Stage Presents

by Aidan Wayne

  At least it wasn’t pouring. The rain had tapered off to a light drizzle. So while it was slightly uncomfortable to take the long walk back to the buses, it wasn’t too bad. And it was warm, which was nice. She sort of liked being outside in warm rain.

  What was less nice was that she was in her costume, complete with tights, and those were no fun to get wet.

  Instead of going around the entire backstage, she took a shortcut through the actual park itself. She wasn’t supposed to during operating hours, but with the park technically closed, even though Guests were still meandering out, she figured it was okay.

  The rain wasn’t too heavy, but she was still pretty wet by the time she got onto the bus, and the blast of cold air from the bus’s air conditioning was not pleasant. When her bus finally arrived at the Chatham complex, she was shivering, and she fairly leaped off the bus into the warm Florida air. At least it had stopped raining.

  Now, of course, to go home.

  Dana tried to stay upbeat. It had been a good day, start aside, and she was looking forward to breakfast with her friends tomorrow—and she had some great stories to tell them besides.

  When she arrived at her apartment building, she took a deep breath and started to climb the stairs. Ashlee was almost definitely home by now; character performers didn’t work late unless they were in the nightly parades. It had been a pattern the last few weeks—Ashlee came home earlier than Dana, and usually had had dinner and was either taking a shower or in their bedroom by the time Dana got home. Dana then made herself dinner and camped out in the living room for a couple of hours, and when she did venture into the bedroom to change and go to sleep herself, Ashlee was often already dead to the world, so Dana could turn off the TV and go about getting ready to sleep in peace. And she was a respectful roommate and actually tried to go about her business quietly. Not that she needed to. Ashlee was a very heavy sleeper.

  Now that she thought about it, they’d accidentally fallen into a routine that worked for both of their schedules and work roles. They didn’t really fight over the bathroom (much), since Ashlee showered at night, after a full day of being in hot, sweaty costumes, and Dana showered in the morning to get ready for the day. They didn’t knock into each other in the kitchen either. Ashlee didn’t cook, so it was left to be Dana’s turf. And Ashlee staying in the bedroom while Dana used the living room wasn’t ideal, but it gave them both some distance. Kind of important when they didn’t talk to each other.

  Dana’d probably be fairly happy with how things worked, except for the fact that she was woken up early every morning from how noisy Ashlee was changing and getting ready to go work out in the living room. And, well, it wasn’t very fun to be given the silent treatment or the screaming treatment.

  Maybe Bolin had been right. It’d been almost a month. She could stand to extend an olive branch. Then it’d be up to Ashlee to decide what to do with it. And if she was still a nightmare then, well, at least it’d prove Dana’s point.

  As she moved to unlock the door, she heard a high-pitched noise that sounded a little like a fire alarm—and screaming. She fumbled with her key and pushed the door open only to be hit with a sharp smell of smoke and to see Ashlee in the kitchen, screaming at the top of her lungs while holding a pan that was on fire.

  Dana left the door open wide and ran over to Ashlee. “Don’t put it in the sink!” she yelled over Ashlee’s hysterics. If it was a grease fire, the last thing that pan needed was to touch water.

  “What do I do?” Ashlee cried. “What do I do?”

  Dana did the only thing she could think of and grabbed Ashlee’s shoulders, forcing her and the pan through their open door and outside. “Throw it down!”

  Ashlee, still overtaken with panic, threw the pan on the concrete floor of the open hallway that separated all the apartments in the building. They both stood there watching the smoldering pan until the fire extinguished itself a few moments later, and then Dana dashed back inside the apartment. A crying Ashlee followed her, but the worst wasn’t over yet; the alarms were still going off, and they’d all been warned that if the alarms went off for too long, the sprinkler system would trigger and basically flood all the apartments in the building. Which would be completely terrible, and Dana was not about to deal with that.

  “Go open the door to the balcony,” she barked at Ashlee, before snatching up a towel and trying to waft the smoke away from the fire detector. Ashlee was still sobbing when Dana glanced over to check on her, but she had at least gone and thrown open the sliding door.

