Chapter Eighteen
“Thank you so much for coming. The kids are going to be so excited to meet an actual Broadway star.”
Molly led Hannah down the hall of the 1960s-era tan brick building that housed St. Anthony’s High School, navigating with ease around the groups of teenagers gathered at their lockers.
“I don’t know about star, but I’m happy to help in any way I can.”
Hannah finally succeeded in removing the backing of the adhesive nametag she’d been handed in the front office, affixing the sticker to the front of her shirt. The printing was crooked and part of the last ‘h’ was missing so it looked like her name was Hannan.
“And I know you’re trying to keep a low profile, but you should know that there are no cell phones allowed in rehearsals, so there shouldn’t be any unexpected photo shoots,”
Molly assured her.
It was at least the third time since Friday’s family dinner that Molly had made a similar promise. Hannah was grateful for Molly’s sensitivity, but she’d also already had a long conversation with Micah about what happened if one of those kids snapped a shot anyway. “You’re only in that town for a few more days, so in the unlikely event a member of the AP follows a teenager from Rhode Island on social media, it should be fine,”
Micah had said. “Besides, if the press picked up the story that you’re nursing your broken heart by volunteering with teenagers, that wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
She’d spent the next ten minutes convincing Micah they shouldn’t plant the story themselves.
“I’m hoping you’ll be able to work with our Audrey, in particular,”
Molly continued as she led her through the double doors of a large open room with cafeteria tables folded up along one wall. “Amelia’s a great kid, hard worker, very talented, but she’s also incredibly self-conscious.”
“What teenager isn’t?”
Hannah asked.
“True, but this is different. I don’t know how to help her break through that barrier. I’ve never acted before.”
“I’ve never coached anyone before, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Another set of double doors opened into the school’s gym, a stage at one end, a basketball hoop raised above the proscenium. A handful of boys, lanky teenagers in the pleated khakis and starchy button-downs of their Catholic school uniforms, darted around the gym, each vying for the basketball. At the center of their group, Caleb held them off, dribbling with an ease that seemed at odds with his bright white priest’s collar and pristine blacks.
Pockets of teenagers gathered in small groups throughout the room all turned their heads as Molly and Hannah entered the space. Caleb looked away from the ball, catching sight of them, and his mouth spread into a grin as gleaming white as his collar. The distraction was fleeting, but it was long enough for one of the boys to steal the ball, jumping into the air and shooting, the crash of the ball against the backboard before it dropped into the hoop echoing through the gym.
Caleb clapped the kid on the back and made his way over to Molly and Hannah. “Hannah, I’m glad you could join us.”
“Are you done riling up my actors?”
Molly asked, tilting her head like a confused cocker spaniel.
The priest chuckled and cuffed the back of his neck. “My apologies, Ms. Proulx. Won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t, Father West.”
With a wink at Hannah, Caleb excused himself, disappearing through the doors of the gym.
“Is he your boss?”
Hannah asked.
“The parish priest is in charge of the school, but he is not my boss.”
Molly turned away from Hannah towards the teenagers scattered throughout the gym and clapped her hands three times. She led Hannah towards the stage, calling, “Circle up!”
The kids made their way towards the front of the room, curiosity slowing them down as they turned to whisper to each other, their eyes trained on Hannah.
“We have a special guest with us today,”
Molly said when her ragtag bunch of high school actors was assembled. “My friend Miss Matthews—”
“Hannah, please,”
Hannah interjected.
Molly smiled indulgently. “Hannah has agreed to help us out today. She is a professional actress who comes to us straight from Broadway and we are so lucky to have her with us.”
Molly led the kids in an awkward round of applause.
“Thank you for letting me crash your rehearsal,”
Hannah said.
Molly ran through the rest of her announcements quickly (no gum on stage, she’s looking at you, Tucker; don’t forget to be off book by next Monday; and the candy bar fundraiser to pay for the costumes would be over in a week so get in those last-minute orders), then ushered Hannah to a seat in front of the stage as the kids took their places for the opening number. Hannah bit back her smile as she watched them shuffle about, shoving each other to the right places on stage when the music for the opening number began. She remembered those days of high school drama club, of being both proud and embarrassed to be good at something.
