Chapter Twenty-Five
Eliza
“The theater was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.
—Stella Adler
The day after the Fourth of July, I worked in the booth alone after rehearsal. The quiet made it easier to focus, and since I didn’t have an ensemble on the stage, I was much less self-conscious about my cues and choices of colors and fades.
As I double-checked act 3, scene 5, my phone buzzed on the table next to the board.
Reed: I’m outside
Reed: Is it cool if I come up?
I hurriedly typed Yes before letting him know to enter through the stage door. Once I saw him enter the auditorium, I waved and called out, telling him how to get up to me.
A few minutes later, he knocked and came into the booth, accidentally kicking the broken-ruler door wedge.
“Don’t let it close!” I yelled, jumping out of my seat. I secured the wedge and then looped my arms around his waist.
His hands cupped my face as he kissed me slowly, and I shivered when he nibbled my bottom lip before pulling away. “Why do you have a broken ruler holding the door open?” he asked.
“It sometimes locks from the outside. No one can find the key, and maintenance is kinda stingy during the summers.” I kissed him again before plopping back into my chair. “Gotta love old buildings.”
“Maybe I could fix it for you?” He ran his hands over the hinges and frame. “It’s easy to install a new lock, honestly.”
“That’s sweet, but Ms. Sparrow was supposed to call the owners earlier this week, so I’m sure someone’s on their way to fix it.” I hoped.
Frankly, it had been a miracle I hadn’t locked myself in here while working alone on my cues.
Reed took the chair next to me in front of the soundboard and moved his hand over one of the knobs.
“Careful!” I warned. “That board is super glitchy.”
“I thought you said it was a new one?”
“It is, but I’m beginning to think it’s as cursed as the theater is…”
“But your grandmother did a ton of stuff here.” Reed leaned back in his chair. “I’m sure it’s not that bad.”
I spun to face him. “The fire alarm has gone off twice for no reason, the ghost light randomly turns on and off, that booth door won’t stay fixed, and my new board keeps crashing—”
“Fair enough.” Reed scooted his chair closer to me. “So what are you working on today?”
“Scene five of act three, where Romeo is leaving Juliet’s room after they, um…well, after they—”
“Sleep together?” Reed’s eyebrows went up, and a smirk played at the corner of his mouth, making me want to kiss his dimple. It didn’t help that his hair had that messy, wet, just-showered look again.
Focus, E.
“Right.” My neck flushed with heat. “I’m trying to capture the mood right for when Juliet’s mother comes in, because there’s a big shift a second later when the dad enters and says awful things to her.” My stomach squirmed.
I honestly couldn’t decide who I hated more in this play: the friar or Juliet’s father. One abandons her in a freaking tomb while another says he’d leave her to die in the streets if she didn’t obey him. Bleh.
“Can I see?” Reed picked up the script. “I can read the lines while you do the cues, if it helps.”
“Actually, that’d help a lot. Thanks.” The downside to doing cues alone is that you forgot the natural rhythm of dialogue, which could make it hard to guess the fades.
I pointed to where I wanted to start in the script and backed up a few cues to match the spot. “Whenever you’re ready, Romeo,” I nudged his shoulder and pressed the green “GO” button to start the scene.
Reed cleared his throat and began reading. “ ‘Farewell! / I will omit no opportunity / That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.’ ”
Wow. Total natural.
“Juliet?” Reed nudged me. “Your line.”
Oh, right. “ ‘O, think’st thou we shall ever meet again?’ ” I clicked the “GO” button again for the slow fade into one of my favorite foreshadowing moments of the play, after Romeo’s next line.
“ ‘I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve / For sweet discourses in our times to come.’ ”
The ace pitcher reads Shakespeare like a thespian. Damn.
The stage continued to slowly darken except for a softer blue that would be behind Romeo as he descended the balcony.
As I read my lines, the only light on the stage came from the follow-spot that would be directly above Juliet, casting a small part of Romeo in shadow.
“ ‘O God, I have an ill-divining soul! / Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, / As one dead in the bottom of a tomb. / Either my eyesight fails or thou lookest pale.’ ”
Reed shifted in his seat. “ ‘And trust me, love, in my eye so do you. / Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu!’ ” He leaned back, making his chair squeak. “Damn.”
“I know, right? I love her lines in this scene.”
“The lines were great, but I meant the lighting.”
My lighting?
He stood and moved closer to the open window overlooking the auditorium. “The sun’s coming up but you’ve got it like it’s going down as he leaves. Is that the kind of shadow you’re going for in the tomb at the end of the play?”
