I blink happy tears from the shadows as Cass dances about the stage to the melody of her own ecstatic squeals.
“How is this possible?” Cass asks, once her celebration dies down. “I’ve never— It’s gone?”
Dylan shakes his head. “I don’t know.” I suddenly realize he’s spoken—twice now—with no stutter. I was too caught up in Cass—it didn’t seep in before. But the fact hasn’t gone unnoticed to Dylan. He starts muttering what at first sound like stray words—then full sentences, paragraphs. He’s talking to himself—maybe he’s always talked to himself, silently. I see him, in my mind’s eye, in the back corner of the cafeteria, in the back corners of classrooms. Always alone. Now, though, his chatter’s spilling out of him—everything he ever wanted to say but never did.
I can’t quite keep up with it all, though—his words are rockets that fly past.
I can’t fathom any of this. No more than Dylan or Cass can. As happy as they appear, what’s happened is also a bit frightening. They want answers. I certainly don’t have them. But suddenly—almost protectively—Dylan reaches forward and takes Cass’s hand. And he leads her to the pit.
seventeen
I start to follow, to let them know I’m still here, but stop. The mirror over the costumes grabs hold of my attention completely—because I don’t see either Cass’s or Dylan’s reflections. Instead, I see Emma rushing toward a piano—it’s upright, a newer, more solid version of the piano in the pit—tripping over her feet in haste. I can see a full rehearsal going on around her, actually hear the voices of other cast members trickling from the glass. I take a step closer as Emma happily taps Nick on the shoulder.
He turns to face her, his eyebrow pointing skyward.
“I came for a music lesson,” she chirps. “I need some help.”
“All right,” Nick replies hesitantly. He swivels his head, looking about, confusion wrinkling his features.
“I’m sorry. I’m not bugging you, am I?” Emma asks.
“No, you’re certainly not bugging me. I’m not used to getting so much attention, is all,” Nick confesses. “Sharing your lunch yesterday, offering to show me around town . . .”
Emma blushes. “Too much attention.”
“No—that’s not it. If I’m to be honest, it’s not just the attention. I’m not the one people come to for help. As a general rule.”
“Why not?”
“I assume you went to a few dances in high school. A pretty girl like you.”
Emma flinches. She’s not sure, at first, how to take this. No one has called her pretty before. Smart. Not pretty. She eyes him in a way that asks, silently, if he’s joking. Or being condescending. Finding no evidence of either, she simply shakes her head.
Nick frowns; he doesn’t believe her. But he presses on, anyway. “Well, if you had, you’d know that there’s always one poor fellow who spends the night alone, feeling the coolness of the wall bleed through his jacket. Watching everyone else dance. No girl likes the idea of a man with a weak heart. No one wants a partner prone to collapse leading her across the dance floor. No one thinks a man with a weak heart can help much of anything.”
“That’s ridiculous. There’s nothing about you that’s weak.”
He offers a crooked smile. “You’re making this whole experience less lonely.”
“Lonely?”
“I—” Nick leans close enough to let Emma smell his soap, his aftershave, the department-store newness that lingers across the shoulders of his new suit jacket.
“I might be a little homesick.” Once he’s whispered his secret, he has to force himself to quit leaning into her, to pull his lips away from her pink ear.
“Homesick? But aren’t you staying with your family?”
Nick crinkles his nose. “They eat leftover cold mashed potatoes for breakfast.”
Emma laughs.
“Really! How are you supposed to eat that at six a.m.? I’m a home-cured bacon and over-easy eggs guy.”
After that, they both struggle to find their next words. Nick fidgets, putting his hands in position on the keyboard, then slipping them back, folding them in his lap. His sad expression makes Emma’s eyes widen behind her glasses. He meant it. Lonely.
“This place is my home,” she says. “This theater. Or the apartment above the theater, anyway. I had sleepovers with my childhood best friend, Bertie, right upstairs. We’d put our ears to the floor long after my dad wanted us to be in bed, listening to the muffled sound of all the stories playing out beneath us. I had birthday parties on the stage. Yes, this place is my home. And you’re my guest. You’re not in any way allowed to be homesick in here. You’re supposed to put your feet up on the coffee table and settle in.”
