Stage Presents

by Aidan Wayne

  Rooting for you!!! Ashlee had texted in reply. That had been a couple hours ago.

  Maya hadn’t written anything back yet, so Ashlee assumed she was still busy. Or just hadn’t checked her phone. Sometimes that happened in the midst of excitement.

  It wasn’t until much later, after Ashlee had been Anna two more times and had changed out of her costume, that her phone (now turned on, since she was offstage for good) buzzed.

  Audition went amazing! I got a part! Ashlee, I got a part!! I’m going to be in the parades!!

  Followed by Also, I met a guy here, and he is super cute and we talked basically the whole time.

  Oh my god, Ashlee sent back. Tell me everything. Are you done with the audition? Can you talk?

  In response, Ashlee’s phone rang. “Maya,” she squealed as she picked up. “Congratulations, oh my god!”

  “Thanks,” Maya said, voice high with excitement. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, I can’t believe this. Dream come true right here!”

  “Tell me everything.”

  Maya launched into the story of arriving at the audition and mingling with the other hopefuls, how they’d been divided up for the movement and dance portion of the audition. “I think I aced that because I was already a character performer, so I sort of knew how to move? So I think you have a real shot at passing the November audition too.”

  “And you’ll put in a good word for me, right?”

  “You know it.”

  “Okay, okay, so what happened next?”

  “Well, we all had to wait until everyone else went before we could do the next stage of the audition, so most of us used it to get our stilts ready and practice, and I ended up next to this super cute guy who had really cool modded green ones. And we got to talking and his name is Bolin and he’s from England—”

  Ashlee didn’t recognize the name. “Is he a character performer? Or has he been here longer than us?”

  “Neither! He’s part of the college program just like us, but he’s in attractions right now.”

  “Attractions? Why?”

  “He wasn’t able to make it to the performing auditions, so he went with attractions intending to audition for stilt-walking once he got to Disney, just like me.”

  “Got it.”

  “Anyway, we got to talking and just—he’s so cute? And his accent is superhot, and we’re both stilt-walkers and aside from that we had a ton of things to talk about—”

  “Please tell me you got his number.”

  “Um, yeah. And better than that, we’re going out tonight together to celebrate!”

  “Oh,” Ashlee said, disappointed. She’d sort of been planning to invite Maya out for a celebration dinner herself. But that was fine. After all, this was a big deal for Maya. She deserved to have it with whoever she wanted. “Well, okay that’s—great. Maybe we can get together sometime this week and I can celebrate with you too.”

  “For sure, yeah. That’d be great. Anyway, when we finally got called in for the next stage of the audition….”

  As Ashlee waited for the bus, she listened to Maya excitedly tell her about the rest of the day. She was incredibly happy for Maya. They were both pretty much living their dreams right now.

  “HEY, GIVE him my congratulations,” Dana said, shouldering her phone as she opened her door. She hadn’t even known Bolin could use stilts. That was pretty cool. Weird, but cool. “Tell him I’ll make him something to celebrate.”

  “Don’t give him that power,” Isabella said. “He’ll ask for something crazy complicated.”

  “Tell him I’ll bake something within reason,” Dana amended. “We want to do anything tonight to celebrate?”

  “Apparently he’s going out to dinner with some girl he met at the auditions.”

  Dana laughed and stepped out of her shoes. “Okay, that works.”

  “Right? Scored himself the role of his dreams and a date. I’m totally jealous.”

  “About the role or the date?”

  Isabella sighed.

  “I told you,” Dana said, not even close to the first time, “that you should just ask your mysterious crush out yourself.” Isabella had been pining over some guy—and she refused to tell Dana who—for a while now. Dana was nearly positive it was Eddie, and that Isabella was hesitant to date him because she was worried it’d mess up their group dynamic. Then again, she’d also gone on at great length over the fact that she didn’t think her crush was interested in her.

