I’m saying to the others the next morning, as we walk down the country road leading to the trailhead for the day. “He was right under my window, yelling my name.”“Like Romeo and Juliet,” Becca says. “It’s my favorite Shakespeare play.”An unlikely choice for a girl who claims to be in search of a happy love story, but then again, Becca’s still in high school. Romeo and Juliet is probably the only Shakespeare she’s ever read and it’s designed to appeal to teenagers, this idea that the star-crossed lovers could have been eternally happy if only their stupid parents had managed to get their shit together.“Romeo and Juliet crossed my mind too,” I tell her. “But then I thought he was more like Stanley out of A Streetcar Named Desire. Randy’s a little too rough around the edges to play Romeo.”I’ve decided I may as well confess the whole thing. If I don’t, Valerie might bring it up, and who knows how bad her version of the story will be, me making out with a stranger in my sock feet and bleeding everywhere and not having any money.