Nick smiles, glancing down shyly at his hands. “That’s an awfully nice thing to say.”
“And if I’m to be as honest as you, I’m terrified about being in this thing.”
Just like Cass. Just like Dylan. Just like me. Just like the entire drama class, I think.
“But music isn’t like life,” Nick tells her, gaining courage. “Screw up in life, everybody notices.” He begins to play the opening bars of “Anything Goes.”
“But,” he goes on, “in music, you can slip up. . . .” He nods at the sheet music propped on the stand, playing an obviously sour, dissonant mistake, adding, “And it becomes a happy accident, one that leads to a richer chord.” He plays a chord that blends with the rest of the song and moves forward as though nothing’s happened.
“You mess up, I’ve got you covered,” he promises.
“But the orchestra leader—”
“Forget him. Forget everyone. You and me, opening night. Just look at me, and I’ll pull you through. I’ve got to find some way to thank you for your kindness, after all. And besides, you asked for my help. It’d be a delight, for once, to be depended on.”
Emma’s face stretches into a grin. She relishes this new closeness, this bond.
“Remember I’m down here,” Nick assures her, astounded by the fact that for once, someone might actually want to lean on him, trusting he’ll have strength enough to support them both. “Don’t think about anything else. Think about me.”
“You seem so calm.”
“I’m not, really. I’m just telling you what’s going to get me through. Opening night, I’m going to be thinking about you.”
“Emma!” George calls. “I need to speak to you.” His words are businesslike enough, but his tone has an angry edge, illustrating how much he hates the looks on both of their faces.
Emma rises from the bench, but she has trouble maintaining her balance. It isn’t her mere clumsiness this time that she struggles with—it’s wobbly knees. This is a new experience for Emma—finding out why the women in Love Fiction Monthly were always described as being unsteady on their feet.
“I need you to check costumes—” George starts.
When he sees that Emma’s still got her head twisted back over her shoulder, eyes turned toward the pit, George reminds her, loudly enough for the young pianist to hear, “You’re going to college in the fall. That’s where you belong. Nick,” he mutters, shaking his head with distaste.
“I don’t like him much, either,” Dahlia announces, appearing out of nowhere and sliding her hand into George’s. “He calls me Grace.”
“Really!” Emma snaps, as though smart-mouthed Dahlia has no business making any comment and what George has said is ludicrous. The light reflecting on the surface of her glasses doesn’t hide the rolling of her eyes.
But George can’t let it go. “Emma, he looks different to you. That’s the magic—”
“—of the theater,” Emma finishes. “I know. You’ve told me thousands of times about the magic of the theater.” She shakes her head at him, turns away, heads toward the costumes.
But it’s clear to everyone—including me, in that moment before the images fade from the mirror—that Emma’s already fantasizing about how she can get closer to Nick.
eighteen
The mirror flashes white, like a blank screen, then begins to spit back only my wide-eyed reflection. Behind me, tinny, harpsichord-sounding notes float up from the pit.
“The pads on these hammers are rock hard,” Dylan explains, his words jumbling, like they’re all in a race to be the first out of his mouth. “They should be soft, but the humidity in here, all these years—it’s like hitting the strings inside with something wooden. Makes a different tone.”
I creep to the edge of the stage, the strap of my backpack digging into my shoulder. I push my glasses higher up onto my nose and watch the two of them.
Dylan’s panting, and he wiggles his mouth as if he wants to say something else, but he keeps stopping himself. Now that there’s been a pause, he’s afraid the biggest miracle of his life might have already come and gone, passed him as quickly as a car on the highway.
Cass is standing beside the piano, unable to keep from touching the side of her face, which is suddenly as smooth as a fresh fitted sheet.
“I’ve been trying to kind of rough up the pads. With that voicing tool. Make them softer. To sound better.” Dylan flashes a toothy grin. It’s still working. Some invisible voicing tool has certainly worked its magic on him.
Dylan props the show music on the stand at the top of the piano. And I’ve decided to find a seat in the front row.
“Ready?” he asks quietly. When Cass doesn’t respond, he touches her arm as if to get her attention. “Ready?” he asks again.
Cass blinks and nods, finally dropping her hand.
