Chapter 5
Marlowe
Everyone believes me by the second day.
A full-scale search has begun for Dallas, led by local law enforcement and a group of citizen volunteers.
At least four former alumni have added me on their social media, just to tag me in sad posts about Dallas’s disappearance, talking like he’s already been found dead.
It’s a wonder more of them weren’t involved in theater in high school, because there doesn’t seem to be a bridge they won’t cross in the name of being the star of our town’s latest scandal.
The police took my statement in the early morning. I missed my first two classes, which only makes my students more curious. They’ve been bombarding me with questions, wanting more than anything to know if everything will be okay.
“It will,” I’ve been telling them, though I don’t think any of us believe it.
I keep reminding myself I’m one day ahead of everyone else in terms of processing the whole thing. They’re still in disbelief. I’ve moved on to despair.
Even though I knew Dallas had gone missing before everyone else, I don’t have it in me to be smug.
It doesn’t change the fact that he’s gone, all of our students need me to step up and be their leader, and I have no good answers to give anyone.
I had to cancel yesterday’s dress rehearsal, hoping against reason it would be the only disruption to our schedule.
With the last dress rehearsal still on the horizon, no one is available to play Dallas’s part, and the administration is relying on me to make the call about whether the show will go on at all.
They genuinely want me to decide if the musical will happen or not.
But the show must go on is so engrained in theater culture that I already know what Dallas wants, even though he’s not here to say it.
His exaggerated drawl plays in my ear over a montage of memories from our many years together.
Freak injuries happening in the middle of performances.
Broken props and failed stunts threatening to halt our production altogether.
The time Dallas got laryngitis before opening night of Urinetown and found a doctor to give him a steroid shot that somehow made his voice return five minutes before curtain.
No matter how you might try to stop it, the show will find a way to keep going would be how he’d say it, because Dallas never does things by the book. There are no limits to what he’s willing to reinvent.
How can the show go on without you? I ask the Dallas in my mind.
Even he doesn’t answer.
I have a free hour before the school day ends and rehearsal begins, so I walk to Dallas’s theater office to think.
The space is tucked into a long, narrow hallway informally known as the drama hallway, because the only things here are his office, a door to the dressing room, and an entrance to the backstage right wings.
The office is filled to the brim with pieces of Dallas’s history.
There are wigs we’ve used in too many productions to count, old props from particularly significant shows, handmade gifts Dallas has acquired throughout the years, weathered play scripts, and binders filled with librettos from decades’ worth of musicals.
I have always planned to hold on to as much of this memorabilia as he’d let me, wanting to preserve his legacy as best I can.
That idea doesn’t seem as sentimental anymore.
It seems more like I’ll be working inside a mausoleum, surrounded by reminders of his vibrancy without him around to contextualize any of it.
Two of his sewing mannequins stand at attention in the corner.
One is bare, and the other has an outfit in progress, held together by sewing pins and clips.
Dallas got his bachelor’s degree in physics, something most people are shocked to learn, because he got his master’s in acting, where he learned all of his practical stage skills.
He can sew. He can mime. If you need someone to jump on a pogo stick while installing a new lighting track, he can probably do that, too.
The outfit he’s currently working on is all black.
When he first started this project, he told me he intended to wear this on closing night.
He’d called it his mourning robes, which made sense at the time.
He’s spent more than thirty years here at WRHS.
It’s quite the legacy, and he’s very much the type to wear an elaborate, macabre gown as he throws his own artistic funeral.
In his unexpected absence, the mourning robes are yet another thing that has taken on a different meaning.
How much have I missed?
My mom texts me a link to a Patch article that’s gone up about Dallas’s disappearance, where a conspiracy theory has already emerged in the article’s comments.
Countless Garden Meadows locals are chiming in about how Dallas has obviously been kidnapped, and we should all be vigilant going forward, because Garden Meadows seems to be changing for the worse.
Some parents pulled their kids from school for the day, even though the police searched the school extensively and deemed the building safe.
Mom: Be careful, honey. Love you.
Marlowe: I’m totally safe, Mom. Don’t worry. Love you, too.
There were no signs of distress on the premises.
No evidence that any sort of attack had taken place.
Most crucially, no suspicious figures appeared on any of the security camera footage, and no body was found.
The drama hallway was the last place Dallas was seen.
There are no cameras in the wings, but there is an emergency fire exit backstage.
He would have set off an alarm if he’d opened it, but that can be disabled easily enough, something an old pro like Dallas knows.
The outside security cameras do have some gaps along that side of the building.
It’s very possible he left quietly. There’s just no reason why.
His phone, his car, and even his wallet were all found at school. They searched his house, just as I did yesterday, and found nothing there either. They searched the wings. No Dallas. None of his friends or loved ones outside of WRHS have heard from him.
Except for Cilla Cove.
I told the authorities that they had talked, but I couldn’t bring myself to share what she had said about him figuring out how to walk through universes.
It seemed to me to be another one of her perverse jokes, designed to make light of a situation that has no lightness.
If the authorities contact her, maybe she will be more forthcoming with them than she was with me.
If Dallas really said to her what she claims, it’s the kind of clue that only makes sense to someone who knows him and his eccentricities like I do.
He has a flowery way of speaking. He loves metaphors and evocative imagery.
There must be some meaning to gather from “how to walk through universes,” and I need to comb through his belongings to find it.
I just have to get over the obvious hurdle first—why did he tell Cilla and not me?
Adding a fresh sprinkle to an already-salted wound, Dallas’s office has a new addition from Cilla herself—a dozen rose bouquets with a note telling the cast to break a leg for opening night.
Everything feels cruel, and not in a way that provides relief.
Sometimes sadness is a welcome exit from reality.
For this, I’m aching and confused and all too present in the world, wishing for advice and guidance from the one person who isn’t around to give any.
When someone knocks on the office door, my heart makes an unapologetic leap, dreaming of looking up to find Dallas sauntering in, saying, “Sorry, dear! Got lost on my way to the bathroom, but I’m back now!”
It’s just Alice, wearing a guilt-ridden expression that makes a decent dent in my own hurt feelings, holding a cold brew that she picked up from Sawyer’s Coffee.
“For you,” she says. “Figured you could use another one.”
“Ah. What a gift. Thank you,” I say, welcoming the peace offering. She takes the cue to walk inside, handing me the drink and then sitting down in the chair positioned on the other side of Dallas’s desk.
After she goes through all the expected points, saying sorry for not believing me sooner and expressing her shock and disbelief at the entire situation, she leaves the floor open so I can do the same.
She doesn’t say that, but we’ve been in enough disagreements for me to know the expected formula by now.
“I was really shitty yesterday,” I tell her. “I shouldn’t have taken any of that out on you.”
“It’s okay.” She walks around the desk to wrap me in a hug from behind.
“I hate that I was mean to you,” I tell her.
“And I hate that I didn’t listen to you,” she replies.
We stay like this for a beat, her chin perched on top of my head, her arms around my chest. My breathing starts to regulate. We’re going to be okay, I decide. It was an ugly moment, but all relationships have them, and both of us have forgiven each other. That counts for something.
“You know, I’d still be willing to live together, if you are,” she says. Her jaw moves against my skull as she speaks, which is fitting, because each word is like a tiny meteor pelting me from outer space.