by Robin Talley
“Yeah. He wanted me to help him convince Ms. Marcus to put on Andrew instead of him.”
“What?” My heart starts thumping. No. No. This show is already maxed out on crises. My brain starts running a hundred miles an hour. “Oh, God—there’s no time. We haven’t rehearsed the understudies. I don’t think Andrew even knows the lyrics. He probably can’t do the falsetto, and the costumes definitely won’t fit him, and we don’t have time to rehearse the cart scene again. And we’d have to restage the sewer scene—there’s no way Andrew could lift Malik like that. Actually, come to think of it, we could probably put Malik on for Nick, but then we wouldn’t have a Marius and we’d be just as screwed—”
“Try to breathe, Mel. I talked him out of it.” She meets my eyes again. Her gaze is slow and heavy, and I wonder how tired she is. If she’s been having trouble sleeping, like I have. “Relax.”
I want to take her hand. I want to take her hand so much.
“He didn’t think he’d get the lead,” she goes on, turning back to the stage. “He auditioned because his parents hired some kind of college counselor after football season didn’t go as well as they’d hoped. The counselor said he should try out for the spring musical, to pad his extracurriculars and give him an essay topic. Something about translating his leadership and physical strength from the football field into the arts field.”
“That’s incredibly stupid.”
She chuckles. “He used to sing when he was younger, and they hired him a vocal coach to prep for his audition, but once he got the role he was on his own. He thinks he yelled at that hockey game and gave himself laryngitis on purpose. Subconsciously.”
“Great. Did you record him saying that? Because he tried to tell everyone it was my fault.”
“Yeah . . . he mentioned that. He asked me to tell you he was sorry.”
“Sure, I totally believe that.”
She smiles a little, still looking at the stage. “He overheard you talking to the crew about him back in February. You said something—or he thought you did, anyway—about him not belonging in the show, and it got to him. He started blaming you for everything that was going wrong. Now he’s finally figured out that didn’t help anything.”
“What? I never said anything like that. Or—wait . . .” Did I? I’ve talked to my friends about actors countless times. It never occurred to me that anyone might hear.
Nick may be awful, but we can’t do this show without him.
“Anyway,” Odile goes on, her voice still slow and heavy, “then he heard about the curse from Rachel, and . . .”
“What? Rachel?”
Odile nods. “They were together for a while. You didn’t know?”
“What? No! I hear every rumor.”
“They kept it under wraps. I didn’t know, either, until we saw them together at that restaurant in the city.”
“Wait. Nick was there that night?” That’s when I remember the guy waving to Rachel with his back turned. He definitely had Nick’s football-player frame. “. . . Oh. Oh, shit.”
I must’ve screwed things up with Rachel worse than I realized. I wonder how much else I’ve ruined without even noticing it.
“For what it’s worth, I really do think he feels bad. He knows he messed things up for you.” Odile looks down at her hands. “And me.”
“Well . . . he’s not the only one who messed up.”
She shrugs. If she heard the regret in my voice, she doesn’t comment on it. “I said I’d help him rehearse one more time this afternoon, to get his confidence up. I hope he agrees. He isn’t in a good place right now.”
“And that’s not good for the show.” I meet her gaze again. “That was really nice of you to offer. Spending extra time with Nick the Dick isn’t my idea of a fun afternoon.”
She finally laughs, a real laugh, and shakes her head. “Is that what the crew calls him?”
“Some of us. I guess we should stop, though. It isn’t cool to talk about the actors that way. I mean, if he overheard us back in February and it freaked him out that much . . .”
“Honestly, cliques are my least favorite thing about high school theater.”
There’s a damp spot on the shoulder of Odile’s scoop-neck T-shirt. I want to touch it, badly. “Did he literally cry on your shoulder?”
She brushes at the damp spot. “Professional hazard. Get ready. SMs are most actors’ favorite crying targets.”
“So whose shoulder do I get to cry on?”
Her smile falters. “Mel, I . . . I talked to Dom last night.”
For some reason, those words make my stomach give out. “Oh?”
“Yeah. He told me some stuff I didn’t know.”
“Such as?” But from the way Odile’s gritting her teeth, I’m not really sure I want to know.
“Well, he said a bunch of things. But the one that stuck with me the most was that the superstition—the one about you not dating—he said the rule was actually that you . . . you weren’t allowed to fall in love.”
We’re both looking straight ahead from the back row of a cavernous auditorium with the run crew still adjusting the sets on the stage in front of us. Somehow, though, it feels like we’re in a tight, dark room, with nothing occupying the space but the two of us.
“He said that if you really believed you’d set off the curse . . . then it must mean you thought you were . . .”
I keep staring straight ahead. “Yeah.”
“That you . . . I mean, that you and I were . . .”
“In love.” I shut my eyes.
It’s strange. This is hardly the first time I thought I was in love. Hell, I even thought I was in love with Rachel. I’d said those words to her—“I love you”—when we were still away at theater camp, a week or so after our first kiss.