I unzip my backpack, pull out the Anything Goes script.
Dylan stretches his fingers and begins to play with a new confidence—as though he knows there’s no chance of a single sour note. In response, Cass’s back straightens. Her voice is a mix of light and dark and strength and softness. A tone that isn’t just one color, but a rainbow of shades.
They hold nothing back, performing with emotion and ease, because no one is here to watch, to offer judgment. This is the kind of no-second-thoughts performance that Mom has heard during sleepovers; it’s the reason she gave Cass the lead.
But they’ve also seen themselves in a new way. They’ve stepped into a different skin. And it changes how they behave. This is no longer the old Cass and Dylan. These are two people the outside world has never seen before.
I’m astounded. I need to record what’s happening—jot down some sort of directorial notes. I grab a pen from the front pocket of my backpack, flip to the end of the script. But there’s no room. I dip back into my backpack, pulling out the old red journal. And stare at the cover. It doesn’t seem right to muck up Bertie’s journal.
But I need to write this—not notes, that’s not the shape my thoughts are taking. Not anymore. I flip to the end of the journal and begin to describe the scene in front of me: Cass and Dylan, which leads to sentences about the Emma and Nick I saw in the mirror, the “magic of the theater.” Their stories have intersected somehow, for reasons I can’t quite make out. I only know that what has happened to Cass and Dylan is magical. I only know that it’s changed their own reflections.
And it’s beautiful.
I’m blinking back tears as I scribble, the scene coming to life on the page.
As I write, the tone of the piano is changing, sounding less tinny. The seat beneath the hem of my shorts becomes soft against my thigh. The broken spring disappears from a spot in my lower back. The upholstery becomes plush again.
And still I write.
Cass sings.
Dylan plays.
The sconces die, sending us back into complete darkness.
“Where—what’s happening?” Cass cries out. “Dylan?”
The piano answers as clumsy hands scramble, whacking into random keys.
The muggy air inside the theater blows in one harsh gust, pushing at me. Like the Avery is blowing me out. Do Cass and Dylan feel it, too?
Where are they?
My shoulder crashes against a wall—no. A door. It’s a door. It gives beneath my weight. And suddenly, I’m stumbling into harsh afternoon sunlight.
nineteen
Footsteps shuffle beside me; as I struggle to regain balance, Cass and Dylan burst into the alley. And they’re both fighting to shake off their own clouds of confusion.
“What happened?” Cass asks. Her hand is on her cheek. It’s bumpy again. Her birthmark’s back—she knows it’s back. “What happened to it?”
I have questions, too: Did you feel it when that birthmark disappeared? Was it like a snake shedding its skin?
I’m about to say it; I’m about to tell her how beautiful the scene was. How I teared up at the sight of her celebration. But Cass blurts, “The hat.”
“Hat?” I repeat.
“Yeah.” She’s patting the top of her head. “I found a hat in the costumes. Did it fall off?”
A hat? Is that all she’s concerned about?
Dylan’s wearing his T-shirt, his skeleton key dangling from his neck. But where is Nick’s jacket? I want to ask. How could it disappear? Did you feel hands tugging it off your shoulders?
“A-a-rre y-youu ok-kay?” Dylan tries to ask Cass, then slams his fist against his leg in frustration. Because his stutter is back. Surely that’s the reason.
Only he’s shaking his head. “L-leftt m-my ff-lashl-lightt,” he grumbles.
His flashlight?
“Where’d you go?” Cass asks me. Cass and Dylan didn’t seem to see the past scene play out in the mirror over the costume rack. Was I also the only one who saw Cass and Dylan differently inside the theater?
“Mom,” I blubber, because it would sound nuts if they didn’t see it, too. “My phone buzzed,” I continue on with my made-up tale. “You know how she is if I don’t answer right away. She’d send the troops—”
“What are you guys doing?” When we all jump and turn in the direction of this new voice, we find Kiki standing at the end of the alley, frowning at us under her wild fringe of orange hair. She’s got an enormous purse slung over her shoulder and a McDonald’s soda cup in her hand. It figures that today would be one of the rare occasions she’s come to the square.
“Seriously,” she persists. “You’re not trying to go in there, are you?” She wags a thumb at the Avery. “It’s got No Trespassing signs all over it.”
