Once in her room, Charlie climbed straight up to the balcony, watched the street until the storefront lights went out one by one. She texted Nick, who had spent hours running through the effects with Mason.
Tomorrow might be an epic disaster, so get some rest. Kidding. You’ve done everything, know that. These are such stuff as dreams are made on...
The ellipses flashed immediately: You stole my line. That is so like you. And WE have done everything. Thank you, Charlie (this medium is completely inadequate for what I want to say, so more after our three perfect acts)...
The video—with their confessionals—was due to post the next morning. She wanted to ask if he had seen it yet, but she lost the nerve.
* * *
After his closing shift, Ethan and Sierra walked back from the pub, stopping at their favorite spot on the Quad under a starry sky. He knew they still had three weeks left—the few apprentices in The Tempest who were still college students, like him, had to get clearance from their schools to stay on past Labor Day—but he felt their days and minutes and seconds slipping away. Sierra seemed especially nervous, even wanting to run some of her understudy lines for Prospero’s part (“Whatever makes you happy,” he said, though it seemed unnecessary).
When he walked her back to her room, she opened the door to Harlow’s side, entirely empty. No clothes, no sheets on the bed, no posters, no nothing.
“Yeah, she left,” Alex said, unimpressed, when they found him with his entourage playing video games in their room.
“What, why?” Sierra couldn’t hide her shock.
“She said she had to get back early for an audition,” he said, clearly skeptical. “Personally, I think she just felt things had gotten, like, static for her. She kind of likes to be the epicenter of the universe, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I guess none of us would be here if we weren’t a little dramatic to begin with,” Sierra said.
“Exactly,” Alex said, eyes on Fortnite. “So don’t get too crazy tonight, kids, big show tomorrow. Even I’m staying in.”
“Right,” Ethan said, kind of annoyed that no one would let New York go. “No ayahuasca 2.0 for sure.”
“That’s hilarious,” Alex said dryly. “I’m gonna whip up some now if you want.”
“Good one,” Ethan said.
“No, really, it’s an acquired taste but soothing, you know?” Alex said, hand to his throat.
“Maybe that’s not the best idea,” Sierra said, sensible.
“Dude, you know it’s just, like, a bunch of different herbal teas and some sage and licorice root and ginger and shit? It’s good for the throat,” he said, confused, taking in their blank faces. “Why are you guys looking like...?” And then he realized. “Ohhh.” He started laughing. “No, guys, I thought you already knew. It’s what Stone and a bunch of them like to do at parties with a lot of new people,” he explained. “They convince them they’re drinking something ‘dangerous and crazy.’” He made quotes. “Then they watch the placebo effect take over. It’s like an acting workshop for them. But wow, okay—”
“We totally knew that—” Sierra started.
“We just didn’t know if you knew...that we knew that,” Ethan said.
“You’re welcome to stay and have some more of our totally natural, totally noneuphoric, nonhallucinogenic boring tea but—”
“We’re good,” Sierra said, walking away.
“Thanks, anyway.” Ethan followed.
They walked in near silence back down the hall to her room. They had planned to watch a movie, and Ethan wondered if that was too weird now. He wished he knew what Sierra was thinking, but he couldn’t bear to ask.
In her room, she grabbed her laptop and let him choose. (Not that he cared what they watched.) She cued it up, setting it on her desk as always, and they took their usual places side by side, shoulder to shoulder on her bed.
She didn’t seem to be watching the screen at all. And he wasn’t either, because he had been watching her to see if she was watching the screen. They spent the entire movie like this. Then, at the end, gave each other hugs good-night. It was excruciating.
61
I FORGOT WHAT A GOOD SHOW YOU MADE
Sierra still had time to pull herself together before curtain. Their show was third in the lineup, which, she had been told, was traditionally the positioning reserved for the best of the Black Box offerings. All of the female apprentices shared one dressing room and the guys another, but she had sought out the restroom, needing time away from the chatter and mad energy to focus. She looked at her reflection in the mirror and, once she confirmed she was alone, talked herself down. “Frankly, it would be super weird if you weren’t freaking out,” she said to herself. “Own that. Use it. And just don’t pass out or anything.”
But she had peeked out from behind that shabby curtain before the show began, in time to see all the reserved rows in front filled—saved for the scouts. And, if that wasn’t enough, another row for the actors in the company. Charlie Savoy and Nicholas Blunt took seats dead center. It was almost enough to forget she would have a cheering section too: her parents and brother.
When Sierra returned to the dressing room, she found a single sunflower waiting at her mirror, with a note scribbled on Chamberlain paper: “Break a leg! Love, Ethan.”
A knock shook the door, their stage manager’s voice ringing out. “Five minutes!”
* * *
The Black Box auditorium pulsed with the collective energy of all those nerves, all that joy, all that fear, every apprentice from each program (set design, costumes, business, drama) gathered. They had ownership over tonight. Charlie and Nick and their fellow actors fanned out in the audience, only guests.