  Between the slight breeze outside and Dana’s desperate towel waving, the alarm stopped after a few more heart-pounding moments. In the wake of the silence, Dana sagged, adrenaline rushing out of her, and she turned back to Ashlee, who had collapsed on the floor next to the balcony’s screen door.

  She hadn’t noticed in the midst of all the panic, but Ashlee’s face was blackened with smoke, and so were her hands. “Hey,” Dana said, staring down at them. “Are you okay? Did you get burned or anything?”

  Ashlee shook her head. “N-no.” Tears were still streaming down her cheeks, making tracks in the soot. “Oh my god I was s-so scared, oh my god.”

  “What were you even trying to make?”

  “Just eggs! I p-put the butter in the pan and it c-caught fire. I didn’t d-do anything else, I p-promise.”

  Dana couldn’t be mad at her. “It’s okay,” she said, trying to calm Ashlee down. “You’re okay. So we’re down a pan. So what? I’ll just take it down to housing and tell them what happened. At worst we’ll have to pay for a pan.”

  Ashlee wiped at her face. “Okay.”

  Dana hesitated, then asked, “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “Uh-huh.” Ashlee did not look it. “I’m—I’m going to get cleaned up.” She stood and went into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

  Dana sighed and went to take stock of the kitchen. It didn’t look like anything else had been damaged, so it seemed as though they were only down a pan.

  Speaking of which, Dana went back outside to grab the thing. It was too late to take it down to housing services now, but she could do it tomorrow morning before she met everyone for breakfast. For the moment she took it back into the apartment and doused it in cold water to cool it down before sticking it in a plastic bag for safe (and clean) keeping.

  Ashlee still hadn’t emerged from the bathroom, so Dana took the opportunity to go into their room and quickly change into her pajamas. She’d become master of the quick-change since rooming with Ashlee. She had just finished when the bathroom door clicked open and Ashlee walked out. She’d washed her face—and probably had done the rest of her nightly routine—and was wearing a baby-blue sleep set. Ashlee had about a million of them, in a bunch of fun, cute patterns (Dana wasn’t jealous). This particular one had a picture of Eeyore on it, and the little shorts were covered with a cloud pattern.

  Ashlee went over to her bed and curled up on top of the covers, arms coming around to hold her knees, and Dana found herself wanting to say something. “Uh, I took care of the pan. I’ll take it over to housing tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  “And it looks like the rest of the kitchen is fine.”

  “Okay.”

  Dana took in Ashlee, who was still obviously shaken up. “Look. Why don’t you unwind a little bit. Try to relax or something.” She inwardly sighed and then added, “Maybe watch some TV.”

  Ashlee’s eyes widened, and she stared at Dana. “Watch some TV?”

  Dana shrugged, trying to sound nonchalant. “If you want. It might, I don’t know, help.”

  Instead of waiting to see what Ashlee would do, Dana busied herself with plugging her phone into its charger and opening up her laptop. She had some things she needed to read for her college-credit economics course. Normally she’d be retreating to the living room right now but… part of her sort of didn’t want to leave Ashlee alone?

  She’d been reading for a couple minute
s when the TV turned on. And then, a minute later, started to play Lilo & Stitch. One of the Disney movies Dana actually liked. And thus not a bad enough distraction that she felt the need to leave the room.

  They watched and read in silence for nearly half an hour before Dana closed her laptop and put it away, too tired to concentrate on econ anymore. Probably she should eat dinner or something, but the thought of moving to the kitchen was not one she cared to entertain at the moment. Instead she focused on the screen, eyes drifting shut to the sound of Lilo’s Elvis-music montage.

  “I can, um, I can turn it off if you want to go to sleep,” Ashlee said out of the blue, voice hesitant.

  Dana opened her eyes. “No, it’s okay. I should make myself dinner.” She made herself get out of bed but paused in the doorway. “Wait, the pan exploded because you were trying to make food. Did you eat?”

  “I’m not very hungry anymore,” Ashlee said, looking down at her bedspread.

