Roo Eaton slapped a no entry sign on his dating life—being asexual in a high school the size of a fishbowl isn’t exactly romance-friendly. But then, on a typical who-set-off-the-alarm-now escapade, he runs into Kate Fontaine—she’s Crestmont U-bound, the holy grail of theater schools, and Roo is plotting his own path there, too.

Juggling directing their senior year play, catching feels, and Kate’s closet full of skeletons (like, metaphorically, but with this girl, who knows?) Roo dives heart first into a mystery that would make even Sherlock raise an eyebrow. As he untangles this spaghetti bowl of secrets, he’s got to figure out how far he’ll go for a chance at being with his person at his dream school.

Will he update his relationship status, or just his understanding of who Kate really is? Packed with humor, heart, and aha moments, Roo’s story is about finding your own spotlight, even when everyone else seems to have written your script for you.

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GENRE Contemporary Romance LGBTQ	EBOOK Amazon Kindle Smashwords Nook Apple Google Play Kobo-	PRINT Amazon
Available November 26, 2024
Teen

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Excerpt
Chapter One

I lean over the handlebars, pumping my bike pedals. Wet branches slap my face, and I almost spin out. My frozen fingers stray to the Crestmont lapel pin I always keep fastened to my jacket—a reminder of why I agreed to do this.

I was all cozied up on my bed with my cat, Juliet, whose butt was not by my face for once, when I got the text from my theater director, Randy.

 

Randy

Alarm going off in theater. Can you check?

Me

Happy to!

 

 

Though there is nothing happy about freezing my ass off biking down this pothole-filled road in the dark with a storm brewing. But I need his rec letter.

I turn off the street and cut through Necropolis, our nickname for Thistlebrook’s cemetery. It’s studded with thick-trunked oak, hickory, and dogwood trees that I dodge my bike around. Loads of ivy vines crawl over the tombstones and statues, giving it a Halloween-y feel. Perfect for spirits, even though I have a hard time making myself feel creeped out here. After all, I’m basically surrounded by family. My ancestors are all buried here, in our family plot, where there’s a space Mom saved just for me.

How thoughtful. But, really, with every passing year, the noose of this town cinches tighter and tighter around my neck. Crestmont, Crestmont, Crestmont, I chant to myself, pedaling faster, as hail balls ping off my forehead.

Finally, the blocky post-office outline of my high school, K.S. Rutherford, looms in front of me. I skid to a stop and shove my bike into the empty rack. Digging my key out of my pocket, I unlock the plain metal door at the back that leads to the theater. It’s pretty irregular for a student to have a school key, I know, but after sophomore year, when Randy discovered I was both more responsible and had better time management skills than him, he began letting me lock up at night and open the theater in the morning, before first bell.

I shove open the door and stuff a wedge under it, letting a shaft of white parking-lot light cut down the aisle. The alarm isgoing off with an insistent beep that grates on my ears after about four seconds. I fumble over to the wall and pull the lever. The alarm shuts off. Silence descends. 

Then I hear it. A scratching noise—up ahead. 

I’m not exactly the courageous type, and it occurs to me that I could just run away. Instead, I fumble in the pile of props someone left on a front-row seat and pull out a heavy plastic tube. Not as good a bludgeoner as a tire iron, but it’ll do. 

I creep down the aisle, toward the back of the auditorium. Pausing, I stop halfway down and listen. There it is again! Faster this time. It’s still mostly dark in the auditorium, and I curse myself for not turning on the light.

“Is someone there?” I call into the void, but I know they are. The theater smells like spray paint, and I hear them rustling nearby. 

Oh my God. An intruder. I clutch my plastic tube. 

“Hello?”

There’s no response. Sweat blooms under my pits. I feel the wall, fingers searching for the switch.

Glaring fluorescent light fills the space.

A figure is crouched in front of Randy’s door, facing away from me. On the door, in scrawling letters, is part of a word: fagg

In the most heroic moment of my life off-stage, I rush forward and swing the tube, which thuds against the intruder’s back. There’s a pop and suddenly the air is full of pink sparkles.