  Frankly, Dana thought that was ridiculous. Eddie had taken to blushing scarlet every time Isabella smiled at him, freckles standing out starkly against his skin. Dana and Bolin had shared a lot of knowing looks.

  Now with Bolin dating someone (or on the verge of dating someone), and Isabella and Eddie hopefully dating each other in the near future (so they could stop pining over each other), Dana was facing the distinct possibility of being the single one in the group. Which was fine, it was. She’d dated some in high school, gone out with a few boys, but nothing all that spectacular. She wasn’t much of a romantic and simply hadn’t met anyone in college she cared to go out with as more than friends. So she wasn’t particularly upset about being the single friend, though she did wonder a little how that might affect their friend dynamic.

  Oh well. She’d deal with it when it happened.

  She and Isabella hung up a few minutes later, and Dana went to her room to change out of her costume and into some comfier clothes. After she had pulled on a long T-shirt and a pair of leggings, she heard the front door open and close.

  Dana padded into the living room just in time to see Ashlee drop her bag on the kitchen table and then slump into one of the chairs.

  Dana raised an eyebrow. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” Ashlee mumbled.

  “Yeah, that sounds like you’re okay.”

  Ashlee sighed and sat up. “I’m fine, I am. I was just hoping to go out with a friend of mine tonight, and she’s busy.”

  “Oh.” Dana thought this over. Ashlee had wanted to learn how to cook something, right? And it seemed as though she needed some cheering up. She’d done her best to cheer Dana up after the Haircut Incident (and Ashlee still offered to do or play with Dana’s hair when they both were home). “Do you want to do dinner, then? Together, I mean. I mean, do you want to make dinner? Together.”

  “Oh. Wow,” Ashlee said, sounding shy. “That-that’d be nice. Sure. Yeah.”

  “Okay. Well, uh… what do you want to make?”

  Ashlee giggled. “I should not choose that. I don’t know how to make anything. What were you planning on?”

  “Probably a chicken and vegetable stir-fry. It’s good and super easy, so I make it a lot.”

  “Um, I could try.”

  “Okay, cool. Here—” Dana went over to one of the cabinets and pulled out her rice cooker and her bag of jasmine rice. “You’re going to make the rice.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s simple, I promise,” Dana said encouragingly. “Here.” She held the bag of rice out to Ashlee. “Go measure out a cup and pour it into the rice cooker.”

  “That’s what this thing is?”

  Dana nodded. “Yeah, it’s the best cooking thing I own. You put in rice, water, and seasonings, press a button, and boom: rice. You don’t have to watch it or anything.”

  “Cool.”

  “Yeah, it was one of the first nonfood things I bought here. Well, that and a bedspread. And hangers.”

  Ashlee, looking so serious it was funny, measured and poured out the rice. “Okay. Now what?”

  “Now we rinse it.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “Like this.” Dana took the metal container over to the sink and turned on the water on, showing Ashlee how to rinse and drain until the water ran clear. Then she had Ashlee measure out the water and put that into the container too.

  “Normally I add salt or garlic or something before I start the cooker,” Dana said. “But since we’re going to be mak
ing a stir-fry and adding seasoning then, I won’t bother now.”

  “Got it.”

  She opened the freezer and pulled out some frozen chicken breasts, then showed Ashlee how to thaw them quickly using warm water. She then got those cooking in a pan with some olive oil.

  “And you’re sure it’s not going to burst into flame?”

  “I told you, if it does, we know how to handle it.”

  Fifteen minutes later she added the vegetables as Ashlee watched in concentration, and by that time the rice was done, so she added that in too.

  “See?” Dana said after half an hour, the stir-fry completed. “Not that hard. And now you know how to make a thing.”

  “That’s awesome,” Ashlee said. “Thank you for showing me.”

  “No problem.”

  “I feel bad,” Ashlee said as they were sitting down at the kitchen table to eat. “That I’m eating all your food. Can I do the grocery shopping next time?”

  Dana raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Really? I mean, yeah, if you want. That’d be nice.”

  “Just give me a list, and I’ll do it the next time I go shopping.”

