by Robin Talley
I shake my head. “I can’t imagine that.”
“Well, you were lucky enough to find your people earlier than I did. And you’ve still got a long life ahead of you to imagine all sorts of things.” He climbs to his feet. “Now, it’s time for us both to be heading home. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
My stomach roils. “I’ve just got to send a couple more emails.”
His smile fades. “I don’t feel right leaving you here by yourself.”
“I promise, I’ll be fast.”
“Well . . .” He glances at his watch. “I’ll text your dads and tell them you’ll be home in twenty minutes. Sound good?”
As Will knows very well, my house is fifteen minutes from here. I sigh. “Fine.”
“Good. See you in the morning. Oh, and watch your step if you go backstage. I tried to sweep up all the sawdust from the sander, but I might’ve missed some.”
“Right.” Tears spring to my eyes. “Sawdust.”
Will shuts the door to the booth behind him, and I gaze down through the glass at the stage. The sparse prison set stands empty behind the ghost light, waiting for theater magic to fill it up tomorrow.
Unless there’s no such thing as theater magic. Maybe that’s no different from all the superstitions—something we pretend to believe in to make ourselves feel better.
I have no idea what I really believe at this point. All I know is I ended things with Odile, and it only made this mess get worse.
Maybe Will’s right. Maybe all these rules I’ve been obsessed with following mean nothing at all.
Or maybe love is a kind of superstition, too.
I purse my lips, staring down at the set. The show’s opening music is beautiful, and it’s been on an unshakeable loop in my head for the past three weeks.
That’s when I realize I’ve been softly whistling it ever since Will closed the door behind him.
And I don’t actually want to stop.
The notes are powerful, even if my voice isn’t. The simple, wobbly sound of my whistling fills the silent space around me.
All the rules I’ve been so obsessed with for all this time are meaningless. Arbitrary, like Will said. I gave up the person I cared about more than anything, and all because I was trying to follow those damn rules. Now I’ve got nothing to show for it but hollow misery.
The curse didn’t screw me over. I did that all on my own. Maybe I only followed all those rules so I could tell myself my choices didn’t matter.
Falling in love, though—that wasn’t a choice. It was a gift. And I chose to let it go.
PRESHOW PERFORMANCE TASK SCHEDULE
Time to top of show
Task
2 hours, 45 minutes before
SM opens theater, turns on lights, preps backstage
2 hrs, 30 min before
Fight call (Valjean, Javert, Fantine, Factory Girl, Bamatabois & SM)
2 hrs before
Cast & crew sign in, start prepping costumes & checking equipment
1 hr, 30 min before
Begin hair & makeup for Valjean, Javert, Fantine, Thénardiers, Éponine & Cosette
1 hr, 15 min before
House manager checks climate, etc.
1 hr before
Final checks on costumes, props & makeup; put mics on principals; box office opens; ushers arrive & prep lobby
45 min before
Cast & directors onstage for pep talk & vocal warm-up
20 min before
Orchestra takes places & tunes up
20 min before
House manager opens house; audience begins to enter
15 min before
SM calls, “15 minutes, please” to cast & crew
5 min before
SM calls, “5 minutes, please”
Top of show
SM & house manager confer to set curtain time
Top of show
SM calls, “Places, please”
Top of show
SM & house manager confer one more time to ensure audience is seated; HM closes auditorium doors
5 min later
SM calls for house lights & preshow message, then cues conductor
GO!
To the barricades!!!
—Distributed by hard copy and emailed to all cast, crew, and directors.
Also stored on BHS performing arts department shared drive.
Created by: Melody McIntyre, stage manager, class of 2021
Viewable to: All cast, crew, and directors
Editable by: Current SM ONLY
Scene 9—Beaconville High School Theater
MINUTES UNTIL SPRING MUSICAL OPENS: 20
It’s opening night.
Holy shit, it’s opening night. And we’re already way behind schedule.