Then Amelia took the stage.
She wasn’t at all what Hannah had expected and she found herself leaning forward in her seat to watch the shy girl move around the stage. Amelia was tall—at least a head taller than the boy playing Seymour—with a round face. It was hard to tell in the oversized sweatshirt she wore but Hannah would bet money she was also plus sized, which definitely was not the usual casting choice for Audrey.
As the cast sang louder and louder, Amelia and her Seymour leading the pack, Hannah’s face split into a grin. The girl was young and probably wouldn’t make a profession out of performing, but she had a pretty voice with a compelling tone. She was also clearly terrified.
The song ended and Molly leaned over to Hannah, whispering, “What did you think?”
“She’s great. She just needs to get out of her own way.”
Molly nodded. “Do you mind if I pull her while you run the next scene?”
“Please, pull away!”
Amelia trotted down the stairs at the side of the stage, her head bowed and eyes focused on her feet, but Hannah headed her off at the pass, meeting her at the bottom of the stairs. “Amelia, right?”
The girl’s head snapped up, her eyes wide. “I’m Hannah. You were great up there.”
“I was late on my second entrance,”
she said, dropping her gaze.
“Yeah, but so were half the kids up there. You’ll get it. You have time.”
Hannah walked with Amelia towards the back of the gym where one bank of bleachers had been pulled out to allow for seating.
Hannah took a seat on the bleachers and waited for Amelia to join her. The girl eyed her cautiously. “Were you really on Broadway?”
“I was, and I did national tours for years before that.”
“Anything that came through Providence?”
Amelia took a seat next to Hannah, her hands pulled into the sleeves of her sweatshirt and her shoulders hunched, like she would disappear inside the oversized clothing if she could.
“I was here with The Little Mermaid a few years back. I played Ursula.”
Amelia’s face brightened. “I saw that! You were so good!”
Hannah smiled. “Thanks. It’s a fun part.”
“Is that what you played on Broadway?”
“No. I was in the original cast of Bridget Jones’ Musical.”
“The one that’s coming to the movie theaters next month? With Jackson Hayes?”
Hannah’s smile faltered. She hadn’t planned on teenagers knowing who Jackson was. His usual fan base was closer to her age. “That’s the one.”
“Wait.”
Amelia’s eyes narrowed. “You’re that Hannah? The one—”
She reached inside her pocket for her cell phone, but Hannah pressed a hand to her forearm, stopping her.
“No cell phones in rehearsal,”
she said, her mouth suddenly dry.
Had this been a mistake? How long would it take before word spread across whatever app these kids were using that Hannah Matthews had been spotted at a high school musical rehearsal?
Amelia lowered her voice. “What they wrote about you online was fucked up.”
Hannah wasn’t sure which specific fucked up thing Amelia was referring to, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She definitely didn’t want to hash it out in the middle of a high school drama club rehearsal. “Let’s talk about you, Amelia. How excited are you to be playing Audrey?”
A shy smile flickered across Amelia’s face before she schooled it into submission, twisting the cuffs of the sweatshirt with fingers still hidden inside her sleeves. “I only got the part because of seniority. We were supposed to do Hairspray this year so I could play Tracy but Mr. Day, the principal, said we couldn’t put a boy in a dress to play Edna, so Miss. Proulx picked Little Shop instead.”
Hannah debated diving into the transphobic bullshit that was denying high schoolers the chance to do Hairspray, but decided it was not the time. She’d talk to Molly and Caleb about it later. Instead she asked, “Were you excited to play Tracy?”
Amelia shrugged. “It’s a good part.”
“It’s a great part. So is Audrey.”
Amelia shrugged again, focusing her attention on her cuffs. Hannah leaned back against the row of bleachers behind them, which, for the record, was much easier and more comfortable when she was seventeen than it was now at thirty-two. “You know, I always wanted to play Audrey.”
“You did?”
“Mmhmm. When they did a production in New Jersey a few years back I wanted to audition, but my manager wouldn’t let me. He said I didn’t look the part.”
Amelia exhaled, her shoulders rounding even further. “Which I think was a bunch of bullshit.”
