If Leopold has plans for this girl, she shouldn’t be foolish enough to fall in love. Not with another girl. Not with anyone.
But Toby doesn’t have the heart to stop it.
“Let me tell you a story,” he says. Their cramped little booth isn’t much of a stage, but it will do in a pinch. “Let’s start at the beginning. God created men and women and trees and snakes and it got very nasty for a bit. Skipping forward — I was a grocery boy here in New York. I craved the spotlight. It’s an old story. Not quite Faust. Faust’s gay cousin. Someone should have slapped me and said ‘Go back to your cabbages!’ But there are no time machines, and hindsight is a know-it-all prick.” Toby holds for a laugh, but Zara is staring at him, solemn. He rushes on. “Leopold gave me a chance. A tiny role. Which turned into a larger role, which became regular employment. Soon enough I was kissing my cabbages good-bye. And that, young lady, is not a euphemism.”
Toby runs a hand over the rough wood of the table. He wishes they could stay in the nice part of the story for a while.
“It might have been easier if Leopold thought I was out there kissing every lad in Midtown, turning myself into a scandal. But I did something worse, at least in his eyes. I fell in love.” Zara holds herself across the middle, as if those words have stabbed her in a soft place. “Leopold made it clear that this, of all things, was a conflict of interest. I couldn’t be ‘committed to the Aurelia’ if I was always running off to be with someone.”
Toby can see Zara’s breath rise in her throat and stay there. “Did you break his heart?”
“No,” Toby says. “No, I tried to keep him. And it got very nasty for a bit.” He wants to skip forward again, but this is the part of the story that Zara has been waiting for. The tragic ending.
“It was a particular time in the history of New York City, and Leopold chased away Michael by telling him — by lying — he said that I was sick.” Toby won’t use the A word. He doesn’t have to; from the frozen-eyed look on Zara’s face, she’s got that much figured out. “Apparently Michael wanted to stay, stand by me and all that. He was a good man. It’s likely he still is, somewhere. With someone else. Leopold told him that I didn’t want to see him anymore. That I . . .” Toby breathes. “That I thought it was his fault.”
Zara is staring at him, stricken.
Toby holds out the phone. He’s been keeping it hostage this whole time. He’s done what he came here to do — told her that Carl is a good man and she has nothing to worry about. Except for Leopold, of course.
“Go,” Toby says, and Zara pulls on her coat. If these two girls are really in love, he won’t be able to stop them. Nobody will. “Just take my word,” he adds. “If you have anything to hide, keep it hidden.”
Eli is under the stage.
She’s been down here for hours in the cavernous dark, searching for equipment. There’s no time left to make this work. Tech is already halfway over, the lighting plan is set, and Leopold hates it.
The trapdoor in the stage above her creaks open. When it lands, the whole stage shudders.
There are Zara’s feet, testing the thin rails of the ladder. She’s wearing her winter coat, the one that Eli is getting attached to. It has an orange silk lining and a button missing from the cuff.
Zara hits the bottom of the ladder and looks around. “Could you have found a creepier place to meet if you tried?”
“The East River,” Eli answers without hesitation. “Or the laundry room in my apartment building.”
Zara whips to face her, several degrees more feisty than usual. “You shouldn’t be down here.”
“This is my job,” Eli says. “This is where my equipment lives.”
Zara shakes her head and corrects herself. “You shouldn’t be down here alone.”
Eli never feels alone when she’s making art. It’s a conversation she’s having. This is what to care about, she tells people when she’s lighting a scene. Mira, esto es importante. And they look where she wants them to look. They sit up and pay attention.
Zara’s fingers twist up in her purse strap. “I’m worried about you.”
Eli doesn’t know how to process that kind of concern. When she lived at home, her parents seemed like they were always worried about her — but really they were worried about themselves. How she made them look. How she made things hard on them. She knows because they told her, almost every day, from the age of four or five until she moved out.