“Shit.” I bat at the glitter wafting around me.

“What the hell?” The intruder stands up. “Are you kidding me?”

The intruder is a girl, I realize in an instant, and then the glitter settles, and I see her in front of me: tall, pale, with long black hair now liberally coated in pink. She’s holding something that could be a spray canister.

“Drop that right now.” I brandish my now-empty glitter tube. “Citizen’s arrest.”

“No way.” She’s laughing. “You didn’t actually say that.”

I try to look menacing as I hold up the tube. After all, I am six feet tall but so is this girl. Also, I’ve been glittered, too, though I’m trying to think of it as an unexpected costume. I always do better when I can get into character a little.

“You heard me.” My voice is so loud, it surprises me.

She swipes at her glitter-covered face. “Well, first of all, I’m trying to de-glitter my face,” she says. Her voice is level and deeper than I expect. “Second of all, I’m trying to get this word off, not put it on.” As she waves her hand, I notice she’s holding a cloth and nail polish remover. No spray can in sight, but she could have stashed it somewhere.

I step forward. “Who are you?”

“I’m Kate Fontaine, new to K.S. Rutherford High but not to shitty human behavior. And now not new to being glitter-bombed.”

Her gaze is dark, direct, and intense. I realize I’m staring like the idiot weirdo I am. “Ah, yeah. Um, sorry about the glitter.” I take off my jacket and offer her a sleeve. “How come you’re in here?”

She tucks her hair behind her ears and takes my jacket. “I was going to introduce myself to the theater director, but when I arrived, I found this. And, well, no one deserves to walk in and see this on their office door.”

As she wipes, she reveals freckles that arc across her nose and cheeks. Kind of adorable. But I can’t let her cuteness mess with my judgment. “Did you really think he’d be here this late?”

“At my old high school, our theater director always stayed late.” She makes another attempt to clean her face.

“Here, let me help.” I take the jacket, fold it, and start scrubbing at her forehead. “Close your eyes.” She obeys, smiling with her lips closed. Her scent, which is citrusy, envelops me. As casually as I can, I hold her chin and wipe around her eyes. “You have glitter eyebrows now.”

She opens her eyes, and we’re so close, too close. I take a step back. “My fantasy always,” she says, dropping to a crouch and swipes at the offensive graffiti. “Thanks.”

I pull out my phone and text Randy that everything’s fine. “It’s nearly ten.” 

She puts the back of her hand on her forehead. There’s sweat on her brow. “It’s that late? I’m so jet-lagged, my timing is all mixed up.” She tears the paint rag in half. On the underside of her wrist is a tattoo: a simple outline of a red heart. Swoon. “Care to help me get this off?”

I take the offered scrap. A new student cleaning off hate speech from Randy’s door is embarrassing. Like Thistlebrook’s dirty laundry being aired in public.

She goes back to scrubbing, and I join her. She has a beautiful, elegant way of moving. I clear my throat and try to sound casual. “Jet lag from what?”

“We flew in from France over the weekend, so my brain is still on European time.”

“Oh.” Jet lag is something I’ve only read about. I’ve barely ever left the state, much less the country. Jet lag. If only.

“You still haven’t told me your name.” My mouth suddenly doesn’t work. My name—what is my name again? She sends me a what-the-fuck look over her shoulder. “Is this kind of thing normal here?”

“What kind of thing?”     

“Oh, I don’t know. Vandalism to school property?” She waves at the door, then the corner of her mouth hitches up. Her eyes graze over me. “Cute guys rudely not introducing themselves to new students?”

Cute guys. Where are the cute guys? Me. She means me! Me cute! 

“Ah, yeah, sorry.” I pull my wet, red curls back and tie them into a loose, boy bun. “I’m Roo, Andrew Eaton. I’ve led the theater troupe here for three years now. And sadly, yeah, it’s pretty common. Vandalism is basically everywhere on school grounds. This word in particular is a regular in the boys’ bathroom, usually with penis motifs for emphasis.”

