Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
“You missed the mark again, Kandace. Let’s run it one more time.”
This was already the fifth run-through and she’d failed to stop in the correct spot every single time. The rare moments when she did hit her mark, Burke had to feed her the line. We needed people to fill the roles, but that didn’t mean any warm body would do.
“Can’t we just move on?” she whined.
In the roles of Connor’s parents, she and Burke had very few scenes, but every scene mattered. Emma and Aiden had learned pages and pages of lines. There was no reason Kandace couldn’t memorize half a dozen.
“Not until we get this right.” Ignoring the sighs from the seats behind me, I waved her back to the start. “Try again.”
Kandace huffed but did as asked, however, once the scene started it was clear she refused to do even the bare minimum.
Remembering that Trey was in his usual spot at the back of the room, I turned and said, “Coach Collins, could you come down here for a few minutes?”
After a brief hesitation, he hopped up from his seat and trotted down the aisle. “What do you need?”
“I’m going to have a chat with Kandace.” Handing him my script, I pointed to the bottom of the page. “Have them start here and run through the next two pages. Madison can tell you if there’s something specific that should be run through again.”
“I’ll be able to tell,” he said, eyes on the page.
That was fair. He’d sat silently through enough rehearsals that he could probably spot mistakes as well as I could.
“You’re in charge, then. Kandace, meet me backstage.”
She huffed again, rolled her eyes, and stomped off stage left like a toddler ordered into time out. You’d never know she volunteered for this.
Taking a deep breath as I climbed the three steps to the stage, I proceeded behind the curtain to find the pouty cheerleader doing just that—pouting.
Ignoring the attitude, I stayed calm. “What can I do to help you find your mark? Do you want to stay after and we can walk through it a few times? Maybe there’s a trick that will help you know where to stop.”
“I’m not giving this play any more of my free time than I already am,” she replied. “What does it matter where I stop anyway?”
“Where you stop determines where Burke stops, which in turn affects Emma’s movements.” Trying to find a way to reach her, I added, “You do this in cheer routines, right? Formations matter here as much as they do there.”
“Cheer is set to music.” She pointed toward the stage. “This is just walking. If I’m out there saying those stupid lines that should be enough.”
I took a beat to make sure the top of my head didn’t blow off. If she was trying to see how far she could push me, she’d just found the line.
“Why are you here, Kandace?”
She straightened. “What?”
“ Why are you here? ” I repeated. “You obviously don’t want to be in the play. So why are you here?”
“I—”
“Did you think you’d walk in and make googly eyes at Aiden and we’d all work around you?”
“Who says googly eyes ?”
This was no time to discuss our generational differences. “I’m struggling to find a reason to keep you in this play at all.”
Kandace scoffed. “Please. You need me or you won’t have anyone to play my crappy part.”
Again, why was she here?
“If you aren’t willing to put in the work and give the same effort as everyone else, then it doesn’t matter if we need you. Respect the play and your fellow actors or leave.”
Dropping her arms to her sides, she stiffened. “Are you kicking me out?”
“No, I’m giving you a choice. Stop wasting our time.” Grabbing a script off Hannah’s prop table a few feet away, I held it out to her. “You have fifteen minutes to learn your lines and do the scene correctly. If you don’t come out, I’ll know you left and we’ll call it done.”
Taking the script, she quietly asked, “If I leave, who would do my part?”
Excellent question. “We’ll figure it out.”
I could see the debate in her eyes and had every expectation of which side would win. But I still wanted her to think about it, in case by some miracle she chose to stick around. Without another word, I left her in the wings to make her decision and returned to rehearsal to find the whole crew gathered around Trey at the center of the stage.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, confused why they weren’t running the scene.
“Aiden has an idea,” Emma said. “Coach Collins suggested we draw it out to see how it would look.”
I leaned over Trey’s shoulder. “An idea for what?”
“We’ve got these transitions between when Connor leaves Darcy at the hospital, the fight she has with her parents, and finding out that Tilly is going to live.” Aiden pointed to the x in the middle of an empty rectangle. “This is Darcy at center stage. She’s in the middle of all the action, so I was thinking the other characters would move around her. ’Cause this is the moment she stops letting people push her around and takes her stand, you know.”
He drew circles around her, and then added arrows for the directions in which they should move. “Connor leaves in this direction, and her parents enter from the other side.” He drew another circle and an arrow to show a character come in from behind her. “Then the doc comes in from here. It’s like when a quarterback is in the pocket while the other team is trying to get to him.”
The pocket reference was lost on me, but I knew what he was saying. This wasn’t a bad idea. “I like it, but she does needs to move in small ways that emphasize the change in her character. She can step back when Connor leaves, to show she’s okay on her own. Then step toward her parents to show she’s moving forward.”
“She’s stronger and letting go of the fear,” Emma said. “This way her words and actions connect.”
Trey looked up. “This would also reduce the chaos on stage so the audience can keep their focus on Darcy.”
Our eyes met and I could see that Coach Collins was much more invested in this play than I realized. I’d been flying solo with this club for so long that part of me felt protective. We agreed right now, but what if I let him in and down the road he pushed for a change I didn’t agree with? At the same time, letting him carry some of the weight would free me up to work on certain areas while he worked on others.
Giving someone else even a small amount of control wasn’t a natural choice for me. Despite having a firm belief in the strength of an ensemble, a singular voice needed to be in charge. My voice. Maybe I could make an exception this once.
