But once I see the library up ahead, my worry about Annie takes over again. I pause at the double doors, and through the little windows I can see Annie inside. Right there, perfectly fine, standing with her back to me in front of the circulation desk. I pull the doors open and step through. She turns at the sound, her face alight with that same new hungry hopefulness from last Friday. Her voice, though, when she speaks, is her normal Annie voice.
“Oh, hi, Cyn. What are you doing here?”
“I came to find you. Are you — is everything okay?”
She looks at me strangely. “Of course.”
I am still waiting to feel relieved. I don’t quite feel relieved.
“You weren’t at lunch,” I say. “Didn’t you get my texts?” My millions of texts? And my voice mail?
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” She shrugs. “I figured you’d guess I came here.”
I take a step closer. That feeling of wrongness, of not belonging in this space, is starting to crowd in around me again.
“Did you — did you go to your classes? I didn’t see you in the hall, either.”
She laughs, but it’s not quite her lovely Annie laugh. “What are you, my mother?”
I try to laugh, too, but I can only manage a tight smile.
Mr. Gabriel appears suddenly behind the desk, and once more I fight the urge to scream.
“Hello, Cynthia,” he says. “We didn’t expect to see you.”
He is looking at me intently. I don’t quite meet his eyes.
“Yes, well, I just thought I’d come by to meet my friend.” I turn back to Annie. “Are you ready to go?”
She looks to the librarian, and I want to shake her. You don’t need his permission!
He nods, and she smiles. “Sure, let’s go. See you tomorrow, Mr. G.”
Well, it’s better than John.
I look at him a moment more. He’s still watching me. As we stand there, I feel that shifting again, that sense of bodies, of movement, of something else here in the same space with us. But there’s nothing here. Nothing beside me, nothing around me but normal library things and Annie and Mr. Gabriel. What is that? I want to ask him. I feel like he knows. But I also feel like asking him would be a very bad idea.
“Yeah, see you tomorrow, Mr. G.,” I say, turning away.
Annie is waiting by the door. Just as I reach her, I hear Mr. Gabriel’s voice right behind me.
“I’ll look forward to it,” he says softly, his breath tickling my ear.
I spin around to face him, to push him away, how dare he sneak up so close to me like — but he’s still standing behind the desk, where we left him.
“Good afternoon, girls,” he says. Then he smiles at me. Something in that smile makes me grab Annie’s arm and practically drag her out into the hall.
Annie and I both have eighth period free on Mondays. I am more than a little surprised that after apparently cutting most of the day to hang out in the library, she is now willingly leaving when she doesn’t actually have to be anywhere else. With some trepidation, I point out this seeming inconsistency in her behavior.
Annie shrugs again. “He said he had things to do during eighth period.”
And just like that, she is back to being herself. The world crashes back into place around me, and I feel like an idiot.
We head to study hall to pass the time until the final bell. Leticia and Diane wave us over to their table, and we swerve to join them. After a minute, Billy and Kelly sit down in the last two seats at the far end.
I drop my eyes without meaning to and feel Annie’s glance of concern from beside me. I look at her and make a disgusted face, and she gives me a sympathetic smile. Kelly Nolan is the girl Billy started dating about five seconds after he told me that it wasn’t “working out.” She is lovely and petite with gorgeous red-blond hair that she often wears twisted up in some seemingly quick and casual way that I could never pull off even with a team of professional hairdressers to help me. She is one of those girls who don’t ever seem to have a bad hair day or a zit or to even once make a regrettable clothing purchase. One secretly suspects that she never gets her period or goes to the bathroom, either. We hate her on principle, even though she is actually perfectly nice.
And really, I don’t even care that they are together. I don’t want Billy. I want Ryan Halsey. Ryan is twenty times the boy Billy is. Fifty times. Possibly a hundred. And I am way more interesting and intelligent than Kelly Nolan. But I don’t really want to watch them making kissy faces at each other all through study hall, either. It’s kind of insulting.