Eli is hoping Zara will drop it, but she goes from worry straight to scolding. “People are getting hurt. It’s not safe.”
“This is New York City!” Eli says, heat kicking up through her chest. “What exactly did you expect?”
“You told me that if I stayed, we would look out for each other. Well, that’s what I’m doing.”
Eli feels the tap of guilt on her shoulder and brushes it away. “I’m not the only one who takes chances. You were out with Toby. By yourself.”
Zara’s face goes blunt. “He made me talk to him after he caught me looking through Carl’s bag.”
Eli has to beat back a smile. This is the girl she saw at auditions — the one who climbed onstage and tossed her feelings around with such force that everyone in the room felt it. Zara’s been softening her edges lately. Making herself less. Trying to keep Leopold happy.
She should always be like this.
Eli’s thoughts act like a spotlight on her own desires. How much more she wants. The things she hopes might happen between the two of them. Dios. She’s being absurd again. This girl has been in love with Ariston her entire life. She dates boys. She’s told Eli about dating boys. Not one mention of a cute girl in there. Eli would have noticed.
So then why is Zara doing the thing where she twists her fingers up like she’s folding an invisible love note? Why are her eyes getting wider, their black centers turning huge?
Oh, right. Because she’s an actress. She’s in it for the attention, which Eli keeps giving her.
“The lighting design,” Eli mutters. “It’s still not right. Let me show you what I figured out.” She goes around making a few last-second adjustments, the blades on her Leatherman flashing. Then she comes back and squares herself up to Zara.
“I need you to say a few lines.” Eli’s been waiting for this moment for hours and now she’s too surly to enjoy it. But the surliness is doing an important job, keeping the rest of her feelings pushed back.
“Okay,” Zara says, crossing her arms tight. “What part do you want me to —”
“Whatever,” Eli says quickly. “A monologue. Just keep talking.”
Zara nods, leaving her chin tipped slightly upward at what Eli is starting to think of as the Echo angle.
Eli gets a flash of that photo, the soft-eyed girl pressed up against Adrian Ward. For two whole seconds she worried that Zara had been messing with her the whole time, that she was just Adrian’s girlfriend-in-waiting. But that’s not the Zara she knows. That Zara’s not even real.
Which is a serious problem. No matter who Zara likes or doesn’t like, she’s the star of a story that’s being told by somebody else.
“Take off your coat,” Eli says roughly.
Zara sheds it like a winter skin she doesn’t need anymore. Eli watches her soft arms move, revealing the rest of her body: the proud sweep of her shoulders, the sweet pinch of her waist.
Zara’s breath drops in that trained actor way. Eli’s eyes trail downward, following the rise of Zara’s breath as it moves from her chest to her stomach, where it pulses. Softly. Zara’s voice spreads through the dark space.
“The gods have not given me leave to speak,
And yet I will,
For to leave this unsaid would be a violence
Against all things . . .”
This is Eli’s favorite monologue. Whether she hates the play or not, there are some truths in life that can’t be denied. This monologue is one of them. The words fill Eli’s chest with bright-hot-white feelings.
“I love this pa
rt,” Eli says. Zara pauses at the end of a line and mouths the words Me too.
Eli picks up the piece of equipment that took three hours to find. Zara takes a deep breath and continues.
Eli’s hands explode with light.
This, too, is undeniable. The way this fire looks on Zara’s face, her shoulders, her collarbones.
The keys that Eli gave her.
All through the basement, Eli has set up reflectors. Their shimmering skin grabs the light and throws it back. Zara looks around with a ferocious sort of wonder. Eli presses the lantern closer to Zara, and her curves take on exhilarating brightness. This is how Eli wants the whole show to look. Close and intimate. Candles and flame.
“Ariston should be the one lighting you,” Eli says, trying to make it sound obvious, like she unlocked the answer when she was staring at her notebooks or remembering some talk she had with Roscoe instead of tossing in her bed at night, one hand pressed between her thighs. “Echo’s normal life is going to be murky. Blues and charcoal, bruise-colored. And then, when you meet Ariston . . .” She holds up the lantern to illuminate Zara’s face.