“Let’s block it out and see how it feels.” The kids bounced up and immediately went to work. To Trey, I said, “Where did you get that notebook?” The thing was huge.
He flipped back a few pages to show more xs and os with arrows going every which way. “It’s my playbook for football.”
I should have known. “Is that how you teach them to run into each other?”
His brow furrowed. “It’s called tackling.”
“It looks brutal.” From the corner of my eye, I spotted Kandace walk out from the wings. After giving me a fleeting glance, she joined the others.
“What happened back there?” Trey asked.
“We had a talk about expectations. I suggested she think about whether she truly wants to be here.”
He crossed his arms. “Looks like she made the right decision.”
Since she played the role of Darcy’s mother, the current changes would move her mark to a different spot. Madison showed her the change, and I could see she had Kandace’s full attention. They then walked through it twice, and Kandace hit the new mark both times.
“We may make an actress out of her yet.” Heading back to the steps at the corner of the stage, I said, “Do that clapping thing you do.”
“The what?” Trey asked, following close behind.
“You know. When you clap and shatter everyone’s eardrums.”
“It isn’t that loud.” He did as asked, doing irreparable damage to my ears and creating an echo in the large space. The kids fell silent, as I knew they would.
We spent the next thirty minutes walking through the scenes using the new blocking, making adjustments where necessary. Kandace even made a suggestion for her and Burke, and looked quite proud of herself when the others approved of her idea.
By the end of rehearsal, I knew we were going to be okay.
“Thanks for doing that for Aiden,” Trey said as we walked out together.
Confused, I said, “What did I do?”
Trey pushed the school door open. “You took his suggestion.”
The cold wind felt as if it might slice through me. “I’m happy to take a good suggestion from anybody who has one, and that was a good one.”
“But you listened to him.”
That didn’t feel like something I should be commended for. “He has as much of a voice as anyone else in the play. Why wouldn’t I listen?”
Looking off into the distance, Trey paused before answering. “Let’s just say he isn’t heard very often.”
He knew the boy better than I did so I took his word for it. I also considered asking for more detail, but that was probably Aiden’s story to tell. As we crossed the lot to my car I pulled the keys from my purse and tried to think of a reason not to leave right away.
Twice over the weekend I’d felt the urge to talk to Trey. First, during my six-hour visit with my sister, niece, and nephew at the zoo, I not only volunteered to pet the camel, but I fed a one hundred fifty-year-old tortoise. That was adventure, right?
Then I saw a commercial about discounted flights to Seattle and remembered him saying one of his siblings lived out there. I even pulled out my phone before remembering that I didn’t have his number. Jacob would share if I asked, but the girls would never believe that I only wanted to tell the man about cheap flights to go see his sibling for the holidays.
Rarely, if ever, did I have the urge to talk to a man, so even I realized this milestone for what it was. The crush thing might have gone both ways.
“Since you seem open to suggestions tonight,” he said, “I have one.”
“Let’s hear it,” I said, happy for a reason to linger.
I unlocked my car doors as we approached my car, and without a word, Trey took the bag off my shoulder and set it on the back seat. “I was talking to Leo about this set design he’s come up with.”
“The spinning one?”
“Yeah, I think we can make it work.”
Leo was brilliant, and I had no doubt that with more time and resources he could bring his vision to life, but we were just over three weeks away from opening night. That time needed to be spent perfecting the performance, not building a set we lacked the manpower to move.
“I would love to have that set, but there isn’t enough time now.”
“Maybe not for the club members to make it, but what if we had help?”
Did he have little set-building fairies in his pocket? “Help from where?”
Trey turned and leaned his backside against the car. “I talked to Ethan Johansson and he’s willing to make our backdrop a class project.”
“You want the kids in wood shop to build our set?” I realize he wasn’t wearing a coat and before he could answer I asked, “Where is your coat?”
“In the truck.” As if that was a rational answer to why he’d be out here in the freezing cold without one. “Ethan looked at the plans that Leo drew up and he says they could build the bottom with the mechanics, and then all we have to do is paint the backdrops before they assemble everything on the stage.”
Painting something that massive would also take time, but there was another problem.
“Even if we managed all of that, who would turn a set that large? Timing is everything in a live production, and we can’t stop the play every time the scene changes.”
He shook his head. “That’s what my players are for.”
His players? “Football players?”
“That’s right. The guys will be happy to help out.”
Since when? “They’ll be happy to or you won’t give them a choice?”
Trey chuckled. “Are you accusing me of abusing my authority?”
“Either that or you’re a miracle worker.” I blew into my hands to warm them up. “I’m still not sure how you convinced Burke and Aiden to join.”
He shifted off the car and stepped between me and the wind. “There was no convincing. I announced the play was looking for new people, and they both came to me after practice to say they were interested.” Opening my driver’s side door, he said, “You need to get out of the cold.”
Yes, I did. Climbing in, I asked, “Are you saying they volunteered without any coercing?”
Placing his body in the opening between the car and the door, he leaned forward. “Doing a play is scary. I wouldn’t push anyone into joining if they didn’t want to do it.”
A play was scary? Had he paid any attention to what football players did to each other on that field?
“If you aren’t in a hurry,” he said, “there’s a little diner down the road. We can firm up the set so I can get Ethan started.”
“Delta’s?”
“That’s it. I’ll even buy.”
Well, if he was going to feed me. “I’ll meet you there.”
A grin split his face as he said, “It’s a date,” then closed the door and trotted off to his truck before I could correct him.
“Smooth, Coach Collins. Very smooth.”