  “Okay. Cool.”

  “SO WHAT about you?” Ashlee asked, both of them in bed for the night.

  “What about me what?”

  “Are you dating anyone? Or is there anyone here you’re interested in dating?”

  “No, and not really,” Dana said. “I haven’t dated since I graduated high school, and I didn’t date that much then either. Too busy with school and stuff.”

  “I was busy with dance,” Ashlee said. “I met some people through that, but we all had so much on our plates that it didn’t really work out. There was one person I liked in college, but, um….” Dana had opened up a little bit about herself. Maybe Ashlee could do the same? “But I could tell she wasn’t, you know, interested in more, so I kept quiet.”

  “She?”

  “Um. Yeah.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is that—okay?” Dana couldn’t be mad at her for liking girls, could she? She knew about not being accepted. Ashlee had been enough of an asshole about that. So maybe she would be bothered—and the longer Dana didn’t say anything, the more Ashlee worried. “Dana?” she asked hesitantly. “Is-is that okay?”

  “Yeah.” Dana’s voice finally sounded out in the darkness. “Of course it is.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ashlee said, voice small.

  “For what?”

  “For-for treating you the way I did, when we first met. For acting like you weren’t….”

  “It’s not fine, but I’m used to it. And you got better, so.”

  “Yeah. Um. Yeah.”

  “I’m going to go to sleep, okay? Night.”

  “Good night,” Ashlee said quietly.

  DANA DIDN’T go to sleep right away. She wanted to think. To digest this new information. Part of her wanted to be mad about it; Ashlee liked girls and knew how it felt to be considered not-normal and she’d still been—

  But on the other hand, it was also clear that she was used to hiding that part of herself. And Dana knew as well as anybody how much that sucked.

  So of course it was okay. It couldn’t be anything but okay. And she was obviously going to keep treating Ashlee the same, because nothing had changed.

  It was stupid to be mad. She wasn’t going to be mad. She and Ashlee were getting along. Better than they ever had. Somehow between the pan fire and the Haircut Incident they’d started to watch things together, and have meals together when their schedules lined up, and now cooking together. Ashlee had volunteered to go in for groceries.

  They were friends.

  And it was nice.

  Chapter Twelve

  “CALM DOWN,” Dana said exasperated as Ashlee wiped down each of their glasses by hand before setting them on the kitchen counter. “I don’t think they’re going to care this much about cups.”

  “Neil said that his boyfriend Javier knew a girl whose friend’s apartment didn’t clean properly for checkup and they all got terminated,” Ashlee said, still determinedly wiping down cups. “I’m not taking any chances.”

  Dana rolled her eyes. “That’s a lot of degrees of separation.”

  “I thought you were going to vacuum! That’s what we borrowed it for!”

  Right. And Dana had walked to housing services and back with it, because Ashlee had begged her to.

  Ashlee was freaked out over this whole apartment-inspection thing. Disney wanted to make sure that the college resident areas were all being respected and kept clean, so they had regular inspections. Their building just got the notice that they were going to have one tomorrow. Ashlee and Dana would both be at work when it happened, and apparently Ashlee had heard horror stories about people leaving their apartment and coming back to notices that they didn’t clean up—so they had to get out.

  Dana doubted it was going to be a big deal. Isabella’s building had had inspection last week, and she said that she and her three roommates had just cleaned like normal, they’d gotten some Rice Krispie Treats left for them after inspection, and that was that.

  To be fair, she and Ashlee had only just started getting along enough to get a regular cleaning schedule going. And… this was the first time they’d borrowed a vacuum cleaner from housing services.

  Dana got the vacuum started and methodically went through the carpeted dining-room-slash-kitchen area, and then went to do the bedroom, while Ashlee went to the bathroom to sweep the tiles. Dana even went over every part twice—to make sure it was clean and thus do her part to alleviate Ashlee’s worry.

  When Dana was done, she unplugged the vacuum and called to Ashlee that she was going to return it, before putting on her shoes and grabbing her keys.

