Spark

by Holly Schindler

  “Now, if the rest of us can figure out how to do that,” I say, “we’ll all wind up on YouTube for the right reasons.”

  Rehearsals suddenly become the destination of choice. The place that everyone from Advanced Drama runs to after the final bell. And running is not exactly easy, not in Verona High’s corridors (which are as clogged as some of the grease-laden drainpipes in fast-food joints). They all show up breathless. They show up flipping through their spiral notebooks to get to the page where they’ve jotted down their latest ideas.

  Once the hallways have completely cleared out, they drag in pieces of freshly painted sets from the backs of their pickup trucks. Liz hauls in armloads of clothing courtesy of Vanessa at Duds. She trails after everyone with a measuring tape. She jots down sizes—including shoes. Makes notes about colors that would look nice next to each cast member’s hair coloring.

  And it’s all because of Cass and Dylan—their stellar performance has lit a fire under everyone.

  Not that the rest of the student body is aware of it, since we continue to practice behind closed auditorium doors. Which means that I have suddenly become the recipient of the entirety of Verona High’s student body ribbing. I’m the object of choice pranksters seek out when they need to relieve a little of their own tension, create a minor earthquake.

  It means that I arrive on a Monday morning to find my locker door branded with a giant chalk “Miss Directed.”

  Oh, yeah. Ha.

  It also means random shouts of “. . . be sure to have my phone charged opening night” fly my way through the cafeteria, along with fry missiles.

  It means I find the narrow hallway leading to my English class blocked by two sets of quarterback-width shoulders.

  “Hey,” one of them says, “watch this. Tell us what you think. Seriously.” He points to his friend, who attempts a silly soft-shoe routine. When he’s finished, he plants his feet wide and wiggles his jazz hands at the sides of his face.

  “Not bad,” I say. “Wouldn’t be too quick to give up the team, though,” and crawl through the space between them, rushing off to class.

  It means I’m stopped in the lunch line to listen to a couple of art geeks recite “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in an overly dramatic way that ends with them both biting the knuckles of their index fingers.

  “You guys have no real passion,” I say, stealing a fry from one of their trays.

  It becomes so pervasive, even the shyest members of the math team feel free to get in on it as two members wait for me in front of my locker, all to “audition” by singing a rousing rendition of “Anything Goes.”

  “Flat,” I say, pushing them aside as I reach for my combination lock. “You can always try next year, though.”

  I’ve learned to put on a good face. I wear it like makeup, forgetting that it’s there, for the most part. The truth is, though, that just because we’ve got a fire lit beneath us, it doesn’t mean that we’ve suddenly found the answer to every one of our problems. We’re not exactly picking up the pace, breezing through putting this production together perfectly. A good portion of our bits are incredibly clumsy. Rehearsal after rehearsal, even though we’re continuing to cross items off Mom’s check sheet.

  We’re actually struggling to get through one such scene—one we aced the day before—when I stop groaning and rubbing my forehead long enough to catch Liz trying to convince Kiki to accept a pair of peekaboo toe pumps.

  Kiki rolls her eyes—I swear, she probably rolled her eyes at her stuffed animals back in elementary school—and finally slides the shoes out of Liz’s hands. After dropping them to the floor, she kicks off her own sneaker and tries desperately to force one of her feet into the high heel.

  Back onstage, the players are bumping into each other, and their movements are so stiff—they look like blind robots up there. The lines I’m hearing are forced, mechanical.

  I raise my script to cover the bottom half of my face. I’m laughing. I can’t help it. Kiki’s the mirror image of what’s happening up there behind the footlights. Trying to force something that will never fit.

  “Okay, okay,” I say, waving my hands as I decide it’s time for me to attempt to kill their collective misery. I carry my script to the stage. “What would you say?” I ask one of the red ball caps. I press him again. “Your words. If you were that character, in real life, what would you say?”

  He stares at me wide-eyed. He finally ekes out a sentence that sounds, to me, a little like the hallway shouts that fill the air as the Verona High stream flows to lunch. Staccato grunts. But it comes out of him naturally. Finally. I nod. “Write it down in your scripts. All of you.”