Even though I know she has a test to study for tomorrow, Annie spends the whole period drawing me little stick-figure pictures to distract me from our lovebird tablemates. I end up being shushed twice by the teacher on duty for laughing, and by the time the bell rings I have stopped feeling at all weird or uncomfortable or vaguely and stupidly inferior.
Sometimes I love Annie so much I can hardly stand it.
Usually Annie sticks around on Mondays both to keep me company and to make actual use of study hall, because her house is always filled with small, loud children in the afternoons, her little brother and sister and their seemingly infinite number of small, loud friends who apparently do not have homes of their own to go to after school, and so it’s impossible for her to get any studying done there. I stick around because I am tech director for the fall musical this year, which rehearses Monday and Wednesday afternoons.
I love musical theater, have loved it fiercely and unwaveringly ever since my parents took me to see a local community theater production of Pippin when I was five. I’ve experimented with being onstage a few times over the years (most memorably as Teresa the Turkey in our fourth-grade Thanksgiving assembly, which I don’t think I will ever entirely live down), but as much as I love and appreciate the music and the singing and the acting, my true devotion is for the secret magic that happens behind the scenes. Even at age five, what most captivated me was the seamless shifting of the sets and the mysteries of how what was obviously just an empty wooden floor with some curtains around it could be transformed into another time and place so convincingly that everyone in the audience completely and absolutely believed it.
And since Mary Chang, who was the reigning queen of backstagery for the past three years, is now off enjoying her first year as a college student at Syracuse University, Mr. Henry came to me when this year’s show was announced and asked me to be the new tech director. Which (as Mr. H. is fully aware) has been my not-so-secret ambition since freshman year, and I am determined to make him proud.
The set this year is, of course, the most challenging one we’ve ever attempted. We’re doing Sweeney Todd, which, in case you are somehow unfamiliar with one of the best Sondheim musicals EVER, is about an insane barber (insane after years spent wrongfully in prison, where he was sent on trumped-up charges so a corrupt judge could steal and destroy his family — mitigating circumstances, people!) who returns to wreak revenge upon those who wronged him. And on pretty much everyone else, too, eventually. There is an equally insane pie shop mistress (Mrs. Lovett) who had been secretly in love with Sweeney from before and who helps him (but also deceives him horribly and is pretty much responsible for eviscerating what little shreds of sanity he had left, to the detriment of all) and who comes up with the brilliant idea of cooking the dead bodies of his victims into her meat pies, and there is a young, innocent sailor who falls in love with Sweeney’s daughter, who is being raised in captivity by the very bad judge, and there is love and pain and humor and darkness and awesomeness all around.
If you think the plot is complex, you should see the set design. It includes a rotating two-story structure that serves as Sweeney’s tonsorial parlor over the pie shop as well as the pie shop itself and Mrs. Lovett’s apartment and also occasional other scenes. And one of the key elements is ultimately the barber chair that Sweeney rigs up to be able to dump his victims conveniently down a trapdoor to the lower level, whe
re they can wait to be ground up into pies. Some high-school productions forego the special chair and come up with some far less impressive method of getting the dead bodies offstage. We are not going to be one of those high schools. Just because there was a little mishap with the prototype and a couple of people got very slightly injured . . . Well, I am going to fix everything and we are going to have a totally kick-ass chair and it will all be amazing. It’s still two weeks till the start of tech week (i.e., the week leading up to the dress rehearsal and then the actual performances), which is the deadline that Mr. Henry laid down, and I will figure it out.
And in related news, there is an extra, added bonus to this year’s production.