“Mel, we need another backup yellow ticket,” Michael whispers into the headset. I’ve learned the hard way that when he whispers, it means he’s even more nervous than usual. “The backup Jacob had got used as a Post-it.”
“Have him send someone from his team to check the art room.” I rub my forehead. Normally, our crew heads and assistants are calm and collected on show nights, but this isn’t any other show night. The crew is freaking out on level twenty, and from what I hear filtering over the headset mic whenever Michael gets near the dressing rooms, the actors are, too. “We probably won’t even use the backup. We only need the ticket for the prologue anyway.”
“Mel!” Bryce shouts, even though shouting over headsets is very much against protocol. “Fatima says the casters for the staircases keep getting stuck.”
“Tell her to chill,” I say. “You have grease back there, right?”
There’s a pause, and I hear Fatima’s voice echoing through Bryce’s microphone. She must be leaning in beside her. “Yeah.”
“Apply liberally. It’ll be fine.”
“Does that scrim look like it’s hanging at a weird angle?” Jasmin squints down at the stage from her seat next to mine.
“It looks fine to me.” But now that she brought it up, I’m squinting, too. The last thing we need is for something else to come crashing down on us tonight.
The curtain’s supposed to go up in minutes, but we’ve been fielding a pileup of mild- to medium-level disasters ever since fight call. As soon as the cast and crew arrived, the hazer set off the smoke alarm and we had to follow the evacuation protocol, so dozens of half-dressed actors and panicked crew members were halfway out the door before Will declared an all clear. Then, once everyone was back where they were supposed to be, the lace on Alejandra’s wedding dress tore and necessitated frantic resewing by three different members of the costume team. Plus, the actors somehow already managed to use up all the cocoa powder we’d stockpiled, and Preston had to make a last-minute grocery store run. I gave him the emergency credit card and told him to buy out all the double-A batteries for the mic packs while he was at it, but he hasn’t been seen since.
Worst of all, the turntable’s jammed. If we can’t fix it, we’ll have to shut it down. That would mean improvising every set change all night, which would make the show half an hour longer. Odds are it would also lead to so many actors tripping over set pieces that we’d be lucky if we didn’t wind up having to call an ambulance before the final curtain.
That turntable situation is actually a high-level disaster, come to think of it.
But I can’t focus on it right now. I’m trapped in the booth until the show’s over, so all I can do is wait for my team to update me on their progress. We haven’t opened the house yet, but I can sense the press of the crowd from the lobby just outside.
“Caroline couldn’t find any yellow paper in the art room,” Michael reports. “And the original’s gone missing, so now we don’t have any yellow tickets, period.”
“Mel?” Fatima seems to be speaking into Bryce’s mic. “I can’t get these casters to unstick. The panel for the inn scene won’t roll at all.”
“Imani just puked,” Michael adds. “Ms. Mar
cus took her to the bathroom.”
“There’s always a freshman who pukes at opening,” Jasmin says. I glance over, but she still won’t meet my eyes. “Give her a breath mint, Michael. She’ll be fine.”
“Well, she thinks it might be norovirus.”
“David’s body mic isn’t working,” Kevin announces. “I replaced the batteries but it still won’t switch on.”
“Also . . . hey, uh, Mel?”
Something in Michael’s voice now makes me pause. He’s been dutifully informing me of backstage crises all night, and he’s always sounded somewhere between level one and level five on the panic meter. He’s too intimidated by the actors to reprimand them when they do something wrong, and he’s too anxious around the crew to try to solve any problem himself. Will said that was the most I could expect of any last-minute fill-in ASM, so I’ve been trying not to get stressed out, even when Michael describes problems in the most dire whisper imaginable.
Right now, though, he doesn’t sound panicky. He sounds genuinely overwhelmed.
I summon my Stage Manager Calm. “What is it, Michael?”
“Something’s happening in the girls’ dressing room. I think they’re . . . fighting, maybe?”
