Followers

by Anna Davies

  He had no idea.

  “You’re lucky,” I said. “In lots of ways.” I’d meant it as a compliment, but my inexperience at flirting was made apparent when Eric flinched.

  “I don’t know about that.” There was a slight edge to his voice, one that warned me not to ask what he’d meant. We’d stepped onto the cobblestone path that led through the academic buildings, Scholar’s Walk. The legend went that only seniors could walk from the beginning to the end. Underclassmen were supposed to step off at some point, or risk bad luck.

  “So what’s your deal, anyway, Bree?”

  “My deal?” I asked blankly, watching my feet edge closer and closer to the end of the path.

  “Yeah, your jam, your drive … like, who are you?”

  “That’s a pretty big question,” I said, unsure whether he was making fun of me or not. I racked my brain for something interesting, something that would make him realize it wasn’t a mistake for him to rehearse with me. “Do you have a more specific one?”

  “Fair enough. Well, you’re new, right? What do you think of MacHale?”

  “It’s a little Mac-zausting, to be honest.”

  Eric chuckled and I unleashed a flurry of nervous giggles.

  “I hear you on that. Same people, same food, same drama, same stuff. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun, but it’s just a little static.”

  “Right.” I was surprised he got it. I’d always thought that he and the rest of his friends were having the time of their lives at MacHale, while I was the one drifting from class to the dorm and back again. I glanced down, noting that only two slate bricks stood between us and the end of the path. I automatically stepped off. Eric didn’t.

  He raised an eyebrow as my foot hit the grass.

  “What?” I asked defensively.

  “You’re superstitious, aren’t you?” His tone was teasing, and I felt myself blush. Again.

  “Maybe. Ish? Maybe-ish?”

  “Maybe-ish. I like that. You’re an interesting girl, Bree.”

  I was glad his back was toward me as he walked off toward the clump of trees by the theater entrance. He stopped at a bird feeder, felt around the bottom, and held up a silver key in triumph.

  “Impressive.” As soon as the word left my mouth, I cringed. I’d meant it seriously, but it sounded jaded and sarcastic. No wonder I’d never had much luck as an actress.

  Wordlessly, he put the key into the lock and pushed open the heavy wooden door. I automatically felt along the wall for the light switch. A sliver of wood dug into my palm and I gasped. “Are you okay?”

  “Splinter. I’m fine!”

  I felt Eric’s warm hand brush against mine just as the space was bathed in a ghostly glow of light. “Splinters are good luck. You should know that.”

  “According to who?” I winced as I yanked the sliver of wood from my skin, which was still warm from Eric’s touch. He was right. He did have insane body heat.

  “According to me.” Eric smiled.

  The two of us walked from the lobby into the auditorium. The stage was bathed in moonlight, making artificial lights unnecessary. I glanced around. I’d been in the auditorium hundreds of times before, but always when the bleachers were littered with backpacks and piles of books, when the room had a brief hum of conversation, even if a scene was going on onstage. Now the only signs of life in the space were the visible puffs of air coming from our mouths and the echoey sound of Eric’s footsteps as he paced around the stage. He moved slowly, deliberately, as though he were performing some private ritual. I slipped off my jacket and watched him.

  The silence wasn’t awkward anymore. It felt right, like both of us were in a holy place. The auditorium was constructed like a theater-in-the-round, with ten rows of wooden bleachers surrounding all four sides of the stage. A retractable skylight above the stage allowed it to be used for afternoon performances when the weather was nice, but today, the pane of glass was covered with a light dusting of snow, causing the natural moonlight to dapple unevenly on the dark wooden stage. In the dim light, dust motes swirled through the air like snowflakes. And even though the temperature outside was freezing, someone had obviously kept the heat on in the theater — the air felt warm and dry against my skin.

  Adrenaline surged through my veins. I’d been rehearsing one of Ophelia’s earlier monologues, before she goes crazy, when she realizes Hamlet isn’t acting like himself and she doesn’t know what to do about it. She confesses to her brother, Laertes, about how weird Hamlet seems. Most people do Ophelia’s later monologue, where she’s the one everyone thinks is crazy, but I didn’t like that one. I like it when she’s still herself, before the madness has gotten to her. When she still thinks everything can be okay.