Amelia’s eyes snapped to Hannah’s. “Did you know the only description of Audrey in the script is ‘honest, sweet, vulnerable, insecure. Attractive but not well educated.’ Nothing specific about what she looks like.”
“Attractive,”
Amelia repeated.
“Right, but attractive to who? Do you and your best friend find the same people attractive?”
Amelia laughed. “Not at all.”
“Exactly. Attractiveness is a subjective quality. Like being tall. I’ve lost parts because the creative team thought I was too tall, and I’ve lost other parts because they thought I was too short. It’s subjective. It’s just that ‘attractive’ is a much more loaded description than ‘tall.’”
Hannah let the silence settle between them as Amelia turned over her words, sentiments that had taken years of therapy and months of outpatient eating disorder treatments to ring even remotely true for Hannah, things she hoped would be easier for Amelia to believe than they had been for her.
“When everyone thought I was going to play Tracy, no one had a problem with it,”
Amelia said slowly, her forehead furrowing as she stared at her twisted cuffs again. “But when Ms. Proulx announced I was going to be Audrey, I could tell some of the other girls didn’t think I deserved the part.”
“And what did you think?”
“It’s easier when you play the parts they expect you to.”
Hannah blew out a breath. “It is. It’s also easier to believe you don’t deserve something than to believe you do.”
“Yeah.”
“But you know what? That’s the character. Audrey doesn’t believe she deserves the things she wants. ‘Honest, sweet, vulnerable, insecure.’ That’s the whole point of Somewhere That’s Green. She wants to be loved, to be happy, but she doesn’t think she deserves it and she’s too afraid to demand it.”
Hannah met Amelia’s eyes, smiling softly. “Maybe you and Audrey have more in common than you think.”
∞∞∞
“The library is so thrilled to be hosting Reader Fest at Nuthatch this year.”
Mrs. Alcott extended a frail hand towards Ethan and he was careful to grip it lightly. Her skin was papery beneath his palms, the blue veins along the back prominent in a way that made him feel protective over the older woman.
“We’re happy to have you,”
Ethan said.
“Well, of course, it won’t be me, though,”
Mrs. Alcott said as she gathered her things.
“What do you mean?”
Baz asked, a scowl beginning to form.
“Didn’t you hear? I’m retiring at the end of the month. This is my last week on the job.”
“Congratulations,”
Ethan said. “You’ve been the Director of the library since—”
“Since you were in diapers,”
Mrs. Alcott said with a smile.
“Who’s running the festival then?”
Baz asked, always one to cut straight to the point.
“We are.”
Ethan glanced up to see the grandma gang, pink jackets and all, in the doorway to his office, Mrs. White at the head of the pack. “After we stopped by last week, we told Joanie the vineyard would be the perfect place for this year’s Reader Fest.”
“The town will need time to find my replacement, you see,”
Mrs. Alcott explained, “so when Helen and the girls volunteered to step in, well, it was too good to be true.”
Baz grunted in a way that somehow managed to sound sarcastic.
“Well, I’m off! I know you all will make me proud,”
Mrs. Alcott said, squeezing Ethan’s hand one final time before sending air kisses towards the other women on her way out the door.
Mrs. Blumenthal sank into one of the seats in front of Ethan’s desk and began pulling manilla folders from her rattan handbag. “We’ll need to get started right away. Of course, we’ve asked Gavin to take a stab at revising the marketing plan for this year.”
“Gavin knew about this?”
Ethan asked.
“We just left him, dear. Do try to keep up,”
Mrs. Kemp said.
Ethan ran his thumb and forefinger over his eyes, pressing hard enough that he saw spots. “I really don’t need to be a part of the planning process. Let me know what you need from the vineyard, how many chairs, that sort of thing.”
“I told you he wouldn’t want to participate,”
Mrs. Greene grumbled, nudging Mrs. White.
“I’ve never read Moby Dick,”
Ethan said by way of explanation.
“No one has, dear,”
Mrs. Kemp said.
“That’s why we’re diversifying this year’s festival,”
Mrs. Blumenthal said, opening a folder to reveal a stack of looseleaf paper covered in her neat, slanting script. “Why have an entire festival about just one book?”