Through the headset I can hear the sound of actors shouting over one another, with the occasional shriek mixed in. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, and I’m about to give Michael intervention instructions when—
“Hey! All of you need to chill the H-E-double-hockey-sticks out.” A familiar voice rings through my headset. “Curtain’s going up in twenty minutes and if you’re bellowing at each other now, you won’t have any vocal chords left to sing. Jillian, your braid’s coming loose, go see Shannon and get her to put it back up. Christina, where’s your apron? You should have it on by now. Did you leave it by the makeup table? Go pick it up and pray no one got lipstick on it. Leah, your cocoa powder’s smudged around your eye. Don’t worry, you’ve got time to fix it before you need to go on.”
Oh my God—it’s Gabby.
“Gabby, is that you? Are you back?” Now the voice I’m hearing is Michael’s, and the only note in it is pure delight. “Do you want my headset?”
“No, Michael.” I rub my forehead again. “I’m sure Gabby just came by to tell the cast to break a leg. Tell her I said hi, please.”
The next sound I hear is the awkward rub of someone putting their hand over a mic. A moment later, Gabby’s voice comes through more clearly than before. “Watch out, Lauren! David’s trying to get by on his crutches. Sorry, Mel—I asked Michael to give me the headset after all.”
“You did?” My breath catches, and I allow myself a fraction of a second to feel actual, genuine hope.
“Yeah, I . . . Julio, where’s your jacket? Go find it, you should be upstairs. Mel, I was going to ask if it would be okay for me to ASM the show tonight after all. I was talking to my mom about it, and I realized it wasn’t cool of me to leave when I did, since I made a commitment. I feel really bad for skipping tech and the last few dress rehearsals and—Katelyn, put that hammer down, you’re not allowed to touch your props until right before you go onstage. No, it’s okay, just go put on your jacket and get upstairs.”
“Thank you, Gabby.” I drop my face into my hands. Something good has actually happened. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“Indeed, you’re welcome back, Ms. Piacine,” Will says, and I hear a scattering of applause from the other headsets, too.
I grin. “But now, back to work for all of us. Gabby, tell Michael he’s back on run crew and to go ask Fatima for an assignment.”
“Already did. She’s got him greasing the casters.”
“And . . .” I swallow, trying not to think about the half dozen other people who can currently hear me. I need to say this, now. “I’m so sorry. You were right, Gabby, about everything. I violated your trust, and there’s no excuse for that. I wish I could go back in time and make a different choice, but all I can do is promise that from now on I won’t keep anything from you, or anyone else on this team. You’re way too valuable for that. I got it in my head that all our problems were about some curse, but the truth is, I’m the one who screwed up.” I sigh. “And now we’re seventeen minutes to curtain and we still haven’t opened the house and the turntable’s broken and our Courfeyrac’s puking her guts out. All I wanted to do was put on a perfect show.”
“I thought you said there’s no such thing as a perfect show,” Gabby says. “Hey, Leah. No, no, that looks great, keep it exactly that way.”
I freeze. “What? I said there was no such thing as a perfect show?”
“Yeah, in our very first meeting after I got the ASM job. You said the first rule of theater is that there’s no such thing as a perfect performance and that we should just aim to put on something we feel really good about.”
It’s exactly what Will told me last night.
Maybe deep down, I knew it all along.
“Anyway, thanks.” Gabby takes a breath. Her footsteps echo on the stairs—it sounds like she’s going to the subbasement storage level. That’s where her standard ASM preshow rounds start. “For saying you’re sorry. It might help if you told the others too.”
“It might,” Jasmin says.
Cautiously, I turn to look at her. For the first time in days, she meets my eyes. She nods, once, then turns off her mic and whispers, “And . . . I’m sorry too. I know you really liked her.”
I nod back and bite my lip. I want to shut my eyes, to wallow for a moment, but—
“MEL!” Gabby’s voice is sharp and sudden in my ear. “We need you, now!”
