Chapter Thirty-Two
Annie’s grandmother had died on an unfairly beautiful summer afternoon, and though the end had been long and expected, the grief still gutted her.
That same suffocating despair returned now, seated silently in Jazz’s office while the others talked, their voices like storm runoff she couldn’t absorb.
Lola was gone. Because Annie had done the wrong thing.
Why didn’t she just tell the truth this morning? Why was she so insecure, so reactive, so mean in the green room?
I had a perfectly good life here until you came back into it.
Was that even true?
Annie tried not to think about Spaghetti à la Spontaneity, and the McCormacks’ water hole, and movie night banana splits.
She tried not to think about bringing Lola a flower in the green room or an afternoon in Jazz’s overgrown backyard or group dinners at Rock Around the Clock.
She tried not to think about Lola’s lips and fingers and the way they could make her feel.
She tried not to think about the show, their show, and everything it meant.
And she tried not to think about all their pillow talk about splitting their time between New York and Rhodes, and how this summer would be the start of their forever.
But, of course, Annie would never forget any of those things. They would torture her for all time.
Lola had left and Annie felt like she might die.
All she wanted to do was go home, get into bed, and weep until her throat bled. But her sheets would still smell like Lola’s lemongrass, and blood was notoriously hard to get out, and Annie felt she had a responsibility to be here, making a plan.
But what plan was there to make?
“How much of the play do you know?” Garrett was asking Kat.
Kat’s nose was stuffy, her eyes red rimmed. “I’ve been so busy planning the talkback,” she whimpered. “I never thought Lola would bail.”
“How much?” Garrett repeated.
Kat shrugged miserably. “I know my part.”
Everyone puffed out tense sighs.
“Kat, I’m disappointed,” Jazz said curtly. “You can go.”
“I’m so sorry,” Kat whispered, beating a hasty exit.
“Why didn’t I have Zoe understudy Lola?” Jazz muttered. “Zoe’s completely off book, just as the wrong character!”
“What about you?” Vicky asked Jazz. “You’ve run the play a million times.”
“No,” Jazz said with a tired laugh. “I don’t know it that well. Maybe I could manage half of act one. But not the whole thing.”
Dylan leaned forward in their chair. “What if—I dunno—we find another actor and they, um, video call in? Like a projection, sort of high tech, and…” They sagged in defeat. “No, that’s stupid.”
“What if I read Lola’s part?” Garrett suggested. “I know pretty much all the blocking.”
“What, you onstage with a script?” Dylan asked doubtfully.
“In our gender-swapped production?” Vicky added.
“Yeah, might be a Cats level of bad idea,” Garrett conceded, kneading his temples. “What if we push the show to after Lola’s film wraps?”
Everyone looked highly doubtful.
“I’m not sure Lola will be doing the show.” Dylan glanced cautiously at Annie. “Ever.”
It stunned Annie that her body still had tears to cry but yep, here they came. She swiped them away, speaking through her stuffy nose. “I don’t think we can count on Lola.”
Vicky gave her another sympathetic smile, another side hug. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered.
Annie couldn’t even fake a resilient smile back. Vicky was wrong. Things wouldn’t be okay.
“I just can’t believe it!” Jazz popped a fist onto her desk, rattling her bangles. “I don’t believe it. Lola Wilson is a professional. I’ve never known anyone more trustworthy, more committed. She gave me her word!”
Annie reached for a tissue from a box on Jazz’s desk. “People change.”
“Not at their core,” Jazz insisted. “You lot haven’t!” She waved at the trio. “You’ve grown up, have new careers, have new haircuts. But in your hearts, you’re the same.”
Was that true? Vicky was the same, maybe Annie was, too, but Dylan had changed, not just looks-wise but in their confidence and sense of self.
Or maybe Dylan had just become the person they were always destined to be—and so had Lola. And that person belonged in blockbuster movies, not community theater.
“So, what are you saying?” Dylan asked. “Lola hasn’t changed and…she’ll be back?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying!” Enlivened, Jazz got to her feet. “Lola Wilson did not get on that plane. She’ll be walking through my door, full of apologies and ready to get back to work in five seconds!”
They waited five seconds.
Nothing happened.
“Sorry to burst your bubble,” Vicky said, “but it looks like she did get on that plane.”
Vicky held up her phone, showing the tagged section of Lola’s Instagram.
