The Show Must Go On!

by P. J. Night

  None of which lessened her anxiety. She could not get the image of the explosion out of her mind. Through each class, walking in the halls between classes, sitting at lunch, and talking to her friends, she felt distracted, her mind locked on that single, devastating image.

  “Earth to Bree,” someone said as she walked through the hallway on her way to rehearsal.

  Bree spun around, practically jumping into the air.

  “Melissa!” she cried. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people.” She tried to joke her way out of the reality that her mind was far away, lost in her terrible dream.

  “You’ve been in a fog all day, Bree,” Melissa said. “Getting the ‘I can’t believe opening night is tomorrow’ jitters?”

  “Maybe,” Bree replied flatly. She had already told Melissa too many weird things. She was not about to share her most recent nighmare with her too.

  “Are you kidding?” Melissa said. “Even with all the bizarre stuff you’ve had to deal with, you have been the glue that holds this show together, Bree. You’re a rock. You are going to rule tomorrow night!”

  If I survive. Bree thought, grimacing.

  “Thanks, Lis,” Bree said, trying to sound happy—like her usual self. “I guess it is opening-night nerves. What else could it be? I mean, this is my first play, and I am playing the lead.”

  “You’ll be great,” Melissa repeated as they reached the auditorium. She pulled open the door, and Bree followed her inside.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please assemble onstage,” Ms. Hollows said as Bree reached the front of the auditorium.

  Bree joined the rest of the cast on the stage.

  “This is our final rehearsal. Our dress rehearsal. We will be performing the entire play, start to finish, exactly as we will be doing it tomorrow night in front of an audience. Before we begin, I would like to let each and every one of you know that I could not be more proud of you,” Ms. Hollows began. “You started as a group of individuals, each with your own ideas about what this play was and what your part in it would be. In the weeks we have worked together, we have become a unit, a team. Each of you has put aside any notion you walked in here with, for the good of the play, and your performances certainly reflect that. I could not have asked for a better cast.

  “Watching you bring the author’s words to life has been a rewarding experience for me. I believe in this play strongly, as strongly as if I had written it myself. And on that note, let’s begin. Break a leg, everyone!”

  As the cast headed backstage, the lights dimmed, and Bree stepped out from behind the curtain to begin the first scene. As she opened her mouth to deliver her first line, a wave of panic seized her. The image of the explosion played out in front of her eyes, as if someone were projecting a movie of her dream right here, where it happened.

  “I—I,” Bree stammered. She was Bree, alone and frightened on the stage. She was not in character at all. She was certainly not Carrie. She was Bree caught in the grip of the deadly vision that now haunted her every waking minute.

  Ms. Hollows stepped up to the edge of the stage. “Gabrielle,” she said. “What is the problem?”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Hollows,” Bree said, using every ounce of willpower to push aside the terror and the panic that shook her whole body. “Must just be nerves. Let’s start again. I’ll get it this time.”

  Bree walked offstage and took a deep breath. You only have to do this a few more times in your entire life. You know the lines. You know what to do. Just do it!

  She walked back onto the stage. The lights dimmed, and this time she became Carrie. The play began, and she moved from scene to scene seamlessly. The further into the play she got, the more her sense of panic and impending doom eased.

  She felt comfortable as Carrie.

  It was even somewhat of a relief to lose herself in the character, to become someone else for a couple of hours.

  When the dress rehearsal had ended, Ms. Hollows called the cast together. “Excellent! I have never felt more confident about a play I have been involved with. Opening night is tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “Everyone please get a good night’s sleep. I will see all of you for the performance.”

  A rush of all-too-familiar anxiety overwhelmed Bree. Those are exactly the same words Ms. Hollows said in my dream. And then . . . and then . . .

  All the calm and relief she had felt during the rehearsal vanished in a moment.