“Especially a book that has such low circulation,”
Mrs. Greene said.
“Reader Fest always focuses on one classic,” Baz said.
“Yes, and attendance has been declining for years. Joanie just didn’t want to admit it,”
Mrs. Blumenthal offered.
“Which is where we come in,”
Mrs. White said, pinning Ethan with a knowing smile that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
“Why feature one book when we can feature multiple books, and all by local authors?”
Mrs. Kemp asked.
“Does Aster Bay have any authors?”
Baz asked.
“Millie DeGrey wrote that one book,”
Mrs. Blumenthal said. “The historical fiction about the servant at Aster Place.”
“Not that anybody read it,”
Mrs. Greene said.
“There are plenty of authors within driving distance,”
Mrs. White said. “Aja Mathé is in Providence—”
“Children’s books,”
Mrs. Blumenthal offered.
“Richard Reynolds is in Maine—”
Mrs. White continued.
“Charming fiction books,”
Mrs. Blumenthal said.
“Philip Nathanson is on the Cape—”
“Historical fiction,”
Mrs. Blumenthal added.
“And AK Wild is in Boston.”
Mrs. White’s eyes gleamed as Ethan’s stomach somersaulted.
“She writes romance books,”
Mrs. Blumenthal said.
“He knows, Dottie,”
Mrs. White said.
“That’s a lot of authors,”
Ethan said, narrowing his eyes at Mrs. White. What the hell kind of game was she playing? “I’m not sure we can fit them all.”
“Nonsense! If you can host a three-hundred-person wedding or an entire reality television production crew, you can certainly fit a handful of authors and their fans,”
Mrs. Kemp said.
“We can talk about the details later. We’re going to be late for our lunch reservation,”
Mrs. Greene complained.
“AK Wild is an Aster Bay girl. Grew up here, you know,”
Mrs. Blumenthal said proudly.
“He knows, Dottie,”
Mrs. White repeated.
“He might not know,”
Mrs. Blumenthal insisted. “She moved away when they were all still kids. Just because he narrates her books, doesn’t mean he knows her personally.”
Every muscle in Ethan’s body tensed as bile forced its way up his throat. His ears rang and the adrenaline coursing through his veins made him feel shaky, unsteady in a way he hadn’t felt in years. It was one thing to suspect Mrs. White knew about his secret alter ego, but if the whole grandma gang knew, it was only a matter of time before everyone in Aster Bay had the information.
“Mrs. Blumenthal—”
he started.
“Don’t worry, dear. Your secret is safe with us. Though why you’d want to keep it a secret when you have such a lovely voice…”
She shook her head and clicked her teeth.
All those years of carefully keeping his life in Aster Bay and his life in audiobooks separate and it was all about to come crashing down, thanks to his kindergarten teacher no less. He sank into his chair, stunned into silence, his gaze bouncing between the women who seemed oblivious to the grenade they’d just thrown into his life.
Baz ushered them to the door. “Let us know what you need. We’ll make it happen.”
While Baz and the others moved down the hall, Mrs. Greene rattling off her grievances with the new lunch specials at Lemon and Thyme, Mrs. White held back. She approached the desk, rapping her knuckles on the mahogany. “Do you remember when Mikey Greenhall broke my ceramic fox?”
Ethan blinked. “In first grade?”
“You took it home and put it back together with Elmer’s glue and Scotch tape. It was on my desk, whole, if a little worse for wear, in the morning. When I asked who had fixed it, you didn’t say a word. Stephanie was the one who told me it was you.”
“Why are we talking about this?”
“You never did like to take credit for your accomplishments.”
Ethan huffed out a laugh. “That fox was a mess.”
“It was. But quite an impressive mess for a first grader, even if the tail was on upside down.”
“Mrs. White, with all due respect, what’s your point?”
“It’s okay to own your accomplishments, Ethan. You’re quite a good narrator.”
He winced. “Please, stop. I would really like to pretend you’ve never listened to a Slade Hardcastle book.”
Mrs. White sighed. “I never took you for a prude.”
She turned to leave, but at the last moment, turned back. “You should be proud of your work, Ethan. Your parents and friends would be proud. And secrets have a way of coming out.”