“Yep.”
“Brilliant.”
I beamed as warmth fluttered through my entire body.
Wow. He gets me.
“Thanks. Would you like to see what I do with the transition between the mother being alone with Juliet and the father coming in?”
He moved back to his seat. “Absolutely.”
A half hour later, I saved my latest work and covered the board before Reed and I walked down to the stage to turn on the ghost light. I used my phone as a flashlight to guide us through the aisles in the dark.
“So I never asked last night, but how were the fireworks?” He leaped onto the stage with ease, something I could’ve done if I were several inches taller like him. “TJ and I couldn’t see from the street well.”
“They were okay. Would’ve been more fun to watch them with you.” I plugged in the light and clicked it on. It flickered a bit but stayed lit.
“Did you watch them alone, then?” His voice sounded unnaturally high as he sat down near the ghost light, legs dangling off the front of the stage.
“No.” The ghost light in between both of us cast our shadows on the floor. “A couple friends were with me.”
Reed got super quiet, his entire body looking like it turned to stone.
“Hey, you good?” I kicked him lightly. “Got any plans for the weekend? You and Ben work things out yet?”
“No. He still won’t talk to me.” He kept his eyes at his feet. “Granddad’s got a couple things he needs help with, and I want to take Dad’s old pitching net down from the loft in the barn to get some throwing in before next week’s game. You?”
“It’s the annual Founder’s Day Tea at our house on Sunday, so I’ll be busy helping my parents get everything ready.
” I groaned. I hated the big brunch and how 90 percent of the people who went to it acted like they were better than everyone else in the town—and the county, for that matter.
But Dad was big on tradition, and since his parents threw it when they were alive, it was his job to keep it going.
Too bad it couldn’t be a barbeque. Tea sandwiches were cold, soggy, and gross.
“A big tea party.” Reed chuckled and held out his hand for mine. “Sounds thrilling.”
“Oh, there’s always high drama at high tea.” I threaded my fingers through his and scooted closer to him, letting my head drop against his shoulder. “Would you like to come with me?”
“To the tea party?” He straightened up.
“I mean, I know tea parties are old-fashioned and dumb but if you were there, it wouldn’t suck so much.” And I could finally tell my parents about you.
Not that sneaking around wasn’t fun—it just was a bit hard when the entire town knew both of you and your families.
He cleared his throat. “I mean, I have a lot of work to do helping Granddad—”
“It was a stupid idea, never—”
“—but sure, why not.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He shifted a bit. “But maybe we should ask your dad first?”
Right. “Ask” rather than “tell.” Because if Reed showed up unexpectedly as my date, what category storm was I tempting to make landfall?
I sighed. “Maybe we should.”
“Does he even know about us, E?”
I shook my head. Guilt dropped into my stomach like a chunk of ice.
“If it’s easier, I don’t have to go. I understand if you don’t want to talk to him about us yet.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to talk to him about us.” It was more that I didn’t know how to.
My phone buzzed twice in my pocket. I didn’t have to read the entire message to know what Mom sent. Based off the confetti bursts on my screen and the all-caps, our team just took the first seed in the Legion League Championship.
Any other summer, I’d be elated being on top.
But now?
“Everything good?” Reed asked, taking my hand.
“Yep.” I quickly put my phone out of sight as a horribly sour taste filled my mouth.
What the hell kind of a girlfriend was I?
All summer I had been worried about moving if we lost the stadium, but so what?
If we moved, we’d still have our lives. Dad had a ton of money from Grandpa and what he did with the stock market, and he’d sell the hardware store.
We’d be in a different place, yes, but we’d be together.
Dad even said he would manage a new stadium, so eventually, we’d have baseball back in our lives too.
But Reed’s family?
Their farm was so close to foreclosure that one bad harvest could shut them down for good. Reed’s father wasn’t in a position to help out right now, and his mother worked full-time back home just to keep things “normal” for her only son. So what did that leave them?
Nothing.
Nothing except this season and the chance to win something that could literally save everything they had worked for their entire lives.
Reed unlaced his fingers from mine and rested his hand on my bouncing knee, and that was when the truth pressed down the invisible crown I had been forced to wear since birth.
I wanted that stadium so I could live my life the same as I always had, but the Fultons needed that stadium to live. To survive.
Suddenly, worrying about the Founder’s Day Tea and soggy cucumber sandwiches felt like the stupidest thing ever.
Our theater ghosts apparently had a sense of humor, because the ghost light flickered on and off in agreement.