Jasmin used to tease me about it. During the first couple of R&J rehearsals, she said I was as bad as Romeo, thinking he was head over heels for Rosaline and probably a whole parade of nameless girls before her.
Now I know better. I know what real love feels like.
But I never got to say those words to Odile. I lost her too quickly.
Stupid. I was so stupid. About so much.
“Yeah.” I open my eyes. “I was. I mean . . . I am. In love. With you.”
Onstage, someone yells, “Watch out!” I look up, on instinct, but it’s just Michael tossing an empty water bottle to Melissa. They’re both laughing.
“But you . . .” Odile shakes her head. I can’t look at her, but I can feel the movement at my side.
She’s so close. I could touch her hand, if she’d let me.
“You still . . .” She’s stammering. I wouldn’t have thought she could stammer. “You acted like the most important thing in the world was dealing with some superstition. You said you had to—to fix this. I remember those words so clearly.”
“It’s not about the superstition, it’s about the show. Everything was falling apart. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Because fixing the show mattered more than anything.”
“I . . .”
“More than love.”
I shut my eyes again. “When you put it like that it sounds really horrible, but . . .”
“Yes, it does.”
“Okay, but—”
“Mel—for what it’s worth, which I guess isn’t much . . .”
Soft fingertips on my shoulder. I open my eyes and turn to face her. She’s biting her lip. “I was in love with you, too.”
She turns away again. And a second later, she’s reaching for her purse.
“I—”
“It’s okay. I know where I stand.” She gets up so fast her purse catches on the armrest. She doesn’t look at me as she disentangles it, but she puts on a strained smile. “We can pretend we never had this conversation. Or any other one, if you want.”
“I’m so sorry, Odile, I—”
“Yeah, okay.” The male voice is abrupt over our heads. I snap around to see Nick, still in his
sweaty costume, his hand buried in his dark, curly hair. “Let’s run the scene.”
Are you serious?! I want to shout. But Odile’s already smiling her Hollywood smile.
“Of course.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder, as though nothing’s wrong. As though nothing’s ever been wrong. “The docks or the hospital?”
“Both. Hospital first, though, that one’s harder.” He’s bouncing from foot to foot. Pure adrenaline.
I glance back up at the stage, but I can’t see Will or Bryce. Well, they can call me on the headset if they need me. Besides, we need Nick as much as we need a functioning fly system.
To be honest . . . we need him more.
“I’ll help.” I sigh. “We can use the black box.”
“Is it open?” Odile asks, still smiling brightly. Still acting.
I dangle my keys and force a smile of my own. Maybe it’s time I learned to act. “It is if we need it to be.”
Right now, putting on a perfect show is the only goal I might actually be able to pull off.
From: Melody McIntyre
To: All directors and crew heads
Date: Thursday, 4/30, 11:05 p.m.
Subject: Rehearsal report
Today’s rehearsal:
12:20 p.m.–2:54 p.m.: Invited Dress Rehearsal (full show run-through)
Tomorrow’s schedule:
7:00 p.m. PERFORMANCE (fight call 4:30 p.m.; all other cast/crew call time 5:00 p.m.)
Actor report:
No absences
Late: Noah (3 minutes—excused)
Set updates:
We’re still in the process of double-checking all the flies and related set pieces. Mr. Green or Mel will confirm when we’re confident everything has tested safe.
Costume updates:
Costumes are at long last COMPLETE. Thank you so much to everyone who pitched in to help this week.
The costume crew is nonetheless expected to be on call backstage on all show days to deal with the last-minute fixes that always spring up.
Lighting and sound updates:
None.
Publicity update:
Advance ticket sales are showing a near-sellout crowd for opening tomorrow. When walk-up sales are factored in, we expect a full house and may wind up having to turn people away (fingers crossed).
Thank you, everyone. —Mel
—Also stored on BHS performing arts department shared drive.
Created by: Melody McIntyre, stage manager, class of 2021
Viewable to: All crew and directors
Editable by: Current SM ONLY
Scene 8—Tech Booth, Beaconville High School Theater
HOURS UNTIL SPRING MUSICAL OPENS: 20
“Mel? You’re still here?”
It’s always strange to hear Will call me by my first name. “Yeah. Everything all right?”
“I saw your rehearsal report come through on my phone.” He ducks into the booth, sliding a C-wrench into his pocket. The house below us is dark, with only the bare ghost light perched on the stage. “Do your dads know where you are?”
“Uh-huh. I’ve been texting Pops.”
“You should get home. Your friends all left hours ago.”
That’s not technically true, but I don’t correct him. After the other actors realized Odile and I were in the black box with Nick, some of them decided to put in extra rehearsal time too. I had to go backstage to work on the flies, but I let the actors stick around.
Dom and Malik wound up being the last to leave, so Dom stopped by the booth on his way out. And we . . . kind of had a fight.
Fine—I started it. I was mad at him for telling Odile about the curse. I thought he’d apologize right away.
But he didn’t. In his opinion, he’d only been trying to help. And the next thing I knew, we were fighting about everything.