  Struggling to hold herself together, Bree hurried backstage. She didn’t want Melissa to see her like this. She didn’t want anyone to see her like this. She just wanted it to all be over. The fear, the nightmares, the crazy masks and lights and phone calls, the play.

  The play.

  Ever since it had come into her life, Bree had felt as if the play was a really bad thing disguised as a really good thing.

  Every time she had begun to feel good about the experience, something inside, something deeper, felt off, wrong, even threatened. The play would be finished soon and she would be free—free of the power it seemed to hold over her. And then she would never have to do it again.

  “Coming, Bree?” Melissa asked, sticking her head backstage.

  “Nah, my mom’s coming to pick me up,” Bree said, trying her hardest to act normal. “I’ll hang here.”

  “’Kay,” Melissa said. “See ya tomorrow for the big show!”

  “Tomorrow,” Bree repeated. Melissa left the auditorium, along with the rest of the cast.

  Bree knew that her mom would be there in about twenty minutes. Enough time to do what she needed to do. She hurried from the auditorium and raced to the library, knowing it was unlocked. Slipping into the room, she was overwhelmed by the silence. It was so weird to be here without Mr. Harris, and without a roomful of studying students. But she didn’t need Mr. Harris’s help for this. She just needed a computer, and she couldn’t wait until she got home to use her own.

  Signing onto one of the library’s computers, she searched for “Mildred P. Wormhouse.” As she typed the name, she wondered why she hadn’t done this earlier. It seemed to Bree that the key to all of this had to rest with the playwright herself.

  After a few minutes of digging, she found a website dedicated to obscure playwrights. Searching through the names, she found what she was looking for—a short biography of Mildred P. Wormhouse.

  Reading the bio, Bree learned that The Last Sleepover was the only play that Wormhouse ever wrote. Apparently, she had had a difficult, unhappy childhood. She had few friends and spent much time alone. The bio referred to the death of Gabrielle Ashford on the opening night of the play at Thomas Jefferson Middle School. And it also said that Mildred P. Wormhouse apparently disappeared shortly after the event and was never heard from again.

  Her whereabouts, or even whether she was still alive, remained unknown.

  Wormhouse was quoted in the piece as saying, “I was endlessly tormented by one particular bully. As a matter of fact, she was the inspiration for my play. She turned everyone at school against me, and there was nothing I could do about it. And so, since I had no control over events in my real life, I decided to get my revenge through my writing, through The Last Sleepover. Not to be too obvious, I shortened the name of the poor tormented ghost in my play from my own ‘Mildred’ to just ‘Millie.’ And I changed the name of my tormentor completely, calling her Carrie rather than her true name—Gabrielle.”

  Bree reached the end of the bio and sat, stunned. Not only was the girl who died thirty years named Gabrielle, but so was the bully who’d excluded young Mildred from sleepovers—the inspiration for the play itself.

  “This whole play is about revenge,” Bree said to herself. “Revenge against the Gabrielle who excluded Mildred. Was it also revenge against Gabrielle Ashford? Will it also be revenge against Gabrielle Hart—against me?”

  She shut down the computer and hurried from the library. She still had a few minutes before her mom would be there, so she headed back to the auditorium to pick up her thi
ngs, trying to digest what she had just learned.

  The auditorium was silent. Bree was alone.

  Or so she thought.

  She suddenly heard the soft scraping of feet, the sound of someone running down the aisle.

  “Who’s there?” she called out, stepping from backstage out onto the stage. She saw no one. “Hello?”

  A shadow moved at the back of the theater.

  “Who is it?” Bree called again, staring intently into the darkness.

  She saw a quick movement near the bottom of the stairs leading up to the balcony. Then a figure stepped into a small pool of light cast from above.

  Bree caught a momentary glimpse of a face, half in light, half in shadow.

  It was the face of a girl, a girl about her age, but Bree couldn’t place her.

  “What are you doing here?” Bree cried out.

  The girl said nothing. She simply turned and hurried up the stairs leading to the balcony.