After Ryan Halsey’s extraordinary scene-stealing turn as the Pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat last year, which, incidentally, positively sealed the deal for me in terms of my hopeless crush, there was no question that Mr. Henry would be casting him again this time around. And what better way to get to know someone than hanging out in the auditorium together between scenes, freed from the constraints of assigned classroom seating and Ryan’s usual intimidating group of friends, who, fortunately, do not seem to share his love of the theater? I only wish I had some talent for sewing, so that I could have volunteered to do costumes on the side and thereby have maneuvered myself to be alone in a corner some evening with Ryan Halsey and some measuring tape and a long list of necessary and intimate measurements that needed taking. But you can’t have everything, I suppose.
Of course, thus far I have not worked up my nerve to do more than stare at him whenever he is onstage and then look down in embarrassment and panic whenever he actually glances my way. But as I may have mentioned, there are two weeks until tech Monday, which means nearly three weeks until opening night. Plenty of time. For everything. I will make my move eventually. I just have to work up the courage. Which might be sooner now that he has demonstrated knowledge of my name. My heart leaps painfully upward in pointless hope as I remember this wondrous fact, but I smush the feeling back down firmly. It doesn’t mean anything. He just has a good memory, like he has a good everything else, and has heard Mr. Henry calling out tech notes to me during rehearsals or heard someone say my name in Italian class. That’s all.
Annie would smack me for thinking that way, I know. But she has an occasional tendency toward optimism beyond all reason.
Ryan, of course, is playing Sweeney, and as he stands up there, holding the pen that is standing in for the razor, which we still need to procure, singing and exuding demonic barberness with a beautiful mix of sex appeal and insanity, all of my problems seem to melt away and I listen raptly, watch helplessly, and let myself temporarily forget that Ryan and I will probably never really be together in some kind of romantically connected way. That’s one of the things I’ve always loved most about musical theater. The way it makes anything, even the most unlikely turn of events, seem absolutely possible.
When Mr. Henry lets us go for the evening, I slip my set notebook back into my bag and then sit for a moment, thinking, as the other students begin to make their way toward the various doors. I am thinking I might swing by the library on my way out, because even though I was right there when Annie said “See you tomorrow, Mr. G.,” I have a very strong suspicion that she ended up back there again anyway. And even though I have nearly convinced myself that nothing sinister is going on outside of my own overactive imagination, it will make me feel better to stop by. And then if she is there, we can walk home together, which would be infinitely more fun than me walking home alone with my thoughts.
I stand up and suddenly notice that Ryan is standing in front of me.
“Uh,” I say eloquently, looking up into his face from this unexpected and surprisingly close vantage.
“Hey,” he says back, as though I had said something similarly standard and comprehensible. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I realized I took off pretty fast after our little mid-corridor collision today. I have Marchansky eighth period; you know how he is about people being late to class.”
“Oh,” I say, which, while significantly better than my first statement, still doesn’t exactly register on the charming-and-clever scale. I mentally slap myself across the face. Wake up and be interesting, you idiot! “Um, thanks. Although, I’m the one who slammed into you; I should be asking if you’re okay. But you seem to have made a pretty speedy recovery as far as I can tell.”
Better. Not great, but at least all the words make sentences and things.
He smiles. I manage to stay upright. “Yeah, I think I’ll make it. Anyway, I gotta run, but glad you’re okay. That was a pretty serious full-on tackle. I can’t remember the last time I was taken out like that quite so efficiently.”
I smile back. The way he says efficiently makes me a little light-headed. “Anytime you want a rematch, you let me know.” Crap. Too much? Am I flirting, or threatening him with further bodily harm?
His smile tilts up a bit on one side. “Maybe I will,” he says. He gives me one of those chin-first nods that guys seem to use to communicate various forms of hello and good-bye and acknowledgment. I feel like it is all three, in the best of ways. “See you tomorrow.”
“Sure, yeah. Yeah, okay. See you tomorrow, Ryan.”
I watch him turn and jog toward the door and through the door, savoring the taste of his name on my lips. I tilt my head a little to the side and let myself take in the extremely pleasant rear view of him until he is out of sight.
Oh. Oh, sweet Jesus Christ Superstar.
