
    What distresses her most is that Dixie Doyle is a more effective actress off the stage than on. Second in descending order of distressing things: Dixie seems to get most of her acting cues from bad television. To Liz there is nothing worse than participating without conscious irony in the clichés of teenage girlhood. She is sure that if cornered she could admit to the existence of worse crimes, but some sins are all the more egregious because of their prevalence.
    And it exasperates her that Dixie is invariably successful in her tactics with boys. Everything that comes out of Dixie’s mouth should, in the moral universe that Liz inhabits, derail any further engagement. By all reason, boys should find Dixie to be a short ride on a broken track. Liz doesn’t understand how, after the mundane exchange she just witnessed, a relationship could ever get to the kissing stage. Much less the holding hands in public, the social partnership, the sex. How could Jeremy, in all seriousness, forget about Dixie’s hackneyed performance of girlishness long enough to take off her clothes?
    She shakes it out of her head. Jeremy Notion doesn’t really concern her—not in terms of the play at least. He may be lacking the common sense to stay away from Dixie Doyle, but he certainly does have that quality of organic masculinity that is perfect for the role of Ivan. She pictures the character as a tight lump of flesh, the unnatural extreme of a natural force: a tumor of manhood balled up in the body somewhere and demanding some kind of response, some kind of action. Like the walls of scuffed flesh she observes walking to and from school, the men and boys who, unknowingly, force her to walk in the street to avoid them—or stand in blind doorways until they pass—with their brute strength.
    Liz wonders how Dixie does it, willingly putting herself in the way of that moving wall of masculinity. She wonders if this is, in fact, something to be admired.
    When she looks at her watch, she realizes how late it’s gotten. She hops up and rushes to the lobby of the school, where, as she wraps herself in her coat, she sees Mr. Hughes walking past distractedly.
    “Oh,” he says, though she knows he doesn’t have any interest in talking to her. “Hello,