  Bree chased after the girl, racing to the stairs. A mysterious stranger lurking in the shadows of the theater? Mysterious, yet familiar—just like the voice in the phone calls. In light of all that had happened, Bree felt certain that this was the person behind everything. She was going to get her answers, and she was going to get them now, tonight, so that when the curtain went up tomorrow night, all this craziness would be behind her.

  She dashed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. As she ran, she heard soft, steady footsteps charging ahead on the flight of stairs above her. Up she went, to the top level of the theater. As she rounded each turn on the staircase, Bree caught a brief glimpse of a foot, or a leg, or a flash of color vanishing around the bend ahead.

  Once she reaches the balcony, there’s nowhere else to go, Bree thought as her feet pounded the stairs. I’ve got her. And she will tell me who she is and what has been going on!

  Reaching the top level of the staircase, she stepped out onto the balcony. Short rows of seats angled down toward the stage far below. A low railing ran across the front of the balcony. There Bree spotted the girl she had been chasing. The girl peered over the railing, looking down at the empty stage.

  “There’s nowhere to go, you know,” Bree said firmly. “You can’t run anymore. I know you’re the one who’s been messing with me, playing these tricks, trying to make me believe that I’m crazy or that I shouldn’t be in this play or who knows what. Well, it ends here.”

  She rushed down the aisle, walked up to the girl, and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  “Who are you?” she demanded, spinning the girl around. For the first time she got a good look at her face.

  Bree released the girl’s shoulders. Were her eyes playing tricks on her? How could this be? Bree stared right into the girl’s eyes. The face belonged to . . . Bree! She was looking at her own face, staring at herself.

  “I’m not dreaming, am I?” Bree asked.

  The other girl, the other Bree, shook her head.

  “Then what’s happening to me?” Bree shouted, venting all her anger and frustration in one powerful outburst.

  The other Bree spoke in a voice that Bree had come to know all too well.

  “Leave now, and never come back . . . or you’ll be sorry!”

  Bree was so stunned by hearing those same words, spoken with that familiar voice—her own voice—that she stumbled backward toward the stairs. Trying to regain her balance, as her mind tried to make sense of what had just happened, she tripped at the top of the stairs.

  She went tumbling down the stairs and hit her head on the landing.

  That last thing she saw before everything went dark was her own face looking down at her from the top of the stairs. The other Bree was smiling.

  CHAPTER 14

  Bree opened her eyes slowly. At first she could not make sense of her surroundings. She felt her head resting on a pillow.

  Her awareness then shifted from the softness of the pillow to the throbbing pain in her head. Her blurry vision began to clear, and she could make out a rectangular plastic light cover, the type used to cover fluorescent bulbs in office buildings and hospitals.

  Bree next focused on the ring of faces looking down at her.

  Mom? Dad? Megan? What’s going on?

  “Where am I?” she asked, finally mustering enough energy to speak.

  “You’re in the hospital, sweetheart,” her mom replied. “That was quite a fall you took, but the doctors say you’re going to be just fine.”

  “Nice to see you awake, kiddo,” her dad added.

  “You’ll do anything for attention, won’t you, little sister?” Megan asked, smiling a genuinely warm smile.

  “Fall? I really did fall?” Bree asked, still very confused. “That wasn’t a dream?”

  “No, honey, I wish it had been just a dream,” her mom said.

  “What day is it?” Bree asked, trying to sit up, but only managing to lift her head a few inches before falling back down onto the pillow. “What about the play? What happened to the play? Did the show go on?”

  “Relax, honey,” her mom said, gently stroking Bree’s forehead. “You’ve been here for two days. The play was supposed to open yesterday, but of course, the opening was postponed after your fall.”

  “You can’t put on a play without the lead, after all,” Megan said.

  “And, of course, everyone was so relieved that the play was postponed,” her mom continued.

  “What do you mean, relieved?” Bree asked.