It takes me a second to start moving again; my brain insists on a few instant replays first. Of my conversation with Ryan Halsey. The one I just had, right here, in which both of us said things to each other, and there was mutual smiling, and no one ended up on the floor or otherwise demonstrated embarrassing behavior of any kind.
I glance up and catch Mr. Henry watching me in obvious amusement from the stage. He raises his eyebrows at me. “Nice boy, that Ryan,” he says, grinning.
I grin back, unable to help myself. “No kidding,” I tell him. I can hear the wistfulness clearly in my voice.
He laughs, but not in a mean way. Mr. Henry is a pretty cool guy. “You should go for it. Bass-baritones that good looking are few and far between.”
“Ha.” I shake my head. “Out of my league, Mr. H. Unfortunately.”
“Now, Cyn. Come on. How do you know until you try?”
I just shake my head again and give him a wave as I head out of the auditorium. Mr. Henry is a little too far removed from being a teenager to really get it, I think. It’s okay. While I am certainly not in any sense of the phrase going to “go for it” with Ryan, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to be excited about our new level of interaction. It’s not . . . impossible, after all, that we could get to know each other better. Maybe we could even become friends, and then eventually he would start to see how awesome I am, deep down. . . .
Now I am actively hoping to find Annie at the library. Screw the creepy librarian. I can’t wait to tell her what happened. Okay, it’s not a marriage proposal or anything, but now that we’ve had one conversation, a real one that’s not just me staring at him in stupid speechlessness or me apologizing for knocking him over, it is highly likely that we could, you know, have another. And another. Which could be the start of really getting to know him. Which could be the start of . . . all kinds of things. My heart makes a few small twitches of tentative hopefulness and I let it, just this once.
Anything really is possible in musical theater. Even if the music at the moment is only playing in my mind.
By the time I reach the third floor, all inner reserve has failed me and there is a full-scale production of “A Heart Full of Love” from Les Misérables going in my head. It is taking place in Italian class and began with Ryan turning to me in the middle of a vocabulary quiz and bursting into song. Ryan and I are Marius and Cosette, obviously, and I have cast Kelly as Éponine, and Signor De Luca as Javert (despi
te that character not actually appearing in this number), and the whole scenario brings me great pleasure, even though the voice parts are all wrong and Kelly takes French, not Italian, and as far as I know she is not secretly and hopelessly in love with Ryan to any great degree. But that’s the nice thing about fantasies; everything can be completely and nonsensically rearranged to the suit the fantasist. It is why I often prefer them to real life. Still, I stop short of envisioning Kelly’s death-scene rendition of “A Little Fall of Rain.” I’m not evil, after all.
I do make her dirty and dressed in rags with noticeably unshaven legs and underarms, though.
Also, there may be some lice.
As the song ends I suddenly notice how dim and silent the school is. Every other fluorescent light along the ceiling has been turned off, and the hallway stretches out ahead of me in creepy partial darkness, and I become uncomfortably aware that it is very late. Even if Annie did come back here after study hall, she probably wouldn’t have stayed this long. I pause, thinking of the stairway just a few steps behind me, thinking how I could just turn right around and go back downstairs. There’s probably no reason for me to even bother checking the library. I can see the big double doors up ahead, flickering a little as one of the ceiling lights nearby struggles and falters. It’s probably locked up for the night anyway. I can leave, right now, without opening those doors. Yes, my brain agrees. That is very logical thinking you have going on there. Let’s just go. Let’s go right now. The urge to flee is nearly overwhelming.
“Oh, just stop it already,” I mutter at myself in irritation. I make myself start walking again. Seriously, delicious Ryan-centered fantasies aside, I need to quit letting myself get so carried away with ridiculous ideas. Even if there is little chance Annie is in there, I will make myself go inside just to prove that there is no reason not to. He’s just a librarian. I am not afraid of a librarian, for crissakes.
Evil Librarian Page 3