Fiona had invited them to come to rehearsals anytime, asked them again at dress rehearsals, but Nick and Charlie had dropped in only once, wanting to give them freedom. You don’t have to please us, do what you think is right, Charlie had overheard Nick telling Fiona once. And Charlie had said to him afterward, That was actually very cool of you. To which he had responded, Occasionally I know what I’m doing with this whole mentoring thing. But it was more than occasionally. He had a much more open heart than she ever gave him credit for.
“He is selling these babies, look at him.” Marlena leaned forward, pointing to the huddle in front of the stage.
Charlie watched Nick, in his blazer and Chamberlain shirt and jeans, kneeling on the floor in front of a handful of talent reps. At least a dozen of them had already settled into their prime seats. Nick was animated as he flipped through the program, pointing to names and faces as though they were his own children.
As soon as the lights dimmed, loud screeching ambient music shooting through the speakers, the first show starting, Charlie felt her mind drift. She remembered how Nick had been frantic, pacing backstage, to have Grayson at his show. To have Sarah Rose Kingsbury. To have Matteo Denali, that year’s resident young Turk. To command their attention for an hour and ten minutes had felt game-changing, door-opening for him then. It had been the start of everything.
* * *
For better or worse, some things hadn’t changed since Nick’s day. The first show was always the experimental one. Nick had outsourced the job of choosing which apprentice submissions to stage to Professor Bradford, who was either trying to sabotage the entire program by selecting this first production or else just had worse taste than Nick remembered. This show was apparently a comedy about artists staging a coup in a fictional place that looked a lot like Elizabethan England, featuring two mimes, a king, a bunch of people dressed in hoop skirts (men too) carrying torches, someone in a horse costume and one poor guy who spent the majority of the show nude for no discernible reason beyond the obvious sight gag. Charlie had whispered at the end, “If nothing else, this oughtta get that guy some dates.”
The second show—an overwrought meditation on
the meaning of an artistic life—wasn’t bad. Its heart was in the right place, it just took itself too seriously, in the way of most student productions. People at a party debating a play they’d just seen—heavy in themes of Shakespearean tragedies—with the playwright himself, who becomes infuriated when everyone has universally loved it but misunderstood every element.
Both shows had their moments though. He was proud of the apprentices and felt newly connected to them. He remembered well the exhaustion and the fear of being responsible for bringing something to life from nothing, of entertaining a theater full of people he desperately wanted to please.
When Fiona introduced their revival, calling Nick and Charlie “together an inspiring force,” Nick squeezed Charlie’s wrist. Her pulse had always calmed him, the best way he had ever found to reset himself. But from the very first line, his fear dissipated. The words transported him to that night so many summers ago, all of the nerves he had watching his show for the first time. This work of his wasn’t perfect, but it held a special place in his heart like a first kiss or a graduation.
Everything rushed back at him: watching from backstage, Charlie giving his words life before a crowd of people he adored. The relief he felt the moment the spotlight set on her. As though his future was in her hands. It almost didn’t seem fair, how much weight rested on her shoulders—he had written it and staged it, devised the tricks and twists and turns, but she was the messenger, she made it more than it had been on paper. It had been so easy to fall in love with her, for that alone.
At the end of the show, Charlie pulled him to his feet to applaud. “I forgot what a good show you made,” she said into his ear. “Thank God they didn’t fuck it up.”
When Sierra and Tripp arrived onstage for the curtain call, rather than bow, Sierra put her palms together, nodding toward Nick and Charlie, and then held her arm out, redirecting the applause their way.
* * *
Ethan waited for Sierra outside the stage door behind the Black Box. There wasn’t a cast photo for the Black Box shows, no merchandise, but he had planned ahead.
The apprentices who had been in all three main stage productions appeared with asterisks beside their names in the info packets prepared for the scouts, and Ethan felt extremely lucky for that distinction. So much felt entirely out of his control in this world: he couldn’t be sure they would see in him what he wanted them to; he couldn’t know if he was enough. It was like falling in love in that way. He could only do his best, put his heart on the line, try not to get in his head too much, and hope.
After they’d finished their own monologues, Ethan had watched the rest of the Black Box performances beside Alex. Ethan thought his had gone well, and Alex had even given him a hearty congratulatory slap on the back. Though Ethan was grateful for Alex’s approval, he’d almost wished he had been seated alone to absorb the final show, and Sierra’s performance, without having to keep his emotions in check, without worrying that Alex was making any more assumptions about them. Sierra’s command and her power had gripped him, like her auditions had but now dialed all the way up. By the end of her one-act, he hadn’t cared what anyone thought. He’d stood up and shouted her name over the applause. He wanted her to know, without a doubt, that he was there.
Now he waited outside, sky darkening, as nearly two dozen of his fellow apprentices trickled out in clusters—some heading to the other side of the complex to the main stage door, others heading back to the dorms to change and return as audience members or to work concessions, box office, ushering.
Even Tripp had already come and gone, along with his new crush, an apprentice named Declan—who had, for some reason, worn absolutely nothing during the role in the first show. But, at the same time, good for him, Ethan thought. He clutched a Sharpie and a photo he had snapped himself: Fiona, Tripp and Sierra during one of their many afternoons at the pub. He had it printed at the CVS on Warwickshire as a glossy black-and-white eight-by-ten.