A grainy, zoomed-in video showed Lola and her handler boarding a small, sleek plane at the nearby Albany airport.
Annie’s heart quivered like a wounded animal at the sight of Lola still, bizarrely, in her theater costume, disappearing into the private jet.
The video sped up a little, returning to a regular speed when the plane lifted from the ground, into the clear afternoon.
The candle of hope Jazz’s premonition had lit flickered out. Lola was en route to London. There was no workable plan. It was over.
Hope Irish-exited the room.
“Should I tell the rest of the cast?” Garrett asked Jazz quietly. “Start refunding tickets?”
Jazz didn’t reply. Seated behind her enormous desk, Annie’s mentor looked half her size. Tears filled her eyes, her lips twisted in pain.
Next to her, Annie heard Dylan sniffle.
“Jazz?” Garrett prompted.
“I’ll do it,” Jazz said, her voice cracking, “I’ll tell the cast.” She took off her glasses with a shaking hand, wiping at her eyes. “It was going to be so wonderful. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.”
Annie sank to a new level of despair. Not only was Lola gone, off to the big, bold life she was always going to return to, but Annie’s heartbreak was the end of Jazz’s dream, too.
Jazz went on. “I’ve always had so much faith in people.
Maybe that’s na?ve, maybe that’s stupidly optimistic, but I’ve always believed people will do the right thing.
Show up when the going gets tough. I have always believed that we are the answers to each other’s prayers.
But today”—and now Jazz began to cry, her words coming through choked sobs—“today I’ve lost that faith.
Today I’ll stop believing that. I’m just a stupid old woman who doesn’t know when to quit.
Well, today I quit. I tried and I failed and it’s over. I give up.”
Now everyone was crying.
“Jazz,” Vicky pleaded, her throat thick with tears, but Jazz just turned away from them, saying, “Go.”
“But Jazz—” Dylan tried.
“Go,” Jazz said, and so silently, they all did.
· · ·
They ended up at Rock Around the Clock, squeezed into a smaller window booth. Annie stared blankly outside while Vicky and Dylan ordered too much food and booze.
Soon, Annie would return to her life of domestic tedium—washing dogs, doing laundry, making dinner for one—while Lola was gallivanting around London with Clay Russo and a K-pop star, beginning a thrilling new chapter.
The town would find out that the play was canceled, in part, due to some drama between them, but eventually, even that would fade, and everyone would forget about Annie and Lola and what might have been.
Everyone except Annie. Annie would never forget.
The barbwired scar tissue around her heart was permanent.
“Annie?” Vicky’s voice broke through the grim monologue in her head. “Food’s here.”
A surprise to see a table full of burgers and glasses of wine.
White wine. That’s what Lola used to drink. “I’m not hungry,” Annie said, pushing her food away.
“Can I ask,” Vicky said delicately, “what happened?”
It wasn’t as if Annie was dying to spill, but what difference did it make now? As briefly as she could, she summarized their fight: her stupid lie about enjoying the premiere, which had somehow blown up into proof Annie was untrustworthy, triggering all of Lola’s anger about the past.
Understanding and sympathy unfolded over her friends’ faces.
Annie grabbed some napkins to wipe her face, blow her nose. “Have you guys broken up, too?”
Vicky and Dylan traded a pained look, shifting awkwardly. Dylan hazarded, “We’re still…talking,” but Vicky just said, “Yes, we have,” and that was it.
So, neither couple lasted. Annie slunk lower in the booth. This time-traveling theater reunion had brought nothing but suffering and sadness and regret. She never should’ve agreed to it.
The jukebox kicked in with “Do You Realize??” by the Flaming Lips and Annie wanted to scream. Lola’s face filled her mind. She’d give anything for headphones.
“Jazz was right,” Annie muttered. “The world is doomed.”
Vicky snorted in agreement.
“Hey, come on,” Dylan said. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do mean that,” Annie said darkly.
“Not to put words in your mouth,” Dylan pushed back, “but this is just a very, very bad day. You don’t really think everything is ‘doomed.’ ”
“Not to put words in your mouth,” Vicky said to Dylan, “but Annie can believe whatever she likes. We’re not impressionable kids anymore—we have a right to our opinions, even if they’re completely dystopic.”
Annie wished again for headphones. “Not to put words in anyone’s mouth,” she snapped, “but I can speak for myself and…”
Out of nowhere, Annie had an idea. A solution. It hit like a power surge, jolting her upright.