  “Because of what happened,” Megan said. She grabbed a remote and flipped on the TV, which hung above Bree’s hospital bed. Megan dialed around until she found a news report.

  “Crews are still cleaning up from the small explosion that took place yesterday evening in the auditorium of Thomas Jefferson Middle School,” the news announcer reported. “The blast went off at seven thirty, which was the precise time a play at the school was about to begin. Fortunately, the play had been postponed, and so the auditorium was empty at the time of the blast. No one was injured. Cleanup crews have been working around the clock to get that section of the school open and safe for use again.”

  Megan shut off the TV.

  “The blast happened exactly at the moment I would have gone onstage to begin the play!” Bree said, trying again to sit up and once again falling back onto her pillow.

  “Don’t get excited, honey,” her mom said. “You were very lucky. I’m not happy you fell, but when I think about what might have happened if the play had gone on . . . ”

  “In my dream I saw myself out onstage,” Bree began to rant. “And I watched from above as I was about to start the play. I saw that explosion happen before it happened!”

  She paused. If it sounded strange to her, imagine how it must sound to her family.

  “Get some rest, honey,” her mother said. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  Bree closed her eyes and tried to make sense of everything. Could the other Bree she saw have placed that dream into her mind, the dream in which she saw what would have happened if she’d gone out to start the play? And when she didn’t heed that warning, did her other self show up at the theater, while Bree was awake, to warn her in person?

  With these questions swirling through her mind, and her body still weak and tired from the fall, Bree drifted off into a deep sleep. She gently fell into a dream, but this time the dream was calming and beautiful rather than terrifying.

  In her dream, she was walking through a field of flowers on a beautiful, sunny day. As she strolled through the field, Bree was joined by her other self. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. It felt like an old friend had decided to accompany Bree on her stroll.

  “The play is cursed, you know,” the other Bree explained as they walked. “Whether by explosion, or a light falling, or some other way, whoever plays the lead is destined to die.”

  “Somehow I did know that, or I sensed it or something,” Bree said. “But who are you?”

  “It’s a little complicat
ed,” the other Bree replied. “I’m you. Or rather, I am your spirit. I’m the ghost of the Bree who would have played the lead and died in the explosion if she hadn’t tripped and fallen.”

  “So you died?” Bree asked. “I mean, I died?”

  “Sort of,” the other Bree said. “There are many timelines that run parallel to one another. They are based on the choices we each make a hundred times a day. Things like ‘Do I walk or take the bus?’ ‘Do I go to my friend’s house or hang out at home?’ ‘Do I go to see the seven o’clock showing of a movie or the eight o’clock showing?’ Simple choices like that.

  “Every so often two of the timelines intersect. In our case, I made them intersect. With your help. Each of the dreams you had in which you saw me opened a portal between timelines. That portal allowed me to pass back and forth between timelines.

  “By the time you had that last dream, the portal was stable enough that I was able to come through and stay in your timeline. That was how I was able to visit you in the theater. I know this is all kind of confusing.”

  “No, I think I understand,” Bree said. “You are from the timeline in which I chose to go out onstage on opening night and do the play. And in that timeline, I died. You are my spirit from that timeline. You crossed over to my timeline, hoping to stop me from going onstage on opening night.

  “I watched as the explosion happened and I was buried in rubble. I saw what was supposed to happen in my dream, but it was because of my other self—because of you—that the show did not go on and I didn’t get caught in the explosion.

  “It was you! You were trying to warn me all along. You were trying to keep me from walking out onto that stage, either by scaring me out of the play or by calling me and telling me to leave. All that, all these weird things that have been happening to me, was just me trying to warn me.”

  “Exactly,” the other Bree said. “I tried to prevent you from being on that stage when the explosion happened. And because of the way the timelines worked, I could only really do things that were part of the play. That’s why it seemed like the scary things in the play were coming true in your real life. It was all I had to work with.