He’s still angry that I ignored him during auditions. I’m still angry he abandoned the crew to act in the first place. He’s mad I didn’t tell him about me and Odile, even though he’s been on my side about the curse from day one.
And, okay, he might’ve had a point about that last one, but there’s nothing I can do about that now. All I know is, I’m working on an epic disaster of a musical, I’m in love with a girl who hates me, and my own best friend thinks I’m a screwup.
“I know,” I tell Will, wishing I had another rehearsal report to write so I could think about that instead of all this. “I’m just polishing my prompt script.”
He frowns down at my binder. “You’ve had that done since tech ended.”
“We made changes during dress. I needed a clean copy.”
“Listen . . .” Will pauses. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
“Oh God, what’s wrong? Are the flies in even worse shape than we thought?”
“This isn’t about the flies. Or, well, it isn’t just about the flies.” He meets my gaze. “I’m concerned about this show, Mel.”
My heart flips over. Will doesn’t say things like that without a reason. “Oh crap. Is the turntable having issues again?”
“No. Not yet, anyway. But all told, wouldn’t you say we’ve had a fair number of problems?”
“I mean, yeah. There’s a reason everyone thinks we’re cursed.”
“Yes, there is.” Will drops into Jasmin’s empty seat beside me. “It’s because you’re all in high school, and most of you have only worked on a handful of shows at most. You don’t have enough context to realize exactly how many things can go wrong on a large-scale production.”
“Come on, Will. Stuff doesn’t just drop from the rigging on the regular in other theaters.”
“Actually, it does.” He nods, his gaze serious and steady. “Generally it doesn’t happen during the IDR, and generally it doesn’t involve such enormous set pieces, but this is hardly the first time I’ve seen something like this happen. It’s the reason this industry has safety protocols. It’s the reason everyone involved in a show needs to understand that these things are normal, and that the only way to stay safe is to follow the rules. We can’t have people believing it’s all controlled by supernatural forces, or they won’t understand that they actually need to be careful. And that understanding has to start at the top. Which means you, Mel.”
“Come on.” I hate it when adults talk down to me. “I’ve poured everything I have into making this a perfect show. I’ve given up things I really, really didn’t want to give up. I can’t possibly work any harder than I already am.”
“I’m not talking about working harder, I’m talking about the tone you set for your team. Tomorrow’s opening night, and after everything that’s happened, the cast and crew need to know they can do this. They need to believe you have faith in them to make this come off right.”
I shake my head. “Things can’t come off right on this show. Every possible thing that could go wrong, has.”
“Not true. There’s always room for it to get worse.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous.” His face is dead serious. “There’s a reason superstitions rise up among the people who do this work. It can be overwhelming, and sometimes it can help to believe the threat is coming from outside. All the same, though, we have to keep in mind that the real danger is right here in the real world.”
“I mean, sure, we obviously need to be super careful, but there’s no way to explain all the weird stuff that’s happened in this theater. That fire started in a locked room for no reason.”
“That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about.” Will sighs. “There is a reason the fire happened, and it has nothing to do with any curse. The fire department investigated. The spark in the costume room started because of faulty wiring. It’s been there ever since this building went up, and it was just a matter of time before it caught.”
I pause. I don’t have an answer for that. “They’re positive?”
“They are. And the investigation found something else, too. The on
ly reason the fire didn’t spread was because the costume room was locked. Because you followed the safety protocol.”
I can’t hide how stunned I am. “But . . . but what about Julio getting hurt in that rehearsal? And when David broke his leg at my house, he didn’t even fall that far—”
“Mel, we can’t spend time analyzing every detail of everything that’s ever happened. What matters is what happens next. We need you to step up and be the leader your classmates desperately want. Not a dictator focused on arbitrary rules, but someone your friends will want to get behind and support.”
He might as well have punched me in the face. “That’s what I’ve been trying to be. Every single day. It’s all I want in the entire world.”
“I know. I heard you helped Nick get in some extra rehearsal time today, even though he isn’t your favorite person. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about—the actions you can take that show your cast and crew you care about them, not the show.”
“But caring about the show means caring about them.”
“It needs to be the other way around, Mel. There’s no such thing as a perfect show. If you keep striving for that, you’ll burn out before you ever make it to your first paid stage management gig.”
He’s right. I already feel burned out, and I haven’t even called my first musical yet. “But I want the show to be perfect.”
“Of course you do. You wouldn’t be a good SM otherwise.” He smiles. “Speaking of which, when you’re at camp this summer, you should really sign up for a costume class. I saw some of the sashes you made the other day, and . . .”
“I know, I know. I suck at sewing. Good SMs need to be able to do costumes.”
“Exactly. You need to be able to pitch in absolutely anywhere.”
“Is that why you used to be an actor?”
He grins. “I wondered when you were going to bring that up again.”
“Which did you really want to do? When you were my age, I mean?”
“When I was your age, I wanted to be in Boyz II Men.” His grin widens, the dimple in his chin flashing. “I didn’t discover theater until college. But once I did, I wanted to do all of it, onstage and off. All that mattered was, I’d found my people.”