Chapter Three #2
Inside, the foyer was empty and dim, the late-afternoon light filtering in bruised colors through the unwashed windows.
There was the box office counter with the old-style ticket taker’s desk, where if she squinted, Annie could almost see a smiling volunteer selling tickets.
On the other side, the concession stand, its shelves now void of chips and candy.
The popcorn machine sat empty, sad and neglected.
Annie smiled wistfully, remembering how they used to help themselves to buttery popcorn (free for performers!), eating it backstage in the green room, licking greasy fingers.
“Hello?” Annie called, listening. “Jazz?”
Nothing. The playhouse was utterly, and atypically, silent.
It was a space meant for noise—the chatter of the preshow audience, the reverent hush as the lights dimmed, the first clear lines of dialogue ringing out from the stage.
It was meant for magic, had always felt mythic.
The magic was faded now, like music in the far distance, the melody impossible to detect.
The checkerboard parquet floors were gritty underfoot as Annie crossed the foyer, toward the doors leading to the theater itself. On the walls, framed posters of past shows hung askew—Fun Home and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Love! Valour! Compassion! and—
“Oh.” Her gaze snagged on the original poster for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, their play, impossibly twenty years old.
It hit like a slap from the past, a hand gloved in velvet, smelling of stage makeup.
Annie’s breath left her in a soft ha at seeing the once-familiar design.
Their names were the last ones listed: Vicky Fang, Annie Lightfoot, Dylan Rogers, Lola Wilson.
Back then, the two leads, pictured on the poster, were played by Trixie Hartzog and Ava Kingsley.
Trixie was a local legend who used to run an iconic vintage clothing store, Va-Va-Vintage, and who always put aside pieces for people if she felt she’d found a match.
Ava was a charismatic flame-haired actor who’d just finished starring in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest on (gasp!) Broadway—making her famous, at least to four teenagers from Upstate.
Jazz had always treated her casts as equals, no matter their age or experience.
It’d felt so cool, so grown-up, to be in rehearsals, and then onstage, with these adults.
It made Annie feel like she was part of something that really mattered.
Ava, inadvertently, gave Lola her big break.
Lola was her understudy, and the one night Ava was out with the flu, Lola’s performance was caught by a Broadway producer.
He was so impressed by the talented sixteen-year-old, he’d offered her the role of Scout in a touring show of To Kill a Mockingbird. And so Lola left. And never came back.
Annie placed a hand on the door leading into the theater itself, the wood warm and dusty beneath her palm. Was the big, bold life Annie had sensed existing without her somehow on the other side?
Only one way to find out.
The doors to the theater whined in protest as Annie pushed them open. The space beyond was pitch-black and musty.
“Hello?” Annie called again, squinting into the darkness. “Is it me you’re looking for?”
Nothing.
“Jazz!” Annie called, then shouted, “Jazz! I’m here!”
Still nothing. She tried a few light switches, but none of the overhead lights or sconces turned on.
Dragging a trash can in front of the doors to ensure she wasn’t trapped in the dark, Annie switched her phone’s flashlight app all the way up, then made her way up the central aisle, jumpy with anticipation and nerves.
Her beam illuminated the green and gold crisscross pattern on the carpet, then swept over the rows of faded red velvet seats in the orchestra and then up higher, to the ones on the balcony.
Her light barely touched the crystal chandelier, once sparkling with a thousand tiny lights, now hanging lifeless. Beyond it, she could just make out the gold and rose gilded plasterwork, marred by cracks and peeling paint.
The tall, red curtains that fell from the ceiling were open, revealing the empty stage.
The space was pin-drop silent, but Annie’s heart hammered like someone pounding on a door, each beat a memory unlocked.
She remembered peeking out from the edge of the curtains, scanning the audience before a show, looking for friends from school or her grandmother, who came once a week and always sat in the very front row.
She remembered watching rehearsals of scenes she wasn’t in from the back of the theater, Lola’s bare thigh pressed to her own.
Most of all she just remembered a feeling, the feeling of that time, in this place.
A feeling of being young and daring and excited by the world, hopeful for the future.
She remembered her friends and the way they were thick as thieves.
Riding their bikes without helmets to rehearsal, leaving them unlocked on the lawn, pushing open the front door like they owned the place.
Jumping off the pier into the Hudson River, screaming as the cold hit their sun-warmed skin.
Making a bong out of an apple, getting high for the first time and raiding Vicky’s candy collection.
Playing truth or dare on Dylan’s bedroom floor or around a fire pit under a spread of stars, confessing secret things that were accepted as sacred and true.
Laughing until she peed her pants. Kissing until her lips were puffy and tender, then being teased about it by Vicky and Dylan, who knew Annie’s secret, that she liked girls, specifically, Lola, who liked her right back.
A shared, precious secret that only the four of them understood, because Vicky and Dylan were obsessed with each other, too, even if they never acted on it.
She remembered catching Lola’s gaze, be it alone or with the others or seconds before walking onstage, and feeling like the entire universe—every star, every song, every precious thing—was in her eyes, and how badly she wanted to exist in there forever.
Until Annie destroyed everything with a single, devastating lie that she’d never forgiven herself for.
Annie didn’t know how special that summer was until it was over and gone for good. And now, standing in the center aisle, gazing up at the sacred Rhodes Playhouse stage, it was all rushing back.
The theater wasn’t supposed to look like this: cast aside and forgotten, like a scruffy rescue dog no one wanted. It was almost too much to bear.
She headed toward the front row, ascending five wooden steps to stand in the center of the stage. She gazed out at the dress circle, and above, barely visible, the empty balcony seats. An audience of none. But art needed an audience.
Impulsively, Annie did a twirl, her flashlight circling her in light.
She let out a chuckle. That was silly but fun, so she did it again.
Stages were made for performing, after all.
Another spin, then without even consciously deciding to, she broke into a little soft shoe shuffle.
She could almost feel something grinding loose in the old theater, as if it were a giant, ancient wind-up toy that someone was cranking alive.
“And a bah, dah, ba-ba-ba,” Annie sang to herself, tapping and sliding her feet across the stage.
“Bah, dah, ba-ba-ba!” Her voice rose, her movements becoming more exaggerated, arms pinwheeling, feet carrying her this way, then that.
When was the last time she danced like no one was watching?
When was the last time she let go? This was her moment!
Better make it count. “Bah! Dah! Ba-ba-BAAAAH!”
She spun once more and struck a final pose, arms flung wide, unexpected delight bursting through her chest.
“Brava.” A female voice sounded from the audience, clear as a bell.
Annie screamed and dropped her phone. It landed face up, blocking the flashlight and plunging her into near pitch-black. Annie squeaked and dropped to fumble for it, awash with embarrassment that someone had been watching. “Jazz? S-sorry, I thought I was alone.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” The low, musical voice sounded closer. Warm and amused.
Annie found her phone, flipping it up to aim it at the voice.
Like an apparition, the beam conjured a woman in the center aisle.
She wore a posh, peach-colored dress that hung halter-neck-style off an elegant gold ring circling a swanlike throat.
Patent nude heels added a few inches of height, making her almost six feet.
Her silvery-blond hair was slicked into a low bun.
A bracelet of what looked like diamonds—legit diamonds—circled one wrist. Her body looked sculpted and strong and as hairless as a mannequin.
Flawless. Expensive.
The world stilled, pausing on its axis.
Then Annie’s stomach plunged through the floorboards. She gasped, stumbling back a step.
“Lola?”