Still, we stare. We’re suddenly all six-year-olds who are too young to be any good at lying. And judging by the way Kiki’s confronting us, we do need a lie. A good one. Quick.
“I come this way every day when I leave Duds,” Cass finally attempts, adding a shrug for good measure. “Quin met me—we’re going to have dinner tonight—and we saw Dylan taking a shortcut. We met up with him. We talked. End of story.”
“You talked?” Kiki repeats. “With Dylan?”
I shoot her a look mean enough to make her back down—if only temporarily.
“Sh-shortt-cutt,” Dylan agrees.
“Isn’t that your Bug parked out in front of the theater?” Kiki presses. “Kind of a funny place to park, isn’t it? If you were working at Duds, why didn’t you park—you know—in front of Duds?”
She slips her straw into her mouth and smiles around it. She’s not about to quit. Her eyes settle on Dylan. She’s especially interested in him. Only makes sense, actually. He’s the one with the job she wanted: behind the scenes, musical director. Trespassing’s a serious offense. Oh, sure—we’re not on school grounds. But Kiki could find a way to make her complaint grab the attention of the principal. She could get Dylan in trouble. Maybe not booted from the musical—it’s our senior project, after all. I’m not sure anything could ever be rotten enough to get us booted from that. But she could definitely make the case that Dylan certainly does not deserve such an important role; that, in fact, she would be happy to step in, save the day. Especially since her family owns Ferguson’s and all. And like that—ta-da! Kiki’s dream of getting off the stage would come true.
“No trespassing,” Kiki says, taking l
ittle nibbles out of the tip of the straw as she talks. “Somebody could call the cops about that. You know. If they were to see you go in.”
Is she serious?
“Hey!” Another voice cries out.
All four of us turn to find Mom holding up two plastic sacks—she almost looks like one of those garden statues of the girl weighing good and evil. “Picked up dinner from Rosarita’s,” she says, nodding behind her shoulder at the Mexican place. The owners still haven’t decided if they want to invest in a permanent, nonhandwritten sign. “Cass, you said you like guacamole, didn’t you?”
Cass grins. Without meaning to, Mom’s confirmed her story. “You bet. You have enough for four?” she asks as she points to Dylan.
Kiki rolls her eyes, tugging her straw from her mouth.
“C-can’tt,” Dylan says. “Nn-need t-to g-get-tt t-to my d-ddad’s n-new r-rental h-housse.”
“Uh-huh,” Kiki grumbles, disbelief saturating her tone.
“W-we’re f-f-ixxing i-tt up-pp,” Dylan adds.
Cass offers him a crooked—yet wholly approving—smile.
“You sure? Maybe you need some hot sauce fuel first,” Mom suggests.
“Ll-lat-te,” Dylan says. “Th-ank-kss, Ms. D-ddrewer-rry.”
He turns, darting down the alley. Mom heads straight for Potions.
Cass leans in toward Kiki and says, “It leaks.”
Kiki frowns, confused. “What—”
“The Bug,” Cass lies. “It’s leaking. I’m making a mess in front of Duds. Vanessa asked me to move. I figure the Avery doesn’t look good anyway, so—”
Kiki glares. She can’t argue against any of this. But she doesn’t exactly have a Curses! Foiled again! expression on her face, either. She flashes a look that says she isn’t through with any of this. That there’s a decidedly fishy-smelling bottom she’s going to get to.
But that save of Cass’s—it’s good. Perfect, actually. I give Cass an approving pinch on the side as we rush toward Potions, dissolving into giggles.
She lunges for the stairs, but I stop her. We stare at each other—eye to eye. Slowly, Cass begins to grin. And instantly, I start to decode that smile. Did we witness the same thing? Did she think her reflection had no birthmark? Because I swear I see it, in the single upward curl of a corner of her mouth. I see her saying, Please, Quin. Don’t ask me to tell you what happened in the Avery. I don’t want to have to say it out loud, because it doesn’t make sense. It can be picked apart. Don’t you say anything either that might make it unravel, prove all of it to be untrue. A trick of light. Even if it’s not true, don’t let me find out yet. Let it be beautiful for a little while.
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