  Whenever I performed the monologue — alone, in my room, when no one else was home — I felt I was Ophelia, hoping that someone would listen to me. I loved that moment, when I stopped thinking like Briana and started thinking like someone entirely different.

  “I never really liked Hamlet,” Eric said, interrupting my thoughts. He stood onstage still, his gaze fixed beyond me and toward the last row of the auditorium. “I mean, I know it’s a classic. I know it’s major. And I appreciate its role in the Shakespearean canon, but honestly, I don’t get him.”

  “You don’t get Hamlet?”

  “Yeah. I mean, he has all these plans, but at the end of the day, he thinks he’s powerless. He spends so much time thinking and hardly any time actually doing anything. It’s like he’s decided he’s doomed from the very beginning.”

  “Isn’t that what makes it such a strong part?” I countered as I gingerly stepped onto the stage and stood next to him. I closed my eyes, imagining the seats filled with people and the sound of applause ricocheting off the wooden walls. I crossed my fingers and made a wish. Please.

  “I know. I mean, I want to play him. I just don’t get him. Now, Macbeth … he’s a guy I get.”

  “Eric!” I reached out and hit him hard on the arm before I even knew what I’d done. It was one of the cardinal rules of acting that you never said Macbeth inside the theater. According to theatrical legend, the play was cursed, and saying it caused bad luck. Rumors abounded about mysterious fires, injured actors, and even accidental sword deaths … not to mention disappointing auditions.

  Eric chuckled. “Sorry. I forgot you’re superstitious.”

  “I’m not … but it’s just … Okay, I am. A little,” I admitted.

  Eric grinned. “Sorry. What am I supposed to do to fix it?”

  “Turn around three times and spit over your shoulder. Outside.”

  Eric flicked his gaze toward the door. “Really?”

  I paused. It was a silly theater superstition. I didn’t really believe it. But it gave me a small thrill to see him indulging me, and I wanted to prolong our banter as long as possible.

  Eric let out an exaggerated sigh. “I am banished,” he said, purposefully misquoting

  I smiled. “Get thee to the outside nunnery.”

  As Eric turned to leave, I walked to the center of the stage and glanced toward the lighting booth. I imagined that I was wearing a floor-skimming dress instead of jeans and a fleece. I imagined a sea of faces glancing up at me, bathed in a single spotlight. I pulled my hair out of my ponytail and shook it loose over my shoulders.

  “I’m going to play Ophelia.” My skin prickled as I said the words out loud. Silence surrounded me. Too much silence.

  “Eric?” I called. He’d only gone out the front door; it shouldn’t take him this long. I felt my heart pick up its pace. I thought of my dad’s warnings: Don’t make any dumb mistakes. Did being alone, in the theater, late at night qualify?

  “Eric?” I called again, uncertainly, thinking of the Macbeth curse. My mom believed it; she even had signs put up backstage before her shows reminding people not to say the name of “the Scottish play” out loud. But that was my overdramatic mother, who’d do anything for a scene. She was overreacting. And now I was overreacting.


  “Eric, you don’t have to take forever. You can come back. It’s okay.” My heart pounded harder. “Eric?” My voice raised upward with the beginnings of panic.

  Calm down, I told myself. Most likely, he’d been locked out. Worst-case scenario, one of the teachers roaming campus had caught him and sent him back to his dorm. I jumped off the stage and headed up the aisle. Every footfall echoed. I pushed open the heavy wooden door that led to the lobby. The lights had been turned off. The only illumination was from a shaft emanating from the gas lamp at the doorway.

  “Eric?” I called, trying to sound far more confident than I felt. Nothing.

  The door was still ajar. So he hadn’t been locked out. I slowly peeked around the corner of the door. The snow had started coming down harder, and the trail of footprints we’d left had already been erased. Except that if Eric had gone outstide, there should have been a new set leading away from the theater. It was like I’d imagined the whole thing: asking him to rehearse, sneaking out of the dorm, walking around the bare stage.