  “You mean change the line?” the ball cap asks.

  “Yes,” I say, scratching the dialogue out of my own manuscript and writing his sentence above it. “Change the line. Make it your own.”

  I return to my seat. But something has happened to me with the scratching out of that sentence. It suddenly sends my mind spinning. I’m staring at the entire scene now—not just that single line of dialogue. And I draw a giant X over the page.

  There’s no room in the margins for what I want to do, so I reach into my backpack and pull out Bertie’s journal. I flip to the back. But this time, as I fill one page, another blank page appears behind it. I write frantically. Beneath a rapidly spreading sense of relief. This is fun—more so even than refusing to let the hallway goons get to me. And it hits me that it should be fun. I’m giggling under my breath, pressing so hard against the pages that I nearly tear them with my pen tip. Until I hear my name.

  When I glance up, I realize Kiki’s annoyed scowl, plastered onto her flushed face, is directed at me. “You’re not even watching,” she accuses me.

  Maybe it’s because I’ve been backed into a corner. Maybe it’s because I’m looking at her face and remembering all the times that she ratted someone out for having equations written on the inside of their wrist during algebra exams. But now I’m visualizing everything that could happen if I were to slam the journal shut and shove it in my backpack, go back to the scene we’d just been working on, which was only barely limping along.

  I’m seeing myself in the principal’s office, in front of his desk, slumped into a chair that feels every bit as unforgiving as Kiki’s words: It’s her mother. Why wouldn’t she have gotten the director’s job? I’m not one to be critical. (At this point, I picture the principal’s eyes flashing Kiki a look he’s picked up from the student population, something along the lines of “Gimme a break.”) But she’s not offering us the kind of direction we really need, I imagine Kiki continuing to say. She’s spending rehearsals not paying any attention at all! She’s coasting. Completely. Of course, I would be completely happy to give up my role and step in. Save the musical. We could just switch places. . . .

  I refuse to give Kiki any ammunition. “I’m listening to everything you say,” I insist, standing. “And revising it as we go along.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks. “Revising?”

  I begin to read what I’ve written. At first, it’s nothing more than a chain reaction. Kiki’s kicked me and I’ve kicked back. As the minutes pulse, though, what I’m doing sinks in. And it starts to scare me. A voice in the back of my head reminds me that there were plenty of reasons why I didn’t get shunted off to journalism with the rest of the writers during freshman year. I’m not the person who reads aloud from my own work. I don’t have a blog where I post my latest flash fiction for the world to read. I’m a closet scribbler, a girl with hatboxes full of stories that have never seen sunlight.

  Once I’ve started, though, I can’t stop. I’m suddenly reciting the passages I’d scrawled in the back of Bertie’s journal word for word. Every once in a while, someone actually laughs. A welcome chuckle here and there.

  As the players move around, they occasionally let out an “Oh—yeah—okay, that’s better,” and then, later on, a few begin to say, “Hey, Quin, what if—” And we’re brainstormin
g, and the scene is changing completely, but who cares? We’re laughing and this feels better—it’s a shoe that actually fits.

  “I have no idea how that’s going to work in with the rest of the musical,” Cass admits as we wrap for the day and the class is gathering their stuff, heading for the exit. “But it was a blast.”

  She’s right—I know she is. All the way home, all I can think about is tying the threads together. Connecting the dots between the musical and what we’ve just practiced. So I burst into my room, and I flip to the scene I’ve written at the end of Bertie’s journal. “Anything Goes Notes,” I’ve scribbled at the top of the first page.

  Why not? What if (literally) anything goes that doesn’t work?

  Suddenly, I’m attacking this boy-wants-girl story, scratching out whole scenes, whole passages in the manuscript, adding new lines and scenarios. The next afternoon, at rehearsal, I share them.

  The cast sits cross-legged on the floor, leaning forward, shouting out an occasional “No—it’d be like this—” Or “What if—?”

  The entirety of Advanced Drama is responding. It’s a collective give-and-take now.