Pink and gold mingle on her cheeks. Her lips stand out, heart-stopping against her smooth skin.
“It’s perfect,” Zara says, holding up her fingers. She turns them slowly, drenching them in light. “I love it.”
Eli’s breath hitches. “There’s more.”
Down here in the dark, Zara is brave enough to name what she wants. She is waiting for Eli to kiss her.
Instead, she hands Zara a lantern.
“You get to light Ariston,” Eli says. “Only fair.”
The small lantern is heavier than it looks, with a tiny switch on the bottom. When Zara flicks it on, yellow-white pours everywhere. She already loves the way the light clings to Eli’s curls. The way it makes the black part of her eyes shine like searchlights.
“Can I try it out?” Zara asks.
Eli looks down at her not-even-a-little-bit boyish body. “I’m not a good stand-in for Adrian Ward.”
“You aren’t a stand-in for anyone,” Zara says.
Eli looks at her like she’s just said something necessary. Something terrifying. Something true.
Zara feels every word, every breath, moving them closer to a moment that already exists. Echo always finds Ariston. They always fall in love.
Zara holds up the lantern, painting Eli’s skin with light. Eli holds hers up, and the light doubles. Zara’s nerves pound, but so does every good feeling in her body. She asks herself — what does she want right now?
This.
More.
This.
She is breathless as Eli’s hand meets her skin.
Her wrist first — then a seamless line up her arm and down her back. Eli’s fingers leave an echo-trail. From her back to her stomach, she draws a circle around Zara’s waist. Moving up, Eli skirts her breasts, pausing for a second before she moves on to the spread of bones in Zara’s chest, the hollow at her neck.
“This is what I want the light to feel like,” Eli says.
Zara closes her eyes. She expects Eli’s lips — she lives for a moment inside that hope.
“Now look,” Eli whispers.
When she opens her eyes, her skin is filled with white fire. Eli is holding the lantern so close that it looks like Zara is lit from the inside. Eli touches Zara’s forearm with one careful finger. “This is what I want,” she says. “For Echo.”
Zara stands there, so bound up in waiting to be kissed that she forgets to blink. Forgets to breathe.
There’s a final half step forward. A trade of breath, a tilting of lips.
Fear slides into the paper-thin space between them. Zara will ruin this just by having it. The world isn’t going to let her keep Eli. It isn’t going to stop Leopold from taking them apart.
But their lips meet, just the same.
Eli kisses her, one hand holding the lantern between their bodies so they won’t crush glass into their skin. Her other hand touches Zara’s temple, sweeping Zara’s hair back as their mouths rush forward. Eli kisses with a softness that barely hides how strong she is. Zara pushes back against her, a slow tide.
When she’s done this before, it’s been mouths and hands and movement and breath. The blocking feels different this time, and it’s more than just blocking — a new feeling that floods in, filling every space.
Eli shifts and puts down the lantern. Zara waits with her eyes closed, trusting that Eli will come back. Her fingers tremble slightly. She feels them stirring the air of the Aurelia.
This is Echo, she thinks. This is exactly like Echo. The smile that comes to her lips turns sharp. Zara promised herself that she would be able to feel this without putting either of them in danger.
But this is the story — this has always been the story.
The next day at rehearsal, Zara touches everything. She walks through the house, skimming her fingers along the backs of the seats, row after row, red so deep and soft that it makes her blush. The stage manager tells her to sit down, which makes her feel like a scolded child. Zara settles into the second row, perched at the edge of the aisle. She looks over her script for act 4, scene 2, but she can’t focus. Her skin is shimmering with everything it felt last night. Her lips are fully awake.
Her body is a walking memory.
When she climbs onstage, what happened is right beneath her feet. Down there in the dark. Eli is up in the lighting booth running through the show with her new board op, and Zara is onstage, about to rehearse yet another love scene with Adrian Ward. The lantern-lit kiss has become one of the stories of the Aurelia, built up like the layers of paint and dust.