  “Eric?” The wind whipped around my ears. I squinted toward the tree line in the woods circling the campus. And there, in the distance, I saw two small, beady points of light staring back at me.

  “Eric!” I shouted. I darted back to the auditorium. I tripped over the doorstop separating the lobby from the auditorium. The door slammed behind me, plunging the room into blackness.

  Where are the lights? I ran my hands desperately along the walls, not caring about splinters, until my fingers closed on the switch. I desperately toggled it up and down. Nothing.

  “Help!” I called desperately. “Help!”

  I heard the sound of a door creaking from the direction of the theater.

  “Help!” I shrieked again.

  My knees buckled beneath me. Sweat or tears slicked my face.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them, the room was dimly lit. Eric stood in front of me, crystalline snowflakes laced in his dark hair like diamonds. I blinked again.

  Eric gazed down at me in concern. “Are you okay? I’m sorry. I think when I went outside I must have tripped over an electrical cord or something. I went down to find the fuse box … and then I found you.”

  Was I okay? My breath was still caught in my throat, my heart still hammered in my stomach. And I’d seen something in the woods.

  Eric leaned down to help me stand up. I flinched away from him.

  “Sorry. I just feel a little skittish.” I thought back to the two eyes. At the time, they’d seemed so real. But now, with the lights and the warmth and the scent of Eric’s cologne-and-deodorant combination surrounding me, they seemed overdramatic and dreamlike, a sign my brain had gotten carried away. I decided not to tell him. Being scared and superstitious when the lights went off was understandable. But babbling about seeing something in the woods seemed certifiably crazy.

  “I couldn’t tell.” Eric smiled.

  “But I’m fine now. Really. Ready to rehearse?” I scrambled to my feet and discreetly wiped the tears from my face as I practically raced into the auditorium. Eric walked behind me.

  “We can go rehearse in the dorm if you like. You seem really freaked out.”

  “No, I’m good,” I lied. I headed down the steps of the stage and plopped into one of the chairs in the first row of bleachers. “It’s kind of funny, right?” My voice sounded high and reedy and not at all like my own.

  Eric nodded, but didn’t make any move to go onstage. “I don’t know, Bree. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  A ghost. I suppressed a shudder. “I’m fine. Seriously. We should do the monologues before it gets too late.”

  “Right.” Still, he didn’t make a move to go onstage.

  “Do you want me to go first?” I asked, surprising myself.

  He nodded. “I’m a little nervous about auditions. Like, I feel on the inside the way you looked when I found you in the dark. Except your panic went away when the lights went on. I’m still in my own private freak-out zone over here.”

  “Really?” I asked skeptically. As if someone like him would get nervous about an audition for a part he had so on lock that he could complain about how he didn’t even like the character. A tiny wave of resentment rose up within me, something I never thought I’d feel about Eric — especially an Eric who’d gone out of his way to be nice to me.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said crisply. I strode onstage, realizing with each step that I was no longer nervous. I wanted to show Eric who I was, that I was more than some shy girl who seemed afraid of her own shadow. “Anyway, I haven’t performed this in front of anyone, so don’t tell me if it’s terrible. Just tell me about stuff I can fix in less than twelve hours. Okay?”

  Instead of waiting for an answer, I launched into the monologue, transporting myself from the barnlike theater into a misty, murky castle where nothing was what it seemed, where the only person I could trust was my brother. I imagined the clank of swords and the angry, ravaged look in Hamlet’s eyes. I felt my lower lip tremble and tears spring to my eyes as I said the final line: “And to the last bended their light on me.”

  My heart galloped and I closed my eyes, waiting for the click when my mind would pull away from the castle and into present day. Right now, I was in what I privately imagined as the in between, where the character and myself were so muddled it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

  Eric’s clapping yanked me back to present day.

  I staggered toward the side of the stage, my legs shaking as I half collapsed onto one of the bleachers.

  “Bree, that was amazing. Like … really, really good. I’d never known you were serious about this.”

  “I am.” I let the words settle over me, and I realized that he was right. It was good. I knew it, certain in a way I’d almost never been before.

  “So, okay, now I’m really nervous,” Eric confessed. “I had no idea you were so talented. I’ve never seen you act before.”