  Mom’s still off having signs printed, taking out ads in the newspaper, coming up with advertising slogans to be featured during the nightly local news. She’s on the phone, calling all the muckety-mucks she can find within the city limits—like a cold-call sales pitch, a “Can I put you down for two tickets, then?” She wants everyone to come out—and she’s telling them we’re picking up right where the Avery left off. Finishing the Anything Goes run—just imagine what we could do inside the theater! Of course we can’t let the city tear it down!

  Except that’s not what we’re doing. The play keeps shifting. I’m not sure, exactly, what Mom’s going to say when she sees it. But I’m oddly protective of it—it’s a work in progress that I’m not quite sure how to describe yet. So I keep all our revisions to myself. The rest of the cast follows my lead. No one says a word about it in class. Not even when Mom asks for status updates. We’re purposefully vague.

  “Hey! Quin!” Liz shouts toward the end of the week, at the close of one particularly long rehearsal. All the players are breaking up, finally dispersing, filing out through the doors that lead to the vacant hallways, then the parking lot. “I was thinking. Why don’t we have the audience show up in vintage clothes? Wouldn’t that be cool? Do you think you could tell Ms. Drewery? She could put out the word. It would be another way to get some advertising. We could put up some signs in Duds. Maybe she could get that on the radio, too. Make it kind of sound like an event or a party, not just a high school play.”

  I like the idea, to be honest. “I’ll tell her,” I promise.

  “I’ve got an idea, too,” one of the red ball caps announces. Toby. His name’s Toby. “For the background. I was thinking, why not use a black sheet—for the sky, you know? I could rig it to where white lights poked through. You know, for stars.”

  Stars? This tickles the back of my thoughts. Bertie. The night sky. Star-crossed lovers uncrossed.

  A thump behind me steals my attention. Dylan’s staring at his toes, while another red cap—Michael, this one’s name is Michael—is thunking him on the back. Dylan’s face is red, and he’s looking uncomfortable. I’m about to tell Michael to beat it—what’s he doing, slapping Dylan on the back, teasing him about his stutter? Acting like he’s trying to free him of words stuck in his throat like chicken bones, saying, “Come on, spit it out already”?

  But that’s not it at all. That slap isn’t a tease. It’s congratulatory. “She’s really into you,” Michael says. Followed by two decidedly way to go thumps.

  I’m wondering who Michael means as a smile squirms across Dylan’s face.

  “I’m taking that as a yes. I’ll get right on it,” Toby announces triumphantly. When I glance his way, he’s backing up, insisting, “You’ll see. This’ll be great.”

  When I turn back toward Dylan and Michael, the two are already gone. I sigh, reaching for the strap of my backpack. Beside my stash, Cass’s phone begins to buzz on top of her small tower of textbooks. I glance at the screen as a text comes in from Dylan: Meet me. Same time 2day. Avery.

  His voice is every bit as clear via text as it is inside that old theater.

  twenty-two

  Cass’s VW putters along toward the square. Her hair flutters out around her face, and she’s humming to the radio, that station she recently found—the one that plays her old faves. The one that Mom visited to make the first Anything Goes announcement. I stare, waiting. But Cass says nothing. Not about meeting Dylan later. Not about what the two of them are up to in the Avery. Not even when the DJ reminds his listeners, between songs, that tickets for our production are on sale now.

  Cass isn’t talking to me. And I’m not talking to her, either. One omission has led to another, and here we are, sitting on a mountain of silence. She’s got Dylan on her mind. She’s rushing to meet him. She’s racing toward whatever’s happening to her inside that old theater. She’s sharing it with Dylan. Not with me.

  I get a panicky feeling, wondering if we’re standing on a road that forks. Like she’s choosing something other than me, for the first time since those days of paste eating and afternoon naps.

  This can’t be happening—and still, it is. I’m losing my hold on her. She has a secret. An enormous one.

  And so do I.

  And neither one of us says anything.

  And I hate it.

  As we pile out of the Bug, I’m still expecting it to come. Some mention of the text. Something as simple as for her to turn and sprint straight for the Avery right in front of me. But she takes a step toward Duds.

