Chapter Twenty-One
Eliza
“Theater was my first love. I can’t take the theater out of me. And I wouldn’t want to. To me, it’s home.”
—Jim Parsons
Trying to sneak in backstage unseen was about as possible as maneuvering around a catwalk while blindfolded, ankle-tied to a penguin, and covered in sleigh bells.
I would’ve picked that Christmas-catwalk-penguin scene a million times over my late entrance to rehearsal Monday.
I didn’t mean to fall asleep with Reed earlier at the ball field in Clairview, but when the sun moved behind the clouds and the humidity dropped, we had let the quiet field speak for us.
I loved the peace of it all. I don’t remember the last time I felt that calm during a show or baseball season.
The stage door slammed shut behind me, and half the cast glared and hissed. “You are so busted,” Raul whispered, a sword belted to his waist. He and all the other Montagues frowned.
Right, because you’ve got all your lines and blocking memorized— Oh, wait…you don’t.
I brushed by Cara, our stage manager, who wore her famous disappointed frown that she normally reserved for the freshmen theater students, and crept along the side of the auditorium till I reached the lobby.
After shoving a dollar into the vending machine for a drink, I grabbed it and flew up the stairs to the booth.
I wedged my trusty wooden ruler in its place so the door wouldn’t lock me in and started getting everything ready.
The eyes of Andrew Lloyd Webber stared at me from his autographed picture on the wall.
“Stop being so judgy,” I whispered to him as I hurried to pull up the show file.
“I’m not that late.” I checked the time on my phone and winced.
Okay, maybe I was.
Cara barked orders at the other onstage crew members about how to properly set up act 3, scene 1.
I missed the first cue waiting for the file to load but quickly caught up with the cast. I loved the lighting of this scene—lots of slow, creeping burnt oranges and deep reds curling in toward the center as the anger flared up between Tybalt and Mercutio during their duel. Everything was hitting perfectly.
I leaned back in my chair and stuck my tongue out at the framed face that had scolded me moments before. “See?” I said to him. “Just because I was late doesn’t mean I wasn’t prepa—”
A bright yellow box appeared on the computer screen over the display: “ERROR: SYSTEM SOFTWARE INCOMPATIBLE.”
“Wait. What?” I rolled my chair closer, and a second later, the computer and the board shut down, putting the entire auditorium in the dark.
Everyone on the stage groaned, and the distinct click of Ms. Sparrow’s heels sounded on the hardwood. “Ms. Crowley? Everything okay up there?”
I shot up out of my seat, sending it slamming into the door. The ruler snapped in half, the door closed, and the lock clicked. Great. “Everything’s fine! I got an error warning before the entire system crashed, but I’ll get it up and running in a sec.”
“Define ‘a sec’?” Cara asked over the radio.
My eye twitched. Since when was a stage manager also the director?
I switched on the house lights, which ran separately from the board, and grabbed the manual, flipping to the index till I found the section on troubleshooting errors.
“If an on-screen error warning has flashed, hold down numbers 7, 8, and 9 on your keypad and turn off the console…”
What? “It’s already turned off!” I whisper-yelled at the book and shook it.
“Eliza?” Ms. Sparrow called again. “Would you like Cara to come up and give you a hand?”
I’d rather push my finger into a wall socket, thanks. “No, no. I’ve got it. Just a sec.”
My stomach squirmed and soured as I read over the suggestions to fix the board. None of them had an answer for my board’s problem.
Screw it.
I held the 7, 8, and 9 buttons, and then pressed the power button, waiting and praying for it to reboot while I took a another quick look at the framed picture of Andrew Lloyd Webber. “If you help me with this reboot, I promise never to make fun of CATS again.”
Not out loud, at least.
The screen blinked twice, and the small yellow and red lights blinked on. Yes!
And then a new message appeared on the board: “INSTALLING UPDATES. THIS MAY TAKE A WHILE.”
Oh my God, noooooo.
I swallowed over the rising bile in my throat and popped my head up into the window toward the stage. “Um, it says it’s going to take a while to install updates. So I’ll just turn on the presets. I’m so sorry.”
“Maybe if you had been here earlier, you could’ve run the updates before rehearsal,” Cara snapped from somewhere in the dark.
Maybe you should—
“Cara, that’s enough.” Ms. Sparrow’s voice turned sharp, firm. “Eliza, please meet me in the kitchen after rehearsal.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I rattled the doorknob and cursed under my breath. I was locked in. “Ms. Sparrow?” I called out.
“What is it now?” she asked.
My cheeks flushed. “I, um…I’ll need your master key to let me out. This door just locked me in. Again.”
I had known about this stupid broken door for years and was told to always keep it propped open. According to Grandma, they had fixed it a few years ago, but the “fix” didn’t last. Like most superstitious thespians, the locals all believed it was some kind of theater ghost.
I didn’t believe anything evil haunted this place, but a big part of me hoped Grandma still visited it in some way.