  I grinned giddily as I stepped off the stage, not trusting myself to speak. I felt like I had the first time I’d gone skiing as a kid. At the end of the run, my legs still felt like jelly from nerves, but my entire body had been bursting with pride.

  Eric climbed up the stage steps. “All right, well, don’t judge too harshly. Same thing. If I can fix it, tell me. If not, I don’t want to know,” Eric said. He crossed his arms and paced. He muttered something, and I leaned forward to hear. I hadn’t realized he’d already started. He smiled apologetically at me. “I’m sorry, I’m just a little nervous.”

  “Well, it’s just me,” I said, ignoring the fact that I had no proof he’d even known my name before tonight.

  He nodded, as if that justification was enough to convince him. I sighed and leaned back. The transformation was complete. I was back to being just me. But at least he’d seen something … and all I had to do was bring that to the audition tomorrow for him to see it a lot more.

  Briana Beland @alleyesonbree

  Mac-zausted, Mac-cited, and Mac-king a Deli-C run for carbs. #machale #hamletauditions

  I pressed TWEET, then glanced at my reflection in the mirror, pleased with what I saw. I’d been playing What Would Ophelia Wear? for the past hour and had finally come up with the perfect combination of Willow’s body-skimming black lace short-sleeve thrift-store dress paired with boots and black tights. I felt a little bit guilty going into Willow’s closet, but she’d clearly also snuck out the night before and wasn’t back in our dorm that morning. Besides, wasn’t the outfit technically a costume? It was what Ophelia would wear if she shopped in a vintage store. Which Ophelia would do. I knew that everyone else would wear a polar fleece/sweater/jeans combo, aka the not-in-dress-code uniform of MacHale, and I wanted to stand out.

  I power walked to Deli-C, running through my lines in my head. Not like I needed to. I knew them by heart. At the bagel counter, I spontaneously bought another cinnamon raisin for Eric. It was, after all, what cost
ars did for one another.

  The old man behind the counter smiled as he rang up my order.

  “You’re looking happy,” he noted.

  “It’s going to be a good day.” I said, plunking my change into the tip jar.

  “Ah, the confidence of youth. Enjoy it while you can.”

  I smiled and headed out the door, bypassing the route that cut through campus and walking the long way around the perimeter. The wrought iron gates glinted in the sun. The turrets of the dorm looked like they could belong to a castle. And the faint sound of the Runnymede River as it ran behind campus could definitely be the sound of the brook Ophelia eventually drowned in.

  “Briana!” A cheery voice yanked me back to reality.

  I turned and blinked in surprise. Behind me was Skye Henderson, her blonde hair pulled into a shiny ponytail and her eyes perfectly lined with shimmery bronze shadow. She leaned in, clearly to go for a European-style cheek kiss, but I turned too late and caused her lip gloss to brush against my hair.

  “Oops! Sorry about that!” She shrugged in a What can you do? gesture.

  “No prob.” I smiled tightly. I never knew how I should act around Skye. She and I had been put together as scene partners in Theater Arts last semester. Initially, I’d hoped her passion for theater meant we could be friends, before I realized that every single scene we did was an opportunity for her to prove that she was the best in the class. And honestly, she was good. She had wide eyes; a low, husky voice that was always on pitch; and always knew everything about the history of the plays we read. She memorized monologues for fun; had a dorm wall filled with autographed pictures and letters from Broadway actors and actresses; and even though she, like me, didn’t seem to hang out with anyone on campus, she seemed too busy to care. On one hand, I admired her attitude. But not today. Especially when I’d spent the last night rehearsing with her ex-boyfriend.

  “Are you nervous?” she pried. Even when she was just having a conversation, she sounded like she was acting, trying to impress a casting director who was just out of sight in another room. It was her one flaw, and one I hoped Dr. Spidell would see. One of the reasons I loved Shakespeare and felt I had a sliver of a chance was that Shakespeare knew how to write weirdos, outcasts, and people who talk to themselves. Sure, he was an amazing writer, but I always felt that was the real reason why the plays were so popular — because he actually understood how people, even kings and queens, could be awkward or sad or confused or any combination of emotions.