  “Hey, Cass—” I call. Just come out with it, already. I saw the text. Tell me what this is all about.

  She turns, staring blankly. But I can’t decode this face—maybe because it isn’t honest. This isn’t an open, waiting-for-what-comes-next blank face. This is a poker face, a cover—for the first time since I’ve known her, the face Cass turns toward me is a lie. Not just an omission. This face insists nothing’s going on. This face says her life right now is none of my business.

  I pull off my glasses and wipe the lenses with the bottom of my T-shirt. Like maybe I could see something else when I slide them back on.

  But no—nothing. Just Cass standing in a pair of bell-bottoms with embroidered hems. A red-checkered blouse. And that blank face she’s put on to cover whatever it is she feels she needs to hide. From me, of all people.

  “See you in the a.m.,” she calls. Like it’s any other day, no big deal. And more—she says it in order to put a giant “The End” on this conversation. To make sure I don’t have a chance to pry.

  I take the long way around the square, walking down the sidewalk that makes up the perimeter. When I get to Ferguson’s, I cup my eyes and press my face against the glass. No sign of Dylan. Only Kiki’s father, reorganizing his display of instruction booklets.

  I try the alley behind the Avery. Still no sign of Dylan—no bike, no half-open back door. The knob won’t twist when I try it. Surely he’d have to leave it open for Cass, right? He’s the one with the filed-down skeleton key.

  Reluctantly, I give up. At least for now. Maybe, I think, they’re supposed to meet up later. After dark, even.

  “You’ll give me a sign, won’t you?” I ask out loud, placing my palm against the rough brick on the back of the Avery.

  Like Cass, the Avery decides to remain silent.

  Mom’s already home when I finally step inside. The microwave is beeping, and the kitchen smells like tomato sauce. Lasagna, I think—one of the many frozen dinners she’s been dropping on our dinner table ever since we both got involved in the musical. Two months. A crazy deadline. The kind that induces panic and keeps the stove from ever getting turned on, any real home cooking from ever getting served.

  Without even a hello, she launches into a tirade on the numbers. “Ticket sales have slowed down dramatically—no
pun intended. But I did place a few calls to some people I think might offer to invest in the Avery once they see our production and everyone starts getting riled up about it again—including their kids.”

  Her white hair tumbles over the top of her glasses. “And once we get those investors, it’ll all come back—the whole square. After all, what do people need once the final bow has been taken? Pie!”

  I giggle. But the look Mom flashes is serious. She hadn’t meant that as a joke. “The businesses on the square closed, one after another, after the Avery died. But let me tell you, when people get out of the theater—or leave from a movie—they don’t want to go home. They want to talk about what they’ve seen. They need coffee shops, restaurants. They need a table for two and a little dessert plate between them. Pie! One plate, two forks. Something sweet. They need a sidewalk café in the summer. They need—”

  “—specialty hot chocolates in the winter,” I finish. “Late dinners. Then, if the conversation gets heated, an early breakfast.”

  Mom smiles, nodding in agreement. “We need a florist showing off their green thumb, too. Create almost a—well, a minipark—right there in the center of the square. With bushes and flowers growing up around benches. And once everyone sees what that florist’s created, they’ll start thinking about getting some flowers of their own. Maybe people could come to like corsages again! Wear them to the theater! Yes! Wouldn’t Cass’s mother like a flower shop down here? If there was a lot of traffic? Wouldn’t it please her as much—more, even—to see people going into the Avery wearing a corsage like the ones she wears every day than it would to make floral arrangements for sick people at the hospital?

  “Even the businesses still here,” Mom goes on, sliding the lasagna out of the microwave and cutting single-serving squares with a spatula, plopping them onto two plates. “They’d benefit directly, too! Ferguson’s would always be renting or selling or repairing instruments for the musicians in the orchestra. And sound equipment! They’d have to supply the Avery with that, too. But after seeing a musical, wouldn’t people be walking into Ferguson’s inspired? Wouldn’t they point to a guitar or violin hanging on the wall, wanting to try it out for themselves? Wouldn’t that mean that Ferguson’s would need more music teachers?