I jump forward, anxiously scanning the stage. The curtain is down, and I can’t see anything happening under it. “What’s wrong?”
It sounds like Gabby’s running. I’ve never heard her sound so out of control. “We’re in the subbasement! You’ve got to come, I don’t know what to do!”
“Continue to hold on opening the house,” I say into my walkie-talkie. I grab my binder, give Jasmin what I hope is a reassuring nod, and direct my smoothest voice into the mic. “Heads up, everyone. This is Mel, leaving the booth.”
MINUTES UNTIL SPRING MUSICAL OPENS: 15
“You’re here!” Gabby lunges toward me as soon as I hit the bottom of the stairs. “It’s Estaban. He got bitten by a bat!”
“What?”
Everyone I see is running. Will is running toward the storage room door, and Ms. Qiao is running down the opposite set of stairs toward me. Meanwhile, Gabby’s running back over to Estaban, who’s cradling his arm.
The subbasement storage room is dark and grimy, full of props from years’ worth of shows, but I never thought there could be a bat in its depths.
“Oh, God.” I run after her. “Estaban, are you okay?”
“It doesn’t hurt.” His face has gone pale, though. “I reached in to grab a backup sword, and I didn’t think to turn the light on, but then—I felt something sharp, and—”
“Go upstairs!” Will shouts. “All of you!”
“How can I help?” I start toward the storage room door just as Ms. Qiao steps through it, raising a prop sledge hammer from Beauty and the Beast over her head.
“Stay out of here!” she calls. “I’m gonna get this sucker!”
Okay. Stage Manager Calm. Stage Manager Calm.
I’ve read every discussion thread there is on stage management best practice, but none of it’s prepared me for what to do if my theater is invaded by flying animals and my props head becomes vampiric minutes before opening. I turn to Estaban, blood pounding in my ears. “We’ve got to wash out the wound. I’ll get the first aid kit—the closest one’s in the hall closet.”
“No, you won’t.” Will swoops toward us, steering Estaban away. “Mr. Goodwin, you’re coming with me. If that bat had—”
Estaban looks terrified. “If it had what?”
“Never mind.” Will pats his shoulder and points to my headset. “We’ve got a show to mount. I need all s
tudents off the sublevel. Ms. Piacine, go wash your hands, thoroughly. Ms. McIntyre, remember the first rule of theater. The show must go on.”
“Right.” I nod, even though I’m still panicking. “So the bat won’t—if it gets out or something—”
A sharp clatter from the storage room makes us all freeze.
“Almost had it!” Ms. Qiao bellows.
“The lady’s got it under control.” Will nods. “Go run your show, Ms. McIntyre.”
MINUTES UNTIL SPRING MUSICAL OPENS: 10
I haven’t even made it one level up before the crises are swelling up again.
“What should we do if Imani can’t go on?” Gabby asks over the sound of running water. She’s still in the bathroom, scrubbing her hands. “It’s okay if she isn’t in the scene for ‘At the End of the Day,’ but we’ll need to have someone else do the dance number in ‘Lovely Ladies’—maybe Madison could? Either way, someone else will have to go on as Courfeyrac, unless we give her lines to Christina or something. But wait, can Madison do the dance without practicing it at all, or should we change the blocking? Or we could run it really quickly—Michael could take them to the dance studio to work on it during the prison scene. Or Peyton could, since she’s dance captain. Should I go ask Ms. Marcus?”
“I—I don’t—let me think.” I press the headset into my ear. Gabby’s mind is already racing twenty steps ahead, and mine should be too—that’s an SM’s entire job description—but I’m still trying to navigate the stairs back up to the stage level, and then I’ll have to run back to the booth, and there are already frenzied actors and crew members everywhere I turn.
“Did something seriously bite Estaban?” Jacob’s the first one who grabs my arm.