Free Understudy by Cheyanne Young

friends who get along well and make a great team for the play.
    But if my makeup happens to be applied professionally and meticulously, that’s not my problem, now is it?
    I climb in Derek’s car and tell him to step on it because the last thing I need is for Mom to walk outside and say hello. Seeing as how she was drinking coffee in her pajamas, the chances of that are highly unlikely but one can never be too careful when trying to avoid parental embarrassment.
    He hands me a coffee from Joe’s Diner and a bag of donut holes. “Since we have such a shitty budget for props, there’s no way we can get an entire bedroom set.” I look over at him as he talks, trying not to think about how cute he is when he’s driving. His tongue runs across his lip before he speaks. “I drive past this place on the way home every that sells antique furniture.”
    I interrupt him by holding up my coffee cup. “We definitely can’t afford antique furniture. We need like… dollar store furniture.”
    He wiggles his eyebrow. “What if we don’t pay anything for it?”
    “Tell me you’re not suggesting we steal it?”
    He takes in a deep breath and stares at the road, clearly annoyed with me. “No, Wren. I’m not going to obtain the furniture by illegal means.”
    He slows the car and turns into a gravel driveway. The antique furniture store is an antique itself; an old barn that’s been turned into a store. Derek reaches over and grabs a donut hole from the bag in my lap. “I spoke with the owner. She said we could borrow whatever we needed. For free.”
    My eyes light up at the mention of the word free. “You are awesome.”
    Derek doesn’t seem as amused. “If I’m so awesome, maybe you could not jump to the worst conclusion next time I suggest something?”
     

     
    Derek and I sit on the couch with a ginormous bowl of popcorn to celebrate a successful day of prop scavenging. Derek had insisted on pouring half a cup of melted butter on top of the popcorn, and as a result my fingers look like they’re coated in lacquer with the stuff they use on the gym floor. I lick my index finger, then my middle fingers before diving back in for another handful.
    “You know when you lick your fingers like that and then get more popcorn, it’s the same thing as if you’d licked all the popcorn,” Derek says.
    I shrug. “It doesn’t bother me because it’s my own saliva.”
    “And if I did it?” He slides his tongue across four of the fingers on his left hand and hovers them over the bowl in anticipation of my answer. The way his tongue lingers in the air makes my stomach flip.
    “It would be gross,” I say.
    He dries his hand on his jeans and turns back to the movie. “Women and their double standards.”
    “Get used to it.”
    Derek shoves a handful of popcorn in his mouth and then speaks, probably on purpose to annoy me. “I meant to ask you about the last text you sent out. Why aren’t we having rehearsal all next week?”
    “The prom committee has taken over the auditorium to sell tickets, and all the actors threw a fit about rehearsing in front of people,” I tell him. “They’re all doing pretty well, so they can have the week off. We’ll have to keep working on the sets though. We’re way behind.”
    “I wouldn’t say we’re behind.” He winks at me. “We have furniture now. We got this.”
    Derek grabs one of the half-popped pieces of popcorn—my favorite ones—and offers it to me. I open my mouth and he drops it in, letting his fingers touch my lips. “Do you want to go to prom?” He asks it like he’s asking if I’ve changed the oil in my car lately.
    “No,” I say, a sudden uncomfortable feeling settling in my stomach. “Plus there’s an interior decorating exhibit on the same day.”
    “You’d rather see a bunch of furniture than go to prom?”
    “It isn’t furniture,” I say. The butterflies that had woken up at the mention of prom sink back down where they belong. “It’s interior