“Ah.” She nods. She probably thinks we’re a bunch of hick homophobes.

I scrub harder at the spray paint. “So—at your old school, you had a theater program?”

“Yes. A good one, too.” Her eyes scan the run-down auditorium and then meet mine.

“How do you know it was good?” 

“My sister Lucy said it was good. She’s at Crestmont now.”

I feel that tightness in my chest that always happens at the mention of Crestmont.

“What’s that like?” 

Kate stops scrubbing. “It’s everything. It’s where careers begin. It’s like the beating heart of the business. I’m not going to be doing Guys and Dolls in fucking Ohio when I’m forty; I want to be on Broadway next year.”

The ease and conviction of her words is giving me a rush of feeling. Broadway by next year? The thought of it makes my whole-body tingle.

“Wow.” Did I really just say wow? Good one, Roo. “And your sister?”

Kate returns to scrubbing. “She’s good, really good. But I’m kind of over being the star’s little sister, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I say, even though I don’t. My brothers are knobs.

She smirks again, and my face flames on.

We spend the next few minutes scrubbing Randy’s door in silence. Maybe it’s being in Kate’s orbit, or this word we’re scouring off, or the lighting that reveals every imperfection of our pathetic excuse for a theater, but the fear I usually suppress—that no matter how much time or energy I put into theater, Crestmont is simply out of reach—resurfaces.

Then Kate starts talking. “I remember the first time I got off-book,” she says, “it was like riding a bike without training wheels, something clicked in me. You learn the words, but when you’re off book you’re in the game, you know? You get to react from your heart more than your mind.”

“Exactly.”

“What about you?”

“The stage. It’s my escape.”

“Escape?”

“Yeah.”

She adjusts her silky hair so that it waterfalls down her back. “So, you don’t like it here?”

“Well, I’ve been here my whole life. Everyone knows me. Everyone knows my family. The town is like my family. And all I can think about—”

“Is leaving?”

“How did you know?”

“It’s small town 101.”

I force a laugh, drop the rag, and stand up.

“No offense,” she says. She peers up at me. “Small towns have their upsides.”

I open and close my mouth a few times. Nope. No sound.

She picks up my rag and stands up. “Thanks for helping me clean this up.”

Our faces are very close to each other. Too close. That’s when a door in my mind slams shut. I turn my head away fast. “No thanks necessary,” I say. My secret is always in the back of my mind, especially at moments like this.

A buzz from my phone jolts me. It’s a message from my best friend, Shaz, on our theater Discord.

 

Shaz

Two words: Code Red.

Me

Should I bike over?

Shaz

No but this bitch is ruining my love life.

 

 

She and her mom must be fighting again. I slip the phone into my pocket.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I have to go, but I’ll see you at auditions, right? I’m the student director this year.” Oof. Did that sound braggy?

She holds my eyes for a moment longer, then looks away. “Sure.” She hands me my jacket and, when our fingers accidentally touch, it feels electric. “See you around, Director.”

She watches me as I head back down the aisle. I can feel her eyes burning into my back.

Outside, the hail has stopped. I unzip my jacket and walk around for a minute to get some air. Whoa. Whoa. What was that? She’s new, she’s witty, she’s incredible. Fucking compelling. Oh my God, do I dare ask her to HoCo? It’s coming up.

Dancing is my third favorite thing in the world (the first two being theater and falling in love, obviously). There’s not a lot to do in a small town like Thistlebrook, so there’s no way I’m going to miss out on an opportunity to dance.

I could ask her. She’d be my date, and that means we’d dance together. Which is a safe activity. Afterall, there’d be people around us. And maybe she’d put her head on my shoulder. I feel like I might spontaneously combust just thinking about it.

On my way home, I lean over the pedals and lift out of my seat, propelling my bike through Necropolis and back to Juliet, still asleep on my bed. I ease in next to her and stroke her soft fur.

I pull out my phone and text Shaz back. I’ll see if Kate is still real in the morning.

 

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