Was it crazy? Yep. But could it work?
Vicky and Dylan kept bickering as Annie’s mind started to race.
Lola had made her choice and yes, it’d cut Annie’s heart out of her chest like an eighteenth-century unanesthetized surgery. But it hadn’t robbed her of all her organs. She had her brain and she had her guts. She could still be strong. Little Orphan Annie still had some fight left.
“Guys?” Annie interrupted the others. “I think—I think I need to call Garrett.” Her heartbeat careened, breath catching like a car slamming into reverse. “I think I have an idea.”
“An idea for what?” Vicky asked.
Annie was already getting out her phone. “An idea for how we can save the show.”
Annie called Garrett. She needed him and all four Tragedians back at the theater, right now. She’d explain everything then.
She could do this.
She could absolutely do this.
“And while we wait for them to come back,” she told a bewildered Dylan and Vicky, “we eat.” She surveyed the table of food, her appetite galloping back with gusto. “I’m absolutely starving.”
· · ·
Less than an hour later, all four teenagers, Jazz, Garrett, Vicky, and Dylan stared at Annie on the Rhodes Playhouse stage. It was past nine p.m. but everyone was wide awake.
Annie’s heart thumped. Next week, she could fall apart. Tonight, she would stand tall.
“I have an idea.” Annie made her voice strong and confident. “Zoe, I know you’re off book for my part, not Lola’s. But what if we switch? You take Rosencrantz, and I take Guildenstern.”
Zoe’s face screwed into confusion. “But you don’t know all of Lola’s lines, do you?”
The collective hope dwindled. That was Annie’s big idea?
“I don’t,” Annie said, “but what if I wear an earbud onstage and have Garrett feed me the lines?”
A pause as Annie’s suggestion sunk in. A single earbud, relaying a phone call. Garrett reciting the lines, Annie performing them.
“What, like, a Cyrano situation?” Garrett asked.
Jazz cocked her head. “From backstage?”
“Exactly,” Annie said. “You know all the blocking, don’t you, Zoe?”
“Yeah, I mean, maybe?” Zoe hedged. “I’d have to practice, but it might be possible?”
“What about us?” Kat indicated Emery and Orchid. “We’re four Tragedians.”
“Now you’re three,” Annie said. “It’s too late to bring someone else up to speed so you’ll have to re-block and relearn everything.”
“The whole play?” Orchid asked in disbelief.
“All the swordplay,” Emery said, “the clowning, the tumbling…”
“Yep.” Annie nodded. “It’s not a perfect plan but it’s our only shot.
” She met everyone’s gaze, one by one. “Jazz and Vicky, you work with the Tragedians. Dylan, you work with me and Zoe. Garrett, you’re reading me Lola’s lines.
” Annie addressed the group, her heart still beating fast. “What d’you say? ”
Everyone looked to Zoe. The teenager took a deep breath, her expression serious and committed. “Not gonna lie, I’m totally freaked. But I’m in.”
“I’m in,” said Kat.
“In,” said Orchid.
“In.” Emery nodded.
Annie looked to Vicky.
“Well, the earbud might fall out,” Vicky spoke practically, “the call might drop—reception’s never been great in here. Garrett might go too fast or too slow and this isn’t the kind of play where you can improvise. But obviously,” she added, “I’m in.”
Annie’s mouth was dry. She didn’t know the lines. Didn’t know if the earbud would work. But she had a pulse and a stage and a story to tell. Annie met Garrett’s eye.
He looked doubtful. “It’s risky. But theater isn’t about playing it safe. It’s about…” He paused, allowing a brief, anticipatory silence. “Taking the leap. It’s about defying gravity.”
Like soldiers receiving a call to arms, Zoe and Emery broke into song—“It’s time to try defying gra-vi-ty”—but Annie cut them off.
“Guys, no. We have work to do. Call your parents—we need you here as late as they’ll let you.
” Annie inhaled the deepest breath of her life.
“We may not have Lola. But we have this play. And this cast. And this chance. I’m not giving up. ”
“I knew we’d figure it out!” Jazz declared. “The show must go on! It simply must!”
“Yeah!” Dylan pumped a fist. “Let’s do this!”
Energized, Annie stuck her hand into the center of the group. “Theater kids on three! One, two, three—”
“Theater kids!” everyone cried, throwing a hand up.
And just like that, hope reentered the chat.