  She took a deep breath once outside as she started down the steps. It was a nice evening, and a cool breeze pretty much made the air temperature perfect. Mid-October, and Disney was full into Halloween-mode. Everywhere was decorated, the apartment complexes were hosting costume parties (and costume-making parties), and the actual parks were, well, Dana still hadn’t explored Magic Kingdom the way she probably should, being busy with work and all the classes she’d taken on, but Hollywood Studios was cool in its own right. And it was nice working Tower of Terror, considering the overall theme.

  One of these days she’d go to Magic Kingdom and check it out. Hopefully before they took all the decorations down. Maybe Isabella would want to go. Then again, she and Eddie had sort of been of doing their own thing for a while, since they’d started dating a week ago. It had taken so long for them to get started that Dana didn’t want to mess with that right now. Once they got used to the fact that they were dating, she’d ask Isabella to hang out again. And Bolin was pretty busy, both with learning his new parade stilt routine thing and with his new girlfriend, Maya.

  Who also happened to be Ashlee’s best friend, what were the odds.

  Thinking about it now, Dana realized Ashlee usually spent a lot of time away from the apartment hanging out with other people. She’d been doing it less and less recently. Certainly since Bolin and Maya had met. Dana had unintentionally overheard enough conversations Ashlee had with her brother Brandon (not the boyfriend Dana had originally assumed for a while) to know that Ashlee was sort of missing her best friend but was unwilling to “bring her down” since she was having such a good time getting ready for the parades herself. And hanging out with her new boyfriend.

  Dana turned in the vacuum and headed back to the apartment, still thinking. She wanted to see Magic Kingdom. Ashlee worked there and probably knew her way around. They both were sort of missing friends right now.

  Maybe she’d ask.

  ASHLEE WAS scrubbing the bathroom tiles when Dana came back. She’d been thinking about a conversation she’d had with Maya, and, well, the tiles needed to be clean for inspection anyway.

  Maya was spending a lot of time telling her how great Bolin was, and how amazing parade practice had been, and Ash
lee was happy and excited for her. But she also couldn’t help but feel a little jealous. Ashlee loved being a face character, she really did. But she also wanted to dance. The only way to do that was to be a parade or stage performer. The dream would, of course, be performing as a face character. But even just being a regular dancer would be huge. Especially since her ability to dance would last a lot longer than her looks. If she wanted to go as far as she could with Disney, she was way more likely to be able to stick with it into her thirties if she danced. After that, well, she didn’t know. But for now, Maya already knew. And that was hard.

  Well, one more month until the November auditions. She’d give it her all then.

  Besides that, Maya was so happy with Bolin. It’d only been a few weeks of course, so they were still in the starstruck stage that Ashlee knew all too well. And Ashlee missed that. Being with someone special.

  “You okay?”

  Ashlee blinked and paused her phone’s playlist, looking up at Dana. “Oh. Yeah. Fine. Sorry. Thanks for taking the vacuum back.”

  “No problem,” Dana said slowly. “Uh, what are you doing?”

  “Cleaning the tiles,” Ashlee said matter-of-factly.

  “Are you actually insane? They’re not going to terminate us if our tiles aren’t spotless.”

  Ashlee fought down her first reaction, which was to bristle with indignation. That wasn’t a rag against her in particular—that was just how Dana spoke. She knew that now. “Better to be safe than sorry,” she said lightly, turning back to her work.

  Dana heaved a sigh, and then she stepped fully into the bathroom. “Do we have an extra scrub brush thing?”

  “Yeah.” Ashlee had bought two when she’d heard about the cleaning inspection. Just in case. “Why?”

  “Because if you’re going to scrub the tiles, I might as well do the tub,” Dana said, sighing again.

  “What, really?” Ashlee turned to Dana, wide-eyed.

  Dana shrugged. “If it’s that important to you that you are literally on your knees scrubbing bathroom tile, I guess I can help do my part.”