She wonders how many love stories are buried in this theater. How many secrets.
“Where are you?” Leopold asks from his spot in the front row.
Zara’s head snaps up. She didn’t even realize she was staring at her shoes.
“I’m ready,” she says.
“Oh good,” Leopold says in a voice ballooning with pretend delight. “Did you hear that, everyone? Zara Evans is ready. In that case, we can begin.”
Adrian tries to sneak her a smile. He’s always doing that — being nice to her when Leopold is at his worst. But Zara gets the feeling that Adrian will never know how bad Leopold can truly be. He gets the stage-ready version that the rest of the world sees. Zara is learning — from Toby and from Meg and from Enna, from Leopold himself — who the director is behind the curtain.
She trusted Leopold Henneman so easily a few months ago. She can’t decide who she hates more — that old version of herself who wanted to stay up late into the night, impressing him? Or Leopold, staring at her now with a flinch of pain as she says her lines, letting her know that she’ll never be good enough?
“Once I had everything, and it felt like nothing,” Zara says. “Now I have nothing, and I am filled.”
“Lovely,” Leopold says.
She can see it, how he flicks from bored to furious, how he calls her brilliant and then breaks her down. He keeps changing the story so she won’t know what to believe — except for him. The sick part is, his compliment still made her glow for a second.
But not half as brightly as she burned last night.
Zara thought it would be easy, once she and Eli kissed. That they would slide into being together. That’s how it worked for Echo and Ariston. They met, they kissed, they became inseparable.
When Eli and Zara left the theater at two in the morning, Zara kept a safe distance between them. No twined hands, no sides pressed together. What if someone was working late and saw them? What if one of the crew members told Leopold, not knowing what he might do?
Adrian finishes a monologue and Leopold twitches his hands, signaling Zara and Adrian to move closer together. They both jump to match his urgency, and she wonders if she’s the only one who feels like a puppet. “Our play has the potential to be immortal or forgettable,” Leopold says, getting up, mounting the rehearsal stairs, moving in close.
“In the end, whether the audience believes in this love story lies with you.” He circles Zara like he is a red pen and she is a word out of place. “You have shown us that you are capable of emotion. Feeling, however, is not enough. We need explosive potential behind each moment, danger in each breath.”
Danger? Zara feels it every time she thinks about what happened to Roscoe and Enna. And a different kind, every time she stands too close to Eli.
Leopold slips behind Zara, his hand spanning the distance between her shoulder blades. He pushes her toward Adrian, until every part of her is crowded against him. Adrian’s whole body feels like an apology. She can’t tell if he’s sorry that Leopold is pushing her into him, or sorry for liking it.
Leopold’s voice is a thick whisper. “This is what we need, in the moments you are standing together.”
“Kiss/kill,” Meg adds from down in the orchestra pit.
“What’s kiss/kill?” Adrian asks. He sounds eager to learn, and again Zara remembers her old, innocent self.
Leopold chuckles. “We use such different words in the theater, I know. Kiss/kill is the distance we use to show intensity.” Leopold prods Zara in the back again, forcing her even closer to Adrian. “So close, the characters seem to have only two courses of action. They might kiss, or they might kill each other.”
Leopold pushes Zara farther; every contour of Adrian’s body is obvious now. Standing this close to him is part of the blocking, has always been part of the blocking, but the way that Leopold pushes her makes anger slide through Zara, burning at the back of her throat.
She doesn’t step away. If two deaths aren’t enough to make her walk away from this role, and being kept away from Eli isn’t enough, being shoved up against Adrian Ward is definitely not enough.
“Still wrong,” Leopold says, studying their bodies like he’s hanging a picture frame and it’s just a fraction off. He adjusts her — a flurry of small touches — and she goes sickly hot everywhere his hand meets her skin.
Echo After Echo Page 14