He waited, waited, checked his watch and finally convinced himself he must’ve somehow missed her. Maybe she was already in the greenroom of the main stage, prepping for The Tempest. Which upset him; she needed to know how well she had done. Or, what he really meant was, he needed her to know how blown away he had been. It felt urgent. His mind fast-forwarded to weeks from now, when they would go back to school, and what would happen then? To not see her every day? He rolled up the photo, put it in his back pocket, Sharpie in his mouth. He took out his phone, starting a text to her, and then he heard the door open.
“Hey!” Sierra sounded genuinely surprised to find him there. “You’ve been waiting here? For me? All this time?” She smiled as he looked up. She had her duffel bag slung over her shoulder and had changed into a tank top and jeans, almost herself again except for her stage makeup. “Fiona had this video thing she had to do. It’s a long story but—”
But he wasn’t listening. His eyes not leaving hers, he walked right up to her until their lips met. His hand clutched her waist, the other webbed in her hair. She let her bag fall from her shoulder to the ground and pulled him closer.
62
WALK DON’T RUN TO THE NEAREST EXIT
It happened at the beginning of the third act, just after intermission—because The Tempest was, of course, five acts.
Everything had been going so well. The first three acts had been perfection: the storm raging in the theater, the lightning effects, the lasers, the wind tunnel, the shaking chairs rigged throughout the audience, the wirework, the zip lines and the water cascading in torrents on stage. The actors too—every one of them: transformative.
Every minute, every inch, had been grand and luscious and moving and spiritual and arresting in the very best way. A show that would wake you from your dreams weeks later recalling the water and fire and smoke. Charlie almost wondered if their plan had been the right thing to do. But they had to, she reminded herself. There had been no other way. People tended not to come to the aid of anything failing until it was failing in a dramatic, dire enough way. So they were just providing that impetus when, during that quiet, reflective scene, Charlie as Prospero imprisoned in her jail cell...
An explosion.
A fiery, charring BOOM ignited the back of the stage and sent Charlie flying several feet in the air, landing on her leg with a scream. Fire alarms blared, emergency lights flashed in the auditorium. Sprinklers flickered on, shooting water at the stage and the audience. Matteo ran out first. The lobby doors at the end of every aisle flew open, the ushers then the others—actors, stagehands—anyone in the wings flowed out toward the side doors. Sarah ran to Charlie’s side, with Chase helping her up, hobbling with her.
Nick’s voice called out from the lighting booth, “We need to safely evacuate the theater. Please walk, don’t run to the nearest exit. We apologize for the inconvenience.” He repeated it over and over as the audience scrambled out the doors, the crush of bodies, the stampede of feet, the sirens and sprinklers. Ushers and apprentice stagehands led the crowd into the Quad as they had been trained to do, coincidentally, in a refresher emergency preparedness seminar a day earlier.
Once the theater was checked, everyone accounted for, the masses safely outside, firefighters inside assessing everything (“It’s the strangest thing, we can’t find the source of the fire, we think it was just a burst light, some kind of flare? We’re continuing the search to be sure the place is safe,” the fire marshal said), Nick addressed them all.
He stood atop a bench at the center of the Quad, shouting to get the attention of the hundreds of audience members still milling around, expecting to be let back in. Off to the side, Fiona recorded on her phone. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m terribly sorry, the fire department is investigating. We suspect things will be just fine,” he said, calm. “However, we do owe you a show. We would like to complete this remarkable performance out here on this beautiful night. Our cast is present and accounted for—”
“Wait, is she okay? As long as she’s alright?” Nick shouted back to him, taking a few steps in his direction.
The audience around him pressed in closer, conversations halting, everyone hanging on these words.
“Yes, she doesn’t want anyone to worry,” Matteo told the group, which seemed to sigh in relief at this.
“Okay,” Nick addressed them all again. “Then, we’ll stage the rest of the show, right here, if you all give us your blessing. We could put everyone over here.” He pointed to the great, vast lawn. “And up front here,” he said, pointing near where he stood, “will be our stage. We apologize for our technical issues. We’re grateful everyone is safe, and I don’t want to say the show must go on, but you know what I mean.” They actually laughed at this. “The role of Prospero will now be played by Sierra Suarez. Sierra?”
Sierra jogged out from her place amid the pack of apprentices toward Nick as a voice cheered in the back.
Nick waved to the actors to assemble, and they took their marks. “I give you the conclusion of The Tempest.”
Applause welcomed the show’s return. The audience, many of them bedraggled and damp from the sprinklers, had found places to sit on the lawn, seemingly invigorated to be part of the adventure. A hush fell and Sierra’s voice, the actors alongside her, carried to Charlie, and she felt at ease.
Charlie watched it all from the street. The ambulance had parked on the hill, giving her a nice perch.
“Remember,” she told the man wrapping her ankle, “the second anything real happens, you guys get outta here.”
The Summer Set Page 29