  “I was just going to heat up some of the baked ziti I made yesterday,” Dana said after a moment. “Do you want some?”

  Ashlee turned wide eyes to her. “Seriously?”

  Dana shrugged.

  “Um. Okay.” Ashlee uncurled from her position on the bed and followed Dana out into the kitchen. “I can set the table,” she said quietly, while Dana pulled the ziti out of the fridge.

  “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

  Dana turned on the oven and stuck the pan of ziti inside to reheat it and get the cheese all nice and melty again. “It’ll take a few minutes,” she said, leaning against the counter.

  “That’s fine.”

  Silence.

  Dana sighed again. Olive branch, olive branch. And this was probably the ideal time to do it. They were almost getting along. Funny how a freak fire accident could do that to a couple people. “Hey,” she said. “About the TV thing.”

  Ashlee’s shoulders hunched, and her brow furrowed. “What about it?” she asked, sounding trepidatious. No doubt expecting another fight.

  And, okay, Dana couldn’t blame her.

  “I think we kind of have a system already,” Dana said after trying to sort out her thoughts. “You go to bed earlier than I do, so if you fall asleep with it on, I can always turn it off after, when I’m ready to go to sleep. It’s what I’ve been doing the last couple weeks, anyway.”

  “Um, okay.”

  “Are you fine with that? Me turning off the TV at night?”

  “Oh, um, yeah. Yes. It’s… it’s been working.”

  “Good.” Dana took a breath. “But nighttime aside, it’d be nice if you watched things on your laptop with your headphones in sometime. So I didn’t have to hear your movies and shows twenty-four-seven. I mean listen, Disney is fine. But I already work here. I don’t need to be surrounded by it my entire life. Even if you like to be.”

  Ashlee tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “That’s fair,” she said after a minute. “Sorry.”

  “And,” Dana started, because this was the other important thing, “in the morning.”

  “Yeah?”

  Be nice. Be nice. “Could you, I don’t know, at least try to be a little quieter? Maybe lay out your stuff ahead of time or something so you just need to grab it and change in the bathroom? Like I get it, okay, you’re a dancer and in great shape and you’ve got to keep it up, but I would appreciate it if I didn’t get woken up every single morning. And I know I’m a light sleeper, which doesn’t help, but the effort would be nice.”

  She watched Ashlee shift, tap her nails on her thigh, and tuck the strand of hair behind her ear again. It was probably a nervous tic. “What wakes you up?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I get ready. When do you usually wake up?”

  “When your alarm goes off first, obviously. You probably can’t fix that. But if I start to doze off, I also get woken up again when you go through your closet. You sing.”

  Now Ashlee looked surprised. “I what?”

  “You sing,” Dana said again. “When you get ready. Whatever you’ve been watching the night before, you sing in the morning. I seriously know the entire Frozen and Tangled soundtracks by heart.”

  “I… I didn’t even know I did that.”

  Dana waved a hand. “Yeah, apparently you’re an actual Disney Princess.”

  “Oh. Um. Well. Yeah, yeah I can… stop that. The singing. Now that I’m aware I do it.”

  “I would really, really appreciate it. The alarm I can deal with. I pretend I just hit Snooze when it goes off. The singing, uh… not so much.”

  “Okay. Um. I’m sorry.”

  Well, apologies were nice. And Ashlee sounded like she meant it too. Dana supposed she should also do her part. “I’m, uh, I’m sorry too. That I gave you a hard time about it without, you know, explaining why it was a problem.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Okay.”

  More silence. Dana turned to open the oven and check on the ziti.

  “Hey, um,” Ashlee started, then trailed off.

  Dana pulled the ziti out of the oven and brought it to the table. “Yeah?”

  “I could also try setting my phone alarm to vibrate and putting it under my pillow. That might help keep from waking you up.”

  “Oh,” Dana said, surprised. That was a little more effort than she was expecting. “Yeah. That’d be cool.”

  “Okay. I’ll try it tomorrow. What time do you have to get up?”

