Bella's Accidents

A Shakespearean Tragedy

As March wore on into April, rehearsals became gradually more consuming, and their frequency increased to three times per week after school. Bella relished these, as much for the opportunity they afforded her to spend an hour in proximity to Claire as for the innate pleasure she derived from the rehearsals themselves. She had become infatuated with acting, to be sure, but she was increasingly becoming infatuated with something, or rather someone, else.

Bella had heard her friends gossip about 'liking' this boy or that boy since they were in grade school, had heard them gush gigglingly about their latest crush, and had even pretended on occasion that she herself had become enamored with some blockheaded nitwit in their grade, to appease her inquisitive friends more than for any other reason. But in truth, she had never quite understood what her friends were talking about until now.

In class, she sometimes caught herself daydreaming about Claire's freckled and smiling face, or else trying to come up with something clever to say at their next rehearsal so as to elicit that playful and ineluctably infectious giggle. When she did so, however, she tried scrupulously to snap out of it as fast as she could. She's a year below you, Bella told herself. And what's more, she's a girl! This isn't the same as when Anna or Bethany has a crush on some boy. You don't 'like' her like that... you're just friends...

Bella couldn't quite shake the feeling that this might not be true, however, any more than she could shake the feeling that Claire might just feel something similar with respect to her. When they chanced to run into one another outside of rehearsal, in the corridors between classes or in the library or elsewhere, there was often an awkward moment of silence before one of them managed a clumsy 'Hey.'

The last time it had happened, Claire had actually dropped the binder she was carrying and blushed furiously as Bella helped her to retrieve the papers strewn across the floor of the hallway. As Bella handed back the ones she had gathered, Claire's fingers momentarily grazed her own and she felt a curious tingle run up her spine, her heart seeming meanwhile to skip a beat or two beneath her chest.

They were scheduled to actually perform the play in early June, in the penultimate week of classes and less than three weeks after Bella's fourteenth birthday. There would be a Friday afternoon performance in front of a captive audience of fifth and sixth graders, which would function as a sort of final dress rehearsal for the real thing later that evening – a performance for parents, siblings, relatives, friends, and any seventh or eighth graders, teachers, administrators, or other community members who wished to attend, which would be repeated a second and final time the following evening, on Saturday.

As April gave way to May and Bella's birthday was quickly drawing nigh, she realized that it was incumbent upon her to invite whom she wished to help her celebrate the occasion. Her family had never been particularly big on birthdays, but the plan was to throw a small party for Bella and her friends at their house. In the past, these parties had typically been sleepovers, but this year Bella eschewed that, for obvious reasons. It would no doubt have been easier to hide her little nighttime secret from her friends at her own house, where there weren't so many elements of uncertainty to contend with, than it had been at Bethany's house some months before, but Bella didn't want to risk it.

In addition to the small but tightly knit group of friends from her own grade, part of her yearned to invite Claire. But every time she felt like doing it, something held her back. It would be awkward for her, Bella told herself. She'd be the only seventh grader there, and she doesn't even know my other friends. Despite these obvious drawbacks, she almost did it anyway but ended up chickening out at the last minute, unable to work up the nerve to proffer an invitation.

It also occurred fleetingly to Bella to invite Jessica, who had attended all of her birthday parties for the past three years, but she ultimately decided against it. Jessica was still not speaking to her, and Bella didn't feel any obligation to be the one to extend an olive branch, in light of what she thought was petty and selfish petulance on the part of her erstwhile friend.