The updates continued throughout the rest of the act and rehearsal. Nothing looked more pathetic than a dead Mercutio being dragged off the stage in plain sight, but the board was out of my control till it finished.
Theater kids were notoriously superstitious, but the way they pressed themselves against the wall as I passed them after rehearsal made me wonder if I had come down with a sudden case of theater plague.
By the time I reached the kitchen, the armpits on my T-shirt were soaked through. Ms. Sparrow sat alone at the old green-tinted table with two cups of coffee and two blueberry muffins in front of her. I choked back a gasp.
My brother told me once that you knew you were going to be fired if your boss wanted to speak to you alone and if that boss brought food. He had said food was meant for the immediate mourning process.
“Come in. Sit, sit.” She waved to the empty chair opposite of her. “Have a muffin and some coffee.”
Yep. I’m screwed.
The seat let out a squeak when I sat. The plastic, ripped in three places, pinched my bare thighs.
“I’m sorry about the board,” I mumbled, my eyes focused on the muffin.
She drummed her fingernails on the sides of her plate.
“Nothing you can do about a board that needs updates. But we can do something about that sticky door. I’ll put another work order in today.
Hopefully they take care of it before the end of the summer.
Maintenance is hard to reach this time of year. ”
Ms. Sparrow unwrapped her muffin and continued. “I know it must be hard reading a new manual and dealing with a board that’s entirely different from the one at the high school.”
I took a sip of the coffee and winced as it burned the top of my mouth. “It is, but I do think I’m finally making some headway.”
“I’m sure you are, but missing a cast and crew meeting before rehearsal and then arriving late—”
“There was a meeting?” I pulled out my phone and opened to my Google Calendar. I could’ve sworn there wasn’t one. I wouldn’t have missed it…
Yet there it was, in the bright orange color I used for all things related to the show season.
“Cast Meeting: 10:00 AM.”
“I…” My throat squeezed. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see that. Ms. Sparrow, I never miss meetings or run late. You know me—”
“I do, which is why I agreed to you running the lights for such a big show for this summer troupe.” She broke off a piece of her muffin. “But to be honest, Eliza, you have seemed a bit…distracted over the last two weeks.”
I sighed and took a big bite of my muffin, forcing it down.
She smiled sadly. “I know how much you have on your plate this summer, what with this show and then that big tournament with your father’s team. It must be a lot to manage.”
You forgot the part about a secret relationship with the grandson of the team trying to beat my father’s, and the fact that if we lose, we also move, and then I’d have to start over with a new school, new friends, an entirely new theater program…
My head fell into my hands. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“With the board? Sure, you do.”
“No, not with the board. With…” I swallowed over an achy lump. “With everything else.”
She pushed the coffee closer to me. “Something tells me you’ll figure it out in time.”
“I’m not so sure.” How do you choose between loyalty to your family and loyalty to something new that feels so right? Reed made me feel different, better than I had in a long time. I didn’t know I needed that feeling, needed him, until this summer.
“Did I ever tell you that I had the privilege of watching your grandmother perform at the regional thespian conference a couple of times when I was younger?” she asked.
“Really?” I lifted my head. “I bet she was amazing.”
I couldn’t think of a time she hadn’t been.
“Better than amazing.” Ms. Sparrow leaned back into her chair. “When Marguerite took the stage, it was like the entire audience held their breath, waiting to be transformed.”
My heart squeezed, and a familiar ache unraveled itself through my chest, a cold coil of rope winding and knotting and releasing, all at the same time. God, I missed her. “I wish I could’ve seen her on the stage,” I whispered.
“She played Eliza in My Fair Lady when I saw her the second time. I haven’t seen a better Eliza since.” She cocked her head. “Is that how you got your name?”
“Yes. Grandma always said that Eliza was one of the best roles written for the stage.” I took another bite of the muffin, but it had no taste now.
I couldn’t smell it anymore either. I had felt the same way for weeks after Grandma passed.
Everything lost its color, flavor…even music sounded melancholy and flat.
“She was right.” Ms. Sparrow scooted forward and took both of my hands in her own. “Do you know why?”
I knew.
Grandma used to sing me to sleep with “I Could’ve Danced All Night” when I was a little girl. She hummed “Without You” while she sewed. Thanks to her, I knew Eliza Doolittle’s monologues long before I even knew what a monologue was.
I stared at the small tattoo on my wrist: the heart-shaped baseball with Grandma’s name spelled out in the stitching.
“Grandma said Eliza Doolittle never needed anyone to fix her. That she had it inside of her all along. She said once she realized she didn’t have to choose between who she was and who she wanted to be that she was a force to be reckoned with. ”
“She was.” Ms. Sparrow squeezed my hands. “This is an important production for you, for many of the cast and crew. They need a Doolittle in that booth, Ms. Crowley, and so do I. Are you ready to be that person?”
I prayed I was.