  “Me? Why?”

  Now Ashlee smiled, just a little. “In case it doesn’t work. I’m a pretty heavy sleeper.”

  Dana snorted and served herself some of the ziti. “Yeah, I figured that out.”

  “So? What time do you have to wake up tomorrow?”

  “Around eight. I’m meeting some friends for breakfast at nine, and my shift doesn’t start until eleven. Why?”

  “Tomorrow’s my day off, so I don’t need to wake up at six. So I’ll set another alarm for eight, just in case. A real one. That way even if it does go off, it won’t bother you.”

  “Okay. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, well, I’ll live with the alarm.”

  “But keep a lid on the singing?”

  “If you can.”

  “I’ll try really hard.”

  That was better than before, at least. “All right.” She held out the serving spoon to Ashlee. “Now are you going to eat something or what?”

  IT WAS weird getting ready for bed. Ashlee was so used to the regular, suffocating tension that it was strange going without it. Like she was able to breathe again.

  It was still weird, though. They’d already both changed into pajamas, Ashlee wearing her favorite baby-blue Winnie-the-Pooh set as a comfort, and Dana wearing her usual purple top and soft-looking bottoms, so there wasn’t the usual scramble to get changed while the other wasn’t looking. She sort of wondered if things would be different now that they were doing… whatever this was. Not hating each other. Calling a truce. Something.

  “I’m going to brush my teeth,” Dana announced before going into the bathroom. Which was fine, Ashlee could wait. While she did, she turned on the TV out of habit and then quickly muted it.

  But Dana had been okay with Lilo & Stitch, at least for a little while. Maybe Ashlee could just use it for background noise while she picked out her workout clothes for tomorrow morning. Because she was going to do that now. She was going to try to make an effort to keep them at least getting along.

  When she thought about it, it wasn’t as if Dana had asked for all that much. It kind of made Ashlee feel stupid, for letting it escalate into daily screaming matches. It wasn’t fair that she woke Dana up every single day, even if she didn’t mean to. So she would try to do what she could to stop that. Dana was compromising about the TV; Ashlee could compromise too.

  When Dana emerged from the bathroom, Ashlee muted the TV again and went to brush her teeth. When she was done, she looked at Dana, who was on the bed watching the silent television.

  S
he looked unhappy but sort of resigned.

  “What sorts of things do you like to watch?” Ashlee asked, going to sit on her bed. It had never crossed her mind to ask before. By the time she probably should have, she hadn’t exactly been feeling all that friendly toward Dana.

  “Huh?” Dana looked surprised to be asked. “I like to watch documentaries. And I watch a lot of Let’s Plays of video games on my computer. And I like musicals.” Her lips quirked up, and Ashlee was struck by the fact that it was probably the first time she’d really seen Dana smile. It was a nice smile. And she was going to make an effort to see it more often. Even this cautious talking back and forth was way better than what they’d had yesterday. Or even this morning. “Which, yeah, I know I said I’m sick of Disney, but I also have been listening to the same stuff for about two weeks straight.”

  “Sorry,” Ashlee said, tucking the errant strand of hair behind her ear again.

  Dana shrugged. “Anyway, I like a lot of older musicals. I haven’t gotten the chance to see any new ones recently. I like older movies in general.”

  “I like musicals,” Ashlee said. “That’s probably not a surprise.”

  “Not really, no.”

  Ashlee grinned hesitantly. “I wanted to be in musical theater in high school, but I was always so busy with dance, I wasn’t able to make rehearsals.”

  “Oh. That kind of sucks.”

  “Yeah, a little. But I know a lot of old musicals too. What’s your favorite?”

  Dana tilted her head. “Probably Singin’ in the Rain. I watched it a lot growing up. It’s one of those things I don’t get tired of.”

  “I think it’s on Netflix,” Ashlee said. “If you want to watch it while I go to bed. So you can stay in here.”

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t need to watch something Disney to fall asleep. I just like to, because I like those movies. But anything works, as long as it’s background noise. That isn’t, you know, screaming or something.”